"You know, Zachariah. It just occurred to me that I don't have my nightgown down here." She moved toward the door. "I think I'll run upstairs and change. I won't be but a moment."
"Don't you dare," he said with a hoarse laugh. "You'll wake up Mandy, sure as the world."
The heels of his boots tapped out a muffled tattoo on the floor as he moved inexorably toward her. Since her eyes were already accustomed to darkness, the moon's glow seemed glaringly bright to her, and she could see him clearly. She felt certain he could see her as well. Her mind shied away from what that would mean if she couldn't go fetch her nightgown.
"I'll be quiet as a mouse," she assured him shakily. "I really do want my gown."
He stepped close and curled his warm, leathery hands around her throat. "You worried about your neck getting cold?"
Kate circled that. "What does my neck have to do with it?"
He ran his thumbs along the curves of her jaw. "Because that's all a nightgown is good for—to serve as a neck warmer."
She clasped his wrists. "How so?"
He bent his dark head to kiss her cheek. "Because if you're wearing one when I make love to you," he whispered,
"it'll end up bunched under your chin, that's why."
With a startled little laugh, she said, "Zachariah, you are a caution." She tried to step away. "I'll be right back."
He moved his hands to her shoulders. "You're not going anywhere."
"I'm not?"
"No, ma'am, you're not." His hands began a gentle massage of her tense muscles. "Relax. You're not going to miss that nightgown, I promise."
"I'm not?"
"No, ma'am, you're not."
"May I ask why you're suddenly addressing me as ma'am?"
"I promised to be polite," he said with a low chuckle.
Kate closed her eyes. "Please don't make fun of me."
He slid his lips to her ear. "Katie, love, I'm teasing you. It's a little hard not to. There's nothing to be nervous about."
She moved her hands to his chest. The heat of him radiated through his shirt and seared her palms. "Yes, well …
I certainly hope not."
"Do you really believe God would have gone to such trouble to design our bodies so the act of love could be as boring and uneventful as Joseph's version?" His breath stirred her hair and her senses. "Or that He meant it to be an ordeal for females?"
"God
is
a male."
He chuckled at that. "Maybe. Maybe not. You may wonder after I'm through with you." He lifted his head to search her gaze. "Tell me honestly, are you frightened? If we haven't accomplished anything else in this marriage, I do think we've managed to become friends. There shouldn't be any secrets between us, not about this.
Even if I can't completely allay your worries, discussing them might help."
Kate had the unsettling feeling that he could read far more from her expression than she wanted him to. She swallowed with some difficulty. "I really don't want to discuss Joseph."
"Sometimes we can't get things out of our heads until we talk about them. Look at all the worrying I did about my face. If I had only told you weeks ago how I felt, you could have saved me tons of agonizing."
She could feel his gaze, relentless and determined, on her face. "I can't," she whispered. "Don't ask me to talk about it. Even to think about it is humiliating and—"
He crossed her lips with a fingertip and bent to press his forehead against hers. A quietness settled over them, and by that, Kate knew he wasn't going to insist she discuss her memories with him. An ache of guilt rose in her throat, for she knew he wanted no more secrets between them. Worse still, she understood why.
She closed her eyes and struggled to speak. "If it's truly that important to you, then I'll—"
"Katie," he inserted huskily, "
you
are what's important to me. Only you. And how you feel. I want tonight to be beautiful for you, and if you're frightened because of things that Joseph did to you, it won't be. I only want to ease your mind. Humiliating you is the last thing I want to do."
Tears escaped from beneath her lashes, and she pressed closer to him, trying desperately to think of a way to make him understand. "Remember the day you held me after Ryan had cornered me in the barn?"
"Yes, but what—?"
She moved closer still, absorbing his heat and strength. "When your arms came around me, I wanted to melt into you and cease to exist. No more Kate. No more nightmares from which I couldn't escape. No more feeling afraid.
I just wanted to stay there in your arms and become a part of you." A tremor ran through her body. "Because you made me feel safe."
He curled his arms around her and buried his face in the hollow of her neck. "Ah, Katie girl, you
were
safe."
"I knew that," she whispered tremulously. "Just as I know it now. Only this time, Zachariah, I don't have to pull away. I can make one of Mandy's magic wishes for myself and have it come true."
She felt his mouth curve in a tender smile. "And what wish is that?"
"To melt into you and cease to exist. No more Kate. No more Joseph. No more bad memories. I can leave my old world behind and step into yours where everything is sweet and good and beautiful. Where everything is new."
Her voice went taut with emotion. "I don't want to bring any of Joseph's ugliness with me. And if I dredge it all back up—" Her voice cracked, and she dragged in a shaky breath. "For five endless years, he took everything good in my life and tried to destroyed it. Even my daughter. Now I'm free. You understand? Please don't let him ruin tonight for me, too. Maybe I'm a coward. Maybe you're right and the only way for me to ever put it all behind me is to talk about it. But I—"
Cupping a hand over the back of her head, he pressed her face to his shoulder, muffling whatever else she meant to say. The urgency of his embrace spoke more eloquently than words. Relief eased the tension from her body, for she knew by his touch that he understood.
She turned her face slightly. "Oh, Zachariah."
For what seemed an endless time, they stood there wrapped in silence, bodies pressed together so tightly that it seemed to Kate their hearts beat as one. When at last he drew away, he lifted his hands and slowly began pulling the pins from her hair. When that task was completed, he gently loosened her braid with deft fingers. Her hair fell like an untied silken drapery down her back.
"Remember the night you told me how it makes you feel when you see the first rays of sunlight come across the sky at dawn?" he asked softly.
Battling tears, Kate smiled at the memory. "As if I've been reborn?"
