IT SEEMED SHE WAS UNABLE to deny this man anything. She wanted to please him, in part, Gillian thought, to yet again prove to him that she’d deserved a second look thirteen years ago. The problem was, of course, that in order to please Hunter, she’d have to surrender the autonomy she’d always prided herself on, choosing instead obedience. But, she reminded herself, it was, after all, her choice. And such surrender would only be temporary.
Gillian began moving her fingers over the keys again, aimlessly, the music coming solely from her heart. Notes tumbled over one another; long treble runs tangling with thrumming bass chords that reverberated in that hot, damp place between her legs.
As if in response to her silent plea, his right hand eased into the open placket of her skirt, stroking over the bone of her hip, moving lower still.
“Spread your legs a bit for me, Gillian.” When she did as instructed, his fingers played their own symphony in the silken curls at the juncture of her thighs. “Now close your eyes. And try not to move.”
She drew in a sharp breath as his fingers slipped into her with a silky wet ease. First one. Then another. A feverish tide rose in her, causing her to inadvertently move her hips toward that wicked, clever hand, seeking more.
“Hunter—” her fingers trembled, discordant notes slurred “—please…”
Unable to think about music while her body felt as taut as a piano wire, she gave up any attempt at playing and grabbed his hand, pressing it tighter against her in a mute attempt to satisfy this ruthless, pounding need.
She was flowing over his hand, like sun-warmed honey. Her ragged plea caused Hunter’s own needs to flare higher even as a dark masculine power surged through him. He knew he could take her further, deeper, showing her the exhilaration found in the experience of pure sexual sensation.
“You’re all I’ve been thinking about.” His words, rough and ragged, scorched his throat. A ruthless stroke of his thumb against the hooded tangle of nerves hidden in the slick wet lips made her cry out. Her eyes, darkened with a blend of surprise and pleasure, those same expressive eyes that had fueled so many lustful dreams, flew open.
“I’ve thought about you like this.” Without giving her time to recover, he pulled her from the wooden bench, held her against him and stripped the sweater over her head as he had that first night, flinging it away.
“Hot.” His tongue created a trail of fire around the dusky areola. “Hungry.” His teeth caught her taut nipple and tugged, drawing a ragged moan. Hunter could tell that her mind was shutting down, letting her body—and him—take over. “Mine.”
He shoved her skirt down, his touch not nearly as steady as he would have liked, lifted her from the crimson puddle, laid her on top of the piano, then unzipped the gray suede boots, which left her only in a pair of opaque gray stockings that ended high on each thigh in a way that framed her fiery red curls.
Taking his time to enjoy the sight and taste of her, he rolled the stockings with aching slowness down her legs, following the sensual path with his mouth. And then, finally, she was gloriously naked, her flesh gleaming in the glow of the candlelight like pearls.
Desperate to take her hard and fast, he continued to ruthlessly rein in his lust long enough to drink in the sight of her. She looked soft and boneless, as if she’d drunk too much wine, but since she’d only had that single glass, Hunter experienced a sense of satisfaction knowing that he was responsible for that dazed look in her eyes.
“You really are lovely.”
He shook his head in mute amazement that such a warm, sensual woman could have sprung from George Cassidy’s icy loins. He ran the back of his good hand down her face in a slow sweep and felt her tremble. In fear? he wondered. Or anticipation? “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Gillian.”
Her eyelids had fluttered closed at his touch. Now they slowly lifted, allowing him to see miniature twins of himself in her widened pupils, the flames behind him making him appear to be some creature risen from hell.
Hunter wondered if that was how she saw him. And wondered even more why he should care.
“I’m not.” Her smile was faint, a bit wary still, but it touched her eyes in a way that caused a distant stir of feeling he couldn’t identify. “I trust you completely, Hunter. I’m more afraid of myself.” A lovely flush of color flowed from her cheeks to her breasts at this admission. “Of how I feel when you look at me the way you’re looking at me now.”
Hunter was wondering if she knew the power of the gift she’d just given him, when she took hold of his hand and pressed it against her rosy breast. Beneath his palm, her heart fluttered like a wild bird. “Of how I feel when you touch me.”
She shivered when his thumb brushed against her nipple. Sighed when he replaced his hand with his mouth.
