With every heartbeat Angel wished that Hawk hadn’t left, that he was still close to her, that his hands and mouth were still caressing her.
She no longer cared that Hawk’s lovemaking had brought her pain once before. She didn’t believe that he would hurt her again. The Hawk who had just caressed her was not the same man who had taken her quickly, ruthlessly, a few days ago. This Hawk was a lover, not a predator.
His hands had trembled when he touched her.
That, as much as Hawk’s caresses, had taken the world from beneath Angel’s feet. She had never been the focus of such intense, consuming desire.
Hawk wants me. No matter how hard he tries to hide it, he wants me.
And I want him.
Angel felt the thick pad shift as Hawk sat next to her. His warm fingers stroked lightly down the length of her spine. She shivered helplessly, wanting more.
His hand remained poised above Angel’s back.
“Are you cold?” Hawk asked, concerned.
Though the sun was overhead, he knew that it was always cool on the water.
“Only when you stop touching me,” Angel whispered.
Hawk’s breath came in sharply. The sudden race of his heart made his hands tremble so that it was all but impossible to unwrap the small bandage and smooth it into place on Angel’s back.
Eventually he managed. Then, when he could trust himself again, he kissed the warm skin that was revealed by the crisscross of straps and the deeply cut back of Angel’s bathing suit.
“Do you like that?” he asked.
Angel nodded and shivered again.
“When you froze in my arms,” Hawk said softly, “I thought you didn’t want me to touch you anymore.”
“I was just . . . surprised,” Angel admitted.
The last word was a ragged intake of breath. Hawk’s tongue was sliding along her spine in a sultry caress that ended in the sensitive small of her back. As the tip of his tongue caressed her, one warm hand kneaded lightly from her ankle to the firm curves of her thigh.
Hawk felt the ripple of pleasure that swept through Angel when his teeth caressed the sensitive nerves at the base of her spine.
“Why were you surprised?” murmured Hawk.
For a moment Angel’s only answer was a moan that sounded like Hawk’s name.
“Angel?”
“I thought I knew myself,” she said huskily. “I thought I knew what it was to want someone.”
“And?”
Angel’s breath shivered out. She felt the heat and strength of Hawk’s fingers sliding along her thigh, sending shock waves of need racing through her, melting her.
“I was wrong, Hawk. Every time you touch me, I learn something new, something beautiful.”
Again, without knowing it, Angel had both destroyed and created Hawk with a few words.
Hawk made a sound low in his throat and closed his eyes. He rested his cheek in the warm hollow of Angel’s back, letting his breath pool moistly against her soft skin.
He had known nothing like Angel in his lifetime. She made him want to believe in things that he had long since abandoned—gentleness and generosity, human warmth.
Truth.
Angel was a woman without lies, and Hawk wanted to worship her.
His caressing palm slid down her right leg again. The muscles of her leg shifted and flexed, giving back his touch. Her calf was smooth and curved, firm. There were faint scars beneath her tan ankle.
Hawk’s fingers stopped, then gently found and memorized each reminder of her old pain. Angel’s skin was taut, warm, incredibly alive. It was impossible to believe that she had ever been injured, broken, an angel wounded and lost but for Derry’s courage.
Abruptly Hawk realized that he was holding Angel’s ankle much too tightly. He cradled her ankle in his hands while his lips and the tip of his tongue smoothed across faded scars.
“I’m sorry,” Hawk whispered. “Did I hurt your ankle?”
Angel’s answer was a silent shake of her head that made sunlight gather and run through her hair.
“Are you sure?”
Hawk kissed her skin gently, then caressed it with his cheek. The stillness in him transmitted itself to Angel. She propped herself on her elbow and looked over her shoulder. For the first time she saw the naked intensity of Hawk’s eyes and the mixture of emotions on his face as he caressed her.
“Hawk?” she asked, uncertain. She had never seen him look quite like that, almost afraid. “Is something wrong?
