Page 43

Anne lifted a hand and traced the hair at Hew’s temple, where the brown had turned silver during his illness in prison. Her fingertip was a bolt of lightning touching earth. His heart tripped in its beat.

“I wish I had known.” Her voice was a whisper, yet it filled his senses, weaving into his mind like a spell.

“All those years ago, when my parents first chose you.” He almost didn’t hear the next words; they might have been conjured in his mind, a sigh made of starlight. “I wish I might have known you then.”

“Anne.” The need overpowered him; he was helpless before it, like a tide that slammed ships toward the rocks, throwing them to their doom. He could no more hold back from kissing her than he could turn away the lightning her touch roused in him.

She placed a hand on his chest, stopping him as he lowered his head.

“I know you did this for me,” she said quietly, and her voice trembled, but not with the controlled emotion she had shown while singing.

The words tumbled out of her, as if she same tide were tossing her.

“I trapped you. I never meant it—I didn’t think?—”

She clenched her teeth on her lip, drew in a short breath, and struggled on.

“Of course you would offer for me, because that is your nature. I had thought you lacked honor, and I was wrong. Honor was what drove you at Acre, was it not? You did what was right, what was necessary … and it caused you nothing but trouble.”

Trapped . The word echoed in his mind, an accusation. He was confining her. She’d offered him an opportunity he’d never dreamed?—

“I do not want to be trouble for you,” she said, her voice breaking on the last words, and the tide surged, blotting out every thought.

“Anne.” There was only need for her, the desperate desire to touch her, the wish to show her what he felt.

The need to tell her she was beautiful, she was perfect, she was his dream of a woman made flesh, and if he were to be skewered through the heart for kissing what he could not have, he would kiss her anyway.

Her lips were cool and soft and fit against his perfectly.

She lifted to his mouth like a nightflower coaxed by the moonlight to unfurl its petals.

He meant to seduce, to entice her to him, but she offered no barrier, no reserve, merely slipped open her lips, and the small, pleading sound from the back of her throat as his mouth came down on hers shot through him like an elf bolt.

He plunged his tongue inside her mouth as if he were taking a fence and she met him, bold and sure, her fingers digging into his forearms as if she were using him to hold herself upright.

She tasted of lemon and vanilla and smelled like cardamom, like all the exotic spices of the world, and every conscious thought shot out of his mind like a covey of pheasants taking flight.

There was only the gravel beneath their feet and the night air dancing along his fevered skin, along his hands where he’d clamped them to the side of her face to hold her and kiss her, and the heat from her body made him want to sink and dissolve and disappear, lose himself in her forever.

As if in union with her, he could be purified.

As if she were the last rock in a drowning world and if he stretched himself out upon her, he could be saved.

“ Anne .” Her name was a summons, an incantation, a plea.

She swayed toward him, melting in surrender, and he lowered one arm to clamp around her, to catch her back and haul her against him, against the hard, aching length of his body.

He couldn’t stop the growl when she came in full contact with him, when her sweet yielding softness melded against him and hot need roared to life.

He froze, sure she’d pull away. An innocent woman, a graceful roe in the field, and he was rutting against her like a buck in heat. He’d deserve if she broke the spell. He’d deserve if she pulled away and left him hard and aching for her, without release.

She moaned again. Slipped her arms around his back, gripping his coat.

Then she shifted ever so slightly, bending her knee and lifting it toward his hip so that the rutting part of him slid not into her belly but into the sweet arch between her legs, and he knew by the cant of her hips that she had placed herself precisely where she wanted to be, that she felt the same hot need and he could answer it.

With another feral growl he pulled her hard against him, plunging against her, the hard shaft in his breeches sliding the soft muslin of her gown between her legs, and her soft cry told him he’d struck true.

