Page 275

“Yes.” The pleasure built from nothing but the feel of him inside her, of knowing he wanted her as urgently as she desired him.

She slid a hand to the back of his neck and kissed him with everything she had, drawing his tongue into her mouth and sucking.

His hips bucked against hers, then he shifted his weight and clasped one hand to her breast and began thrusting in earnest, and in moments she was hurtling off the edge into the sky, flung into a bliss so shattering that stars burned upon her eyelids, a river of sparks erupting inside her.

He shivered in her arms and she knew her climax had spurred his, that he spun with her inside this perfect ecstasy, that the same force that bound the planets held them together.

With Pen, held and fused, she was complete.

After a while they unwrapped their bodies and burrowed under the blanket together.

There they lay quietly, hands moving beneath their clothes.

She touched him as if still not certain he was real, despite the solid warmth that crept from his body into hers.

He stroked a hand from her hips to her shoulder, his touch possessive and reverent, and paused at her throat with the thumb resting on the dent between her collarbones, his fingers sliding into her hair behind her ear.

“You must marry me,” Pen said.

She stilled in the act of tracing his ribs, finding the small lump where the bones had knit after his fall into the dory. The night that had changed his life, and hers.

“I can’t be a viscountess.” She tried to laugh, but the sound was a wince of pain. Here in this tower in the wilds of Wales, beneath a rough blanket and an ancient sky, she belonged to him completely. Outside St. Sefin’s, his world was as different as could be.

“Tell me why.” He wrapped a lock of her hair around his fist and tugged lightly.

“Where to begin? I’m Welsh. Your countrymen hate mine.

” She let her fingers follow the scars over his shoulder and arm.

“I’m a farmer’s daughter.” The fact that her father might have died a knight didn’t change the fact of her humble birth, a class far below his, and Pen lived in a world where birth meant everything.

“I’m not pure, which you already know. I don’t have the breeding of those English ladies. I’ll do nothing but disappoint you.”

“All you have to do is love me.”

She spread her hand over his heart, letting her palm absorb the firm, steady beat. He moved a hand to cover hers.

“That I do,” she said quietly. “It is the only requirement I could meet, Pen.”

“Then nothing else matters.”

“Perhaps not to you. But it will matter to your world. Your people won’t have someone like me. I’ll be an embarrassment. The woman you lowered yourself for.”

“But we’ll have each other. We’ll have this .

” He rose swiftly and rolled atop her, his groin settling atop hers.

She shifted her hips to cradle him, her body an invitation.

She couldn’t deny that in this way they fit, this most primal and elemental connection.

She’d never try to deny it. He could come to her at any time and no matter where he had traveled, who else he had loved, she knew she would open and yield to him, draw him hungrily, gladly back into her arms. She hadn’t the power to end this craving and wouldn’t try.

“But what about children?” she whispered. “You have a title and estates you need to pass on. I can’t—I doubt I’ll have another child of my own. Something happened at the birth of my daughter, and it left me barren.”

Hot tears seeped from her eyes, sliding down her temples. She put her hands on either side of his face, trying to read his eyes. They were shadowed, only his cheeks and lips catching the starlight, and the faint pink line of a scar high on his brow.

“You would give up everything to be with me, Pen. I can’t ask that of you.”

“I gave it all up before.” His voice was rough and low, scraping against her chest. “I lived here with you as a nobody.”

“That was a lie.” Despair clutched at her throat. “Because I didn’t tell you who you were. It was selfish and dishonest, and I—I kept you from where you belonged.”

She thought of Penrydd, that lovely little castle in its field of lush green.

She’d barter her soul to belong there with him, raising their children in spacious rooms, entertaining their friends with hunts and musical evenings.

But that place had been barred to her from birth, even before choice and circumstance made it impossible for her to be worthy of him.

“Then come with me as my not-viscountess.” He muttered the words against her throat, kissing a line from her ear down her neck.

“I made you an offer months ago, didn’t I?

It stands. It will always stand.” His clever hand worked at her breast, knowing how to bring her desire to thrumming life with a stroke or two.

“I’m needed here.” She couldn’t just hare off in pursuit of her own pleasures and leave everyone here to shoulder on without her. Her income sustained them, paltry as it was.

Her fingers stilled on Pen’s back. She’d forgotten about the mines. She could arrange for a stipend for St. Sefin’s. She could repair and expand the place, take in even more people. The project might sustain her when Pen left. It would give her a reason to keep breathing.

“ I need you.” He rolled his hips against her and with a little moan she bent a knee so his growing erection slid between her legs.

She let her head fall back, helpless to resist him, but knowing that even when the night ended and they must part again, her answer must be the same.

She had been exonerated from her trial. She might indeed be an heiress.

But she had seen the disdain in Lydia’s eyes, knew what barriers would confront her, them, if she were so foolish as to give in to love and passion. Her answer must always be the same.

“Look at the sky,” she whispered. “What do you English call that? The silver wheel.” She pointed to the river snaking its way across the spangled expanse.

“The Milky Way? We learned this in school. The via lactea , so called because one Greek god or another tore a child from Hera’s breast, and the droplets spattered into the sky.” He dropped his mouth over her naked breast, tonguing the nipple.

Gwen shook her head, even as little fires arrowed through her veins. “We call it Caer Wydion, the castle of Gwydion, an ancient hero known for his strength and cleverness.”

Pen moved from the moistened tip of one breast to the other, licking and nuzzling. “I thought Gwydion was a pig stealer and the father of his sister’s child.”

She sighed and tugged the blanket over his back, enclosing them both. “He was a powerful warrior and knew magic. He made a woman once out of nothing but flowers.”

“You taste like a flower.” He tugged a nipple between his teeth. “I don’t see your point, besides these two.”

She cradled his head in her hand, sifting her fingers through his hair.

“Two different stories,” she said. “Two different worlds. Two different pasts. They can never come together.”

“We’ve come together. Several times.” He reached between them and led his cock to the slit of her body, the slick, firm cap nosing against her entrance. She was ready for him, hungry again. She would always be hungry for him. It was her curse.

She cupped her hand around his and guided him inside and he obeyed, sinking his length into her.

He dropped her forehead to hers, breathing heavily, holding himself taut as she accepted his swelling fullness, the ache and its relief together.

She could never have enough of him. She could never have him inside her long enough, deep enough, to quell the demand.

She would always want more. If she could pull him inside her and keep him there, she would.

Leaving him what? Her?

“I will always want you, Pen,” she whispered, rocking against him, grief in her voice.

He moved against her in leisurely strokes, watching her eyes, and she knew he would try every angle, every variety of pressure, until he brought them both to bliss and beyond.

“Then at least we have this,” he muttered.

“Yes.” She had him for now, this man who made her feel as if she were knit of flowers and stars.

This astonishing man with his clever mind and gentle hands, his determined spirit, his fierce and battered heart.

She braced her feet to take him inside her more deeply, loving how his breath hitched in pleasure, wishing she could hold and please him always.

Desire reached from her belly, clenching around her heart, a candle now burning bright that would be wasted and empty when he left.

“At least we have this.”