Man of Ice Read online

  Curious, she let her fingers become still on his face. There was something in his eyes, something dark and intense. She searched them for a long moment, but she couldn’t read the expression.

  At least, she didn’t understand until she took an involuntary step closer and felt his body against hers.

  “No fluke,” he said through his teeth. His voice sounded odd. “Now I don’t want to frighten you,” he continued shortly, “so if you’re getting cold feet, this is your last chance to move away.”

  She wasn’t sure if she meant to hesitate, but she did. His hands came out of his pockets and slid to cradle her by the hips. He pulled her, very gently, against him, and then moved her slowly against the raw thrust of his body, shivering.

  It wasn’t so frightening that way. She was fascinated by what she saw.

  “Yes,” he said through his teeth. “You recognize vulnerability, don’t you?” he asked impatiently, hating the helpless desire he felt even while he thanked God for the ability to feel it. “My legs are shaking. Can you feel them?” He drew her a little closer, to make sure that she could. “I’m swelling. You can feel that, too, can’t you?”

  It was embarrassing to hear him telling her such intimate things, especially in that angry tone. She flushed, but when she tried to drop her eyes, he caught her chin and made her look at him.

  “Stop cringing. I’m not a monster,” he said roughly. “I lost control with you at the worst possible time, and I hurt you. I won’t hurt you again.”

  She swallowed. The feel of his body in such close contact made her nervous, but it also excited her to feel him wanting her. She grew dizzy with confused sensations. She shifted, uneasy yet exhilarated at the same time.

  He drew in a sharp breath and groaned, and then he laughed. “God, that feels good!” He bit off the words. He actually shivered. His eyes met hers and he moved her against him in the same exotic little motion she’d made without thinking. His teeth ground together and the laughter came again. “I’d forgotten what it felt like to be a man.”

  His pleasure affected her in the oddest way. She buried her face in his chest, half afraid, half excited. She shivered, too, as his arms enfolded her.

  “So you feel it, too, do you?” he asked at her ear. His hands tightened on her hips and he repeated the rough, deft motion and heard her cry out. “Do you like being helpless?” he asked, and his head bent. “Do you like wanting me and feeling powerless to draw away?”

  She could hear the resentment, mingled with heated desire, in his deep voice. She opened her mouth to respond and his lips moved over it, opening to fit the shape of it before they settled with a rough, hungry, demanding pressure that made her stiffen with unexpected pleasure.

  Pictures of tidal waves flew through his mind as he groaned and forced her body into even more intimacy with his. He wanted her. God, he wanted her. It was a fever that burned so high and bright that he couldn’t hide his need. It grew and swelled, the pressure hard against her soft stomach. He could feel her embarrassment as she tried to move her hips away from his, but he wouldn’t permit it. He couldn’t. He needed her softness against the flare of his masculinity.

  He needed her.

  His arm forced her closer as his mouth deepened the slow kiss into stark intimacy. She felt the slow, soft penetration of his tongue, the hard caress of his lips, the aching deep groan that shuddered out of his chest.

  Her arms were under his and around him. She could feel the heat from the hard muscles under her hands. She could feel his belt digging into her midriff. His powerful legs were trembling as he moved her against him and he groaned again, in anguish.

  While he kissed her, his hands went deftly under the knit top to the front catch of her lacy bra, quickly loosening the catch before she could protest. His hands slowly took the weight of her bare breasts, caressing their hard tips, while the kiss went on and on. He felt her body tremble again and heard her soft cry go into his mouth. He couldn’t stop. It was just like France, just like that night in her room. Some part of him stood away and saw his own helpless headlong rush into seduction, but he was too far gone to fight it now. He hadn’t been a man for years. Now he was in the grip of the most desperate arousal he’d ever felt and he had to satisfy it. He wanted her, needed her, had to have her.

  He was practiced, an expert in this most basic of arts. She was, for all her fears, still a novice who’d never known pleasure. He was going to give her that. He was going to make her want the satisfaction his body demanded.