He didn’t know how he held her, how he kept them both from falling, but as they stood on the gravel path beneath the moonlit trees, with her beautiful body wrapped around his, he pressed between her legs and knew he was pleasing her with his body by the way she trembled and whimpered, by the way her hands dug into the thick scars of his back, by the way her breath fluttered against his mouth as he kept kissing her, kissing his Anne, telling her in the only way he knew how that she was beautiful, so soft and brilliant and beautiful, she made him mad with desire.

He had never seen or felt anything more perfect and if he died of pleasure bringing her to her peak, then he would count the sacrifice well worth his life.

She gave a soft cry, her fingers closing convulsively, and he froze, terrified he had hurt her.

“Stop?” he asked raggedly, lifting his mouth from her.

“Hew.” She buried her face in his neck, her lips touching his throat above his cravat.

“I’m not—I oughtn’t—we …”

“Don’t stop,” he said, his voice grating like the gravel beneath his boots. “Touch me. Take your pleasure, Anne.”

If he could only have her, hold her. If there were some way other than words he could bind her to him. If he could make her want him, even only for this.

She sagged against him, and he shifted his grip, one arm around her lower back to hold her against him, then slipped his hand beneath her knee, hitching her closer.

He almost buckled and fell as she moved, pressing her sweet, soft self against his cock, the movement timid at first, then wanton, urgent.

She rode him to her pleasure, and he felt by her trembling and the softs pants of her breath when the tension built in her, when it came to the breaking point, and when she broke, spasming against him, holding on to him for dear life while the great wave lifted and shook her.

It was the most beautiful thing he’d beheld in his life.

He couldn’t have stopped himself if he wanted to—the feel of Anne, his beautiful Anne, finding pleasure in his arms was too much for a mortal man. Hew let himself spill in his breeches and panted at the hard, sharp relief of it, the temporary reprieve from madness.

“Oh,” Anne breathed against his neck. She pulled back her leg and he released her knee, setting her carefully back to earth. Slowly, the world stopped spinning, righted itself, and stillness descended. “Oh,” she said again.

He rested his forehead on the top of her head as she pressed her face against his neck. “Oh,” he agreed, relishing the way she melted against him. As if he were all she wanted.

As if he could bind her to him with this, against her will and better judgment if he must.

The purr of a nightjar broke the silence, punctuated by a few pleased chirps. Hew smiled. It was exactly how he felt. Anne, in his arms, soft and tousled and pleasured. Pleased by him. With him.

“Hew, I …” She burrowed against him, her shoulders tensing. He couldn’t bear for her to explain or apologize. Couldn’t bear for her to feel ashamed of her wantonness, her greedy demand, when it meant so much to him that she should lose herself in his arms.

“Ssh,” he whispered into the silk of her hair. “It is just pleasure. Let it be. It is good.”

“Oh. Just pleasure.” She stepped away, releasing him. “Yes. I-I must go.”

“You needn’t.” His voice cracked. He’d forgotten how to form words. “Jilt me yet,” he managed. “There is time.” He wanted to hold her as long as he could.

But she drew back, and he focused all his will on releasing his fingers, lifting his hands. A nearly impossible task, when everything in him wanted to haul her back against him, carry her inside to his bed, and claim her fully. She was his. His .

She hurried away, the delicate embroidery on the hem of her white muslin gown sweeping along the path as if her feet didn’t touch earth.

He watched the sway of her hips and the straight, proud line of her back.

That lithe, lissome body was imprinted on his own, a hot outline against the cold air rushing in around him.

Off she went, the water sprite returning to her element, the fairy creature leaving the mortal she’d seduced and captured and ruined.

A few steps from the terrace, she turned to face him. She stood under a linden tree, her expression in shadow as if she were dissolving already, a dream he was never meant to have.

“I cannot do it, Hew,” she said in a low, trembling voice. “I do not want to live a lie.”

Then she turned and swept up the steps, crossing the verandah, slipping into the house as silent as a wraith, as if he had not held and kissed her and revealed himself to her. As if she had not just torn his heart from his chest and borne it off to keep it always, a hollow and worthless prize.