Sweet Revenge

him nothing, and take nothing for herself. But her breath began to quicken, and her lips warmed and opened. He invaded, letting his tongue tempt and his teeth excite.
    This was seduction, more so than soft words and soft light. This was challenge, a gauntlet thrown. This was the answer to questions she’d never dared ask.
    All at once she was clinging, giving back, but nothing seemed to satisfy him.
    He moved down her body, raced, dragging her gown to her waist to free more flesh. No exploration now, but exploitation. He filled his hands with her breasts, then tugged and sucked and teased until her nipples were hard and hot and aching, until her body writhed and arched and shuddered. Reaching for him, she accepted.
    She called to him, mindless, with incoherent words that sent the blood racing to his loins to throb with every beat of his heart. So the seducer was seduced.
    This was a lock he would open, once and for all. He had the skill, the experience, and the need. The treasures here were richer and more tempting than any he’d ever taken from the deepest vaults, the darkest safes. With his hands and mouth alone he drove her up, dragging her over the edge.
    There was a darkness here, like velvet, and the air wasas thick and heavy. She fought to pull it into her lungs only to have it catch and lose it again in moans. She should have understood from the hints he’d given her before that pleasure could rack the body, turn it into a mass of sensations and needs. The choice to give and take, to offer and receive, was out of her hands.
    She tore at his clothes, all sense of denial and self-preservation winked out like the tip of a candle. There had been pleasure before, with its twin face of pain. But not like this. To want like this was to forget all other wants. Never had she been so aware of her body so that she could feel every pulse beat, hundreds of them pounding wherever he touched, wherever she wanted to be touched.
    Sweat sprang out on her skin. And his. She could taste the salt as they rolled over the bed. The scent of passion rose, sharp, pungent, arousing. She could hear his breath come ragged and strained as he pinned her beneath him again. Their eyes locked. His head pounded as air tore in and out of his chest. He could feel the bite of her nails in his back, and the give of her breasts beneath him.
    “I’m going to watch you go up,” he told her, and the words hurt his throat. “You’re going to know I’m the only one who can take you there.”
    He plunged into her, pounding, thrusting so that her eyes went wide and glazed. The gasp of pleasure strangled in her throat.
    He could feel each separate muscle in his body bunching, straining. Then her hips were moving like lightning, meeting him thrust for thrust. Sensations sharpened. He could see the light falling over her face, hear the rustle of sheets, almost feel the pores of his body open. Her scent, like her arms, like her legs, like her hair, wrapped around him. Reality focused to the point of a pin. He thought it must be like dying. Then even his vision dimmed. Her cry of release was like an echo as he poured into her.
    She waited for the shame to come, and the self-disgust. But there was only the soft, lingering glow of pleasure. He’d done things to her that she’d never known she could enjoy. And she had welcomed them. Wallowed in them. Even now,with passion spent, she knew she would welcome them again. She kept her eyes closed, knowing he watched her.
    She couldn’t know how she looked, Philip thought. Naked, her long, lean legs still spread in abandon, her skin warmed with that afterglow of good sex, her hair spread wildly over white lace pillows. She wore nothing but diamond drops at her ears. They winked erotically in the light of the lamp.
    “These are real,” he said as he toyed with them.
    “Yes.”
    “Who gave them to you?”
    “Celeste. For my eighteenth birthday.”
    “That’s good. If they’d come from a man, I’d have had to be jealous. I don’t have much energy for it at the moment.”
    She opened her eyes and nearly smiled. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”
    “You could say something about this being an excellent way to start the new year.”
    She wanted to touch his hair. It was almost gold in the light and mussed around his face. Her hands had done that in passion, but she kept them lowered now. “Philip, you have to understand this can’t change anything. It would be best for you to go back to