“Will you not tell me about it?” she asked.
There was something in her voice, a tone he recognized. It was the way she had spoken to him before, at Coddington Hall and later, in London before he had been taken away. But he did not want to think about those times. Did not want to remember her words of love or how she had made him feel whole again. Did not want to recall a single damned moment, a heartbeat, a breath.
But he did. Oh, how he did. And he missed it. He missedher.
“Adrian,” she said, the hand on his chest moving, stroking. Over his shoulder. Then to his nape. Her fingers slipped beneath his hair, kneading the tight muscles of his neck.
Tension he had not known he was holding eased. He felt himself relaxing. And that was wrong, he knew it. But still, he could not seem to extricate himself from the charmed circle of her presence. She was like a balm. A panacea to his soul.
She pulled him toward her. Blindly, he went. He went without even being aware he had moved until it was too late. Until he had released his grip upon the bedclothes and was instead reaching for her. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.
It was unbound, the curls tickling him, as silky and sweet-scented as he remembered. She held him every bit as tightly. And thank Christ she was decent, a dressing gown keeping the fullness of her breasts from his chest. Fire licked through him, desire roaring to life, heating his blood.
Memory did not just dwell in one’s mind, he realized. It was touch and scent. It was in the caress of a hand, in an embrace. It was in his wife’s golden hair, her voice, her lips. Memory was visceral and tangible. And he was hurtling headlong into it. And into her.
His body remembered hers just as his heart did. His fingertips too. They had traced every glorious inch of her bountiful curves. They had brought her pleasure. They knew the soft dip behind her knee, the bend of her elbow, the sweep of her hip. They knew the heart of her, wet and hot and ready. His mouth knew hers, knew the silken hollow below her ear, the place where her neck and shoulder met, the elegant protrusion of her collarbone, the pert buds of her nipples.
His body recalled all. Everything he had tried to keep at bay, every speck of yearning he had done his damnedest to forget and banish, returned. It returned with the force of an uncontrollable fire. Burning, raging, roaring.
“Tell me, Adrian,” she whispered. “Tell me what happened.”
But he was not interested in unburdening himself to her now. She had come here, to his room, to his bed. She had started this. She had made him remember. She had made him surrender.
He would loathe her for it later.
For now, he sought her lips in the darkness. His mouth over hers. He had not kissed her lips at their wedding ceremony. A peck to the cheek was all he had been willing to give. Now, he was lost. An astonished puff of air left her as he took her lips. He swallowed it.
This kiss was not tentative or sweet, was not soft or giving.
This kiss took and it claimed. It had been too long since their mouths had last met. Since she had been his. She was his again now. He felt it in the way she responded, her arms wrapping around his neck. In the way she sighed into their kiss, in the way her tongue tangled with his. He tasted it in the furor of her mouth, in the clutch of her fingertips on his shoulders, her nails scoring his flesh.
To hell with it.
This woman hadalwaysbeen his.
She had been his before he had met her, and from the moment their paths had crossed in Derbyshire for the first time, his instant, instinctive reaction to her had been undeniable. She had been his even when they had been apart. And she was most certainly his now.
Mine.
The word became a chant in his mind, drowning out the horrors of his nightmare, chasing the bitter memories of his time at Dunsworth.
Mine.
The word made him new and whole. Filled him with triumph as his hands tore at her clothes. He wanted no barriers between them. A hundred buttons on her dressing gown thwarted him. So many diminutive discs. Likely fashioned of pearl. He should treat them with care, but he was desperate.
He began tearing. He tore his lips from hers to kiss down her throat. Her pulse beat fast. Her head tipped back, granting him more room to feast on her. And feast he did. She was soft and warm. A seductive goddess. She was his wife.
Almost impossible to believe. Impossible and yet somehow miraculously true. He forgot all the reasons why he did not dare trust her. Forgot to hold sternly on to the memories of what had happened to him. She eclipsed them anyway. His need for her was bigger than he was. As unstoppable as any rail car barreling toward its journey.
Mine, mine, mine.
The sound of rending fabric split the night. And still, he did not care. He would not halt. She wanted him every bit as much as he desired her. He felt it in the urgency of her fingers flying over him. In the determined way she flipped back the bedclothes and straddled his lap. Together, they worked her arms from her robe.
Her breasts sprang free, the garment pooling around her waist.
He shifted them both, andholy bleeding hell, his erect prick grazed over her swollen folds. She was wet and hot. Paradise. One he had been denied for so long.Damn it, he wanted her free of the blasted dressing gown. His fingers worked faster, plucking buttons from moorings, ripping when he could not spare the patience.
He kissed between her breasts, nuzzling the perfect curves of them with the stubble on his cheeks and jaw. He cursed the darkness which kept him from the sight of her creamy flesh turning pink at the abrasion. But he would settle for sucking the stiff bud of one nipple into his mouth. Her breasts were larger than they had been before. Fuller and more beautiful. Her curves were more pronounced as well.
