By Desire Bound Read online

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  "Oh God . . ." Who said it ... one or both ... the raw nakedness of him penetrating her so deeply, so im­measurably, so darkly; he almost rocketed out of con­trol.

  "Darcie . . ."

  She whispered against his mouth, "Take me now ..."

  "I don't want to move."

  "Do it—"

  He'd never had a woman like this, who shimmied and writhed and spread her legs and pushed down de-mandingly on him and commanded him to give her everything he had.

  "I'm never going to let you get dressed again," he growled in her ear. "I want you naked so I can take you whenever I want."

  "Do it, Con . . ."

  He shoved himself deeper. "I can't wait for it now ..." and he pulled himself back, so long and strong and thick that his withdrawal made her feel be­reft. And then he rocked back into her with deep, hot thrusts, one, two, three, withdraw, thrust, a rhythm that made her whimper with need. He was too far away too far; she reached for him desperately when he removed himself. She needed him deep inside her. She needed to feel him, to squeeze him, to know he was hers.

  Short, stiff thrusts, suddenly, hard against the flaring center of her heat. No kisses. No caresses. Just his potent power lunging and plunging and driving her home.

  He felt her body seize up and her resistance to it. "Come for me now, Darcie—"

  "No. I want you to work for it."

  "Do you?" He could go on forever, a machine, pump­ing and thrusting into the encompassing heat of her. He was hot for her, out of his mind for her. She was the light in the darkness and he drove into her wildly to

  appease her, to pleasure her, to bind them even tighter so that she would stay.

  "Now, Darcie ..."

  She made a sound at the back of her throat, almost a whimper. She didn't want it to end, but they both wanted it too badly; five thrusts later, she careened out of control, sliding down the shaft of his power, and rid­ing him to oblivion, triumphant at last when he followed her into the darkness and satiety.

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  Seven

  They lay side by side, exhausted. She thought at one point she slept because there was a short spate of time in which she was not thinking about him, and his sex, and their explosive coupling. And then she was awake suddenly, stretching her body luxuriously to just touch his, to experience what feeling his bare skin did to her. There was something so illicit and delicious about knowing he was there, naked and hard, and waiting for her.

  "Are you awake?" "I'm here."

  Did she dare . . . ? "How here?" she whispered, her voice trembling just a little.

  "As here as you want me to be," and there was no doubt what he meant. She reached out her hand to grasp him and he groaned and rolled toward her.

  His heat enveloped her as she welcomed his weight and parted her thighs. His mouth settled on hers, feed­ing off the intensity of the desire that had aroused them both quick as a flame. He slipped inside her, thick as a cloud, and they moved in unison to her rhythm.

  He was the man in the desert who had found an oasis, and he didn't want to find out if it were an illusion. All he knew, all he could feel was her—soft and slick and

  enfolding a starving man as deeply as his aching soul. Slowly and softly, she moved with him, coaxed him, adored him. His sweet discharge, when it came, spi­ralled them endlessly outward toward oblivion, and then she held him tightly while they slept.

  When she awakened again, it was still dark. She reached out to touch him and he wasn't there. She pan­icked, scrambling over the side of the bed and reaching for the lamp on the night table. "Con . . . ?"

  "I'm here." His voice, strangely disembodied, from the other side of the room. "What are you doing?" "Thinking about you."

  She liked that. She sat back on the bed and consid­ered his words. "Tell me what you're thinking."

  He wanted her again. He was rigid and rampant with it and he didn't understand a need so consuming it kept him awake and hot and throbbing for almost a day and a night. If he took her now, he would want her again in an hour. He didn't like feeling that out of con­trol after so many years of denial. But—her craving for his sex was every bit as strong as his desire for her.

  He had accomplished what he had set out to do—he had enslaved her, only he had ensnared himself in the process. But at the moment, it didn't seem to matter. There was something about the dark and her untamed response, and the sense that he could say what he wanted, he could do what he wanted—in the dark—and somehow it would all be absolved.

  "I can't get enough of you," he growled. She loved that. "Tell me how much." "I want you now."

  She swallowed. His words made her breathless, made her body quicken with desire. She loved the idea of

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  coming to him in the dark; in the dark, they were equals. In the dark, they were the same.

  This was time out of reality. It didn't count when it was in the dark and filled with such devouring pleasure. They didn't have to acknowledge the things that they did in the dark. And she could hold those memories in her heart forever.

  She felt her way across the room to where he was sprawled in the chair, and she knelt between his legs and placed her hands on his knees. She loved this, feeling for him in the dark, where every sense was heightened by the scent of their sex, the knowledge of everything they had done before, and the drive of their mutual de­sire.

  She rubbed her face against his penis, loving its tex­ture, its length, its rigidity, its power. And then she bur­ied her lips at its base, in his hair, her mouth taking him at the root in a ferocious love bite.

  "Get up here."

  "I like it better down here." She nipped him again, a little further up his shaft. And then another and an­other, until she encircled him at the ridge and pulled on him in a long wet sucking kiss.