“I like looking at you.” He lifted his head and drank in the sight of her again, looking flushed and wanton atop the piano, her damp flesh glistening in the firelight, her feet unable to reach the floor, her legs open, moisture glistening like early morning dew on her silken curls.
“I like touching you.” He skimmed a fingertip down a milky thigh. “And I especially like tasting you.”
He touched his tongue to a pale blue vein revealed by her milky, Irish-pale skin and was vaguely surprised when there was no hiss of steam. When his teeth nipped at that fragrant flesh, she cried out, a sharp sound of pleasure mixed with pain.
“Please, Hunter.”
Gillian had never begged for any man in her life. But as need coiled tightly inside her, she realized that was because she’d never met a man she wanted in the way she wanted Hunter St. John. Never met a man who could make her willing to toss away a lifetime of sexual restraint in order to learn the secrets her body had been hungering for since her first night on Castle Mountain.
Hunter knew those secrets. She’d witnessed it in his hot, hungry eyes as they’d looked at her, seeing beyond her clothing, even, she’d thought, past her tingling skin, to some hidden feminine place deep inside her.
She’d felt it in his hand, which revealed a familiarity with the female body that caused needs to well up inside her at the same time she hated all the other women he’d touched in such an intimate fashion.
The hook that had replaced his left hand glinted dangerously in the firelight as he captured an erect nipple between the prongs, delicately, but in a way that would have prevented her from moving, if she’d wanted to. Which, heaven help her, she didn’t.
As he watched her in the steady, unblinking way a diving falcon might watch a small gray mouse, Gillian understood that this was a test, that he was searching out disgust on her face. He wouldn’t find it.
“Please,” she repeated on a soft, thready tone. “I want you, Hunter.”
I need you. The words went unspoken, but there was no need to articulate them.
The prongs opened. Closed. “Soon.” Opened again. “You’re a woman of virtues, Gillian. Surely you’ve acquired the virtue of patience.”
Only this morning Gillian could have assured him that patience had always been one of her strongest traits. Now it seemed to have scattered like dry leaves attacked by hurricane-force winds.
The touch of that cold point of steel against her burning flesh proved unbelievingly erotic, and although she’d always considered herself a self-controlled woman, Gillian discovered what she suspected only a few women could ever know, that sexual surrender to the right man—a man you could trust absolutely—could be glorious.
The fact that Hunter was still fully dressed while she was naked was strangely, undeniably exciting. When he spread her legs wider, so far apart she felt a faintly painful tug in her hip joints, she felt no embarrassment. No shame. Only pride and an age-old feminine power that she could be the cause of the hunger that was written in bold script across his normally inscrutable face.
“Lovely,” he murmured again. The tip of the hook tugged on the blazing nest of hair. Gillian didn’t flinch. But she did moan as he knelt down between her legs and with deft fingers parted the deep rose flesh of her outer lips, revealing the paler petal-pink opening.
When his tongue flicked over those tingling lips, it caused such a spark of exquisite pain that Gillian gasped and began to tremble like a woman in the grips of a fever.
“Stay still,” he ordered huskily, as if she could control the demands of her mutinous body.
His touch was ecstasy. Agony. Alternating strict commands with lush compliments and warm endearments, he seemed ruthless in his need to pleasure her—fondling, licking, sucking, biting, ravishing her with mouth and hand, bring her to a seemingly never-ending series of orgasms that racked her body.
The more Gillian gave into Hunter, the more control she surrendered, the more she came. Over and over. Until she was slick and wet from her own juices and aroused anew by the musky scent of sex rising from between her splayed legs.
She couldn’t possibly take any more, she thought as he lifted her hips off the piano and pressed her mound against his mouth. When his tongue thrust deeply into the moist cleft, Gillian gasped for breath and felt her blood pounding in her heart, her ears, that burning place between her thighs.
It was too much.
At the same time, it was not enough. Because even as yet another series of convulsions shuddered through her, Gillian still wanted Hunter. All of him.
Across the room a log shifted, but with her mind clouded by smoke and haze and her body battered by an increasing crescendo of sexual sensations she could feel all the way to the marrow of her bones, Gillian was only distantly aware of the resultant flare of sparks.
