His eyes burned with an intensity that stole her breath as he moved again and retook her lips.
Valteri nibbled a path to her throat, and nipped at her tender flesh. Sharp, pulsing fires burned inside him. It seemed as if the first time with her had never been.
Not a callow, untried youth, he still found himself shaking from expectation. Nervous almost beyond endurance.
Her lips brushed the flesh just below his ear and he shook from the boiling desire that pitched inside him.
“Come to me, milord,” she whispered, her husky voice urging him further.
He separated her thighs.
Ariel shivered in expectation as she reveled at the sensation of him lying against the length of her. She held her breath, afraid he would yet change his mind and send her away.
Or worse, that he’d leave her again.
And that thought made her fear that he would one day leave. That would kill her.
Valteri was her life, her breath.
His body heat reached out to her and she raised her hips to him. With a groan, he buried his face in her neck and slid inside her.
All of a sudden, a horrible, body-wrenching pain tore through her pleasure. It seemed as if she were being halved in twain. Her stomach lurched and burned and Ariel gasped from the agony.
“Ariel?” Valteri’s voice sounded so far away that she longed to ask him where he’d gone.
Yet her head spun as ifshehad fallen into a well or some other deep hole.
Strange lights and images spiraled around her, stealing her breath. A hundred foreign voices spoke simultaneously, some accusing, some in pity.
From somewhere far away, she heard weeping and lamentations. Her chest tight, she tried to focus her thoughts, but like someone falling from a steep cliff, she couldn’t find anything solid to grasp.
Suddenly, the images stopped.
Brutal pain exploded inside her body. Out of nowhere, her memories returned with rich, sharp clarity.
All of them.
“Dear gods!” she cried, shoving against Valteri.
His gaze confused, he held her against him. “Milady, what is it?”
Milady.
That single word hovered in her mind like a nightmare, an unbelievable terror that paralyzed her.
Over and over, the veil in her mind was shattered. All the images that had been foggy became crystal clear.
They all made sense.
Shadow. Belial.
The man with eyes identical to Valteri’s…
Shite…
“Nay!” She moved away from him to cover herself with the fur-lined blankets. Ariel cowered against the edge of the bed, too horrified to think. “What have I done?”
Valteri looked at her as if she’d struck him and he slowly moved from the bed and retrieved his breeches. The pain in his eyes told her that he thought her rejection was of him.
