Forbidden by Susan Johnson (best feel good books txt) 📗

to snatch her hands away from the steel-hard muscles beneath her palms. When he shifted slightly to turn his own body more fully toward hers, she took a small steadying breath as his muscles coiled and rippled under her hands. She remembered with graphic recall how his hard body felt under her and over her, how he moved with supple sureness and skill, how no other man had brought her to climax with such exquisite sensation. And she hated him for his consummate sureness… for his mocking challenge. Seduction might be his avocation, but she'd trained with the medicine woman of her clan and resist she would. For she'd learned a pattern of visual mind-control she could call on now.

Snow-covered mountain ranges majestic against the horizon of her father's summer camp appeared in her mind as the Duc's lips first touched hers. She saw the horse herds racing across the highland pastures as his mouth softly parted hers. Closing her eyes tightly against the lazy penetration of his tongue into her mouth, she struggled to maintain the interior landscape of her mind, consciously drawing on her memories of mountain summers.

He held her tightly in his arms, only the silk of her gown and chemise barrier to the heated warmth of their bodies while his tongue slid slowly to the back of her mouth, in seductive suggestion. She could feel the hardness of his arousal beneath her, found herself imagining that same slow penetration, just as his tongue ravished her mouth. Against her will, a tremor of desire shook her. Recognizing her response, he moved gently upward at the same time he exerted a mild pressure on Daisy's shoulders. Her small gasp wanned his mouth and he smiled. Daisy desperately forced her mind away from the pleasure flooding her senses, but summer camps and mountain landscapes diminished in vividness against the heady need innundating her pleasure centers.

"No," she murmured, pushing against the solid weight of his body. "No."

But his arms held her firmly, his kiss only deepening, and Etienne Martel, Duc de Vec and practiced lover of beautiful women, brought all his skill into play. Short moments later her palms slid a small distance across his shoulders as if of their own volition—her first small capitulation to sensation. It was mere inches but they both felt it with such a shuddering intensity the world quivered on its axis for a moment. A second later, because she was Hazard Black's daughter to her very core, strong-willed as her father, too fiercely independent to be treated as the next entry in the Duc de Vec's amorous adventures, she snatched her hands back as if burned. "Don't," she protested, twisting her mouth away. "I won't."

Forcing her face around, he said very, very softly, "I love you, Daisy Black…" His fingers were leaving marks on her face. "And for what it's worth," he added in a quiet voice, "I've never said that to a woman before."

His simple words fell into the heated atmosphere of her mistrust and resentment with staggering impact. "Never?" she said.

His hand fell away from her face and he shook his head, then shivered as a premonition of disaster overwhelmed him. He'd ordered his world to his perfection too long not to recognize total chaos.

Daisy smiled for the first time that day, understanding how striking an admission he'd made. "Neither have I," she said, as simply. Her dark lashes dipped a small fraction, then she reached up to touch his lips gently with her finger and added in lush invitation, "I must have been waiting for you."

No further invitation was required for a man who had for the first time in his life seriously considered making love to a woman against her will. And brushing aside the destruction of his very comfortable world for need of this woman as if the aristocratic traditions of centuries were suddenly irrelevant, he kissed her with a pent-up, uncontrolled passion. In seconds he was frantically undressing her and in seconds more when she said, "Hurry," he stopped the undressing, tumbled her to the floor, shoved her skirts and petticoats out of the way and cursing the buttons on his trousers, entered her short moments later as if they had only minutes left on earth.

She was as frantic as he, as overwhelmed with need, as tumultuous and greedy and insatiable. With flame-hot intemperance, they loved each other, touched and felt and held each other as if feverish possession and blinding passion would affirm their love. They were wild and unrestrained, given license at last with their admission of love to indulge their desire. Tossed and buffeted by the racing speed of the carriage, pitched and flung from side to side, their own frenzied race toward fulfillment was as rushed. Neither could wait or breathe, it seemed, or give a care for the discomfort of their cramped quarters. Overpowered and overwhelmed, they found haste was imperative.

"Last night was too long…" Etienne whispered, bracing his feet and strong arms, steadying them for a moment, ungovernable possession igniting his mind. "I almost pulled you into my arms a dozen times in front of Charles. You're mine," he murmured, his voice a low deep growl, the brilliant green of his eyes hot with lust. "Mine," he harshly repeated. His broad shoulders swayed with the racing speed, but he held her firm prisoner of his passion and need, filling her entirely, the undulating motion of the speeding carriage creating a dizzyingly pleasurable friction.

"Yours," Daisy whispered on a small caught breath, giving up the very core of her independent soul without thought or regret, welcoming the man who had overwhelmed her thoughts and tantalized her senses in the hours of their separation.

He drove into her with impatience and covetousness prompted by craving and want, resistance and longing, as if the fierce rhythm of his need would obliterate the difficulties.

Clinging to him, she met his savage, unconstrained power, as intoxicated as he with the irrepressible, tempestuous passion burning through her senses. And when her