  Slowly he began to to slide the fabric of her blouse from her body while his mouth bit at hers in the kind of kisses that were a blatant prelude to intimacy. They threw her off balance so that she made no protest when he removed the top and bra and dropped them onto the carpet. His hands caressed her soft, bare breasts and he drew away a breath so that he could watch them under the tender mastery of his hands.

  “They’re beautiful,” he whispered tenderly, aware at some level of her dazed, wide-eyed stare. His hands caught her waist and he lifted her to his mouth. He traced the hard tips with soft wonder, savoring their taste with lips that cherished her. “You taste of rose petals and perfume,” he breathed, nipping her tenderly.

  She made a sound that brought his head up. He looked into her eyes, seeing the excitement, the shock of wonder in them. No, she couldn’t stop him now. He recognized that blank, set expression on her face. She was in the throes of passion. There was no way she could draw back now, even if she’d wanted to.

  Confident, he let her slide down his body and he moved back a step. She didn’t try to cover her breasts. After a minute he caught the hem of his own knit shirt and pulled it over his head, tossing it onto the floor with her things.

  His chest was sexy, she thought through a haze of pleasure, staring at it, bronzed and muscular with a thick curling mat of hair just a few shades darker than the hair on his head. Without volition, she moved forward and leaned into him, closing her eyes with a shaky sigh as she felt his bare chest against her breasts.

  His big hands flattened just under her shoulder blades and drew her closer in erotic little motions that made her shiver.

  She felt the heavy, hard beat of his heart under her ear. She traced the nipple beside her mouth and felt him tauten. Then he groaned and his mouth slid down and found hers. He lifted her clear off the floor and stood holding her, kissing her, in the middle of the sunlit room. For an instant he looked up and glared around the room. There was only the sofa or the desk or the carpet. He groaned.

  He had no more time for decisions. Shaking with the terrible need to have her, he couldn’t risk having her come back to her senses before…

  He laid her down on the carpet in front of the picture window that overlooked the lawn half a story below. Her body, there in the light, had the shimmer of a pearl. He knelt beside her and slowly, tenderly, stripped the clothing from her body, leaving it bare and trembling, all the while tracing her softness with his lips, with his hands, in skilled caresses that made it impossible for her to draw back.

  He removed his own clothes then, still a little uncertain that his body was going to cooperate with him despite its tense need. So many years, so much pain, so much hunger. He looked at her and felt his whole body clench as he stood above her, shivering a little in the fullness of his arousal.

  She looked at him with faint fear in a single moment of sanity. It hadn’t been this intimate before. In the darkness, she’d had hardly a glimpse of him. Now, standing over her that way, she saw the magnitude of his arousal and flushed.

  “I’ll be careful,” he said quietly.

  He eased down beside her, restraining his own desire. He smoothed the hair back from her flushed face and bent to kiss her with aching tenderness, stemming the rush of words that rose to her lips. She wanted to tell him that she was unprotected, to ask him if he was going to take precautions. But his mouth settled hard on her breast and she arched, shivering with hot pleasure, and her last grasp on reason fell away.
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  The slow, easy movements of his hands and mouth relaxed her. She lay watching him touch her, hearing the deep tenderness of his voice as he whispered to her. The words became indistinguishable as he touched her more intimately. Her body lifted, shivered, opened to him. Her eyes, wide with awe, sought his as the pleasure built to some unexpected plateau and trembled there on the edge of ecstasy as he moved over her at last and his body began, very slowly, to join itself to hers.

  She stiffened at first, because it was suddenly difficult, and her eyes flew open, panicked.

  He paused, breathing heavily, and bent to kiss her wild eyes closed. He couldn’t lose control, he told himself. Not this time. He had to fight his own desperate hunger for her sake. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered roughly. His hand caressed over her flat stomach, lightly tracing, soothing. “I won’t hurt you, baby. Try to relax for me.”

  Her eyes opened again, hesitant and uncertain. “You’re…so…so…!” she blustered, swallowing. “What if I can’t…?”

  He groaned, because he was losing control, losing it all over again when he’d sworn he wouldn’t, that he could contain the raging desire she kindled. But he couldn’t. The feel of her body cost him his restraint.