Fond schoolgirl memories of that ancient crush she’d had on an older man spun away, while her future seemed aeons in the distance. There was only now. Only this glorious, shimmering presence with Hunter.
At this suspended moment in time, there was nothing he could have asked for that she would not have willingly given. The idea that she, a woman who’d always insisted on absolute control in all parts of her life, should feel this way both intrigued and excited Gillian. She knew she’d have to give the mystery more serious thought. Later, when she could think again.
Hunter realized that he’d won the victory he’d been seeking. Gillian’s mind, her heart, her lush, fragrant body, all were his for the taking. Even as he was pleased by her open-hearted gift of absolute submission—it had, after all, been his intention to tame her, to break down all her barriers of independence until she was unconditionally his—he was discovering he’d not remained unaffected by her uncensored response.
As his body had hardened, his own heart had strangely softened. She’d touched him. In a way that could prove a threat, a way he’d have to examine. When he could think again.
But for now, driven by sexual needs stronger than the forces of nature that had formed the towering cliffs on which his house was perched, he released her just long enough to strip off his clothes and sheathe himself.
Then, with a single hard thrust he surged into her, deep and hard, driven by her breathless cries, the feel of her inner muscles, contracting, drawing him in.
“Put your legs around me, Gillian.”
His voice, rough and guttural and nearly incoherent, was unfamiliar to his own ears. But somehow Gillian managed to understand him and she did as instructed, her hands fretting up and down his back, her unlacquered nails digging into his flesh in a way that fed his lust even further.
He hammered into her, again and again, hot flesh slapping against hot flesh, her soft cries muffled by his ravenous mouth as it ate into hers, his tongue thrusting between her parted lips in rhythm with his bucking hips.
A red haze shimmered in front of Hunter’s eyes. His movements quickened. Deepened. And then he was coming, in a hot, torrential release that had him shouting out. The single word that was wrenched out of his chest to reverberate around the red cedar walls of the room was her name: Gillian.
An instant later, she followed him over the edge.
Hunter had no idea how long they lay there, her half on, half off the piano, him collapsed on top of her, his heart pounding, his body too drained to move. It could have been minutes. Hours. It felt like an eternity.
The ravenous hunger that had escalated with each passing day had finally, at least for now, been temporarily sated. He could stay like this forever. Buried inside her, feeling her soft feminine curves yielding to his harsher angles, her pearly skin, which had been fever-hot, now cooling, like a moist summer mist against his. He nuzzled at her neck and breathed in a flowery fragrance that mingled with the redolent, evocative musk of sex.
Hunter couldn’t recall a time when he’d felt more satisfied. More fulfilled. Which was exactly why he had to move away.
She murmured a faint complaint as he eased out of her. Her legs hung limply over the edge of the Steinway, her arms at her sides, her eyes closed, dark-looking like strands of gold and copper silk against her still flushed cheeks.
There were marks on her pale flesh, faint purple bruises that were mute evidence of the passion they’d shared. Hunter knew that he should feel guilty for having put them there, but couldn’t, since they were, in their own way, like a brand. As if he’d burned his name into her silken flesh.
His satisfaction at that idea was quickly dampened when he viewed the dark smears marring the smooth white flesh of her inner thighs.
“Gillian.” He touched a still glistening smear with a fingertip.
Her only response was a sleepy murmur that was more purr than proper answer.
“Gillian,” he repeated, cupping her cheek in his palm. “Open your eyes.”
Another faint protest. But she did as instructed.
“You were a virgin.”
It was not a question, but Gillian answered it, anyway. “Yes.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?”
She sighed. “Would it have made a difference?” she asked as she propped herself up on her elbows. “Would you have changed your mind about bringing me here?”
“No.” He’d promised he wouldn’t lie to her, and whatever else might be said about him, Hunter had always prided himself on being a man of his word. “But I would have done things differently.”
“Oh? How?”
Having never been one to indulge in long, heartfelt conversation after sex, Hunter was finding this topic more unpalatable than most.
“I would have been more careful with you. Taken you with more finesse.”
She stretched, in an unconsciously seductive way that reminded him of a sleek, satisfied cat. “I thought you showed amazing finesse.”
“I managed some restraint in the beginning,” he allowed. “But I ended up taking you like some kind of animal.”