He framed her face between his hands. "That's how you make me feel when I look at you. And it's how I want to make you feel when I make love to you."
Kate closed her eyes on that, touched by the aching sincerity in his voice.
"We can turn our backs on the past," he whispered. "As far as I'm concerned, we never have to speak Joseph's name again. But only under one condition. I want you to promise me if anything I do ever starts to frighten you that you'll tell me. Agreed?"
"Yes, but—" She lifted her eyelashes to look into his eyes. "Oh, Zachariah, I'm not frightened. Just a bit apprehensive, that's all. I'm not certain what to expect from you."
"Ecstasy," was his husky reply.
Very gently, he pressed her back against the wall and put some distance between them so his hands were free to unbutton her shirtwaist. Kate resisted the urge to catch his wrists. Inch by inch, her bodice parted and fell from her breasts, leaving only the muslin of her chemise to shield her from his gaze. Next, he unfastened the waistband of her skirt. Kate closed her eyes when he skimmed his warm hands down her arms to peel away her sleeves.
Cloth rustled and fell to the floor in a whisper. Her heart was pounding so loudly she felt certain he might hear it.
A tug on the drawstring at her waist sent her petticoats the way of her skirt. An instant later, she felt her bloomers sliding over her hips and down her legs to lie at her ankles. He knelt on one knee to remove her shoes and stockings. Then he stood and began the task of untying the ribbons of her chemise.
Kate dragged in a searing breath and held it as his fingertips eased the muslin apart. Until now, she had never stood naked in front of a man. With an agonizing slowness, he drew the cloth down her arms, trailing in its path feather-light fingertips that electrified her skin.
"You're beautiful, Katie," he whispered.
Kate exhaled in a rush, longing to press close to him so he couldn't continue to stand there and look his fill.
"Zachariah, don't do this to me," she pleaded in a tremulous voice. "I'm not quite ready for this."
"You will be. Just let me get a running start here."
She blinked. "I thought we
had
started."
Chuckling under his breath, he toyed lightly with the tips of her fingers, then drew his touch slowly over the palms of her hands, up to her wrists, then higher to the sensitive bend of her arms. His laughter died as suddenly as it had come to be replaced by an almost worshipful concentration, all fixed on her. The sensations he elicited were so acute, so tantalizing, that Kate could scarcely breathe. He touched her as though he meant to sculpt her, his fingers whispering over the flesh of her arms, tracing the curves and hollows, lingering, then moving on, only to stop and hover again as if to memorize each line. By the time he reached the slope of her shoulders, the V of her collarbone, the tendons along her throat, Kate couldn't form the words to ask him to stop.
When he pressed the pads of his thumbs under her jaw to lift her face, she was shivering from head to toe, and her breathing had become ragged. A dizzying swirl of blacks and grays filled her mind, and she closed her eyes again to keep her balance. Behind her eyelids, the shades spiraled to pinpoints, then blossomed as his silken lips brushed across hers.
"Oh, Katie, you're so sweet. Every time I make love to you, I'm going to be on my knees afterward, thanking God with every breath I take for sending me an angel."
With his lips still a breath away from hers, he trailed his wondrous touch back down her throat once again to trace the shape of her collarbone. When his fingertips ventured downward from there, Kate caught her breath, her entire being focused on each caress. Slowly, so slowly. Her blood felt as though it were as thick as molasses, slugging through her veins with a resonant thrumming that beat against her eardrums in a hypnotizing staccato.
Dimly, she realized he was playing her as though she were a string instrument, her body his fingerboard, her tautly strung nerve endings the strings from which he plucked his notes. The melody that rose within her made her recall the music her mother had loved and shared with her when she was a child. Attending a symphony, hearing the music, being surrounded by it, feeling it to her bones. That was how Zachariah made her feel, as though she drifted on the notes of a light, graceful allegretto. As surely as she breathed, she knew the moment he touched her throbbing breasts that the pitch would reach a crescendo.
Anticipation stilled her lungs. The room around her fell away, and there was only this man and his clever, masterful hands. Her skin quivered at his every touch. The aureoles of her nipples swelled, the tips pebbled and eager to be kissed by moonlight and the brush of his fingertips. As if he sensed that, he circled those pinpoints of yearning, setting her flesh afire all around them, denying her what he had made her want most.
Kate sobbed at the sheer frustration of it, and mindless with need, she grabbed his wrists to guide his hands. Such wonderful, glorious hands. They cupped her with searing heat, the calloused surface of his palms chafing tender peaks, each electrifying contact stirring another need deep within her that only he could slake.
She leaned against him, forgetting all her preconceived notions about propriety of behavior. For propriety to exist, there had to be a world, and Zachariah had become her only reality. It felt so wonderfully sweet when he skimmed his large hands along her ribs to test her waist and the softness of her bottom. So wonderfully, wonderfully right when he lifted her against him and settled his hungry mouth over hers.
She moaned. His breath spilled into her in a ragged rush. When he moved in a dizzying circle with her crushed to his chest, she likened it to a swirl in a waltz, the melodious scale to which they danced trilling octave by octave up the cordillera of her spine, each thrum of her heart a harmonious drumbeat.
Need. An urgent need. A longing so poignant, so acute she nearly wept with it. Kate clung to him. When he touched his tongue to her lips, she opened her mouth, willing to engage in yet another new intimacy simply because he had asked it of her.
Only vaguely aware, Kate felt him carrying her toward the bed, felt the bunching of muscle in his chest and arms as he struggled out of his shirt, never once turning her loose. Denim rasped down the front of her legs. Boots thunked. Pocket change clinked and rolled across the floor. And then there was only the silken heat of flesh against flesh. Kate gasped at the shock of it and dug her nails into his shoulders.