DangerousPassion Read online

  Sarah almost told Derek that she could protect herself. She had been an independent woman too long to not immediately consider such a response. It was what she wanted to say, even though logic told her that in this particular instance, she needed Derek more than she had ever needed any man in her life. She also wanted to hide her naked breast with her hand, as she had previously, but when she took her hand away from Derek’s mouth, her arm dropped to hang loose at her side.

  “I’ll take care of you,” Derek said as he bent down, his face coming closer to Sarah’s. “Trust me. You’ve got to trust me.”

  A thousand separate thoughts ricocheted through Sarah’s brain. Derek bent slowly, so there was plenty of time for her to indicate that she did not wish to experience his kisses. But she gave no such indication. She just stood there, her left hand over one breast, her other breast exposed, as Derek brought his mouth to hers.

  A vicious brute like Derek is incapable of knowing how to kiss, Sarah thought an instant before his lips came into contact with her own.

  As had happened before, Sarah discovered that her initial assessment of the stranger with the quicksilver draw and deadly accuracy, was inaccurate. She was completely, blissfully, magnificently wrong.

  And never in her life had it felt so right to be so wrong.

  Initially, Derek merely brushed his lips across Sarah’s, planting butterfly kisses from one side of her mouth to the other. And then, very softly, the tip of his tongue came out to moisten her lips, first the upper, then the lower. Only when all this had been done with the most erotic lethargy, so that Sarah’s entire soul ached for the full impact of his kiss upon her lips, did Derek slant his mouth down over hers. The kiss was firm, authoritative, and when Sarah felt Derek’s lips open, she opened her own invitingly. His tongue, slick and devilish, glided between her lips, entering her mouth to dance with her own tongue.

  The soft, tremulous moan of female acquiescence that drifted to Sarah’s ears seemed odd somehow. It took a second or two for her to realize that she had been the one to moan with passion, and it was several seconds later that she became aware that she had never really heard the sound of her own excitement. When Edgar french kissed her, all she felt was an unpleasantness that didn’t quite reach the level of revulsion.

  The kiss deepened, and though Sarah at first simply received Derek’s kiss, within seconds she was returning the lusty kiss with equal ardor, playing her tongue against his. She raised her hands, slipping her arms loosely over his broad shoulders. When she felt Derek’s powerful hands slide over the naked extravagance of her breasts, another softly hissing moan escaped her.

  “Oh, Derek,” Sarah whispered, her lips brushing his as her better judgment stridently insisted that protests should be given a voice. After all, she hardly knew the man¾she didn’t even know his last name!¾and there was really no reason in the world she should be kissing him now while a dozen violent young outlaws were searching for them.

  But protests from Sarah to Derek were easier to think about than they were to actually speak aloud. This was especially true when Derek, with surprising delicacy considering the demonstrated strength in his hands, captured her nipples between forefingers and thumbs and twisted with a connoisseur’s precision, using just enough force that the pleasure went completely through Sarah. Derek never crossed the gossamer line that separated forceful from painful¾but he danced constantly on the high wire defining pleasure from pain, and that made all the difference in the world to Sarah’s awakening libido.

  The kiss seemed to last an eternity, but even that wasn’t sufficiently long for Sarah’s satisfaction. When Derek finally took his mouth away from hers, Sarah’s legs were weak, her blood was heated, and there was a distinctly traitorous hunger between her legs that she wished with futile desperation did not exist. Sarah adamantly did not want to be sexually aroused by this distinctly dangerous stranger, and she had every intention in the world of telling him so. Sometime soon. Not quite yet, but very soon.

  That is, she would have told Derek he must behave like a gentleman…had he not kissed her cheek, and then her neck, nipping at her tender, silken flesh with his teeth. The sensation hinted at pain, but did nothing more than hint. The pleasure that Derek’s teasing love bites brought was enormous. Sarah angled her head to the side, silently availing herself to Derek’s desires, positioning herself so that she would not thwart any of his cravings. Never once¾not in all the times that she had been in Edgar’s arms¾had she made such an obvious act of sexual submissiveness and acceptance.

