He looked at his wife for the first time, seeing her properly as she sat beside him, her cornflower-blue eyes large and round and her lips so red against the pale creamy skin lit by the stars, and he wanted to lose himself in her. Wanted to take what she was consciously or unconsciously offering. But he didn’t feel as if he had that right. Didn’t know if his touch, his kiss would be welcome after all the damage he had wrought. Not just the loss of a business deal, but long before then.
And as if she could sense his hesitation, sense the current of his thoughts, the need coursing through him like wildfire, as if all this time, all these weeks and months of frustration and want and desire, came crashing about them in this one moment, she pulled him to her and pressed her mouth against his in comfort, in her own need.
The passion she offered him, matched only by his own, set light to his thoughts, to the hold of the past and the uncertainty of the future. The moment her lips opened to him, her tongue drawing his deeper into their kiss, he was lost.
He spread the red cloak across the marble floor of the stone gazebo, the crimson pooling about her as he laid her back.
‘This was what I saw when I bought this cloak,’ he admitted, desire painting his voice dark. ‘Removing it from you, revealing the beauty within.’
The thin cotton nightdress glowing in the starlight made her angelic and him unworthy. ‘I should take you back to the house, to soft cotton sheets and soft deep mattresses. You deserve more than this.’
More than he could offer.
She looked at him then, large crystal-blue eyes wide and crimson mouth part opened on a breath. ‘There is nowhere I’d rather be than here beneath the stars with you.’
* * *
In a second Roman had claimed her lips with his, and Ella felt an almost primal cry rise within her. A cry of loss, of longing, of comfort, of desperation. The sword that had hung above them for so long had dropped and severed the final barriers holding them both back as hands swept across bodies, tongues swept across teeth, lips across skin. She felt him draw up the cotton nightdress at her thighs, bunching it in his hands, both trapping her by the taut material and protecting her from him.
The peaks of her nipples pressing against the thin fabric refused to disguise her want and she no longer wanted to hide it. No longer wanted the power of her need to come from anger or resentment, or a yearning for the unknown. This time, she strove for something more. Because she knew that this night had cost them both and only their touch could offer comfort the way that words, yet, could not.
Her hands ran over his shirt, desperate to feel skin, wanting, needing more. As he pressed open-mouthed kisses against her neck, across her collarbone and further to between the V of her neck, she vainly struggled with the buttons on his shirt—the passion he wrought in her making her fingers clumsy and awkward.
His hands released her for the moment it took to haul the shirt over his head and discard it, as if equally impatient as she to be skin to skin, but instead of returning to the kiss he held himself back, hovering over her, as if consuming her with his gaze. There was something in it, something deep and dark, and she went to raise a hand of comfort to his hardened jaw. But he shook his head to warn her off.
‘I… I don’t even know if I can hope to be the man you should have by your side. You’re making me want to, but…’
‘You once asked me to trust you. And now I’m asking that of you. Trust me, because I know you can be. You are,’ Ella said, feeling the truth of her words settling in her chest—a chest that ached for her husband, for the pain he had experienced, all that she could see he had sacrificed. A boy trying to avenge the death of his mother, a man trying to be better, do better. A man scared of opening himself up to what it was they were weaving between them.
He returned to their kiss as if he too understood the need to feel the purity of the connection they seemed only to share here, now.
Roman pushed up under her nightdress, his hands sliding over her thighs, the heat from his palms both soothing and torturous at the same time as each sweep moved closer and closer to where she wanted to feel him. She felt his fingers pull at the edges of her underwear, drawing them almost leisurely down her thighs and from her ankles.
Her fingers once again struggled with the belt on his trousers, only to find them thrust aside by Roman’s efficient swift movements as he freed himself.
‘Tell me you want this.’ His words were more of a plea than a demand. ‘Tell me you’re as lost to this as I am. Tell me—’
‘I do, I am, and right now I’d tell you anything you want to hear if you would—’
All words, all coherent thought was lost as he thrust into her, the delicious smooth glide of him within her taking her by surprise and propelling her towards an edge that she felt far too close to. Her hands flew to his hips as he entered her again and again, wringing pleasure from her that she feared would never be satisfied, would never be appeased. But she had been wrong. Because almost against her will the world came crashing down about her as everything within her rose to
