Chosen: Part Five (Allure Book 5), page 4
I hated what he had done, shattering my trust and plunging me into an abyss of anger and regret. The mere thought of trying to understand or accept his actions was infuriating. And yet--
Given the deep, still unresolved wound of his parents’ deaths, if he had truly feared that the danger from Sebastian was as imminent as he said and that I could be the target--
No! I refused to go that route, certain as I was that I would lose myself in the process. We all carried wounds from the past. Granted, most weren’t as severe as his but that was no excuse for enforcing his will so ruthlessly.
I set down my fork and took a breath. “This was a mistake. Until you realize that what you did was wrong, there’s nothing for us to discuss.”
A sudden gust of wind fluttered the candle flames. Bands of light and shadow moved across his face, alternately hiding and revealing. Which was he truly, the man who had subjected me to such brutal torments or the one who had wooed me in New York? I felt the confusion welling in me and looked away quickly.
“Where are you going?” he asked, standing at the same time that I did.
“To find a guest room or better yet a way off this damn mountain.”
His mouth tightened. “Do you imagine that putting distance between us will change anything?”
A shiver ran through me. How far would he go? The need to know surged with each breath I took.
A dangerous brew of anger and hurt made me reckless. “Perhaps not but I can’t imagine sleeping in the same bed with you, not now.”
I was pushing him deliberately, driving him to either destroy the last, tenuous bonds between us once and for all or find a way to somehow repair them. Which would it be?
“That’s too bad,” he said as he came around the table toward me. “I’ve discovered that I like waking in the night next to you.”
I backed up a step but it made no difference. The distance between us shrank alarmingly. His hand rose, the tips of his lean fingers stroking along the curve of my cheek and down my throat. To my shame, ripples of desire flowed through me.
“Do you have any idea how you make me feel?” he asked.
That he needed me as much as he had claimed, as though I was the very breath of life? I couldn’t believe that, however much I might want to. The romantic in me was proving all too resilient despite the lessons that Adam himself had taught me.
Without daring to take my eyes from his, I shook my head.
“You make me feel afraid,” he said. “For you, for us. And that’s unfortunate.”
He stepped closer, pressing me back against the smooth stone wall of the terrace. His hand curled around my throat gently but implacably, urging my head up so that our gazes met. Quietly, he said, “I don’t deal well with fear. It brings out the worst in me.”
I didn’t deal with it well, either. Especially not when it came wrapped in confusion and contradiction. I should have been even more angry and afraid, and I was. But the gathering heat and moisture between my legs made it all too clear that I was also aroused. Worse yet, I suspected that he knew it.
“The last time I felt fear like this,” Adam went on, “was when my parents were killed.” His voice was seductive and oddly soothing even as his words were anything but. “It seethed in me, growing stronger as I grew until finally it proved too much. I went on a rampage. Everyone I could discover who had anything to do with their deaths died savagely--at my hands. Did you know that?”
I nodded mutely, the best I could do under the circumstances. Held by him with what I realized was carefully measured strength, I could breathe without difficulty but my chest was tight all the same. The feeling of pressure rising up within myself was inescapable. I was being driven in a direction that I knew I shouldn’t go. Yet with every beat of my heart, I felt myself yielding to my deepest desires, the ones I hadn’t even known that I possessed until Adam came into my life. The raw, savage will emanating from him shattered every barrier.
As though he sensed my wavering, his hold eased fractionally. I felt the warmth of his breath against the curve of my neck, the seductive caress clashing with the starkness of his words.
“I want to hurt you,” he said. “For your opposition, your willingness to endanger yourself, above all for the fear I feel ever since you came into my life. At the same time, I can’t bear the thought of you being harmed.”
He drew back a little, still holding my gaze. My breath caught as I saw the raw torment in his eyes, so at odds with the controlled, impervious man he showed the world.
The pad of his thumb stroked over my lower lip, tugging at it. Softly, he murmured, “What am I to do about you, Grace?”
Chapter Five
What am I to do?
The question resonated deep within me, applying not only to Adam but to myself as well.
I knew what I should do. But how could I compel myself to leave him when everything in me cried out to stay?
All my life, in my own way, I had fought against the pressure to obey, to be good, to submit. The knowledge of what my family had done to Patrick, to Rolf’s sister, and to countless others had only strengthened my resolve. But now, face-to-face with Adam, my determination faltered.
Absorbed in the cascade of sensations he unleashed, my answer sounded hollow even to my own ears.
“Let me go.”
To my shock, Adam didn’t hesitate. He released me at once and stepped back. The sudden opening of space between us knocked me off balance. Freed so abruptly, I felt as though I was falling. Instinctively, I reached out for him.
His hand clasped mine, our fingers intertwining. I gasped as the tight coil of sensual need exploded inside me.
“Are you toying with me, Grace?” he murmured. “Would you be so cruel? God knows I deserve it.”
Absurdly, at the thought of hurting him, my eyes sheened with tears. At the sight of them, a low, hard growl came from him.
“Stop me,” he said, his voice a low, husky plea.
“How?” I gasped. Pleasure radiated from his touch down along the length of my body clear to my helplessly curling toes.
