Honor Bound(51)

In the mirror, Aislinn saw Lucas smile as he bent over the drawer, which she had placed on the floor near the side of the bed. Her heart fluttered at the way his face softened when he looked at his son. It would be very easy to fall in love with a man who could feel that kind of tenderness for a woman.

Mentally she jerked herself erect. Tender emotions like that would be foreign to most of the men she knew. For Greywolf, they would be impossible. As though to sweep the ridiculous musings from her mind, she picked up her hairbrush and began pulling it through her hair, though it already crackled with life.

Lucas sat down on the edge of the bed and tugged off his boots, dropping them to the floor. "Gene told me tonight that he's glad we got married."

It was so unlike him to initiate a seemingly innocuous conversation that her arms fell still and she looked at his reflection in the mirror. "Why?"

He chuckled. Another phenomenon. "He's been trying to get my mother to marry him for years. He made her promise she would when I got out of prison." He stood up and unbuckled his belt. "Our getting married was his ace in the hole. Now she really doesn't have any excuses left."

"He seems like such a dear, kind man. How can she help but want to marry a man like him?"

"A man so unlike your husband."

She was laying the hairbrush aside, but at his words, her eyes swung up to meet his in the mirror. "I didn't mean it that way."

"It doesn't matter what you meant. I'm the husband you've got."

She swallowed a knot of apprehension as he came toward her with a stalking, sauntering gait. He epitomized a confident male animal on the scent of a female. He had stripped down to his jeans. The fly was unbuttoned. Aislinn's eyes unerringly went to that narrow V that yawned open just below his navel. Her heart leaped with a mixture of desire and trepidation.

In the dim lighting, his skin took on a deep copper hue. His dark body hair was limned with golden light, especially that which spun around his navel. His cheeks were shaded by the drastic projection of his cheekbones, which were striped now with the long shadows of his eyelashes.

His gray eyes were trained on her like an eagle's on weakened prey. They seemed to penetrate the layers of her skin and see straight inside her. His look was hot. It seared her, but she shivered.

"Lucas?"

"You have beautiful hair."

He came to stand directly behind her, putting her shoulders on a level with his hips. Against the brown expanse of his hard stomach, her hair looked incredibly fair. It rippled like golden threads in his hands when he lifted bunches of it off her shoulders. Idly he let the heavy strands sift through his fingers.

Aislinn was entranced by the sensuous sight. And even though it was happening to her, she forced herself to become strictly an observer, to pretend that it was happening to someone else. That was the only way she could survive it.

Otherwise, when he spread a handful of her hair over his belly and rubbed it around and around like lather, her heart would have drummed its way out of her body.

If she let herself admit that she was actually participating in such a visually erotic act, she might turn around and kiss that taut stomach. She might treat her lips to a journey around the thin slit of his navel and down that strip of jet-black hair that fanned wide in the opening of his jeans. She might dampen that hair with soft, kittenish licks.

He let her hair fall back to her shoulders and closed his hands loosely around her neck. His fingers strummed it lightly. "Why does your white skin appeal to me so much?" he asked raspily. "I want to hate it."

He touched her earlobes, feathered them with the pads of his fingers, softly pinched them between his thumbs and index fingers. She made a whimpering sound. Against her will, her neck gave way and her head landed against the hard plane of his stomach behind her. Mindlessly, she rolled her head from one side to the other. She watched her hair swish across his dark skin and thought that, together, they were very beautiful.

His hands coasted over her shoulders and slipped beneath the lacy elastic top of her gown. Her eyes, which had been half-closed, opened and met his in the mirror.

"I want to see my hands on you," he said.

She watched, hypnotized, as his strong, tapering, wide-spread fingers slid down her chest. No protest broke across her lips when they moved lower, taking the gown down with them. Her breath rushed into her lungs when his palms slid down over her breasts. He pressed. He massaged. He rubbed.

Her body responded.

He cupped the undersides of her fully aroused breasts and lifted them, lightly whisking the crests with his thumbs. She moaned, grinding the back of her head into his belly' which was rising and falling with each of his rapid breaths.

Their eyes never wavered from the mirror. They were mesmerized by the contrast of his large hands, such testimonies to his masculinity, moving over the soft, velvety mounds of her breasts. He knew just how much pressure to apply to give her optimum sensation. His fingers played delicately with the dusky tips until they throbbed with a pleasurable pain.

Deep inside her, another ache was becoming unbearable. Her womanhood felt feverish and heavy as it flowered to readiness. Only one thing could ease that special kind of ache.

And that was impossible.

The realization struck Aislinn suddenly and she threw off his hands. Springing off the stool, she pulled her nightgown up over her breasts and, turning to face him, said "I can't."