  In the distance, though Sarah at that moment, could give no intelligent guess as to what that distance might be, the sounds of the outlaws running and shouting to each other took on a new note. Sarah tried, ever so briefly, to convince herself that the vicious gunmen that she had escaped from only minutes earlier were what she should concentrate on, but this thought vanished when she felt Derek’s right hand release her breast, then his fingertips brushed feather-soft over her stomach, moving downward.

  I must stop this insanity, Sarah thought. But once again the thought brought no action. Logic and reason had vanished with the application of Derek’s kisses and caresses. All that was left was a responsive, traitorous body that melted at Derek’s discretion.

  Derek kissed her collarbone, nudging her torn dress open a little more with his chin. His kisses traveled downward, inching closer and closer to her exposed breasts. His right hand moved past the slender leather belt encircling her waist, gliding over the curve of her hip to ease downward even more.

  “Don’t,” Sarah whispered, feeling Derek’s warm, moist, tempting lips on the upper slope of her breast.

  She had always had very sensitive nipples, and she knew with frightening certainty that whatever sense of logic and reason she possessed would be stripped away completely if she ever felt this sexy man’s devilish mouth capture her nipple. Action had to be taken¾and taken immediately¾if she was to have any chance whatsoever of preventing this accident (and Sarah had no doubt at all that any semblance of a romantic entanglement with a man like Derek was most definitely an accident) from happening.

  “Please, I’m begging you¾stop,” Sarah whispered, once again hating the weak, frightened tone of her voice.

  “You don’t mean that,” Derek replied, casually dismissing Sarah’s words, his right hand now pulling up the skirt of Sarah’s dress. The tone of his voice was husky, infinitely seductive. “You’ll beg me...but it won’t be to stop.”

  “But...“ Sarah began. It seemed to her completely unfair that he should have such a tempting voice. The sound of his words shouldn’t cause Sarah to feel like she was being caressed with a mink glove¾but as she was discovering, Derek was the exception to every rule.

  Derek raised his right hand high enough to press his middle two fingers against Sarah. Even though the thin barrier of her cotton drawers prevented his fingers from actually touching her, the pleasure that surged through her veins was instantaneous and breathtaking. With devastating precision, as Derek touched her so intimately, he opened his lips wide and sucked the crest of her left breast into his mouth. The liquid heat of his mouth against her sensitive nipple caused Sarah to curl forward as she clutched onto Derek’s broad shoulders.

  She felt as though she were being devoured. Blissfully, passionately, ecstatically devoured. She was being eaten alive in a way that made Sarah embarrassingly aware of her own sexual inexperience.

  Please stop! Please stop! thought Sarah, with delusion, believing that she really did want Derek to cease his kisses and caresses.

  She could not force the words from her throat. She simply couldn’t tell Derek to do something that¾had she been capable of being entirely honest with herself¾she really didn’t want him to do. For all his negative traits, he was the man who had put himself in mortal danger to come to her rescue at the precise moment in her life when rescuing was exactly what she had desperately needed. He was also masculine to a heightened degree, and when Sarah was feeling weak and
vulnerable, ostentatious virility and overwhelming male strength and courage were traits that she could not find entirely offensive. In fact, she could find nothing offensive about them at all.

  Sarah’s well-rounded hips began to move. She hadn’t intended for it to happen, it just…happened. Slowly at first, just from side to side. It was an unconscious movement caused by the unprecedented pleasure charging through her, but even when she became aware of what she was doing, she could not stop herself. She could no more stop her hips from moving than she could stop her breathing. Derek touched her with astonishing skill, rubbing the pads of his middle two fingers up and down over the delicate, nerve-laden lips of her pussy, forcing cotton to rub tantalizingly against her responsive labia and even more responsive clitoris. Looking down, she saw his handsome profile, his cheek hollowed as he drew a tight suction upon her breast, and she wished once more that she could find the internal willpower to put an end to this luscious, deliriously exhilarating madness.

