Raven’s Prey(39)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

“Let me have you, sweetheart,” he growled against her lips. “Give yourself to me. I want you the way you were in Mexico, all soft and warm and clinging.” He filled her mouth with his searching, exploring tongue, urging a response from the dark, warm depths of her. His legs stretched out alongside hers, the denim fabric of his jeans rough against her bare skin.

Honor felt her senses begin to spin and her emotions vacillated wildly from passion to anger and back again. “What do you want from me, damn you?” she cried, her head moving restlessly on the sheet,

“What does it look like?” he rasped. Then he buried his lips against her throat.

“You can get your sex from someone else. Leave me alone!”

“You don’t understand! You didn’t understand the morning we left Mexico and you don’t understand now! But I’m going to show you what I mean this time.”

She heard the resolute determination in his voice and knew, as she had known from the moment she saw him at the foot of her bed, that she was lost. He wasn’t fighting her for the embrace, nor was he hurting her. Judd was simply intent on arousing her and she knew him well enough by now to know that there was little one could do to stop this man once he had set himself a course of action.

She was aware the instant he treed her hands to stroke the line of her thigh. She tried to push at him but already her body was succumbing to the demands of his. How could she resist the man she had thought herself falling in love with such a short time ago? How could she resist the desire in him? It reached out to envelop her, making her senses sing. She didn’t hate Judd Raven. She could never hate him. He aroused her passion and her anger and even, at times, her compassion, but she would never be able to hate him. Especially not when he held her like this and made slow, intense love to her.

Slowly, slowly she stopped struggling, giving herself up to sweeping desire. He wanted her and she wanted him. Why did she have to look beyond that point? For now she would ignore the future and the past. Only the present counted.

She knew her implicit surrender must have been signaled immediately to Judd. Honor sensed the sigh of[_ _]longing and satisfaction that seemed to emanate from deep in his chest as he gathered her closer.

“You won’t regret it this time, sweetheart. This time you’ll [_understand!” _]His hand slid along the naked length of her thigh, pushing up the hem of her cotton nightgown. “So soft, so sweet…”

Honor shuddered and her fingers lifted to twine themselves in the depths of his black-and-silver hair. The feel of it was excruciatingly exciting and she moaned softly. Everything about him excited her. The musky, warm scent of his body was intoxicating and the^; ^roughness of his unshaven cheek made her twist with a new kind of restlessness.

“Judd, I shouldn’t let you do this to me. Not again.”

“This time it will be different,” he vowed thickly. “God, I’ve been wanting you so, Honor. Did you really think I could let you go? When I saw you with that other man tonight I wanted to break his neck!”

“And me?” she dared, driven by her own rising passion to taunt him as she had done so often down in Mexico. “What were you going to do to me?*’

“Exactly what I did do. Kidnap you and bring you home with me. Hell, lady, you have the power to drive me out of my mind!” He shifted abruptly, tearing impatiently at the buttons of his dark shirt. His eyes burned into her face as he stripped the garment from his body and then reached down to unfasten his jeans.

A moment later he lay naked beside her, his hand playing with the skirt of the nightgown while his lips explored the curve of her shoulder. Honor shut her eyes letting herself thrill to the power he had over her body. She clutched at the thrusting line of his back as he slowly worked the nightgown up over her hips.

“Oh, Judd!”

He flattened his palm on her thigh, smoothing her skin as if it were priceless silk. Then he lifted her slightly and pulled the nightgown off completely. “Sweetheart,..!” he breathed as he tossed the light cotton garment heedlessly down onto the floor. He lowered his head to taste the budding nipple of her breast and she trembled with pleasure as he made her softness swell.

When her legs moved, seeking his, Judd trailed his palm down the curve of her stomach and boldly found the soft mound below. Honor moaned his name aloud and clung more tightly than ever, arching her lower body into the warmth of his hand.

Slowly, with infinite sensitivity, Judd traced an erotic path to the hot, damp warmth between her legs. With his knee he opened her thighs to his touch and when she shivered he soothed her with dark, persuasive words that urged her to relax and let him fly away with her. Or at least that was how her enthralled mind interpreted the words.

Her nails began to sink tantalizingly into his shoulders and Judd’s response was a low, aching groan that spoke clearly of his barely restrained need. The part of her that always seemed inclined to tease and taunt him drove her to seek a further reaction. She loved getting a reaction, any kind of reaction, from him, Honor realized vaguely. Something in her seized on such slim evidence and pretended it was meaningful communication.

“Love me, Judd,” she whispered, making no attempt to hide the arousal in her voice. It would have been pointless. He must know the effect he was having on her body. “Make love to me, darling.”

She knew even as she spoke that love was not a word in his vocabulary but she used it anyway, as if daring him to deny that he wasn’t making love to her. He wouldn’t, she told herself. He wanted her too badly now to jeopardize her willing surrender with an argument; over the word she was using to describe it.

And she was right. He didn’t correct her, he simply ignored the word “love” altogether. Instead he asked her for the words he wanted. “Tell me you need me, sweetheart,” he coaxed roughly as he dropped tiny, stinging kisses into the pit of her stomach. “Tell me how much you want me.”

“I want you, Judd. Oh, God, how I want you.” She slipped her hands along his back down to the hard, muscular male bu**ocks. His savagely indrawn breath was music to her.

“Yes,” he muttered huskily. “Oh, yes, sweetheart. Touch me. Pull me into you. Show me you want me.”

Sensuously he stroked the inside of her leg down to her knee and back until she flexed it in an agony of desire. “Now, Judd. Please, now!”

He didn’t answer, moving aggressively over her instead until he lay along the length of her slender body. Honor felt gloriously crushed and reveled in the sensual weight. of him. When he inserted his legs between hers she obeyed the silent command and opened herself to him.