  His body jolted against her rapacious mouth. "Je-esus ..." he groaned. He felt himself spinning, pushing himself into her mouth, and he didn't want to let go, not now, not there. Not yet. "Darcie . . . !" he reached forward and grasped her arms.

  "I'm hungry," she protested.

  "Me, too. Get up here." He pulled her onto his lap and she straddled his legs, spreading her thighs and settling herself precisely on his rigid length with appre­ciative little murmurs of delight. "I like this; I like sitting on you like this."

  He cupped her breasts. "I like it too."

  She arched her back inviting a caress.

  "You're very hot, Darcie."

  "It's because I'm pressed down on you. Make me wet," she begged, bracing her hands against his shoul­der and pushing her breasts closer to his mouth.

  He pushed her breasts closer together, and then he brushed her nipples with his lips, first one, then the other, back and forth equally, one and the other, in a lush erotic rhythm that made her writhe and moan.

  She ground her body down tightly against his hard length as he started kissing her nipples, one and the other with deep wet sucking kisses, over and over, licking, pulling, sucking until she almost couldn't stand it. And then, without breaking the rhythm, he began concen­trating on each hard pointed tip, swirling his tongue, cushioning, pulling, squeezing with his lips, pulling, pull­ing, pulling, one and the other.

  She arched up against his mouth in an erotic haze, begging for more, bracing herself against his knees, and feeling for his length, so she could stroke him there in concert with his relentless sucking.

  The minute she touched him, he was ready to blow. Her nipple was tight and taut in his mouth, wet and hard from his sucking; he felt her fingers rubbing him, caressing him, feeling him. He pulled harder just at the sex-engorged tip in a dark ferocious sucking kiss.

  "Ahhhhhhhhh . . ." She threw her head back and bore down on his manhood as her climax broke and streamed all through her body, a
river of hot silver skeining down down down and exploding between her

  legs. And then she melted against him, pressing her aching

  breasts against his chest.

  He took her mouth in a soft soft kiss, waiting, waiting, until she was ready, waiting even though he was stoked

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  to the bursting point. Waiting, with every one of his senses screaming for release.

  "Let me come inside you."

  "Please ..." she whispered, rubbing her lips against his mouth.

  She shifted to her feet, and then she slowly climbed back onto him; he held her hips, guiding her as she grasped his penis and positioned it at the point of pene­tration, and then she just sank onto his jutting length with a muffled groan.

  His hands moved upward as she bore down; he cov­ered her breasts, he cupped them, he caressed her nip­ples as she set the primitive rhythm, her whole body centered on her two most pleasure points: her tight taut nipples and the precious flesh between her legs.

  There was just nowhere else for a woman. He fin­gered her nipples and let her move, and she thought she would just explode. But he came first, erupting into her with one volcanic thrust that lifted her from her erotic seat as spasms racked his body and finally made him complete.

  His dreams were suffused with visions of sex and sur­render, but the thing that held him captive were the memories surfacing from someplace down below, from beyond all conscious remembrance.

  He couldn't quite grasp what he wanted to know. It was all tangled up with tunnels and pits and diamonds and trains and the Con Pengellis he used to be. The darkness mattered. Sometimes he thought he could see more clearly in the darkness. And sometimes he felt like he had to fight it like a demon, and blast his way up and out.

  He remembered the diamond, remembered touch­ing, lifting it, feeling the weight of it in his hands. . . . leaving it . . .

  Where?

  No—it was the slender weight of Darde he lifted in his hands . . . and then he was falling, top over tail, through the tunnel, down the pit, into the darkness, his eyes focused on the brilliant light beyond . . . . . . wait . . .

  He had waited. Patiently he had waited. Wait. A train. A tunnel. He was running. Wait. He knew what Con Pengellis knew. And The Eye of God was following him . . . The Eye of God saw everything and cast out a sinner . . . wait— . . . the single largest octahedron ever found . . . . . . balancing fate—

  Darde was fate.

  And he would remember because he felt the hunger of the hunt all over again. The hunt for sex. The hunt for riches. And he would find his way to the tunnel before somebody else did.

  And now he had Darde to help him.

  She never wanted morning to come. She wanted to curl up in that seductive fog and warm herself against his heated skin forever.

  Instead, she was up and about before him, packing what few clothes they had, and seeing to breakfast.

  It felt strange, this morning, to be folding away the memories of this room, where no one and nothing could touch them, but dreams couldn't last forever. They would never be as safe again, she thought. And she would never be as free.

  Risks—they both had taken risks, and now it was time to go beyond the walls. And they couldn't turn back,

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  he wouldn't turn back now, and let someone else claim it all.

  She had gotten him a shabby old suit to wear, in the guise of her elderly patient. But she wondered, as she laid it out at the foot of the bed, how she thought she could contain his intense masculinity with any kind of disguise.

  Well, he would find it, and know what to do with it. She needed to take the pitcher downstairs to bring back some hot water.

  "I trust my wheelchair is safe," she said to the inn­keeper.