  But she could not. Could not and would not. And if she was really being honest with herself (which she wasn’t), Sarah would admit that she did not want this to end. Perhaps in some odd way that Sarah did not understand the element of fear had heightened her senses and had stimulated long-neglected nerve receptors. Perhaps it was because Derek was nearly everything she disliked in men. Maybe it was because at any second they might be caught by the vicious outlaws who wanted to rape her and kill Derek. Whatever the reason, Sarah felt as though the surface of her skin had been magically sensitized, so that she felt everything with infinitely greater precision than ever before in her life. Her fingers kneaded the muscles in Derek’s shoulders, caressing him through his finely tailored suit coat and shirt, loving the suppressed power she felt there.

  He could break me in half if he wanted to, Sarah thought. But he knows how to be strong without hurting me. I could kneel at this man’s feet and not be ashamed of myself.

  She pushed her fingers into his thick, ebony hair, shocking herself by guiding Derek’s hungry mouth from the crest of one breast to the other. When Derek captured her nipple between his teeth and nibbled softly, another startled cry escaped Sarah. The intensity of the pleasure was so shocking she couldn’t contain herself. Suddenly, inexplicably, she considered doing to Derek things that Edgar had asked for. With Edgar, she had adamantly refused...but with Derek, the temptation to behave wickedly was so powerful it made her shiver.

  Derek feasted upon her firm breasts, sucking and licking, using his lips and tongue and especially his teeth to give her pleasure that constantly danced between pleasure and pain.

  “Oh, Derek! I’m on fire!” Sarah whispered, her arms looped over his broad back as his lips tantalized her breasts. Sarah was certain that if she did not hold onto Derek, the strength in her legs was insufficient to keep her standing.

  Derek’s fingers eased higher, relieving the pressure against her clitoris. A moment later Sarah felt deft fingers pulling loose the drawstring of her knickers. The warning alarms that almost always protected Sarah began clanging furiously in her brain, infinitely louder than ever before in her life. She felt Derek’s fingers slide over the soft, curly hair above her pubis, then felt him touch the heated, wet lips of her pussy.

  Sarah’s entire body flinched at the contact. She uttered the name of a deity, then a curse, utterly oblivious to the inconsistency of what she was saying, distinctly aware that she was traveling into an area of sensual emotions that, for her, was entirely uncharted territory. She was aware only of her body, and of the thoroughly frightening yet ecstatic way that she responded to everything that Derek was doing to it. When she felt his fingertips come in contact with her pink, erect clitoris, more tremulous words came from her¾though if they were words or merely sounds, even Sarah could not be certain.

  Sarah opened her mouth wider, hungry for the taste of Derek’s tongue. She moaned lustily as she felt her clitoris being rubbed lightly with a fingertip. She knew that if Derek continued to kiss and caress her as he was now, she would have an orgasm¾and this was almost unimaginable for her. She had never climaxed through any way other than with self-administered passion.

  Derek slipped a single finger between the tight, slick pink folds of Sarah’s pussy. She started to cry out, and he again silenced her with a demanding kiss. She felt as though she were melting inside. Sarah had no logical, rational reason for why she felt so completely out of control of her own actions and emotions. All that she knew with certainty was that a kiss from Derek was more exciting than any caress she’d ever received from Edgar, and that a caress from Derek touched her to the core of her soul and burned her with a fiery intensity that she hadn’t imagined possible.

  The outlaws were nearly upon them before Derek’s survival instincts warned him that the trap was being set. Sarah was unaware of anything other than Derek, and how magnificent he made her feel¾until he pushed her hard against the brick wall. He sprang into action, attacking the two young padfoots who had come across them hiding in the alley.

  Sarah did not want to watch the violence, but she did, and the skill and savagery that Derek displayed frightened her almost as much as the young criminals did. Even though Derek was outnumbered two to one, the young men did not have a chance against him. Within fifteen seconds both young men were unconscious and sporting either a broken arm or a broken leg.

