She touched his hair and stroked it from his face. She met his eyes with her smile wistful, her gaze both damp and aflame. “It is Eden, it is paradise,” she told him with all of her heart. “Where you are, dear sir, it is paradise, for that is what you create inside of me, within my soul.”
He caught her fingers, and kissed them. He met her eyes again. “I do love you, milady. With all of my heart, I love you. As Lord Cameron, as the Silver Hawk, as any man, myself, I love you, and I will do so until my dying day.”
She touched his face. His fingers dropped to her bodice and he pulled upon the delicate satin strings until her breasts fell free to his touch. He savored them with his touch, with the sweet intensity of his teeth and tongue and lips. His hands ravaged her thighs, teasing, stroking. He entered into the core of her, and once his touch came so intimately to her, the fires within her soared, and she arched against him, desperate for more of the splendor that churned its fine sweet storm throughout the length of her.
He was the Hawk, he was her husband, and there was no fear any longer that the one might be recognized as the other.
He stood, and shed his clothing, and came back down beside her, stripping away what remained of her gown.
Shadows fell more deeply. Night was falling. Skye did not fear the darkness. He was with her. His hands were upon her. His kiss seared her flesh, and made her warm.
She rose on a wind of fate and glory, desire lapping against her flesh, the fever of it entering her fingers and her lips. She bathed his shoulders with her kiss, she raked his spine with her nails.
She whispered to him of her longing. Of the thing that swirled inside of her. Of the way that she needed him, needed him so desperately to appease the yearning.…
And it was paradise. There was no coarse straw, no sandy blanket, no shanty walls around them. The scent of the earth was with them, the music of their heartbeats rose.
Her flesh was silk, and his was splendor. The sun was in his fingertips, spiraling warmth that caressed her naked flesh. Rays that fell against her spine and stroked and rounded her hip, rays that entered intimately, deep, deep within her.…
She no longer whispered, she cried out. She strained against him with urgency, her hips undulating to the demanding rhythm of his thrust, her limbs locked around him. She soared and swept ever higher into Eden, then she called out his name, shuddering as the force of his seed racked her again and again. She felt the absolute constriction of his body, the explosion within her, and then she fell softly. Eden was gone, but she drifted on clouds, and those clouds left her sadly satiated and deeply in love upon the raw straw and the sandy blanket. It didn’t matter. His arms were still around her. He held her. He stroked her hair.
And that was the paradise of it. Distant and far, as paradise might seem.
“If something does happen—”
“Shush!” she told him, rolling to cover his lips with her fingers.
He drew her hand away and cradled her to his chest, massaging his fingers through the hair at her nape. “Listen to me, Skye, I beg you. I do not believe that it is so simple to conceive an heir, and yet I tell you now that if I have a prayer tonight, it is that you might already carry my child.”
“Roc—”
“No, please. I am an eternal optimist, my love—and an eternal rogue, I suppose you might say. I will fight Logan with whatever I might have until the very end. But in case—”
“Roc—”
“No! Listen to me!” Passionately, intently, he rolled her beneath him, demanding that she heed him. “You promise me this, milady, whatever else may come, whatever else may be. If we have created a child, swear to me that you will hold well to his or her heritage.”
“Roc—”
“Cameron Hall. The land. The estate.”
“Stop it, please!” Skye cried. “You speak of bricks and a handful of earth when—”
“No, lady, no!” he protested gravely. “It is not land, not brick. It is the Tidewater, it is a—dream! It is where my forebears came to live, to find their destinies. It is everything that I am, milady. It is my family. It is the future, and it is the past. There is honor there in the way that we have lived, in the Eden that we have carved from the earth. Promise me that come what may, you will preserve it!”
He was so very tense! Death lay all around them in the shanty, in the night, and he was desperate that she keep his land. She wanted to protest again, but she could not. “I promise.”
“A promise you will keep, love.”
“I have kept every promise that I have ever given you!” she whispered passionately.
He kissed her lips. “So you have.”
“I vow it, Roc. With all of my heart, I vow it,” she swore.
He ruffled her hair, falling down beside her, cradling her closer. “It is always beautiful there,” he murmured.
She smiled beside him. “Always. The days are not too hot because of the river.”
