Her eyes came open slowly at the gentle touch of his fingers.
"I found my way out," he whispered. His words were meant to soften the shock. A declarative statement easily absorbed.
And when her dark eyes opened in astonished awareness, he smiled.
His face, she thought, was the most beautiful configuration of stark plane and modeled form ever contrived by man or god. And in her own spiritual awareness, she didn't question his presence with fear, she only accepted the bounty of his reincarnation.
"You're back," she whispered, reaching out to touch his face, as though he had indeed returned from the dead for her.
"I couldn't leave you."
"I asked the spirits on the other side of the slippery log to send you back." And she had, with a solemn earnestness attuned to a spiritual world of magic and reality so intertwined, she didn't doubt now they'd listened to her plea.
"Voila ," he murmured, his smile achingly beautiful.
She sat up then, opening her arms in welcome, her dark liquid eyes still half-lashed and drowsy with sleep.
"I'm wet," he said, taking her hands in his before she touched him.
"You're alive," she softly corrected.
He nodded, gracefully rising and pulling her upright in one fluid movement. Taking her in his arms, they stood body-to-body for a lengthening space of time, savoring their nearness, her face lifted to his, his gaze consumed with the beauty of her smile.
"You shouldn't have volunteered," she chastised in the convoluted reasoning of a dream recaptured, wanting to rearrange the sequence of the horrendous events. "I'm never allowing you out of my sight again." Her smile defined her raillery, but in a less conciliatory way she meant it.
"The dynamiting almost went perfectly," he diplomatically, said, the sound of her voice paradise, the feel of her in his arms beyond paltry definition. He smiled, thinking he'd trade this sensation for any golden-tongued articulation, and thinking, too, I'm going to kiss her—for a thousand years or so. His jubilant bliss swept aside theories of relativity. Savoring his anticipatory joy, he understood the word future held new meaning. It was a minute second-by-second, breath-by-breath appreciation of life.
He would never rush again.
"Trewayne said you saved him."
"He fell." The Duc's words were simple, an honorable man doing the expected.
"I won't let you go underground again."
His smile lit up his eyes. "I adore your orders. Have I told you that?" He hadn't of course. In the past, he'd either ignored them or circumvented them or allowed her her way with his own special style of gallantry.
"I mean it, Etienne." She wouldn't ever. "I'm serious."
"It's like falling off a horse, darling," he murmured, lowering his head, his mouth drifting nearer.
Daisy's heart began beating in swift and pulsing rhythm, as the small flurry of his warm breath touched her face. "I'm truly serious," she repeated, but her voice had lost its admonishing edge.
"I'll take you with me." An ambiguity imbued his quiet murmur.
And with his lips brushing hers, Daisy absorbed both the tremulous sensation and his seductive words. "We'll talk about it," she whispered, not totally beyond reason yet, the cold fear of having almost lost him still starkly real.
"I have to get these wet clothes off and then we'll talk." His mouth moved lazily over hers, a teasing pressure of anticipation.
"We should talk first."
"I'll catch pneumonia." Blatant irony infused his tone.
"I'll keep you warm."
"I was hoping you'd say that."
"Seduction doesn't solve every problem."
"Really." His crooked grin lifted his brow too.
"I'm not so easily distracted from a very serious issue."
He adored her lack of levity, the serious, essential elements ingrained in her character that viewed the world as fixable with either determination or obstinacy or sheer iron will… that resolute energy driving her to accomplish so much for herself and others. That same energy, in the form of her bold assurance, had first attracted him that night at Adelaide's, as had, of course, her obvious and sultry beauty. "I'll have to reassess my methodology then," he said with teasing expediency.
"That would be wise."
What he meant didn't involve wisdom—what he had in mind was more fundamental. More basic. Less intellectual. Less talk, he thought with masculine disregard for interpretive topicality, and considerably more touching.
When he kissed her again short seconds later with a special emphasis on touching, her eyes opened wide in momentary astonishment, and then her lashes fell, a small moan trembled in her throat, instant flame exploded through her senses, and serious issues took flight.
And the words he murmured in the next moment, as his mouth moved across her cheek in a brushing caress to nuzzle the softness near her ear, had to do with how much he loved her and how he intended to show the extent of his love. Those whispered words melted into her brain, heating her senses and intellect. Some were small instructions for later, others were petting, coaxing words that fired her imagination. And when he reminded her of what the shepherd and shepherdesses had witnessed from their vantage point on the boudoir walls above his barge's harem bed, she was lost.
"You can't always win this way," she said in breathless remonstrance, her hands moving already to unbutton the smooth leather of his coat.
"Next time it's your turn." His hands were sliding under the crimson wool of her sweater, his slender fingers warm, although her skin was warmer, heated, waiting to be touched.,
"It's my turn this time too," she said with a grin. "You'll be happy you came back from the dead."
Their eyes met for a moment in the shadowed room, and beneath and above and beyond the teasing, both viewed