He smoothed his mustache over the arch of her foot in silent reassurance.
“It’s all right,” Hawk said in a low voice. “I was just thinking of how much I owe Derry.”
“Derry? Why?”
Angel searched Hawk’s face with eyes as deep as the sea, waiting for his answer.
“You, sweet Angel,” Hawk said simply. “I owe him you. I owe Derry the most beautiful moments I’ve ever shared with anyone.”
Tears magnified Angel’s eyes for a moment, hovering on the brink of release. She whispered his name through lips that trembled.
Hawk moved swiftly, catching her tears on the tip of his tongue before they could fall.
Angel reached for him, trying to turn onto her back so that she could hold him. Hawk gently prevented her from completing the movement. He released the soft ties of the bathing suit that crisscrossed on her back.
The suit fell away, revealing the firm curves of Angel’s breasts. Where the sun had never touched her, her skin had the soft gleam of a pearl. Her nipples were taut, elegant, as pink as the tip of Hawk’s tongue.
Lightly Hawk caressed the aching peaks with his mouth, touching her only enough to leave a sensual sheen of heat and moisture behind.
Angel was torn between passion and shyness. She had never felt so naked as she did now, not even when Hawk had undressed her completely. Then there had been the thick twilight intimacy of the bow.
Now there was only sunlight and the clear brown fire of Hawk’s eyes looking at her.
“You’re more beautiful than I remembered,” Hawk said slowly.
His voice became even deeper as his tongue touched her breast again, heat and moisture making her ache.
“And I remembered you as the most perfect woman I had ever seen,” Hawk whispered.
“Hawk . . . ” Waves of longing took Angel. She leaned against him, shivering. “You make me weak.”
Her bright hair swirled across Hawk’s naked stomach and the weight of her head was a sweet burning in his lap. He held his breath, knowing that Angel must have felt the hard insistence of his arousal beneath her cheek.
Yet she didn’t retreat.
Hawk closed his eyes and knew that he would remember this moment long after every other woman had faded from his mind.
Very gently he lifted Angel in his arms. His lips moved over her face, caressing all the curves and hollows that he had already made his own. When his mouth brushed over hers, Angel moaned and threaded her fingers into his thick black hair. Her lips opened, wanting him, needing him, hungry for the sensual excitement of his mouth.
Hawk’s tongue slid between Angel’s teeth, thrusting slowly across her tongue, retreating, thrusting again, inciting her with the rhythms of love. Her arms tightened around him, pressing her breasts closer, and her hard nipples teased him as she twisted in his arms.
Without ending the slow movements of his tongue, Hawk moved his fingers down Angel’s spine to the hollow of her back. As he slid her bathing suit down her legs, he touched for an instant the hidden, sensitive flesh within the shadow curve of her hips.
Sensual fire shivered through Angel, making her moan into the heat of Hawk’s mouth.
His arm tightened around her waist, shifting her in his lap. When his hand returned from sliding the suit off her ankles, his fingertips caressed the smoothness of her inner legs. Gently he stroked the liquid heat hidden within the burnished blond curls.
Eyes closed, Angel felt herself come undone all over again. Slow, liquid rhythms uncoiled deep in her body. She shivered and sighed and melted over Hawk, knowing only his touch and intense pleasure shimmering, gathering in her.
Hawk lifted Angel once more, then lay down with her on the dark quilt. Angel kissed his shoulders and the powerful muscles bunched in his arms. She felt the shiver of his response. She moved her mouth across his chest, caressing him with her lips and teeth and tongue, glorying in the throttled groan that she felt as much as heard.
Only then did Hawk claim Angel’s mouth again, filling her with a kiss so deep that she could only cling to him, melting again, shaping herself to the hard male lines of his body.
By the time Hawk ended the kiss, Angel was making small sounds in her throat with each swift, shallow breath that she took. When his lips left hers, she protested with a word that became a cry of intense, unexpected pleasure when his tongue circled the tip of her breast.
