Hidden Obsession Read online

  But if he thought to distract himself from her tentative strokes along the underside of his cock, ah hell. He didn’t have a prayer.

  He released her enough to roll to one side, fishing his wallet from his pocket and his condom from within the billfold.

  “I have displeased you?” She frowned at his wallet and the foil packet he withdrew. “You are—too busy to make love to me?”

  “Not hardly.” He didn’t have a clue how he was going to explain as he ripped open the package. “I—uh—have a way to make sure sex doesn’t make you pregnant, but allows me to stay inside you.”

  “You have been to a medicine woman?” She touched the thin prophylactic as he rolled it on. “This fabric has been charmed?”

  “Well, it works like a charm, let’s put it that way.” Tossing the package and his pants aside, he devoted his full attention to her now, his hips settling between her legs, wedging her open.

  He could already feel the damp heat of her, and he wasn’t even touching her yet. She reached up to thread her fingers through his hair, to tug him closer through force of will if not strength.

  “Please.” She ground down closer to him and he could not string out the moment another second.

  Hips thrusting forward, he entered her slowly, the thrill of being inside her causing lights to flash behind his eyes, his whole body hyperalert to her. Each new inch rocked him a little more.

  “I cannot even feel this wondrous device.” Her fingers gripped his shoulders as she clung to him. “All I feel is—ooh.”

  He withdrew from her slightly and then pushed his way deeper, farther. Restraint was important if he wanted to make this last—and damn but he had to make it last—yet reserve was tough to come by when she tilted her hips upward, taking more and driving him crazy for her.

  “It is pretty wondrous.” He could listen to her talk all day long. “But the charm will only work once so we need to make the most of this one time.”

  “Once?” She looked stricken for a moment, her whole body going still as she gripped the blankets in their hearthside bed. “Then there is something I must ask you for while you can still grant my request.”

  “Name it.” He was ready to take on fifty knights for her just yesterday—he couldn’t imagine anything he wouldn’t give her at this moment.

  “I have heard it is a sin,” she warned him, her green eyes full of dire warning and still so freaking beautiful.

  “Yeah? I like it already.” He captured her mouth once more for a long, slow, thorough taste.

  When he released her, her eyes were less wary and more sex-dazed. Just like he wanted.

  “Perhaps I could be on top?” She made the request in a breathless rush.

  That was her sinful act?

  She was priceless.

  “I’d like nothing better than to check out the view of you naked on top of me.” He rolled to his side and onto his back, taking her with him until she lay over him, her long hair spilling over his arm. “But I don’t know how long I can last with this kind of temptation.”

  She pushed herself up to sit straight on him, the guilty pleasure of their new position evident in her wicked grin.

  “You really let me be in charge.” The surprise in her voice renewed his anger at Kendrick for treating her like a possession and fired Graham’s determination to show her how a relationship between a man and woman could be.

  Should be.

  “Yes, ma’am. And I encourage you to have your wicked way with me.” He bracketed her hips with his hands, loving the softness of her oh-so-fine booty under his fingertips. “In fact, the wickeder, the better.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” She bent down to kiss him, her fingers grazing his unshaven cheeks as she steadied his face.

  Tenderness for this woman unfurled inside him, scaring him with its intensity. He shoved those thoughts from his mind even if he couldn’t quite obliterate them from his heart.

  She sat back on her haunches again, her body outlined by the orange glow of the fire in a room that remained otherwise dim without many windows.

  “I hardly know where to begin.” She swirled her fingers around his chest to track lower on his abs.

  His muscles shivered in response, flexing everywhere she touched.

  “You let me know if you need lessons in wickedness.” He had plenty of ideas on that score.

  “I prefer to acquire firsthand experience.” She rode up and down on him for a moment before readjusting her legs, knees bent, so that she could prop herself up on her toes.

  Unusual.

  And un-freaking-believable.

  With the extra leverage of her legs beneath her, she could rise higher on his cock, holding herself above him for long moments before inching her way down so slowly his eyes crossed with the pleasure of it. Taking total control, she rocked her hips up and down, her eyes falling closed as she found her rhythm. A rhythm that made him break out in a cold sweat.

  “Is that enough experience for you?” He ground out the words between clenched teeth, staving off his finish that threatened every time she lifted herself high to tease the head of him.

  “I don’t think so.” She slid down him again with smooth grace as she wrapped one hand around the base of him and squeezed him gently. “I’m learning so much.”

  “Are you prepared to be repaid in kind?” He tried to dredge up those tender thoughts he’d had about her again to keep him from thinking about the mind-blowing sex, but all traces of gentleness had vanished when she’d started her acrobatic tricks that were straight out of a double-jointed fantasy.

  “What do you mean?” Her eyelashes fluttered open wide as soon as he grazed her clit with his fingers.

  “That’s what I mean.” He stroked her sleek folds where she stretched to accommodate him, then gave her sex a soft pinch that sent her flying back down into his arms.

  He rolled her to her back again in no time flat, needing this control if he wanted to last longer.

  “Sorry, sweetheart. Your experience will have to wait.”

