"Your wish," he reminded her raggedly. "Melting into me and ceasing to exist, remember? That's what it's all about, Katie girl. Making love, becoming one. No more Kate, no more Zach. Melting into each other, getting lost in one another, until all that's left is the magic."
Kate felt the down mattress pillow around her as he lowered her gently onto it. When she realized where she was, she started to stiffen, but then Zachariah was beside her and everything else moved away. With one sweep of his hand over her body, she was mindless.
"I love you, Katie girl," he whispered. "I want to taste and memorize every inch of you. Every precious inch so I'll have the memories while you're away from me."
With his hands and mouth, he proceeded to do just that. And Kate surrendered all that she was to him. No part of her body was left untouched, unkissed. He traced each line on her palms with his tongue, learned the shape of her ears, the slope of her brows. By the time she felt the silken heat of his mouth at her breast, she was strung so taut with need that she arched toward him like a bow. When he slid a hand up her inner thigh, she raised her hips to meet him.
Zachariah. His name became a one-word lyric to the song within her. She loved him with such intensity she ached with it. When his fingertips found the honeyed center of her, she gasped at the sheer pleasure that rocked through her. When her body sheathed the white-hot shaft of his manhood, the pleasure was intensified by a sense of rightness, and Kate finally understood what loving this man truly meant. Oneness. A sense of completeness.
Nothing held back. It was beauty at its most exquisite, so sweet, so perfect that she wept.
Partly buried within her, he froze. "Are you all right, Katie?" he rasped. "You're so small. I don't want to hurt you."
Gazing up at him through tears, Kate ran her hands over the broad shoulders above her, along the rippled arms that braced his weight, over his flat belly. When her shyly seeking fingertips encountered the base of his staff, he gasped and moaned her name.
"Don't," he bit out. "I'm having trouble enough holding back as it is."
Instinctively, Kate curled her legs around his steely thighs, her invitation as old as womankind. "I don't want you to hold back. I've given myself to you. Now give yourself to me."
"I'm afraid I'll hurt you."
Clutching his shoulders, Kate lifted her hips and took all of him. "I've had a child, Zachariah. You're not going to hurt me, I promise you."
A violent shudder ran through his body. "Are you sure you didn't find her under a cabbage leaf?"
A startled giggle erupted from Kate. At the sound, a smile touched his mouth. He executed a careful stroke, driving gently home. Her little laugh ended with a gasp, and she dug her nails into his skin.
"Are you all right?"
With a muted moan, she arched into him with urgent need. It was answer enough, and he set a cautious rhythm.
Darkness and moonlight, limbs intertwined, heat then fire. Kate felt as though she were soaring. The sensation of having him inside her was just as he had once said it should be. Glorious. There was nothing and no one but him.
Zachariah, lifting her, pushing her inexorably toward a sweet promise. Ecstasy. With a final series of thrusts, he took her over the edge into a swirling vortex of feeling that went beyond the ecstasy to sheer rapture. Jolt after jolt of it. Rocking through her body, spasm after spasm.
Afterward, Kate was too exhausted to move, and she felt as though her body were buried under a thousand pounds of vibrant, muscular flesh. Zachariah. The heat of him radiated to her bones. His ridged belly convulsed against hers with every ragged breath he drew. The pounding of his heart vibrated through her, muting the patter of hers. She felt a whiskery jaw against her cheek, a padded shoulder under her chin, large hands manacling her wrists, long legs anchoring hers apart. His heavy sex was still buried within her, their skin slick with sweat.
Barnyard beasts. The memory came to Kate from out of nowhere, and she closed her eyes on a surge of joy that brought with it an hysterical urge to giggle. Draping an arm around his neck, she lost the battle and gave a weak laugh.
"What?" He turned his head to nip her ear. "Did I do something funny?"
More wild laughter swelled in Kate's chest. Another giggle escaped from her despite her efforts to hold it back.
"What?" he demanded, his voice taut with stung pride. "Jesus, Kate, you're not supposed to break up laughing after I—"
"My dignity," she managed to squeak. "You promised to keep it intact, if you'll recall, and I'm just wondering where you stashed it. Under the bed, maybe?"
She felt his mouth curve in a grin against her ear. "I slipped it under the pillow," he whispered huskily. "Want it back?"
"Not if you hid your socks under there with it."
