What happened was that Burke caught hold of her hand by the wrist, and a second later, he’d pinned it to the pillow beside her head.
“What,” he whispered hoarsely, “are you trying to do? End this before it’s even begun?”
With her free hand, Kate tugged on the sash to his robe. “Take this off,” she said.
He needed no further urging. The robe came off.
And when it was flung away, he thrust a hard thigh between her legs, parting them enough to allow him the room he needed to lower himself between them, until he lay atop her, both hands raised to cover her breasts. Then he brought his mouth down to smother hers once again, this time in a kiss that revealed, all too clearly, how very close he was to bursting from need of her—as if that hadn’t been made perfectly obvious by the size of his erection, which she could feel pressing urgently against her inner thighs.
And once again, Kate’s body, quite independent of her mind, remembered what to do, reacting instinctively to the familiar smell of him, the welcome weight of him. A second later, she had raised her hips, pressing her pelvis against him.
And he, with an unintelligible murmur that was lost inside her mouth, suddenly plunged into her, burying himself as deeply as he was able, feeling her heat and moisture close around him far more tightly than her fingers ever could. Beneath him, Kate gasped as he entered her, just as she had the first time. Only this night, there were no tears, just a sudden sinking of her fingernails into his shoulders, which she clung to the way a capsized sailor might cling to a piece of driftwood.
And perhaps, in a way, that’s how Kate thought of those shoulders of his—as the only stable things in a world suddenly awash in desire. Wave after wave of it rolled over her as she brought her hips up to meet his each time he thrust himself into her. He wasn’t being gentle about it this time, either. How could he? The first night, he’d been careful, careful not to frighten her with the intensity of his need for her. This night, his need for her was too great, and had been left too long unsatiated, for him to control it. Each time he plunged into her, he drove her deeper into the featherbed beneath them.
And each time he plunged into her, mindless with the pleasure of it, it was if he were coming home.
She drowned first. She simply let go of his shoulders and let the waves take her, no longer caring whether or not she kept afloat above them, no longer capable of keeping her head above them. They caught her up in a violent eddy, and down she went. Deeper and deeper she spiraled, until suddenly, she crashed onto the beach as if she had been pushed there by a veritable wall of water.
And there she lay, spent and panting beneath him, hardly conscious of the fact that at some point, he’d slipped down into the vortex with her, and had now collapsed atop her, his heart hammering at breakneck speed against her breast.
Kate opened her eyes, and saw that the candle had gone out. They lay in utter darkness. Somewhere, off in the distance, thunder rumbled, but the rain no longer beat down upon the window beside her bed. The storm was over, both outside the bedroom, and within it, as well.
Burke seemed to realize it, too. Wordlessly, he slid from her. Kate almost cried out at the coolness of the air that rushed in where he’d lain.
But he wasn’t parted from her for long. He only sat up to find the quilt she’d so carelessly tossed aside in her sleep. He pulled it up over both of them, tucking the ends carefully about her, then circled an arm around her waist, and cradled her against the curl of his larger body.
There were things that needed to be said. Kate thought of them sleepily, and even opened her lips to say them, to remind him that he was not to think, just because their bodies found pleasure in one another’s, that there was any reason to think she had in any way changed her mind about—
But as if he’d sensed what she was about to say, he leaned down and whispered, “Shhh ….” then smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek, and kissed her good-night.
And really, she was far too tired to argue anymore.
Burke was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming, because there was a weight upon his chest, and when he opened his eyes to see what that weight was, he saw that it was Kate. She had flung her torso across his in her sleep, and now lay with her cheek pressed to his heart, her hair spilling, like burnished gold, all across his shoulders. A strand of it tickled him beneath the chin.