  He drove into her the rest of the way with all the fierceness she’d ignited behind his thrust, his need too raw for finesse anymore. Her eyes rolled back when his body met hers and he sensed he wasn’t the only one hanging by a thread.

  “Come for me, Linnet.” He chanted the request in her ear as he watched her whole body flush pink with desire. “I want to see you go crazy for me again.”

  He cupped her hip to drive her closer, then slid his hand between them to pluck the damp fullness of her clit.

  She gasped at the contact, her whole body going still again and he knew the end was inevitable. She convulsed around him a second later, her hips lifting, thrusting of their own accord.

  He couldn’t stave off his release with the blatant sexuality of hers urging him on, taking him to that final level. His finish racked through him like a hammer, pounding out his pleasure with undue force and driving him deeper, hotter, wetter. The sensation blasted away any memory of sex with anyone besides her, their moments together too intense to leave room for any memory that didn’t have her in it.

  He couldn’t think. Couldn’t move in the aftermath of their time together. It was all he could do to roll to his side and tuck her warm body against his.

  And as much as he wanted to let sleep drag him under with her as her breaths evened into a slow cadence, he owed it to his investigation to crack open the scrolls he’d pilfered from Kendrick’s tent.

  Regret filling up the hollow places inside him, Graham waited another minute to make sure Linnet was asleep, then eased out from under the covers to discover whatever clues he could unearth on the strangest journey of his life.

  12

  DARKNESS PREVAILED when Linnet awoke. The sun had gone down, leaving only the light of a dying fire in the hall where she still lay between two blankets.

  But worse than the physical darkness was the mental one.

  “Graham?” Waking up alone brought back ghosts of the old lone
liness that had haunted her since she’d been consigned to a chastity belt.

  Nay. If she were honest, the darkness had started when her mother had died, leaving her alone to fend for herself among half brothers who did not love her and a father for whom she was naught but a burden.

  “I’m here.” His voice kept the shadows at bay a little longer, but she’d had a taste of how her future would feel without him.

  Rising to sit, Linnet spied him on the trestle bench before the fire, his hands tilting a piece of parchment toward the dying embers in the hearth.

  “You wanted to read Kendrick’s scrolls.” Graham had mentioned them in passing when they’d shared stories of their time apart. After setting the blaze that had distracted the men and brought Kendrick running into the fray, Graham had run into the private ceremonial tent to drag out the woman Kendrick had brought inside it.

  He’d taken the parchments then in the hope they would contain clues.

  Clues that would only tear them apart.

  “Your former fiancé is amassing a fortune in gold and ancient artifacts.” Graham’s back took on a bronze hue in the burnished glow of the scant flames. He’d clothed himself in his braies for his late-night reading, but he remained shirtless, a condition which she greatly appreciated.

  The mere sight of him sent her pulse skipping.

  “I care not what he does so long as he remains far from me.” She shuddered, wrapping herself in the blanket Graham had used to cover her. Padding over to sit on the bench beside him, she clutched the blanket like a cape.

  “You might be interested in his methods.” He passed her one of the parchments, the vellum smooth and soft. “What do you make of that?”

  Rotating the scroll to orient herself, she saw it contained a picture. A diagram of a desert and three pyramids with a crude palm tree and crescent moon in the background. At the top of the parchment were the only words on the page, reading simply Visualize This.

  “I don’t understand. What does this have to do with Kendrick acquiring wealth?” She had expected accounting lists or inventories of his holdings, not a poorly sketched picture.

  “He has an impressive list of acquisitions on another scroll along with a list of wanted items.” Graham flashed another scroll under her nose, this one crammed full of words in an unfamiliar language.

  “You can decipher these?”

  “You can’t?” His demeanor had shifted somehow, becoming more distant.

  He was no longer her lover. This was the lawman.

  “Some words look familiar, and others do not.” She struggled with a few lines and picked out whatever she recognized. “Egypt. Kings. Linnet?”

  Was that really her name on the long list of inventory?

  “It’s a form of English I know well. And yes, that’s your name as a notation beside his entry about searching the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.”

  “Like the picture?” She turned back to the crudely drawn desert scene and suddenly understood. “He wants a woman with the Sight to visualize this valley. He hopes to search for treasure by using me to see it for him.”

  “I think he drugged those other women last night with something to make them hallucinate so that they’d see visions, too. But I don’t know why he’d think he could trust their information if people without an extrasensory gift looked at these pictures.”

  Graham gestured to a pile of other scrolls in his lap, and only then did she realize how ambitious Burke Kendrick’s plans had been. He wasn’t just trying to steal valuable artifacts from the resting place of Egypt’s kings. He wanted to steal from sites all over the world.

  “My mother once told me everyone is born with some potential to have the Sight. But most people ignore the gift in favor of what they see with their eyes until at last the natural ability to see with their minds withers and dies.”

  She hadn’t thought about those old conversations with her mother in a long time, a habit abandoned back when the memory brought with it a pain she could not bear. But the ache was no longer there, replaced by a mellow and comforting warmth, as if she’d healed an old friendship.

