Passion's Price Read online

  "Are you having a better time tonight?" he asked quietly. "How do you like the Bennetts?"

  "Oh, they're very nice and very interesting. Joan is a volunteer in the local elementary school, so of course we had a great deal to talk about."

  "How tactful you are not to compare the Bennetts with the Brices," he teased, laughing as she lifted her eyes heavenward in remembrance. "I agree with that assessment completely and I want to apologize for asking them to have dinner with us. Actually, I'd never met Joyce before last night, so I didn't know she was so…"

  "Flamboyant?"

  "Silly is a better description," he amended bluntly. "And I'm sorry it was such a dull evening."

  "I've been trapped with duller people, I assure you, and for longer periods of time. And besides, now we're even," Laine said with a wry smile. "I introduced you to Dulcie Jacobs. Remember? She's a lot like Joyce Brice except she talks constantly about the arts committees she's on instead of about celebrities. Actually, I feel sort of sorry for both of them. They try so hard to seem important. I imagine Mrs. Brice spent all of today telling people she had dinner last night with the famous attorney Nick Brannon."

  "She's welcome to tell the entire world if she likes, as long as I never have to spend time with her again," Nick said seriously. "Status seeking is a very unattractive trait, one for which I have no patience."

  "I'll remember that," Laine quipped. "In case I'm ever tempted to act like Dulcie or Joyce around you."

  "That'll never happen. There's nothing in you like either of those women," he replied, solemnly examining her upturned face. "Maybe you don't realize it, Laine, but there's something about you that makes you seem very wise for your years."

  Laine grimaced. "My, that makes me sound like an awful dullard."

  "No, love, it makes you an intriguing mystery," Nick whispered, brushing a wayward strand of hair back from her cheek, allowing his fingertips to linger against creamy skin. "You present a challenge most men would find hard to resist. I know I do."

  "A challenge? Me?" She laughed lightly. "Oh, come now, I bet you say that to all the girls."

  "You lose your bet then," he murmured, stilling her laughter at once when his fingertips drifted downward into the shadowed hollow between her breasts, seeking bare skin beneath the bodice of her low-cut dress. "I've never said that to anyone else because no woman's ever been the mystery to me that you are, Laine." Fingertips feathered her breastbone; knuckles pressed gently into rounded flesh. "What fiery emotions are you hiding in there? That's what I have to find out."

  Laine shook her head, dragging herself back from the warm weakening lethargy his huskily spoken words and grazing touch had induced. "Nick, I…"

  "Dance with me," he commanded softly, taking her hand to draw her to her feet. And when she glided obediently into his arms, he held her close to him, his lips moving over the silken cap of moon-silvered hair.

  In the rose-scented cool night air, beneath a starry sky, every beat of the music became a sensuous pulsation. Laine's arms slipped up around Nick's neck as both his encircled her waist. In that evocative embrace they remained in the secluded arbor, simply swaying slightly to a slow seductive rhythm. Nuzzling her cheek into the warm hollow of his shoulder, she relaxed. The graceful curving contours of her slender body were molded into the firmer line of his, and she delighted in the feel of potent masculinity.

  It was as if they were alone in the world, and when Nick's lips touched her left temple, she lifted her face to gaze drowsily up at him. "Aren't you ever going to kiss me again?" she whispered compulsively. "It's been two days, and I…"

  "God, I know how long it's been!" he whispered back. Then he was seeking, finding, taking her mouth with a rough demand that brooked no denial.

  As if she could have denied him. The instant his hardening lips took possession of hers, she stretched up on tiptoe, kissing him back, tightening her arms around his neck and pressing against him, unable to get close enough.

  The tenor of his breathing altered, became nearly as quickly drawn as hers, while his hands at her sides followed the line of hip to the enticing insweep of her waist and upward to linger, palms cupping the soft firm curves of her breasts. His mouth plundered the sweetness of hers again and again. Laine responded with complete abandon, telling him with the touch of her lips on his, with her caress, with her soft moans of desire, that she wanted him, needed to be close to him in every way. But as suddenly as the kisses had begun, they ended. Hands on her hips, he put her away from him.