But then he realized he could not possibly be dreaming, because they were not in his enormous bedroom back on Park Lane, but in a low-ceilinged, cramped room in a roadhouse outside some obscure village, and below them, he could hear the sounds of the innkeeper’s wife as she began preparing breakfast. Outside the small window beside the bed, he could see that dawn was streaking the sky—at least, he assumed it was. It was rather hard to tell, with the thick fog that had rolled in. The rain had stopped during the night, but it was still utterly grey outside, and looked cold, as well. Autumn was well and truly upon them. All the more reason, he thought, to stay abed.
And yet they couldn’t stay abed. Because there was Isabel to think of. Isabel, who with every passing minute was slipping farther and farther out of his reach.
And yet …
And yet, Isabel wasn’t very likely going anywhere this early, on so foggy a morning, either. And here he was, with Kate in his arms at last.
It wasn’t likely he was going anywhere anytime soon, either.
It still filled him with wonder, her beauty. Oh, it wasn’t the traditional beauty of, say, a Sara Woodhart. With the exception of those enormous grey eyes, Kate’s features were too small to be classically beautiful. And her hair was neither pale enough to be truly blond, nor dark enough to be brunette, but somewhere in the middle, a color impossible to classify. And she was small, almost small enough to make her seem insignificant, fine-boned and lacking in breadth of both hip and breast for the current definition of what the haut monde considered beautiful.
And yet.
And yet her skin was flawless, smooth as satin and the color of the palest blossom. Her waist was narrow enough for him to circle with his hands, and have his fingers meet in the middle. And below that waist, her legs were long and slender, tapering down to ankles of bewitching slimness, and feet of elegant proportions. And between those legs lay a patch of silken hair that enticed him more than any other woman’s, for in it he had found he could bury his entire length, the whole of himself, in a nest of such sweet warmth and closeness, he never wanted to leave it.
But that wasn’t all, of course. There were her hands, so small his own could swallow them up. Hers were the graceful hands of a ballerina, or a musician. Her fingers, dancing across his body the night before, had very nearly been his undoing. And of course there was that mouth. Even now, he traced its shape with his finger, as she lay atop him, sleeping so peacefully. He liked the feel of the weight of her upon his chest, enjoyed the softness of her breasts against him.
Perhaps he enjoyed it a little too much, since he could feel himself swelling beneath the sheet which only partially covered him. Soon, the sheet became tent-poled from his erection, and it occurred to him that this time, as opposed to all the other mornings he’d wakened with this particular need, there was something he could do about it.
And so he did it. Only instead of rolling Kate over and plunging into her, which was his initial inclination, he had a better idea, and with only a little trouble, he slid her over him until she was astride his body. This woke her, of course, and she lifted her head sleepily from where it lay on his shoulder, and blinked in the dim grey morning light
“What?” she said wearily.
He answered by placing steadying hands on her hips, and sliding himself slowly inside of her. She was still slick from the night before, and so he knew he could not have hurt her. And yet her eyelids flew apart, and, as always when he entered her, she sucked in her breath.
“What,” she gasped breathlessly, “are you doing!”
He showed her, by moving her hips forward and then back again, and keeping himself still. Again, she sucked in her breath … but this time for a different reason. She tried moving her hips on her own, the way he had shown her, and was rewarded by a groan from him that she could feel reverberating all through her thighs, locked as they were around his waist. The groan was not so much because of the exquisite feel of her, as she moved up and down his shaft, enveloping him with her heat, as it was because of the way she looked perched there above him, her hair thrown back until it resembled a glorious cape behind her, her nipples pointed so insouciantly toward the ceiling. He wanted to reach for those nipples, to graze them with his palms, but he was compelled to hold on to her hips, as suddenly he could no longer keep himself still beneath her, and instead found himself driving into her with a force that, he was quite certain, threatened to rend her in two.
But Kate was not nearly so fragile as she looked, and matched him thrust for thrust, throwing her head back and marveling at the apparently numberless ways her softness could accommodate his hardness, all the while making her feel things, incredible things, she had never felt before.
And then she was slipping from him, slipping again into that vortex between pleasure and pain, and she reached out for him, blindly grasping for his hand, his shoulder, anything that would keep her teetering on the edge just a little longer … but it was too late. She was gone, her back arching, her head thrown back, her hair spilling down until it brushed his knees.
