“Is that the only way you know to handle a twenty-nine-year-old spoiled brat?” she taunted furiously.
Something new flickered in the depths of his dark eyes and then it was gone. “No,” he told her in a deadly voice, “there are other ways of dealing with a woman.”
“Are you threatening to rape me or beat me?” Her only weapon now was her tongue and Honor used it recklessly. She felt driven to taunt and goad him until she could get some kind of human response out of him. If she could find a crack in the seemingly impenetrable wall that surrounded him, perhaps she would have a chance of reaching him.
Or perhaps she would find there was simply nothing beneath that barrier except more of the same unnaturally cold, hard maleness that seemed to assault her senses.
“Which would you prefer?” he retorted brutally. “Would you rather be raped or beaten into submission? Is this part of the syndrome, Honor? Has your infantile brain somehow concluded that violence is a form of attention, too?”
“There’s no real choice, is there?” she hissed scornfully. “You’ll have to beat me into submission because you’re incapable of raping me!”
“Damn it to hell, woman!”
“It’s true, isn’t it? Even rape takes some kind of emotion. Hatred, sadism, a sick kind of passion, [_something! _]You don’t have any emotions that run that deep, do you? Not even old-fashioned, garden-variety lust!”
Suddenly the dark eyes of the hunting bird gleamed dangerously in the moonlight. Honor felt Judd go very still above her, his body tight with a new kind of tension. She held her breath, knowing she had pushed him much too far and knowing, too, that she’d had no choice.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” he whispered harshly.
Honor felt as if she were caught up in the talons of a bird of prey but her eyes never left his. “So it’s going to be the beating, is it? I thought so. When was the last time you went to bed with a woman, Judd Raven? I’ll bet it’s been years! Tell me, do you make love to that damned plane—”
The words were cut off in her throat as his head swooped down toward hers. She had only time enough to read the glittering fury in his eyes, time enough to realize that at least she had sparked some kind of emotion in him and then his mouth was on hers in savage conquest.
The impact of the brutal kiss washed through her body like a crashing wave. It was far more than Honor had bargained for, even in her desperation to goad Judd into some kind of response. She lay passively beneath the assault, unable even to drag her mouth free of his.
She had never known anything like it before in her whole life. There was no finesse, no pretense at romance, no hint of tenderness. The kiss could not even be described as passionate. It was overwhelming and devastating, a primitive attempt by a man to dominate a woman in the most fundamental sense. Judd’s mouth moved on hers with feral intent, forcing apart her lips. When she instinctively tried to close her teeth against the invasion of his tongue, he used his thumb and forefinger on her jaw to pry open her mouth. Then he was inside, swamping her senses, exploring and conquering every corner.
The faint moan of protest and newfound fear which emanated from deep in her throat went unheeded. Judd’s free hand slid roughly down her throat to find her breast and closed over the gentle curve of it. She trembled violently beneath the onslaught, terrified at what she had unleashed.
His legs slid between hers, pushing her thighs apart in a gesture that left her feeling ravished even though she was still dressed. Crushed as she was against the unyielding wooden floor, Honor began to panic. The tremors coursing through her were uncontrollable. Tears seeped into her eyes and she closed them tightly.
It was the ripple of small, violent shivers in her body that finally got through to Judd. He sensed the fear as if it were a tangible presence emanating from her and her total vulnerability finally registered in his raging mind.
What was she doing to him? What in God’s name had he allowed her to do to him? And what the hell was the matter with him that he had gone off the deep end like this?
The fury surging through him didn’t disintegrate, but his normal iron control finally began to reassert itself. He fought back the waves of enraged desire that were still pouring through his body, breathing heavily with the effort. One hand closed into a tight, hard fist of frustration and anger. He wrenched his mouth from her and stared down at the lips he had bruised with his own.
Such a soft mouth. It had been one of the first things he had noticed about her. That gentle mouth and those huge hazel eyes. Every time he had looked at that damned photo he had wondered how that mouth and those eyes could belong to the self-centered, immature, spoiled brat of a woman he had been sent to find. He hadn’t wanted to think of her as genuinely crazy for some reason, although that explanation was probably the simplest one. So he had studied the intelligent eyes with their hint of mischief and humor and decided that the woman he was after was merely overindulged by a doting family. It had crossed his mind more than once that the right man might be able to straighten her out.
Not that he was that man, Judd had assured himself as he tramped through the dusty streets of one village after another. He was merely making an observation.
Now here he was almost raping her. And it was all her fault. She was more than spoiled and overindulged. She was dangerous.
“Damn it, lady, what kind of game are you playing?” he ground out. “You’re even sicker than your family thinks you are if this is the way you get your kicks!”
Her eyes slitted open and he saw the trace of tears in their gold-and-green depths as she watched him with the expression of a trapped animal. But even though he could see the remains of genuine fear in her eyes her tongue continued to cut at him like a knife.
“If I really was trying to get my thrills this way it’s obvious I’m in for a disappointment, isn’t it?”
He swore softly, violently. “Why are you trying to goad me into rape, you stupid woman? What is it with you?”
“Maybe I just wanted to see if there was some trace of an identifiable human emotion in you,” she mocked scathingly. “You’re like a robot, Judd Raven. I’ve been trying to talk to you all evening, argue with you, plead with you and all I got was the feeling I’m dealing with a damned robot!”
“So you decided to see if you could provoke me, is that it? After trying to shoot me, first, that is!”
“I didn’t shoot you! I never got the chance, remember? You stole the bullets from my gun. When did you do that, Judd? Before you came looking for me in the cantina?” she blazed furiously.