  "This is crazy," he muttered. "There are people all around."

  "Take me home then," she replied immediately.

  "Are you sure that's really what you want?" he asked and when she nodded, his hands around her waist tightened fiercely. Almost pensive, he looked down at her for several seconds. Then a hint of a smile played over his mouth and he brought one hand up to stroke her tousled hair. "We'll have to say goodnight to the Bennetts before we go."

  After that courtesy had been attended to and Nick and Laine were in his car going south, she sat close to him, resting her head against his chest. As if entranced, she could think of nothing except the arm around her shoulders, the touch of the fingers brushing her bare upper arm, and the warmth of his body radiating into her own. She almost felt dizzy and closed her eyes to the sight of the trees streaming past on each side of the road, like the flash of scenes in a dream.

  They were at Nick's so soon she could hardly believe they had traveled nine miles. And it was when he got out of the car and came around to open her door that realization dawned. The magnitude of what she was inviting was an astonishment, and she might have hesitated had Nick's grip on her hand not been so firmly insistent. As they walked to the house, he slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her to his side. He said nothing, and she would always remember that in that moment all she heard was the strange repetitive music of the katydids and the sound of her own heart beating in her ears.

  When Nick led Laine around the house to the deck overlooking the beach, she thought she had gained at least a temporary reprieve. She relaxed somewhat, but then her heart seemed to soar up into her throat when he immediately started to take her into his arms. Stepping back, she gestured nervously and promptly latched onto the first thought that popped into her mind.

  "I'll just go put my wrap in my room and be right back," she said weakly, then gasped as the cream crocheted stole was pulled off her shoulders and tossed un-ceremoniously onto a deck chair. Fires blazed on her skin when gentle fingers slowly pushed aside the straps of her dress.

  "Oh, no, Laine, you're not going to your room, where you can have second thoughts. You're staying here," he murmured, hands spanning her waist to pull her to him. "What you start, you have to finish."

  "But I…"

  He placed a finger to her mouth to silence her, then began a devastating assault on her senses by tracing the soft shape of her lips with his fingertip. His other hand skimmed around her waist, his touch so lightly caressing that she trembled with quickening sensations of delight. When he bent down to scatter lingering kisses over smooth shoulders, she tilted her head back, exposing the slender column of her neck to firm searching lips.

  She ached for him to seek her mouth, but he didn't, though her lips were parted invitingly with her swiftly drawn breaths. Instead, he tormented her with tiny shattering nibbles at the lobes of her ears and brief electric touches of the tip of his tongue in the hollows just beneath. Laine's hands, clenched and trapped between them against his chest, slowly opened, her fingers stroking taut muscle and, after shakily undoing two buttons, slipping inside his shirt to graze over hair-roughened skin.

  His hands wandered over her, shaping each curve with a deliberate lightness that further inflamed her senses. At last, when he arched her against him and touched his lips first to one corner of her mouth then the other, again again, she could stand it no longer. One hand cupped the back of his head, her fingers tangling in thick hair.

  "Nick, pl
ease," she whispered, desperate for the fierce demand of his kiss. When his mouth did cover her own, she moved closer to him, but his lips only teased, brushed, played with hers until she breathed imploringly, "Oh, Nick!"

  Widening his stance, he caught her closer to him, one hand seeking the gentle swell of her hips, pressing her against the hard lines of his body. At last his kiss became impassioned, and she gave a little murmur of satisfaction when firm lips caught her own, exerting an ever-increasing pressure that was almost bruising in intensity. So enraptured was she by the demanding hardness of his mouth that she didn't realize he had adroitly lowered the zipper of her dress until the night air caressed her bare back. By then it was too late.

  "Nick," she protested softly. "No."

  "Yes. Oh, yes, Laine."

  "But we're outside. Someone might be…"

  "Hush," he whispered. "No one's around. It's a private beach, and I want to see you out here in the moonlight."