And beneath her, he saw it all, watched as her climax took her, reveled in the way her lips parted to let out a soft, helpless cry … and then followed her with a mind-numbing orgasm of his own, one that caused him to shudder violently from his scalp to the arches of his feet, until he was convinced he was going to drown her in his own seed.
When Kate came back, it was to find that she had thrown herself across his chest. She raised her head, and realized, when she looked down at his smiling face, just a few inches from her own, that her hair had fallen around them, enclosing them in a soft, silken tent. She moved to push it away, but Burke caught her hand and said, “Don’t. I like it.”
And then she had to kiss him, of course. What else could she do?
And yet, when he reappeared a half hour later, after having left her to consult with his driver about the condition of the roads, even Kate was not quite prepared for her sudden change in mood. The root of it, of course, was the fact that she had just been violently ill—or as violently ill as someone with nothing in her stomach could be, after retching repeatedly and unproductively. Burke, finding her in the exact spot he’d left her, only asked, as anyone would, “Kate? Aren’t you getting up?”
“Get out,” was all she could bring herself to say.
He continued to stand there, however, looking infuriatingly healthy and well rested, while she could hardly move without incurring waves of nausea.
“Kate,” he said, obviously annoyed, but trying not to show it. “We do have to be going soon, you know …”
“Get out!”
This time the request—which was a polite way of putting what, in actuality, it was—was accompanied by the mate to the boot she had hurled at him the night before. Burke made haste to do as she asked, and went downstairs to partake of breakfast, wondering how much her lolly-gagging was going to delay them. The road to Scotland was bad, according to his driver, but not impassable. If they traveled hard, they might be able to make it most, if not all, of the way by nightfall. But not if their start was a late one, as it appeared, thanks to Kate, it was going to be.
And yet no sooner was he finishing his coffee that she appeared in the dining room. She offered no explanation for her strange behavior. She eschewed the eggs and bacon he pressed upon her, but accepted toast and a cup of tea. And when she was finished with them, she declared herself ready to leave—but declared it in a voice that lacked real conviction.
But that was merely, he supposed, due to embarrassment, or extreme self-consciousness. She had, after all, spent the wee hours engaged in activities that might make a wife of long standing blush. And here she was, forced to face the other guests who’d slept beneath the very same roof that had been witness to her disreputable behavior.
He made haste to pay the innkeeper and rush Kate into the carriage, so as not to prolong her embarrassment.
But if he’d expected Kate to notice this gallant behavior, he was sadly disappointed. No sooner had he lowered himself onto the seat beside hers, and curled his arm around her shoulders, than she stiffened, and pointed at the padded bench across the way.
“No,” she said. “I think you ought to sit over there.”
He looked down at her incredulously. “Kate,” he said. “You aren’t going to start that again, are you? I thought we’d settled all that.”
“Settled all what?” Kate demanded. “I don’t believe we’ve settled anything. I agreed to come with you to help you find your daughter. Nothing more.”
“If that’s true,” Burke challenged, “then why did you call to me last night?”
“I told you,” she said, turning to stare out the window. “I was dreaming.”
“Well, then maybe you should pay attention to your dreams, Kate,” he said seriously. “Maybe they’re trying to tell you something. Maybe they’re trying to say what you apparently cannot, which is that you love me, and want to marry me—”
Still not looking in his direction, Kate gave a quick, negative shake of her head.
“Are you telling me,” he said, speaking very carefully, “that even after last night—not to mention this morning—you still haven’t any intention of marrying me?”
“That is correct,” she said to the window.
He had never felt as much like throwing something as he did just then. His fingers curled into fists, but he kept them carefully hidden from view. He hadn’t, he told himself, any intention of using them.
“You little hypocrite,” he growled.
That brought her head whipping round at last. Her grey eyes wide with effrontery, she echoed, “Hypocrite?”