“Tell me that you hate me for what I’ve done and want nothing to do with me.”
I opened my mouth, intent on speaking the words but none came. Not pride nor shame nor even entirely justified anger could compel me to lie to him.
A single tear slid down my cheek. Adam caught the salty drop of my grief on the tip of his tongue and swallowed it. A tremor ran through him. For an instant, his eyes closed. When he opened them again, what I saw blazing from the depths of his soul made me gasp.
His fingers pushed through my hair, his hands gripping my head. I felt the wall against my back again and his erection pressing into my softness.
“What you do to me,” he groaned in the instant before he took my mouth.
His kiss was savage. He claimed me without restraint, the hard thrust of his tongue filling me with his taste and scent. Muscles low in my body clenched with a sweet, agonizing pain.
Beyond sense, beyond reason, he was a fever in my blood, the seed of madness that would not be denied. I opened for him like a blossom to the sun.
But even then, a tiny kernel of reason remained. I clung to it with all the desperation of a drowning woman. When, at last, he raised his head, I gasped, “The staff--”
“Know better than to intrude,” he said with the arrogant certainty that was as much his birthright as the castle we stood atop. Fisting the fragile silk of my dress, he slid the fabric slowly up my legs. All the while, his gaze held mine. I found a strange comfort in it. Even then, if I had offered any true resistance, I didn’t doubt that he would have let me go.
In the paradox of my own mind, that made it acceptable to yield to his desire…and mine.
His hand slipped under my raised skirt, stroking the sodden silk between my thighs. A wave of color warmed my cheeks as I realized that if he’d had any doubt about my state of arousal, it was gone in that instant.
“You’re so wet,” he said with blatant satisfaction that held a note of relief.
His long index finger slipped under the edge of my panties, finding my clit unerringly. His touch was light at first, the merest circling motion brushing over me again and again. But it was enough.
My nipples hardened even further, thrusting against the fragile lace of my bra. The tension that had been building in me all day with every thought of him rapidly became unbearable. My head fell back, my eyes opening wide. I saw the sky, strewn with stars, and felt as though I was falling upward into it.
“You are the most sensual woman,” Adam murmured, his lips brushing mine. “A treasure beyond compare. And you didn’t even know it, did you? Not until I found you.”
I made a low sound of admission. He had awakened me to an understanding of myself that I had never before suspected. The rush of memories--that night on the beach when we came together for the first time, the nights--and days--that had followed--overwhelmed me. But even they burned away in the incandescent moment.
The brush of his body along the length of mine drew a gasp from me. I looked down in shock and met his wicked smile.
Just as he had taunted me that he would, he kneeled in front of me, an arm wrapped around my hips so that I could not move. With his fingers, he tugged the scrap of silk aside and parted the swollen lips of my sex.
“You have the most beautiful cunt,” he said, his breath hot on the little nub of sensation that was rapidly becoming the sole focus of my consciousness. “Pink and glistening, just begging to be tasted.”
A strangled groan broke from me. Despite his assurances, I still felt acutely exposed. But instead of deterring me, the thought of being seen in such an intimate and vulnerable moment only heightened my response. I was beyond any such concern, freed as I had never been in my life, soaring higher and higher--
The tip of his tongue probed where his finger had lately been. I gasped at the molten rush of pleasure. Almost without my being aware of it, my hands tangled in the rough silk of his hair. I wanted…needed…
Just as I trembled on the very edge of release, Adam stopped. He stood with agile grace and cupped my face in his hands. Darkness swirled in his eyes. On his mouth, I saw the glistening evidence of my own arousal.
“Tell me that you want me.”
Was that an order or a plea? I was beyond any such distinction. My legs quaked; I could barely stand. Heat flushed my skin. Distantly, I heard the pounding of my own heart.
At that moment, the coy moon emerged from behind a veil of clouds and bathed the stone terrace in molten silver. For an instant, I seemed to stand apart from us both, gazing at the couple illuminated in that stark, shimmering light. They appeared to be without secrets, stripped of their masks, revealed to one another if only they had eyes to see.
I tried to speak, to tell him what he needed to hear but my breath caught, held by the fierceness of his gaze and the tremors I felt running through his big, hard body. Instead, my hand slipped down the wall of his chest to the bulge between his legs. I cupped him firmly, my fingers stroking his length.
When he allowed my touch, making no attempt to re-assert control, heady pleasure bubbled in my veins. I unbuckled his leather belt and undid the button at his waist. Still caressing him, I slid his zipper down and freed him. The weight and heat of his fully erect penis made my body clench. I wanted him desperately, deep inside me, driving hard, claiming me even as I claimed him.
Still holding him, I arched a leg over his hip and brushed his velvety crest against my clit. The sensation was beyond exquisite but it wasn’t remotely enough. I needed so much more. A low moan broke from me.
A flash of relief flared behind Adam’s eyes before it was replaced by something altogether more primal. Sliding his hands under my bottom, he lifted me so that the tip of his cock pressed against my opening. Slowly, never take his gaze from mine, he lowered me onto him.
