‘God.’
‘I was glad for it.’
His erection rose up another notch, pushing against the superfine of his trousers. He did not wish to frighten her, but a lust unlike any He had ever known before caught him off guard. How did she do this to him, and so easily? He could not remember one other woman who had affected him as she did.
Reaching out, he pushed the gown gently off her shoulders, cupping the bounteous beauty below the silk.
Heaven. He watched as she flinched at the feel of him against her nipple, his other hand moving to her throat and her cheek and tipping her lips to his own.
Home. He was there as his mouth covered hers and the feel of warm familiar sweetness surrounded him. Deepening the kiss, he pushed inwards, taking all that she would give him and more, force overcoming softness in his need to possess her. Her skin beneath his palms melted like silken liquid, the stain of her red tresses across the paleness sending sense into greater frenzy.
‘I want all of you.’ The voice sounded nothing like his own, hoarse and desperate, and pulling her hair into a knot, he anchored her close, his other hand around the curve of her bottom.
She let him lift her against his chest, his breath on one cheek and his heartbeat against the other.
‘My room is near.’
Up one flight of stairs and then down a short corridor. He carried her as though she were the weight of a feather, though the burden of acquiescence caught solid between them, heavy with suggestion.
When his door shut Aurelia closed her eyes against the four-poster she could see in the corner, and she kept them closed as he lay her down upon the softness, catching breath and counting seconds.
‘I would never hurt you, Aurelia.’
She could no longer dwell in her own darkness. ‘I know.’
Her scarlet gown was bright against pale coverings and white sheets, and when he removed her shoes and stockings she did not flinch.
His touch strayed to a higher place and she waited for denial or for panic. Neither came, although her breathing worried her. No longer controlled or bridled, the crisp feel of cotton beneath her fingers clasped tightly against an escalating need. When he peeled back her bodice she felt the material fall loosely to her waist, her skirt hitched up to join it.
She felt him look at her, felt his glance know her breasts and her legs and the curved sway of hip, felt how he tethered her with her hair, holding her still, inescapable. Her breath in the silence was ragged, wanting the finesse and the adroitness she knew he would be capable of, wanting the torn-away utterness of what it must be like to be truly loved.
Loved. Her lips curved upwards. He had never said it once and he would not. This was lust and passion and desire on both sides, though the expression in his eyes was one she had not seen there before. Redemption, if she might name it. Her thighs fell open with a will of their own, the hem of scarlet silk cool on burning skin.
He did not hurry. He did not plunge in as Charles would have, caring not a whit for any satisfaction that she needed. Rather he tarried, a small caress here, a longer one there, pressure on a place she had not thought to know, her response surprising as she rose to his ministrations.
A midnight magic.
‘Let go, sweetheart,’ he whispered as she tensed against ardour. ‘Let me take you to a place that is wonderful.’
One finger came inside her, widening the tightness, his other hand flat across her stomach keeping her still. Faster and then faster, his thumb hard against the bud of promise and as she cried out he pressed down, her deep muscles clenched together so that she knew a growing restless wave of release, the ache of it arching her back and making her shout out into the darkness. The keening groan held rapture on its edge.
She was boneless, formless, spent. But she was also elated. She had never felt this pull of seduction, this completeness that took her from this world and far off into a place where all she wanted was more. She no longer cared to be soft or docile or gentle. Finally.
As he brought her fingers to the place his had just left and she felt the wetness, she was mute with the knowledge that her body was not ‘dried out and prudish and useless’ as Charles had been wont to label her.
The gift was like a treasure.
A single tear traced its way down the side of her cheek.
‘Never leave me, Hawk.’ She needed to say it, to make him understand. Not just tonight. But for ever.
‘I won’t.’
When he stood to remove his clothes she watched, the sculptured strength of his body revealed with each discarded garment, though as he took off his trousers Aurelia saw a vivid red scar curling down the whole front of one thigh.
Her finger went out to touch the knotted and raised flesh of a wound beneath each pad.
‘Someone has tried to kill you?’
‘More “someones” than you could imagine.’
‘But not now?’
He only smiled and she understood that whatever took him from England’s green and pleasant lands was not finished yet.
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he had been with a good number of beautiful women. But it was more than just the physical, Hawkhurst thought.
Aurelia was a woman who had reached out to the ice-cold core of him and begun a thawing. He could feel it inside, the tense hard ache of loneliness dissolving.
She had lived and she had lost and yet still she triumphed and it was this more than anything that made hope rise unbidden. Hers was not the innocent purity of Elizabeth Berkeley which he could have so easily ruined, but another quality that held the kernel of a faith surprisingly and exactly right.
For him.
Like two halves coming together as a whole.
Usually he took women quickly because his life had been bound by danger and by little free time and because he did not wish for the commitment that all of those he had bedded seemed to demand. But this time was different. This time he wanted the night to stretch on for ever, the moon across their skins and a joining connecting body and soul.
Rolling on to her, he opened her thighs with his knee, signalling purpose. She was damp and she was ready, the swollen flesh of her sex calling them together. With one hand under her bottom he raised her up so that the angle of their connection might be more conducive to pleasure and, poised at the opening of her womanhood, he waited.
‘I will be gentle,’ he promised as he pushed in. She was tight and small and when her eyes widened at the pain he waited until she could accommodate him. Then with one hard and heavy push he was in her, buried to the hilt, her flesh calling in the ancient rhythm of life. Aurelia was his, her hair wrapped like flame about his hand and the generosity of her breasts between them.
The ache of ownership was the most powerful aphrodisiac Hawkhurst had ever experienced and, emptying himself into heat, he gave no thought to protection or hesitation, just need, desperate and all consuming.
He had bruised her, he thought later, with his fingers as he clung to hope and with the drive of his manhood into softness. But she had stiffened as he did, her nails a-tremble on his skin and urging him into a response he could not stop.
The little death, the French called it—the time when a lover died and went to Heaven and back. Joined by sex they moved inwards, straining, wanting the moment to last for ever, listening to each other’s heartbeat and knowing each other’s breath, the rush of it beaching in relief as wave after wave depleted sanity.
Her fingers strayed, holding the small bud of his nipple, causing Hawk to simply stop breathing.
He