One Night for Love

And ready for love. He slid his hand down over the mound of dark-blond hair at the apex of her thighs. His fingers found her core and caressed her there until he could feel the heat and the slippery wetness of her desire.

'Look at me, Lily,' he said, suppressing the urge simply to mount her. Even now he would not take her compliance for granted—he dared not. And she was lying very still.

She opened eyes heavy with unmistakable passion and gazed upward into his face.

'Look at me,' he told her again. 'I am your husband. I am going to come inside and love you and let you love me. I am not going to use you or hurt you or degrade you.'

'I know,' she murmured. 'I know who you are.'

He positioned himself carefully and pressed inward while she watched his face, unflinching. He felt her muscles clench about him and fought for control—she was soft and hot and wet. She searched his eyes with her own, but then they drifted closed and her head tipped back against the pillows and her lips parted. She was experiencing, he could not fail to see with mingled relief and desire, the beginnings of ecstasy.

It was very hard for a man to love unselfishly when desire hummed through his veins and hammered against his temples and was an agony in his groin.

He was still kneeling between her thighs, but he brought his weight down onto her now, careful to take some of it on his forearms. And he began at last to move in her, aroused by her stillness, which was nonetheless not passive, by the small, exquisite body that was unmistakably Lily's, by memory of the last time they had been together, by his long abstinence, by her return from the dead, by the steady squeaking of bedsprings that were noisy even for a single sleeper, by the sighs of pleasure that escaped her with the rhythm of thrust and withdrawal that he held steady for as long as he could.

Lily, he thought as all sensation, all awareness became focused on the exquisite pain of his desire. 'Lily,' he murmured. 'My love. Ah, my love, my love.'

She had stopped sighing. Her body had gone slack and he knew that she had moved into the world of release ahead of him with quiet joy rather than with any sudden bursting of passion. He could not have asked for a more precious reward for his patience. She was as far from fear as it was possible to be.

'Beloved.' It was a mere whisper of sound. The endearment she had used on their wedding night.

His own climax came quickly. He bore her downward with all his weight as he pressed hard and deep and allowed the blessed release of all his need, all his pain, all his love into her.

It was a moment of extraordinary oneness.

Everything was going to be all right, he thought as he began to emerge into full awareness again a minute or two later. Everything. They were together and they were one. There were some problems—some minor problems that they would solve together over time. There was nothing they could not do together. All was well.

'I am sorry,' he murmured, realizing how heavily he was lying on her. He lifted himself away from her, sliding slowly free of her body as he did so, and lay beside her, still warm and breathless and sweaty. He wriggled one arm beneath her neck and turned his head to look at her. But he had only one glimpse before the candle guttered and finally went out. Her eyes were closed. She looked peaceful.

'Thank you,' she said, and she turned onto her side to curl against him as one of her hands slid up his damp chest and came to rest near his shoulder.

He felt the pain of tears in his throat. It felt like forgiveness. Like absolution.

The air was cool on his damp body. He hooked the blankets with one foot and drew them up about both of them. 'Better?' he asked. He chuckled softly. 'And thanks are scarcely necessary unless they are intended as a compliment. In which case I should add my thanks to yours. Thank you, Lily.'

She sighed once and fell asleep with a smile on her face.

All was going to be well. He gathered her closer, rubbed his face against her hair, breathing in its fragrance, and shifted into a more comfortable position. If only he could see Lauren as happy. Surely she must be in time. She had so much to offer the right man. And Gwen—her happiness had been cut so short.

But sometimes, he thought sleepily, one could surely be pardoned for indulging in selfish happiness. He felt the deepest sympathy for both his sister and his cousin and former betrothed. But for now, for tonight, he felt so totally happy for himself, for Lily, for them, that it was difficult to spare a thought for anyone else.

He slept.

***

When Lily awoke, it was to a feeling of yearning so intense that it was painful. There were the first suggestions of dawn beyond the window. She was inside the picturesque little thatched cottage by the pool beneath the waterfall—she could imagine the scene as it appeared when one came down into the valley on the way to the beach. She was there now with Neville, her husband—his arm was slack about her, her head pillowed on his shoulder. He had made love to her and it had been wonderful beyond imagining. She had felt cleansed from the inside out. And he had not felt disgust—she would have known it if he had.

The yearning was to make this night somehow permanent. If only they could live here together, just the two of them, for the rest of their lives. If only they could forget Newbury Abbey, his responsibilities as the Earl of Kilbourne, her captivity, his family, Lauren. If only they could stay like this forever.

It was without a doubt the happiest night of her life.

But though she had always been a dreamer, she had never confused dreams with reality. Dreams gave one moments of happiness and the strength with which to deal with reality. And sometimes, when dream and reality touched and became one for a brief moment in time, as they had done this night, they were to be accepted as a precious gift, to be lived to the full, and then to be released. Trying to grasp hold of them and retain them would be to destroy them.

The night would be over, and they would return to Newbury Abbey. She would continue to feel—and to be— inadequate, inferior, out of place, and out of her depth. And he, being a gentleman, would continue to make the best of the situation. He would continue to see Lauren almost every day and would continue, perhaps unconsciously, to compare the woman who was his wife with the woman who ought to have been his wife.