  She tried without success to still the hands that brushed the straps of her ankle-length cream eyelet dress down her arms. She had made it so easy for him because when the bodice dropped down, the built-in bra went with it and immediately she was standing before him, bare to the waist. Instinct made her start to cover her breasts with her arms but Nick caught her wrists, preventing that protective gesture and also allowing the dress to slip through his fingers to float down around her feet. Then she stood unresisting, as if hypnotized, as he expertly removed both her long half-slip and the last remaining article of her clothing. He stepped back to look at her.

  "You're so beautiful, Laine," he said huskily, gaze narrowing as it swept slowly over the gracefully sweeping lines of her slender curved body. As if he were studying a lovely work of art, he surveyed her for what seemed to her like an eternity.

  She was trembling but not from cold. Heat was rushing through and over her. No man had ever seen her naked before and an overpowering feeling of vulnerability made her legs go weak. Suddenly, as if he could no longer resist touching skin that shimmered opalescently in the moonlight, Nick moved close again, reaching out to trail his fingers over the upper curve of her breasts, then cup their weight in his hands.

  Unable to withstand his burning appraisal any longer, she moved swiftly into his arms in an attempt to hide her nakedness. And when he pulled her to him, hands drifting over her delicately structured back, she knew the right of possession was his. He swept her up in his arms to carry her inside the house.

  In Nick's room, he threw back the coverlet on his bed and lowered Laine gently onto the mattress. She lay very still on the cool percale sheet, watching spellbound as he quickly stripped. In the soft glow from a small lamp across the room his skin shone like burnished bronze. Involuntarily, her gaze flickered over him, over the broad strength of his shoulders, hard, subtly muscled chest, down to tapered waist, lean hips, and long powerful legs. As a woman, she found him intriguingly magnificent; as an inexperienced bedmate, she was apprehensive, somewhat intimidated by such obvious virility. Then he came down onto the bed beside her and simply held her for several minutes, lean fingers stroking, massaging her back to ease her tension.

  She began to relax, and as her body went warm and pliant in the circle of his arms, she looked up at him, her love for him expanding to infinity when she recognized tenderness softening the hot glint of desire in his green eyes. He smiled, almost indulgently. And when she brushed one finger over his lips and he gently caught the tip between his teeth, she smiled back. He kissed her.

  He was so patient. Obviously exercising firm control over his own desires, he proceeded to arouse hers to feverish intensity. Slow, long, deepening kisses claimed her mouth as hands moved over her body in intimate exploration. His lips followed the paths blazed by his hands, seeking the round firmness of her breasts, the satiny skin of her abdomen, and the creamy smoothness of lightly tanned slender thighs.

  Responsive to every caressing touch and kiss, her own hands and lips were eagerly exploring him. She delighted in his passionate sigh of pleasure, eager to give back in full measure the tender, exquisite delight he gave her. When he finally moved above her, arching her to him, her small cry soon altered to a long shuddering sigh of ecstasy. The fingers that had pressed hard into the corded muscles of his shoulders as he took her relaxed, began stroking his back.

  "Laine," he groaned triumphantly, possessively. "You are a delight."

  Her thumbs brushed over the strong tendons of his neck. Her lips found the rapidly beating pulse in his throat and lingered there as he moved slowly, gently, making her completely his. Her entire being throbbed to life as she merged with him.

  "Oh Nick, I…" She never said the words, but she gave her love without hesitation. And with each slow rousing movement of his hard body, that love deepened as she was swept up in a whirlwind of passion. In his quest to give her pleasure, he conquered all her inhibitions and carried her upward in a tide of ecstasy so devastating that she cried out his name when piercing fulfillment cascaded in hot pulsating waves inside her. The throbbing ripples receded but the warmth remained, and she clung to him as he took his own satisfaction with a compelling urgency, no longer capable of gentleness.