  “Damn it, isn’t this ever going to end?” Derek muttered to himself, releasing the jacket collar of the unconscious cretin who had just discovered exactly how much force Derek could put behind his fists.

  Derek reached a hand out to Sarah. She knew what to do by now, only this time she longer bothered to hold her dress closed as she ran at Derek’s side.

  Chapter Three

  Derek was breathing heavily. There had been two more clashes with the young outlaws, and the only reason why Derek and the woman were still unscathed was that the gang had split into small groups in their efforts to kill Derek. They wanted to capture the woman. Eventually, they’d get around to killing her—but not before they’d all had their sadistic fun with her first.

  “I…I’ve got…to rest,” she said again through gasping breaths. “I’m...Sarah.”

  “Derek.”

  She bent over at the waist, putting her hands just above her knees, turning partially away from Derek for modesty’s sake. Her legs were weak and shaky, just as they had been earlier when she was in his arms and melting inside because of the heat of his kisses, responding to sensations she’d never before realized were possible. Now she was simply and completely exhausted.

  Derek looked up and down the alley, and then cursed under his breath. Whether the gang had meant to do it or not, they had chased him deeper and deeper into the seamiest section of Deadwood. This was the area that even Sheriff Artie Sterns, who had been hired to uphold the law, avoided completely. Itinerate cowboys looking for one last job filled the ten-cent-a-night hotels; there weren’t any brothels, but the hotels kept numerous women who rented out themselves, and their rooms, by the hour. The saloons were poorly lighted, sparsely populated, and served whiskey that went down the throat as gently as a hacksaw blade.

  The decent citizens of Deadwood knew better than to be in this neighborhood at night, or even to unlock their doors. Derek could hear, in the empty silence of the streets, the outlaw gang running about, shouting to each other, searching for the man in black who had already caused so many of their vicious but close-knit clan to end up screaming in agony or silently dead.

  Derek turned toward Sarah, and the moment he did, he wished he hadn’t. Or, rather, he felt as though he’d been struck with a lightning bolt. She was standing sideways to him, bent at the waist with her hands on her knees as she gulped in air. In that position, with her dress and camisole torn apart, and gravity playing its vital role in this visual moment that would forever be burned into Derek’s brain, he was given a view of extravagant feminine charms. Even under the duress of knowing that he would be instantly killed if he was caught by t
he gunmen pursuing him, and despite his own long and profligate history with women that left very little room for new experiences in the realm of sensuality, Derek considered the charms now exposed to him to be beyond earthly splendor. Sarah was, in his eyes and at that moment, heavenly and angelic. Again his brain correctly itself, searching for clarity and precision in a world and at a time when clarity and precision were almost nonexistent. No, she wasn’t heavenly¾she was incarnate eroticism. She was sexy as hell.

  He turned his back to Sarah. Self-control of his libidinous impulses had never been particularly strong with Derek, and in Sarah’s presence he discovered it was nearly nonexistent. Since his late teenage years, Derek had realized that he possessed steely willpower regarding almost all facets of life. However, when he looked at his reflection in the mirror and stripped away the flesh until he got down to the very bones of his existence, he also knew that where women were concerned, he was weak-willed and intemperate in the extreme. How many times had he promised himself that he would never again be in bed with this rich young belle, or that flirtatious debutante? And how many times had he promised himself that he would never again listen to their empty chatter, or let himself get tugged into their bedrooms to give them the satisfaction that their other lovers could not provide?

  The answer to the question he didn’t want to ask himself, but couldn’t avoid, was: too many times.

  With a conscious effort, Derek forced Sarah’s magnetic, voluptuous allure¾and his own shortcomings¾from his thoughts. He looked around the alleyway and considered his predicament. Earlier he had replaced the spent cartridges in his Colt with fresh ones, which meant that he now had six rounds in his pistol, and three additional rounds in his jacket pocket. That would be sufficient if he found himself in a duel, but woefully inadequate should he get into a protracted gunfight. And with Sarah with him, he couldn’t run or attack as he otherwise would have.