  He moved helplessly against her. “You did before,” he said. “God, Barrie, don’t tense like that!” he whispered urgently. “Oh, baby, I can’t stop…!” His hand suddenly slid between them and he began to touch her expertly, feeling her body respond immediately, uncoiling, lifting helplessly. “Yes!” he groaned. “Yes, yes…!” He shuddered and suddenly his tongue was in her mouth probing, like his body, teasing, penetrating…!

  She sobbed. He was doing something to her, something that made a rush of pleasure shoot through her like fiery shafts, that made her body crave what he was doing, what she was feeling…

  There was a fullness that grew unexpectedly, that teased and provoked and excited. She was empty and now, now, she felt the impact of the fullness, shooting through her like fireworks, making her body throb in a new rhythm, making her blood flow faster. She could hear herself breathing, she could hear him breathing, she could feel his hips moving, his skin sliding sensuously against hers, above her, as his body moved closer and closer. She couldn’t breathe for the hectic beat of her heart. She opened her eyes, her nails biting into his muscular upper arms as she tried to look down, to understand what was happening to her.

  “No, don’t look,” he snapped when she tried to see. He kissed her eyelids, so that they had to close, and his mouth found hers again. His hand was still between them, and she was feeling things so intense that they made her mind spin.

  “What are you…doing?” she gasped against his devouring mouth, shivering as the pleasure suddenly gripped her and made her body convulse.

  “My God…what do you think I’m doing?” he cried out, shuddering as his hips pushed down in a pressure that sent the sun shattering behind her eyelids in a burst of pleasure so primitive that she sobbed like a child.

  She couldn’t tell how he was touching her now, she didn’t care. She was moving with him, helplessly. Her taut body felt hot and tight and swollen. She felt it opening to the fullness that was alien and familiar all at once. This, she thought blindly, must be how a man prepared a woman for his body, this…!

  His mouth never left her own. She was buffeted in a hard, quick rhythm that increased the fullness and the pressure, and it wasn’t enough to fill the emptiness she had inside. Her legs felt the rough brush of his as she heard the anguish that came gruffly from the lips possessing hers. She could hear someone pleading, a sobbing high voice that sounded oddly like her own. She went rigid as the feeling stretched her as tight as a cord and suddenly snapped in the most unbelievable rush of hot pleasure she’d ever known in her entire life.

  She felt intimate muscles stretching, stretching, felt her body in rhythmic contractions that threatened to tear her apart. And even as they took her to a level of ecstasy she’d never dreamed existed, the plateau she’d reached fell away to reveal one even higher, more intense…

  She cried out, shivering, sobbing, drowning in pleasure. She must have opened her eyes, because his face was above hers, taut and rigid, his eyes so black they might have been coals. His teeth were clenched and he was trying to say something, but he suddenly cried out and his face flooded with color. She watched him in rapt wonder, saw his eyes go black all at once, saw the helpless loss of control, the set rigor of climax that made his face clench. The pressure inside her exploded and she felt his body go rigid, convulsing under her fascinated eyes as his voice cried out hoarsely in an endless moan of pleasure. His chest strained up, away from her, his arms shivering with the convulsive pleasure. He shuddered again and again, and all the while she watched him, watched him…

  He felt her eyes, hated them, hated her, even while the world was exploding under him. He thought he was going to faint with the onrush of ecstasy, reaching a level he’d never dared achieve before it left him helpless. Always, he’d been in control. He’d watched women in this anguished rictus, but he’d never allowed a woman to see it happen to him. Until now. He was helpless and Barrie could see. She could see…what he really felt. Oh, God, no…! He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t. She could see everything…everything.

  The room seemed to vanish in the violence of his rapture. It was a long time before he could open his eyes and see the carpet where his cheek lay against her body. He was shaking. Under him, he felt her labored breathing, felt her cool skin touching his, felt her hands touching his hair, heard her voice whispering shaken endearments, whispering, whispering. Damn her. Damn her!

  As she held him, her breasts were wet, like the rest of her body. He was heavy, lying on her. She felt his shoulders and they were cool and damp. She moved her hands and felt his thick gold hair, wet with sweat. When she moved, she felt the pressure of him deep inside her body. She gasped.