  Afterward, Laine lay wrapped in Nick's arms, her head nestled in the hollow of his shoulder. Beneath her hand on his chest, his heart had slowed to a strong steady beat and his relaxed warm nearness was as emotionally satisfying as their lovemaking had been physically. Laine had no regrets. She had given love and he had given tender desire, and for the moment that was enough to make her content. He did feel affection for her; she could sense that and could only hope that the affection would eventually become love.

  Drowsy, Laine snuggled closer to Nick, and when he began to play idly with strands of her tousled hair, she tilted her head back to look at him.

  "You seduced me after all, you know, Nick," she accused teasingly.

  "Ah, but you were so much more than willing," he countered huskily, smiling as a faint blush tinted her cheeks.

  Dropping the veil of thick lashes over her eyes, she concealed the love she thought must be revealed in their depths. But as Nick's hand curved around her upper arm, his fingertips beginning to trace small circles on her skin, she smiled slightly to herself. It was nearly impossible to believe that she had known him for only a brief time. He had become so important to her that she felt as if he'd always been an integral part of her life. In her sleepiness, her mind began to wander. How Strange destiny could be… If Nick's uncle hadn't been ill… If Nick hadn't had doubts about the grant… Her musing triggered a succession of interrelated thoughts until at last the special-education classroom she wanted so badly came into her mind. Half asleep, she lifted a hand to touch light fingertips to Nick's lean cheek.

  "Nick," she murmured, "you are going to give Latham the grant, aren't you?" And she would have given the world to have been able to recall the words the instant they were out of her mouth and she felt him go tense beside her. Her eyes flew open and she saw the implacable set of his strong jaw and the muscle ticking with ominous regularity there. The planes of his face were now forebodingly hard beneath her fingers, and she moved her hand away in a futile gesture of apology. "Nick, I didn't mean…"

  "I knew virginity was a rare commodity these days," he muttered through clenched teeth. "But I had no idea you'd put a million-dollar price tag on yours."

  "Nick, please listen. I…"

  "Anything for 'Father.' Right?" His voice was low, his tone harsh. "Right?"

  "No, that isn't right!" she said urgently, feeling his anger in the taut inflexible line of his body, feeling her own heart react to that anger with wild palpitations. Sensing danger, she tried desperately to explain that she'd been half asleep and the question had just popped into her mind.

  "Don't bother talking, Laine. We have no time for that," he interrupted her midsentence, in no mood to listen. With awesome swiftness he turned over, imprisoning her beneath him, his weight pressing her into the softness of the mattress.
His eyes glittered icily as his gaze raked over her face. "A million dollars," he muttered, "hmm? Well, now that I know what a high price I'm expected to pay, I think I should get my money's worth, don't you agree?"

  Laine gasped, her face going pale as a hard knee thrust downward and parted her legs, and when she faced, for the first time in her life, the proof of a man's overwhelming physical superiority, she panicked. She threw her hands against his broad chest, pushing as she frantically twisted beneath him. But her struggle for freedom was useless. Catching both her wrists in one large hand, Nick pushed her arms back on the pillow and one long muscular leg pinned hers beneath it. Held practically immobile, completely in his power, she moved her head from side to side on the pillow, but if he noticed the hurt and growing apprehension in her widening eyes, he gave no indication of it.

  Despair chilled Laine to the bone, and when Nick's free hand stroked across her abdomen and upward to cup one breast, she flinched and whispered imploringly, "Please, Nick, don't let it be like this. If you force me…"

  "I don't intend to force you," he said flatly. "I won't have to."

  He was right. He slowly seduced her, and when his hands began to move over her in insistent sweeps and his tongue opened her mouth to a succession of possessive marauding kisses, her body traitorously responded. She lost all will to resist, unable to contain the love she felt for him. He had released her arms, and she wrapped them around his waist as their bodies merged again.

  He immersed himself in her. Yet, despite his anger, despite the misconception, he was no less gentle, no less considerate than he had been before. Letting the fires of his own passion smolder, with slow deliberation he transported her to the peak of ecstasy again and again until she felt faint with the shattering sensations he brought to life within her. Then she was whispering his name, urging him nearer, compelling him to take from her as much pleasure as he had given.