Tenderly he raked his teeth over Angel, feeling her response in the aching hardness of her nipple pressed against his tongue. He groaned and suckled her deeply, savoring the passionate reflex shivering through her. When his hand touched her stomach, her breath stopped. And when his fingers found her liquid secrets, she cried out in pleasure.
For long moments Hawk caressed Angel, drinking each soft cry, each hot shivering of her tender flesh. When he pressed lightly against the inside of her thigh, she shifted, revealing more of herself to him.
Hawk’s fingers traced each petal softness, each curve and hollow of Angel’s passion until she was twisting in slow motion, her hips blindly seeking. Very gently he deepened the caress.
She shivered and melted and clung to his touch, lost in the sweetness and intense excitement his touch called from her. He bent over her, drank her cries with hungry lips as he stroked her slowly.
Angel moaned as muscles deep inside her body tensed, wildness gathering and melting through her in shimmering waves.
Hawk saw surprise and pleasure equally mingled in her brilliant eyes. He knew then that he was the first man to touch Angel so deeply, to make her body melt like liquid fire.
His lips sought her throat and he told her of her softness, the exciting beauty of her response, the warm sliding satin of her body clinging deeply to his touch.
Angel tried to say his name but could not form the word. Hawk had stolen the ability to speak from her lips.
Slowly he made his caress less intimate, though he had never wanted anything so much as he wanted the warm depths of the angel who trusted him.
“Am I hurting you?” Hawk asked, rubbing the words over the softness and heat of her lips.
Silently Angel answered his question, moving her hips, capturing his tantalizing touch, feeling him inside her again, shivering with need of him. When Hawk’s thumb found and teased the aching nub hidden in her softness, Angel cried out his name, trying to tell him about the incredible pleasure sweeping through her.
Then his head bent and his mouth caressed her breasts, the shadow dimple of her navel, and finally the hot, honeyed secrets his touch had revealed.
The world fell away, leaving only the angel and the hawk who worshipped her, an angel’s sweet cries of ecstasy filling the empty blue sky. And when she had no more breath, he gathered her along his body, sheltering her, bringing her gently back to earth.
Angel’s eyes opened slowly, dazed with the extraordinary pleasure Hawk had given her. She wound her arms around him and rubbed her cheek against the heat of his chest.
Strong fingers laced through her hair, bringing her even closer. She tilted her head back and looked into Hawk’s clear, burning eyes. She wanted to tell him what she had felt, what she was still feeling, but she didn’t know how. There were no words.
With lips still flushed from Hawk’s kisses, Angel gave him the only truth she knew.
“I love you, Hawk.”
Angel saw the sudden darkening of Hawk’s eyes, felt the shudder that ripped through his strong body.
“Angel,” he said hoarsely, “I didn’t mean—I didn’t expect—” Hawk’s breath caught in his throat. He kissed Angel’s eyelids tenderly, closing them, unable to bear the emotion shining in their blue-green depths.
“I would tear out my throat rather than hurt you again,” Hawk said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ve hated too long, Angel, hated too well. It’s too late for me to love.”
The hunger and regret in Hawk’s voice were a pain as great as Angel’s pleasure had been.
Her hands went up to his face, cradling him, understanding and loving him, all of him, the hatred as well as the gentleness, the cold past as well as the shimmering present. She kissed Hawk’s lips as gently as he had first kissed hers.
“It’s you I love, not the idea of love itself,” Angel said. “You don’t have to love me in return. Let me share the next weeks with you. I won’t ask for anything more. Except . . . ”
Angel’s eyes changed, shadows where brilliance had been.
“Don’t tell me when you’re going to leave,” she whispered. “Just go. I’ll know then that it’s over.”
“Angel,” Hawk’s said, his voice ragged.
“It’s all right, my love,” she murmured, kissing him, her eyes brilliant again. “I’m strong enough to love you and then set you free. Just don’t deny me what you can give me . . . a few weeks of flight on the wings of a magnificent hawk.”