  And she needed that warmth now when Graham remained subtly distant.

  “Did you ever have a friendship with Kendrick? Before he became your enemy?”

  Her neck prickled with warning and she hated to feel that kind of uncertainty with the man she’d given herself to, whether he recognized the value of her gift or not.

  “Never. May I ask why you would suggest such a thing and why you have backed away from me in your heart even if you haven’t left the chamber we share?” Her heart pounded in nervous, jerky beats.

  “Speaking strictly from a legal perspective, you’re implicated in these writings as a partner to Kendrick. He suggests you’ve already helped him find many treasures.”

  “Impossible.” She shook her head, disappointed that he would give any credence to outright lies. “I’d never met him before he came to claim me as his future bride. And even then, he spent little time here. He certainly never asked me to visualize anything for him.”

  Although he had questioned her extensively about her gift. But she’d already told Graham about that.

  Shoving away the scrolls, he nodded.

  “Sorry. I knew that. I just—Thanks for clarifying.” He pulled her onto his lap and kissed her, the cool reserve gone.

  “You are a man who does not trust easily.”

  She hadn’t known that about him, perhaps because they’d had so many other obstacles to overcome in the short time they’d known each other. Now all the customary strategies for courtship no longer applied. They had moved beyond polite dinner conversations in front of their families.

  They had slept together without understanding one another at all.

  “Lack of trust makes me good at my job.” He brushed his lips across her forehead, then rained kisses over her eyes. “I’ll admit it sucks when it comes to personal relationships.”

  “Someone hurt you?” She opened her eyes to watch his reaction.

  “No. I’m just careful not to be a sucker.”

  “Where I come from, we have a name for that.” She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Tis called someone hurt you.”

  “Okay, put it this way.” He reached beneath her blanket to mold a hand to her bare hip. “Maybe someone tried to hurt me.”

  She could almost believe him. But he pushed the fib too far, and his eyes told another story.

  “I do not need to know your tale if you do not wish to share it.” She sensed what she didn’t know about Graham Lawson could fill many tomes. “But I have no reason to deceive you.”

  He made no answer, but continued his exploration beneath her blanket. His hand dipped between her thighs to cup her mound and she knew he wished to end that particular conversation.

  He pressed the heel of his hand against her sex; making her achingly aware how much power he had over her. His need became her need in one intimate touch. He could wrest a cry from her with a single lazy swipe of his finger or a deep, wet kiss.

  Both of which he gave her now while she melted into his lap, her blanket falling away along with her fears that he did not trust her. She would muddle her way through it tomorrow, when he was long gone. If she was fortunate enough to have him inside her again tonight, she would accept it greedily.

  Already her feminine muscles shivered with hunger. She writhed unabashedly in her seat on his thighs, delighting in the hard feel of him. His tongue flicked over her lips in the same kiss that had driven her mad when he’d delivered it between her thighs, and the memory of that moment was so powerful it made her cry out with want.

  The heat between them flared up so quickly, so intensely, they did not bother moving to their makeshift bed. He unfastened his braies and shoved them down while she straddled him.

  He didn’t enter her at first. Allowing her to rub herself against him, heightening her pleasure and her hunger.

  Just when she thought she would go mad without hi
m inside her, he reached behind them to dig in the traveling sack she’d brought from Welborne Keep.

  He emerged with the Initiator. The horrid device Edana had laughed about, the one used to penetrate a woman.

  “I want you.” Her thighs squeezed close reflexively, but she only managed to hug his hips because of the way she was seated.

  “You have no need to fear it,” he whispered in her ear, stroking the outer rim with his tongue between words. “Where I come from, women use these to bring themselves pleasure when they are alone.”

  “But I am not alone.” She stroked the engorged head of his staff. “That piece of wood and horn possesses no warmth. No velvety skin over stiff muscle.”

  He strained toward her and she rewarded him by increasing the pace of her strokes. Learning what he liked had been a seductive pleasure.

  “But I can’t come inside you. I have no more of the—uh—medicine woman’s charm.”

  She mourned the loss of his magical thin skin that kept her safe. Opening herself to the lifeless tool seemed far less appealing.

  “Besides,” he continued, already lowering the rod between her thighs, “this way you will conquer another piece of what made you scared of Kendrick. You can take something he taunted you with and make it a harmless, pleasurable toy to be enjoyed.”

  A toy?

  She raised an eyebrow at his description but protested no further. Her body was already a mass of hot, hungry need.

  “Do not hurt me, Graham,” she pleaded, closing her eyes to feel what he did instead of see the wicked object in his hands.

  “Never.”

  True to his word, he kissed her lips and mirrored the stroke of his tongue with the work of his fingers on her sex. Soon she was so slick and ready for him that he had no trouble nudging the device a short way inside her.

  He held it there, allowing her to become used to the feel of it. While it was a poor substitute for Graham, at least he offered her aching, wanting body a substitute.

  He lowered his head to her breast and drew on one tight peak. Her thighs clenched in appreciation of the kiss, edging the rod deeper inside her.