  "Yes, mum. We was hoping the mister would recover some, as you said."

  "He can sit up, and he seems well enough to travel. I'll pay the bill now and then I'll need some help bring­ing him downstairs." She hadn't told Con that part, but her senses were so disordered, she felt she needed to take every precaution. The charade had to begin, now.

  "Ring the bell, mum, and I'll come."

  She entered the room to find him half dressed, and groping toward the table. "That's right, you're almost there. There's tea and pastries, and I've just brought up some hot water."

  He sat down heavily in the chair. "You sound disgust­ingly chipper this morning."

  She pushed every other consideration aside, like his warm bare chest, and her rising desire. That was over now. It was. "We have to go."

  "I'd rather stay here." Even he was feeling it, the reluctance and the need.

  "We're going. There's a suit at the foot of the bed. And after you've eaten and washed, I'm going to pow­der your hair."

  "Jesus." She really meant it, he thought; she was go-

  ing to make him into an invalid. But he was already feeling like one now that the magic of darkness was gone.

  "Everything else is packed and I've paid the bill," she said briskly. "I've asked the innkeeper to come help me take you downstairs, by the way."

  He put down his cup hard. "Why is that, Miss Dar-cie?" he asked, his tone just a little dangerous.

  "The play starts here, Con. I can't take the chance no one is watching us. I haven't been out and about in two days. I don't know what's going on out there. So we have to start play-acting now."

  She knew he wasn't going to like that. She felt his skepticism clear across the room. But it didn't matter. She'd put the whole thing together in her mind the first day and she wasn't going to deviate from it.

  "The story is, you've been recuperating for the past couple days from an attack of some kind, and now you're better and ready to travel. We have . . . oh, maybe two hours, and we'll need at least an hour to get you dressed and down those steps. And don't glower. It has nothing to do with anything else."

  "It has to do with a fool's quest, and your stupid de­termination to find this damned diamond, that I still goddamned can't remember where or if I even found it."

  "But you will," she said confidently, ignoring his frus­tration and his outburst. "You know what's at stake, and I know you will."

  It was over, so abruptly he couldn't quite comprehend it. But it was nothing he hadn't expected, he thought. Darcie was eminently practical. She had spent the

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  money for tickets to France, they were going to France, no matter what magic they had created in that room.

  He couldn't afford to fall for her. Above all else, she wanted her share of the diamond. In one corner of that sensible mind, she had never forgotten the endgame. Nor would she ever let him forget he owed her his life.

  And now he had made sure he had bound her to him like a wife. And he couldn't ever forget that had been his plan.

  She eyed him like an artist surveying a masterpiece. "You wouldn't want to see yourself, Con. You look— fifty." She jammed the slouchy hat down on his head. "Perfect."

  "I feel fifty," he grumbled.

  "It's time to go." She jerked the bellpull. "I think I have everything. We have two suitcases, one each, and I tried to estimate what size clothes for you. I think I did all right. I didn't want to take too much, in case we had to move fast."

  "Darcie—no one is after the diamond."

  "You can't know that."

  "And Lavinia has probably given up looking for you."

  "I doubt it," she said, and she felt a rush of heat. Oh dear God, in all that happened, she had forgotten about the baby; how could she have forgotten about the baby. "I told you, she wants Roger's baby."

  He felt like he'd been kicked in the gut. The baby. The baby had utterly slipped his mind. She was carrying a child in that beautiful flat belly. How far along was
she?

  There was a knock at the door so he couldn't pursue that thought; she opened it to admit the innkeeper.

  "If you'd just let him lean against you, and I'll take our bags—I think we'll be fine."

  He felt himself being heaved up roughly against a tall

  male body. He felt Darcie lifting his arm on the other side, and he let it drape around her neck.

  "That's good," she said brightly, wrapping her left arm around his waist and pinching his side. "That'll be fine. Just down a flight of steps, darling, and you won't have to walk again."

  "Mmmph," he grunted, as they shuffled into the hall­way.

  "He's deeply appreciative," Darcie said, as they care­fully descended the stairs.

  "Grrmph," he growled when they reached bottom.

  "And he couldn't have done it without you," she added, as they settled him in the rickety wicker wheel-chair she'd bought on the cheap, and she dumped the suitcases in his lap.

  She flashed a smile at the innkeeper as she slipped him a couple of pence. "Thank you so much."

  "Good luck, mum."

  "We'll need it," Con muttered.

  "You never can tell," she whispered hotly. "Come on now, hunch your shoulders. Look old."

  She wheeled him into the sunshine, swerving around objects with the skill of a lorry driver. He felt the sun in a burst of light against his eyes. He heard the raucous noise of an afternoon in a coastal town: mongers and drays, and gulls and dogs, and voices and horns, all meshing together in one indelible picture in his mind.

  And Darcie, determinedly wheeling him toward the dock.

  "How many days to Le Havre?" he asked, his voice muffled because he had crushed his chin against his chest.

  "Two days," she said, jerking the chair around sharply to avoid a cat, before her step faltered. She hadn't thought about that.