Only With Your Love (Vallerands #2)(13)

His knee pressed between hers, wedging them apart. Inexorably he pulled her forward until she straddled his sturdy thigh. Celia groaned in agony as she felt a terrible pleasure invading her body. It betrayed everything she was, everything she held dear, and still she could not hold it back. His hand covered her breast completely, his thumb rubbing gently over her nipple until it contracted to a point. Shivering, she arched her back, her body responding wantonly to his caresses. Somehow her arms were around his neck and her fingers were tangled in his thick hair…Somehow his hands were soothing her aching br**sts, his thumbs stroking over the hard peaks, and her h*ps were pressing harder against his thigh in response to the gentle rhythm he had begun.

The whore peered at the outline of two writhing figures in the shadows, and she smiled knowingly. “Why, it’s nothin’ but one o’ the girls and some salty jack givin’ it a turn.” She ventured farther in the passageway, hand braced on her ample hip. “’Ey, me ’earty, care to join a merry crowd already half-seas over?”

Griffin lifted his head, taking care to keep his face out of the light. “Begone with you,” he said roughly. There was a dangerous note of warning in his voice.

Wisely the woman backed away to avoid the prospect of trouble. She motioned for her two companions to follow her. “Leave ’em to their ruttin’,” she said. “We got our own to do. You two jack-tars ever had a woman at th’ same time?”

Eagerly the seamen followed her sashaying form down the corridor.

Celia watched until they had disappeared. Her breath rushed out in uneven bursts, ruffling through the crisp black curls on Griffin’s chest. She could not look up at his face, not when she was suffused with humiliation. She was no better than the whore who had just passed by them. How could she have behaved in such a way? The feelings that had flamed inside her were unfamiliar and painfully confusing.

She knew there was such a thing as lust, a desire that had nothing to do with love, but until now she had thought herself incapable of such a thing. She loved Philippe so much that she couldn’t bear the idea of life without him, and yet she had just been unfaithful to the ideals and the love they had shared. Her eyes stung sharply. It took all her strength to hold back her tears.

Slowly Griffin’s knee withdrew from between hers, but his hand was still closed around her wrists. Neither of them moved until Celia forced herself to raise her chin. “Let me go,” she whispered, her hatred easy to read.

His face was sheathed in darkness. She could see little but the glitter of his eyes. The silence deepened. He bent his head again.

“No,” she whimpered, just before his mouth closed over hers. His muscular arms wrapped around her struggling body, one hand pushing her slim h*ps against the bulging ridge that strained against his breeches. Her lips were forced open by a devastating kiss, his tongue thrusting deeply inside her. Rage exploded in her chest. She fought him viciously, using her nails, her elbows, her knees. But he muffled her screams with his lips and slid his hand over her bottom in an insolent caress. Celia groaned and shivered, her resistance crushed by his strength, her senses careening.

He kissed her as Philippe never had, his mouth uncivilized, voluptuous, barbaric. The tip of his tongue slipped underneath her top lip, finding an excruciatingly sensitive nerve, teasing gently until she moaned in protest. He drew her trembling breath into his mouth, wet her inner cheeks with his tongue, traced the line of her teeth.

When he broke off the kiss and eased her away from his aroused body, she was too stunned to move. Gasping for air, she leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.

His voice was mocking. “I’m intrigued, Madame Vallerand. You look and speak like a lady, but you don’t kiss like one.”

She quivered with fury, striking out blindly, her fists beating on his chest. Griffin laughed and picked her up, slinging her over his shoulder. “Quiet, or I’ll knock your head against the wall.”

As they emerged from a seldom-used entrance to the fort, more of a hole in the wall than an actual door, Griffin lowered Celia to the ground. Carefully he drew her to the corner of the building. The air was filled with merrymaking, fist-fights, drunken quarrels, and the sounds of prostitutes entertaining their customers on the beach. There were pools of light shed by the torches, and a sea of shadows. Pushing aside a swath of Celia’s hair, Griffin murmured into her ear.

“Do you see the row of three warehouses over there? A pirogue is waiting on the other side. If I tell you to run, move quickly and don’t look back. All right?”

“All right,” she echoed, her eyes fastened on the dark outline of the buildings.

He took her elbow firmly. “Come.”

Celia was too anxious to notice the pain in her feet. Stealthily Griffin pulled her along the moss-covered wall of the fort and across a short stretch of sand to a group of worn boulders. Celia stopped with a gasp as she saw a scrawny figure propped up against one of the rocks. The man stirred and gave a contented snore, loosening his grip on the small jug of whiskey in his lap. Griffin sank to his haunches before the sleeping figure. Celia held her breath as she watched Griffin ease the jug away from the man’s lax grip. Bewildered, she took the whiskey as Griffin stood and handed it to her.

Griffin’s eyes swept the terrain. Seeing that the area was clear, he took Celia’s free arm and propelled her toward the warehouses. Valiantly she tried to keep up with his long strides. As they rounded the corner of a building, a rough voice broke from the darkness.