  When he could breathe completely again, he lifted his head and searched her eyes with barely contained fury at his loss of command, raising himself on both elbows so that she came into focus. He looked odd. He poised above her with a dark scowl.

  His jaw tightened. “I saw you watching me,” he said. “Did you enjoy it? Did it please you to watch me lose control to the extent that I couldn’t even turn my face away?”

  The angry words shocked her after the intimacy they’d just shared. She didn’t understand the anger that flared in his face. He looked at her with contempt, almost hatred, his lips making a thin line. He took a rough breath and began to lift away, but she hated to lose the intimacy, the oneness he’d shared with her. Her body gripped him in protest at his upward movement, but then she suddenly cried out and her fingernails bit into him.

  “Dawson, don’t!” she whispered frantically, clutching at him.

  He stopped moving at once, afraid that he’d hurt her. He scowled. “What’s wrong?” he asked curtly.

  Her face was rigid. She could feel the contractions inside her body. “It…hurts when you move,” she said, embarrassed. She licked her dry lips. He muttered something that made her color and started to withdraw again, but this time he did it gently, with a slow, steady pressure. It was still uncomfortable, but not painful.

  She looked down and blushed as red as a rose as he lifted himself completely away from her.

  He rolled away from her and got to his feet, his muscles trembling from the violence of his fulfillment and the fear her cry had aroused. Memories of the night in France came back and he couldn’t look at her.

  He’d hurt her again. He jerked his clothes back on, hating his helplessness. He was just like his father, he thought furiously, a victim of his own uncontrollable desire. He wondered if Barrie had any idea how it frightened him to be at the mercy of a woman or why.

  Barrie didn’t understand his coldness, but slowly her pride came to the rescue. She couldn’t bear to think of the risk she’d just taken, of the things he’d said to her. She’d welcomed him without a thought for the
future, walking like a lamb into the slaughter, just as she had five years ago. Would she never learn? she wondered bitterly.

  She drew herself up, wincing at the unfamiliar soreness, embarrassed and hurt as she reached for her things and began to dress, more clumsily than he had. She didn’t understand what had made him so angry. He’d wanted her. Had it only been to prove his manhood after all? He’d given her pleasure that she never expected, and at first he’d been tender, almost loving. Now he wouldn’t even look at her.

  He was breathing a little unsteadily still. She didn’t seem to be damaged, at least, thank God. But as his fear for her subsided, his anger at himself only increased. His body ached with the pleasure he’d had from her, but his pride was lacerated. He’d lost himself in her. He’d been helpless, so in thrall to desire that he’d have taken her in the hall, in the car…

  He turned away, unable to bear even the sight of her. He was like his father. He was a slave to his desire. And she’d seen him that way, vulnerable, helpless!

  She bit her lower lip until she drew blood. “Dawson?”

  He couldn’t look at her. He stared out the window with his hands tight in his pockets.

  She felt cold. Her arms clenched around her body. It was impossible not to understand his attitude, even if she didn’t want to. “I see,” she said quietly. “You only wanted to know if you…could. And now that you do, I’m an embarrassment, is that it?”

  “Yes,” he said, lying through his teeth to save his pride.

  She hadn’t expected him to agree. She stared at him with eyes that had gone dark with shock. The clock had turned back to France, to that night in her hotel room. The only difference was that he hadn’t hurt her this time. But she felt just as cheap, just as used, as she had then.

  There was really nothing else to say. She looked at him and knew that the love she’d felt for him since her teens hadn’t diminished one bit. The only difference was that now she knew what physical love truly was. She’d gloried in it, drowned in the wonder of his desire for her, given all that he asked and more. But it still wasn’t enough for him. Now she knew that it never would be. He hated his hunger for her, that was obvious even to a novice, despite the fact that he’d indulged it to the absolute satiation of his senses. He wanted her, but it was against his will, just as it had been five years ago. Maybe he hated her, too, for being the object of his desire. How ironic that he was impotent with everyone else. How tragic.