“Oh, that.”
Her smile was slow and decidedly sensual, giving Hunter a very good idea of what Eve must have looked like after she and Adam had shared bites of that serpent’s shiny red forbidden apple.
“Actually, Hunter, I thought that was wonderful.” The siren’s smile darkened her eyes, turning them from Irish moss to emeralds. “Thrilling, actually.”
He was going to have to send her away, Hunter decided yet again. She was too enticing. Too appealing. Too damn dangerous. But first…
He scooped her up from the piano, threw her over his shoulder and walked out of the room.
“What about our clothes?” she asked, seeming as unfazed by her upside-down position as she’d been about everything else he’d thrown at her these past days. “We can’t just leave them here. Mrs. Adams—”
“Is well paid not to notice,” he said as he strode down the hall to the master bedroom suite, where he plunked her unceremoniously on the closed lid of the commode while he ran the water in the oversize tub.
The water streaming from the wide swan’s-neck tap was hot; he tossed in a handful of herbal bath salts he’d bought specifically with her in mind and soon they were surrounded by fragrant steam.
“Hunter?” she asked as he moved the soft-as-silk Egyptian cotton washcloth over her bloodied thighs.
“What?” Self-recrimination made his tone sharper than he’d intended.
“I know you don’t care about image. Or your reputation.” She bit her bottom lip as she looked up at him through a thick fringe of lashes. “But I do. And I don’t think I’ll be able to face Mrs. Adams tomorrow morning knowing that she knows we were having an orgy in your library.”
Hunter wondered how it was that even after what they’d just shared, she could remain such an innocent. “It wasn’t exactly an orgy, Gillian. Besides, Mrs. Adams is an employee. It’s none of her business what we do. Or where.”
She didn’t exactly seem won over by his argument. “Please?” When the touch of her hand on his arm brought back the memory of those slender fingers against his burning flesh, Hunter felt himself giving in.
“All right. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go get them.”
“Thank you, Hunter.” Her smile could have lit up the entire island for the entire winter. “That’s very nice of you.”
Both touched and irritated by the wave of emotion sparked by that dazzling smile, Hunter cupped her chin and gave her a hard, tooth-grinding, punishing kiss.
“I told you, baby,” he reminded her on a growl, when they finally came up for air. “I’m never nice.”
That stated, he stood up and strode from the bathroom.
“Hunter?” She called out to him as he reached the doorway.
He shot her a frustrated glance over his shoulder. “What now?”
“My name isn’t baby.”
Because he wanted to laugh, he merely shrugged his shoulders and left the room. But even as he reminded himself that Gillian Cassidy was turning out to be trouble with a capital T, he found her impossible to resist.
Although he suspected very little got past the eagle-eyed Mrs. Adams, he retrieved their clothes from the library. Then, as he succumbed to temptation and joined Gillian in the tub, Hunter tried to ignore the uneasy feeling that he wasn’t really sinking into the fragrant hot water, but into quicksand.
GILLIAN FOUGHT THROUGH the fog of sleep filled with erotic memories, some real, others born in dreams so vivid she wondered if some of them could have actually occurred. As her mind gradually cleared, she wasn’t all that surprised when she woke up and found that Hunter had gone. Disappointed but not surprised.
“After all, he does have work to do,” she murmured, reluctantly leaving the tangled sheets that still carried Hunter’s scent.
The fire had died sometime during the night; the former blaze had burned down to embers as cold as the lonely bed. “He can’t stay in bed all day just because you’ve discovered that making love just might be your favorite thing to do.”
No. Not making love, Gillian reminded herself. “It was only sex.” She stretched from side to side, trying to work out the unfamiliar kinks. “Great sex. But that’s all it was. Love had nothing at all to do with it.”
At least on his part. But she feared that somehow, between when she’d barged into his office and the time, just before dawn, when he’d given her a kiss so sweet and tender it had almost made her weep, she’d begun to fall in love with him.
“It’s merely the situation.” Continuing the little pep talk, she walked across the room and opened the draperies. “He’s set up a ridiculously erotic situation. There’s probably not a woman in the world who could resist falling a little under the spell.”
