flavors she now knew so well-him, all heady masculinity and passion, strength, desire, and the promise of possession.
All there, all familiar, yet there was a deeper thread running beneath all. A powerful current that fed all the rest, that gave the rest life.
For the first time she could touch it.
Stroke it, know it.
Welcome it as his hand closed over her breast and, pulling back from the kiss, she gasped.
Eyes closed, head back, she drew that novel power in with every racing beat of her heart as his hands, hard, possessive, sculpted her curves. Arousing, yet not driving.
This was lovemaking with a different slant. With something else in the mix. Something he was letting rise up and fill him, and pour into her.
It was glory of a different degree. It took desire and passion, hunger and need, and gilded them. Made them shimmer with meaning, with purpose.
She drank it in, focused on each and every caress. Every explicit act of claiming. Reveled in the heat, the deeper warmth that suffused every inch of skin, and sank to her bones.
Raising her heavy lids, from beneath her lashes she studied his face. His features were set, harshly passion- etched, his lips a firm, unyielding line, yet his eyes as he surveyed the bounty of her breast, filling one of his hands, held an expression of…reverence.
Possession, too, but there was a deeper joy, a deeper appreciation beneath.
Before she could concentrate and identify the impression, he saw her watching him. He bent his head and took her lips again.
Again swept her away on the familiar tide…but slowly.
As if their heartbeats were counting the bars, marking time.
He waltzed her to the bed, but before he could tug away her shawl, she stopped him with a hand on his chest. He paused, but didn’t break the kiss.
She seized the moment, and slowly-still keeping to that deeper, slower, compulsive beat-pushed his coat off his shoulders. Unwound his cravat and let it fall from her fingers, unbuttoned his waistcoat and pushed it away. Spread her hands over the fine linen of his shirt, traced, unlaced, then pulled the tails from his waistband, slid her hands beneath to find his heated skin, and stroked, caressed.
Del broke from the kiss, and drew the shirt off over his head. Watched as her eyes fastened on his chest, watched them gleam, watched her lips curve with feminine greed and blatant anticipation.
She touched him. Spread her small hands and possessed.
He let her, captive to some compulsion he didn’t fully understand, yet he was the one who had let it free. His pulse drummed in a slow cadence-powerful, controlled, all passion and driving need held subservient to that greater force.
Together, they dispensed with his trousers, his stockings, his shoes, until he stood naked before her.
He reached for her, needing the promise of her body against his. She came, but with one hand on his chest, stayed him from locking her against him. Looking down, she closed her other hand about his jutting staff.
Caressed, possessed.
Deliah traced his heavy erection, took it in her palm and stroked down, up, then she ran her fingertips around the bulbous head.
And he shuddered.
She glanced up, and their eyes met. Gaze to gaze in the candlelit gloom, the dark pools of his eyes drew her in. Held her. Even as she cradled him. Then she felt him tug at her shawl; this time she let it go. Let him divest her of shawl and nightgown, let him pull back the covers, lift her and lay her down, and join her.
He drew the covers over them, creating a cocoon of warmth, a cave, a place that, with the firelight flickering over the walls, was safe and theirs. She’d expected him to join with her immediately, but he propped himself on his elbow beside her, leaned over her, captured her mouth once more with his, filled it, her mind and her senses, then set his hands once more to her body.
Stroked, caressed…worshipped.
There was no other word to describe what she felt, what she sensed through his touch. He’d never made her feel less than desired. This night he made her feel…
Loved.
Cherished.
Desired not just in a physical sense but on some deeper emotional plane. While one part of her mind scoffed at such thoughts, at such an interpretation of his motives, another part saw, and knew.
She felt it in her heart, recognized it in every slow beat of his.
Sensed it in the rise of their pulses as desire thundered anew.
As passion rose and claimed them, and he lifted over her, spread her thighs with his, and filled her.
Completed her.
As she took him in and gloried.
Del wasn’t holding the reins. He’d given them over, ceded all control, surrendered to the compulsive force that was the reality of what he felt for her.
That was the reality of why he needed her.
Giving that reality free rein had been easier than he’d thought-showing her, letting her see. But now it whipped them both, raged through them both, leaving them blind, deaf and consumed, victims to the fire raging in their blood. To the molten heat, to the need to be one, caught in the inexorable drive to consummation.
Their blood pounded in their veins, and glory beckoned.
Desire lifted them on a wave of raw, exquisite, mind-numbing sensation.
Ecstacy sharpened, heightened, brightened, then exploded.
And they shattered, fragmented.
She screamed his name as she clung and fell.
He smothered a roar in the curve of her throat as he followed.
They spiralled back to earth through the fading brightness, to the comfort of that familiar golden sea, to satiation and completeness.
And, he suspected-he hoped-to a deeper understanding.
Never had he felt so utterly wracked with pleasure.
Never had the act been so deeply fulfilling.
Never had he felt so vulnerable-as if he’d placed his heart and his soul in her hands.
Deliah didn’t immediately sink into sated slumber. Sated she was, to her toes, yet…curiosity niggled. What had changed? And, more importantly, why?
He’d dropped his guard completely, lowered all inner shields, and given her honesty-emotional honesty. With a compelling sincerity he’d shown her what he felt.
But why? Or rather, why now?
From the depths of her mind surfaced the thought that tomorrow might well see the end of his mission. If, as she suspected he would, he decided to stay in Cambridgeshire to wait for his friends to reach safety, he might well send her north with an escort.
Once his mission was over, there would no longer be any further danger to her, no further need to keep her with him.
Was this-tonight-their last time? The last night they would share?
A species of dark panic bloomed inside; she felt it grip her throat, black and strangling.
His fingers touched, traced her forehead, her temple, her cheek.
She opened her eyes, and fell into his.
Searched them frantically. Waited, breath bated, for him to tell her their time together was over.
His gaze remained unwavering, rock-steady and sure.
“I want you to marry me.”
She opened her mouth, arguments jostling on her tongue-then his words registered.
And her world spun.