My soft, keening cry was muffled in the curve of his shoulder. He was so big, so thick and long, that I had to stretch to accommodate him. I could feel the savage pounding of his heart and taste the sheen of sweat on his skin as he held himself still while my body adapted to his.
When he finally began to move, every thrust was slow and measured, driving me all the wilder with need. Every effort I made to quicken the pace was thwarted by his will. Finally, beyond desperation, I raked my teeth along the column of his throat and sank them into his flesh.
I had never done such a thing but I was beyond reason, lost in a sea of sensations and emotions that crashed through me with relentless fury. In the grip of arousal so intense as to be its own sweet agony, all the barriers inside me were crumbling.
A felt the roar building in Adam’s chest before it burst from him, a harsh, wild sound that shattered the night. His grip on my hips and buttocks tightened; I would have bruises in the morning but I couldn’t care. Stripped of all restraint, he drove into me with unbridled fury. Again and again, the hard, thick length of his cock stroked that ultra-sensitive place deep inside me. At the same time, with each thrust, the rough silk of his pubic hair tormented my clit.
I managed a single, strangled cry before the on-rush of orgasm engulfed me. The reverberations of his own release joined with mine, further heightening and extending it. Every contradiction and conflict between us fell away. Only the stark honestly of our need for one another remained.
For the moment, it was enough.
Chapter Six
“This is so good,” I said, all but moaning with pleasure. The tartly sweet taste exploded on my tongue. It was sinfully delicious. I couldn’t get enough.
“Here,” Adam said, “have mine.” Smiling, he slipped the cut crystal dish across the table to me.
We were seated at a small round table in the master bedroom, our dinner having been relocated there in the wake of our fiery interlude on the terrace and the lingering shower that we shared afterward. Distantly, I marveled at how the servants could come and go without my seeing them. But all I could really focus on was the deluge of pleasure flooding my senses, all due to the man sitting across from me.
The anger that had begun to build in me the moment I awakened in the plane and realized what he had done was quiet for the moment, silenced by the explosion of sexual release so intense as to leave me shaken to my core. I didn’t make the mistake of thinking that the truce between us could last very long but its very fragility made it safe to embrace. Or so I told myself.
The lapels of his black silk robe were open enough to give me a view of tanned skin stretched taut over hard muscle and lightly dusted with rough silk dark hair. My fingertips prickled with the remembered sensation of stroking down the length of that powerful chest, over the washboard ridges of his abdominal muscles to--
Aware suddenly of the flush spreading over my body, I wrenched my eyes back to his face. A faint smile played at the corners of his mouth, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. He looked at once relaxed and intent, a predator at ease for the moment but still intent on his prey.
A shiver of anticipation flickered over my skin. I felt my nipples harden further under the thin cotton camisole I wore with a comfortable pair of pajama bottoms, the best I could do given the general practicality of my wardrobe.
“I couldn’t,” I said, my greedy gaze slipping from him to the contents of the dish.
“I insist. Besides, as good as this is, watching you enjoy it is even better.”
“What is it?”
“Pflaumenkuchen.”
Right there was the reason why I had never learned German. The words were too long and, with all respect, to the untutored ear they sounded more hacked up than spoken. To be fair, I supposed that English could sound the same.
“Beg pardon?” I said.
“Plum cake, but this particular recipe calls for the addition of almonds. It was a favorite of mine when I was a child.”
Adam as a child…when he was still an innocent, loved by his parents, safe within a world of privilege and comfort--
“What was it like, growing up here and on Malta?” I asked softly.
He shrugged. “I’ve told you, all that seems to have happened to another person.”
“Yet you remember the plum cake.”
“That’s true…and a few other things.” The reluctant admission seemed to surprise him.
“Tell me,” I urged before he could think better of it.
In the back of my mind, I knew that I was seeking to take advantage of the moment and, at the same time, prolong it. The temptation to understand him better was enticing. So, too, was the forlorn wish that nothing existed beyond ourselves alone in the room perched high above the treacherous world. A foolish wish that I should have turned away from but which lingered all the same in my heart.
He shrugged, as though not to make too much of what he would rather have forgotten. “The crackle of logs in the fireplace of the main hall…and the burn of snow on my cheeks the first time I schussed down the mountain.”
“Were you happy here?” I knew the answer but I wanted him to say it.
“I suppose that I was. Until-- You know.”
Until the chasm that lay across his life, the still raw wound of his parents’ deaths. Softer still, well aware that I was trespassing on ground he had guarded alone for so long, I asked, “Afterward, you didn’t live here?”
“I went away to school. Holidays, I spent on Malta.”
I took a bite of the cake, let it melt on my tongue, and asked, “So this place was empty?” I tried to imagine the high-ceilinged rooms, the galleries filled with art, and the stone towers spiraling into the sky all vacant, waiting for his return.
He shook his head. “My Uncle Christoph ran the family enterprises until I was ready to take over. He lived here with his wife and children, including Sebastian.”
The revelation surprised me even as I realized that it shouldn’t have. Of course, someone must have overseen the Falzons’ affairs in the years before Adam claimed that position. If I had given any thought to that at all, it would have been to envision an army of loyal aides toiling away anonymously. The truth was ominously different.