That thought, meant to comfort, did just the opposite as Gillian wondered how many women Hunter had made love to— “had sex with,” she corrected again sternly—in this room. In this bed.
If there was one thing Gillian was certain of since arriving on Castle Mountain, it was that a man with Hunter’s sexual skills must be an inveterate seducer of women.
“Well, at least the piano may have been a first.”
Gillian sighed at the realization that a few days under the same roof with Hunter would have her foolishly grasping at such weak straws.
Along with the storm that Gillian and Hunter had created last night, a blizzard had blown in from the mainland. The entire world was engulfed in a white blanket; more snow was battering against the glass wall. It was definitely a day to stay indoors.
A day to stay in bed, she thought, feeling her hormones spike dangerously as remembered sensual images caused a slow burn deep inside her. As she went into the bathroom, which had its share of erotic memories, Gillian wondered, yet again, what on earth she’d gotten herself into.
After showering, she returned to the bedroom, opened the top bureau drawer to retrieve a sweater and found it filled with the lingerie Hunter had taken away that first night. Even as she understood that this was his way of maintaining control by rewarding her for last night’s submission, she was inexorably drawn to the scanty bits of lace so different from anything she’d ever owned. She ran her fingers through them, enjoying the feel of silk against her fingertips, the slick of cool satin. Then she smiled.
Like everything else about Hunter’s home, the lingerie almost seemed to be imbued with magic. She’d no sooner put it on than Gillian felt her spirits lift. She was humming as she entered the kitchen.
“Good morning,” she greeted Mrs. Adams, receiving a grunt in return. Refusing to allow the taciturn woman to spoil this special day, she smiled and said, “I’m surprised to see you here today.”
“Don’t know why you should be.” The housekeeper cracked an egg on the side of a blue ceramic bowl. “It’s my job, after all.”
“But the storm’s so bad.”
“Ben’s truck has four-wheel drive. It’ll go near anywhere.”
Gillian walked over to the kitchen window, looking out at the drifts that were beginning to pile up against the glass. She wondered if her cat was out there, wet and cold and hungry. That thought caused a little pall to drift over her good mood.
“Well, I’m sure Dr. St. John appreciates your devotion to duty, but I can’t believe he’d expect you to come out in a blizzard.”
“T’weren’t a blizzard when we left our place. Though the snow was sure enough starting to pile up when Dr. St. John left.”
“Left?” Gillian turned back toward the housekeeper. “Dr. St. John went out?”
“Ayuh.”
That came as a surprise, given his seemingly reclusive lifestyle. “Did he tell you where he went?”
“Can’t say as he did.” Butter sizzled hotly in a cast-iron skillet. Normally the fragrance would have stimulated Gillian’s appetite. But not now. “Though it’d be my guess he went over to the brain factory.”
“Brain factory?”
“His laboratory.”
“Oh.” Gillian cradled the mug in her hands and took another sip of coffee. “I thought his lab was here in the house.”
“That’s where he works most times,” Mrs. Adams allowed. “But he’s on staff at the brain factory.”
“Is it far away?”
Mrs. Adams’s bony shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Not much that’s far away around these parts. It’s a small island. The brain factory’s on the other side. The town’s sort of in the middle.” She poured the eggs into the pan and began energetically stirring them around with a fork.
“Still, that’s quite a trip in a storm like this.” Gillian went from feeling abandoned to fearing for Hunter’s safety.
“Weather Service says it’ll be a short, quick blow. ‘Course, forecasts are wrong as often as right this time of year. But you needn’t worry about Dr. St. John, since he won’t be driving back today.”
“He won’t?” Her heart sank.
“Told me I wasn’t to worry about making him supper tonight or tomorrow. Said he’d call after that and let me know his plans.”
“I see.” All too well. Hunter couldn’t have made his point more clear if he’d written it across the bathroom mirror in bold black paint.
Mrs. Adams flipped the scrambled eggs onto a plate and put the plate down on the table. “I suppose you’ll be wanting some extra bacon. For that fool wild cat.”
“I’d appreciate that, Mrs. Adams.”
The woman’s huff told Gillian she’d suspected nothing less. It also suggested that she thought Dr. St. John’s houseguest was crazy.
Gillian couldn’t blame her. She was, after all, rapidly coming to the same conclusion herself.