He sank inside her, fully seated and paused, flung back his head and stared at the ceiling.
She put a hand to his throat. “You feel like heaven inside me.”
He loomed over her of a sudden, his face harsh with restraint, his hand at her nape. “I adore you. You’ve known it. Always. You are my angel. My own heaven.”
“Don’t leave me,” she pleaded. “Never again.”
He took her mouth then. No words, only the craven capture of his lips on hers. Whatever it meant, she could not ask. Not then.
He began to move inside her, surges of desire, pleasuring her, pleasing her, pumping her flesh into a frenzy of need and want and up into a whirlwind that at once exploded in mindlessness. He was there, wanton in her arms, deep in her body, in the dark and the light and the blinding beauty of what they created together.
He stroked her hair from her cheeks. Kissed her nose and her temple and her swollen lips.
She was content as she had not been for years and years. Settling into his embrace, she inhaled the sweet clean smell of him. The masculine power of him.
He rose, naked, to pad behind her screen. There, she heard him pour water from her pitcher into her washbowl, swish a cloth in the water and wring it out. He returned to her, urged her thighs wide and with tender care, wiped her skin free of the remains of their union. In all, she examined his face and he did not look at her.
Putting his avoidance to some residual shame at having had her, she found it difficult to find words to broach the subject with him. After all, if she did, she’d have to admit certain things she had no wish to describe.
Finished with his ablutions, he left her. He emerged from behind her screen and made for the table near the fireplace. He poured liquid into two glasses and walked back to her. “Sit up.”
He sounded firm, unlike a lover. And her heart stopped as she considered him.
As he handed over her glass with a goodly portion of red wine, he stared at her. Upon his face was a mix of concern and anger. Not what she expected.
“Drink that,” he ordered and sat beside her on the bed. This was not what she’d envisioned. “Now we will talk.”
She didn’t want to. Whatever he had to say, she did not wish to hear it. Hadn’t she just given him all of her? What more could he want?
“Don’t cross your arms,” he warned. “And do not look at me as if I am the enemy.”
“I don’t know—”
“But you do.”
She opened her mouth to argue with him.
But he gave her an arch look. “Drink that.”
She took a swallow.
“Everhard.”
Oh, hell.
“He did more than hit you that night, didn’t he?”
She nodded.
“You weren’t going to tell me?”
“I was. I thought I had actually, when you said you didn’t want to despoil me, I said you wouldn’t.”
He sighed. “You are splitting hairs with me!”
“I’m not!” She jammed down her glass on the nearby table and shot from the bed. Naked, furious, she stood before him. “Yes! He raped me! Yes! I was a virgin when he took me. Yes! I wanted you tonight. Yes! I hoped you wouldn’t care that he…that I couldn’t say the words! I wanted you…” Sobs choked her. She clamped a hand to her mouth. “Even if you do not want me forever, even if you cannot care for me now I am…amdespoiled, I thought I would come here, see you, determine if you still cared. I’d see if a good man could still care for me. And barring that? Barring that I might also persuade you to show me what rapture, what love is really like. Because—“ She hiccuped. “Because I have loved only you all my life, Octavian. And I can now live to the end of my days remembering what true passion is.”
She spun on her heels then and grabbed up her night robe at the end of the bed. Tying her sash, she yanked it tightly around her waist. She whirled to face him where he sat still upon her bed. “You may leave now. I’m certain you have much to do. Good evening to you, sir.”
