“Please. Let me go.” She arched, trying to move away from Brandon, and felt him go deeper inside her.
Brandon leaned forward, supporting himself on his forearms. “Don’t do that,” he whispered. God, she was like warm, moist velvet. His hips ground involuntarily against her. Beads of perspiration collected on his upper lip as he strained for control. “He was impotent, wasn’t he?” he ground out again. “He never touched you this way.”
“Never,” Shannon said on a fragile thread of sound. She was becoming accustomed to the feel of him inside her. It distracted her. She tried to concentrate on the muscle working in Brandon’s cheek. “I tried to explain. I told you he turned away from me.” She couldn’t help it. Her back arched again, lifting her hips, as a frisson of heat rippled through her.
He felt her shudder. His hands had folded into white-knuckled fists. “And it was then he punished you,” Brandon finished slowly, finally understanding the true nature of what had passed between Shannon and her stepfather. “I’m sorry, Shannon. I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right,” she said, frowning slightly as the focus of her concentration wandered to the point of their joining. Unwittingly, her muscles contracted around him.
Brandon felt her tighten. “Forgive me, Shannon. I can’t…” He withdrew slightly and then thrust deeply. “…can’t stop.”
Shannon didn’t want him to. Not then. Not ever. Her hands slid along his back until they rested lightly on his taut buttocks. She watched his face, awed by the naked expression of need in his darkly polished eyes, never suspecting her own face mirrored the same need.
Brandon’s husky reassurances fed Shannon’s soul, filling the emptiness until she felt whole. Pleasure tugged at her senses as he taught her how to move with him. His hands guided her, sliding silkily over her pliant flesh. The exact nature of what either of them sought eluded Shannon, yet she felt as if she were being led toward the same goal that was Brandon’s. Shannon felt an urgency build within her, an intensity of sensation that held her captive until, without warning, its frantic energy exploded.
The earth is flat, Shannon thought, clutching at Brandon’s shoulders. I know because I am falling over its edge. Her taut muscles shivered in reaction and Brandon’s name hovered on her lips. She stared at him, stunned by the enormity of what he had made her feel.
Brandon wanted to shout his joy when he saw the perfect surprise on Shannon’s face. She could almost make him forget his own needs. Almost. The thrust of his hips quickened and Brandon buried his face in the curve of her neck as his body shuddered its satisfaction.
“Sweet, sweet Shannon,” he murmured, his senses filled with the fragrance of her hair and the aftermath of her precious gift to him. It was some time before he realized she was sobbing. He rolled away from her and sat up, watching in amazement as Shannon began to gather her discarded clothes. “Shannon? What is it? Why are you crying?”
Shannon shook her head, unable to speak and unable to look at him. Her hair fell like a dark, heavy veil across the side of her face. Her fingers fumbled with her dress and she pulled it over her head hastily, making a tangle of the laced bodice.
Brandon reached for her wrist but Shannon pulled back sharply, a wounded cry coming from her lips. “Dammit, Shannon! What is it? Did I hurt you?”
Hurt her? Would that he had, Shannon thought. She could have accepted that. What she could not accept was the pleasure he had given her. Instead of punishing her for her wantonness, he had celebrated it. The things he had made her feel were wicked. She was wicked. She shouldn’t have enjoyed it. He shouldn’t have made her enjoy it. Shame flamed her face. With a low moan of frustration, she gathered her undergarments and her shoes and pressed them closely to her chest in the manner of protection. Brandon was collecting his own things now, and Shannon could not face the inevitable confrontation that would occur once he was dressed. She swept aside the curtain of willow branches and ran toward the folly as if the devil himself were her shadow.
Brandon had one leg in his breeches when Shannon fled. “Shannon! Come back here!” He saw her hesitate slightly, then run even faster in the direction of the house and the safety of her room. He swore softly and eloquently as he wrestled with the rest of his clothes. A low growl of frustration worked in his throat. What the hell had happened?
That question would not be silenced, and it nagged at Brandon’s thoughts continuously. He could have forced a confrontation with her, but he doubted it would have resolved anything. Instead he allowed her to seek the sanctuary of her room and permitted her the protection she used in later days by going nowhere without Clara. Brandon sought the protection of his work, spending long hours in the fields and in his library. He avoided even going near the clearing by the river where they had made love, afraid the bitterness he was trying hard to quell would rise again. He knew only that lying with Shannon had easily been the most beautiful experience of his life. That it had ultimately given her a disgust of him made him feel less than human, like some savage beast that could not control its own carnal impulses.
Once Brandon saw Shannon speaking with Cody at the edge of the fields. She had Clara in her arms, and they were both petting Cody’s bay mount. He saw her tilt back her head and laugh at something his brother said. Her laughter cut him raw, and he felt only numbness when she glanced in his direction a moment later and visibly paled. Afterward she quickly took Clara back to the house. He watched her until she disappeared before he laid his crop across his horse’s flanks and headed hell-bent across the countryside.
On another occasion Brandon crossed Shannon’s path in the stables where she and Clara were playing with the kittens in one of the stalls. They were whispering like conspirators, naming the animals, when Brandon came upon them. He leaned against one of the supports, his arms crossed in front of him, and wondered how Shannon could look so completely happy while he was bleeding inside. When Clara saw him she brought him into the conversation, oblivious for once to the thickness of Shannon’s silence and the odd tenor of her father’s short replies. Brandon tried not to look at Shannon, tried not to notice the bits of straw nesting in her dark hair or the way she avoided his eyes by snuggling the kitten she held at her breast. After a few minutes he left, his shoulders hunched as if supporting a great weight. God, how she must hate him.
“How long has it been since you’ve gone to town?” Cody asked Brandon one morning at breakfast.
Brandon was not deceived by the indifference in Cody’s tone. “To town or to a second-floor chamber in Redheart’s?”
Cody cleared his throat as Brandon’s dark eyes speared him. “Well, since you brought it up,” he said conversationally, “Annie’s been asking for you. She mentioned it’s been quite a while since you visited her.”
Brandon grunted and pushed his eggs around on his plate. Finally his fork clattered to the table. “Is that what you think is wrong with me, Cody, that I’m expiring for the love of a good woman?”
“More like a woman’s good loving. Hell, Bran, you’re like a bear with a sore paw around here, and I’m tired of being the one to point it out to you. Did you and Shannon have words? She’s as skittish as hot grease on a griddle whenever you come around.”
“Miss Kilmartin and I—”
“Cut line, Brandon! You don’t think of her as Miss Kilmartin any more than I do. If you’d stop treating her as if she had the damned plague, you might even find you could enjoy her company. For a while I thought…” His voice trailed off as he rubbed his chin with the back of his hand. “But never mind, nothing has come of it. Still, you don’t have to glare at her and take your bad humor out on the rest of us.”
“You don’t know anything about it.”
“Then tell me.”
Brandon picked up his fork and began eating. “No,” he said between bites.
Cody was not fazed by Brandon’s dismissal of the subject. “Are you planning to send her away?”
Brandon’s head snapped up. “No! What gave you that idea?”