He barked with laughter and rolled to one side, carrying her along in the circle of his arm. After draping her naked torso across his, he flashed her a rakish grin. "I did promise to keep my socks on, didn't I? Sorry. I got so wrapped up in preserving your dignity and trying to remember all the rules of decorum, I flat forgot."
Looking into his moon-silvered gaze, Kate lost her smile. With tremulous fingertips, she traced the network of scars along his cheek, then bent her head to kiss them. He clamped a hand over the back of her head.
"If I told you all the things I imagined you might do to me in the marriage bed, you'd be laughing with me," she informed him in a tight voice. "Every time I even thought about it, I wanted to shrivel in mortification. I was terrified you'd go about coupling like a barnyard beast."
He tucked in his chin to meet her gaze. "What in hell did you think I meant to do?"
Her voice went even tighter. "Exactly what you did."
For an instant, he lay perfectly still and silent beneath her, then she felt his chest jerk. A strangled laugh came up his throat. Then another. Kate pressed her face against his neck and laughed with him. Until she was weak. A laughter that cleansed and healed as tears never could. And in that, Kate found the magic she had long since ceased to believe existed, the miracles she no longer dreamed could happen, and the peace that had evaded her for so long. All because this big, powerful, absolutely wonderful man held her close and laughed with her—at the nightmares, at the pain, at the heartache—helping her to bid it all good-bye, forever.
"I love you, Zachariah."
"I'm beginning to believe you truly do," he whispered, and turned his dark head so her lips settled over his. After a long, drugging kiss, he asked, "Would you mind if I left your dignity stashed under the pillow for a while longer, Mrs. McGovern?"
"Just what, exactly, do you have in mind," she queried in a throaty whisper.
Clamping his large hands at her waist, he drew her upward on his chest until her breasts were within easy reach of his lips. A little shocked at her brazenness, Kate braced her arms to accommodate him and moaned softly with pleasure as the velvety wet heat of his mouth closed over her nipple.
After tormenting her for several delicious moments, he drew back. "Well? Make your choice," he said with a devilish grin. "Me or your dignity. You can't have both."
As far as Kate was concerned, that was no choice at all. He made love to her again, slow, languorous loving that was so sweet, so incredibly fantastic, that Kate's mind reeled at the sheer wonder of it.
Afterward, he reared up on an elbow, planted a light kiss on the end of her nose, and whispered, "Thank you, ma'am."
Kate giggled and nipped his lower lip. "That isn't nice."
His teeth gleamed white in another rakish grin. "I don't want to completely abandon all decorum and shock you."
Laughing with him again felt nearly as wonderful as making love with him had. She wiggled a toe along the arch of his foot. He bent his leg to escape and lowered his head to nibble her ribs, which sent her into instant fits of shrill giggles. He muffled her mouth with his hand and continued to tickle her until she lay weak beneath him.
Completely sated, completely content, and happier than she could recall ever having been.
* * *
One night. It was all they would have for a very long while, and Kate half expected Zachariah to spend it making love to her until dawn. And he did. But, as he had from the beginning, he never did things exactly the way she expected. After physically taking her a third time, he threw on his jeans, helped her into her chemise, and led her in a tiptoed ascent of the stairs. For the remainder of the night, they lay four to a bed with a child and a dog, him holding her tightly to the powerful planes of his body, one hand across her midriff, his other resting lightly on her daughter's silken curls.
Kate snuggled against him and learned yet another new meaning to an old word. Love. It went beyond the joining of two bodies, as wonderful as that part was. It meant sharing and caring. It meant embracing a child together. It meant whispers in the darkness, and smiles that had no meaning yet meant the world. It was knowing another's deepest feelings without being told. It meant making sacrifices simply to please. Love, Zachariah, the two were synonymous, and over the course of that one night, he taught her that lesson well.
By dawn, Kate felt filled. As though she had lived and loved for a lifetime. No matter what the day brought, she would never feel cheated. One night with Zachariah. It was enough. She wanted more, of course, but if fate said otherwise, the beauty of the simple gifts he had given her would last her.
When she rose to face the day, Kate stood at the window to savor the dawn's first light, knowing that she might next see it through the bars of a cell window—if she was lucky. If she wasn't and her cell had no window, she might never see it again until she was released. Unless, God forbid, she was found guilty of Joseph's murder.
Then she might see it next from a scaffold, for executions were usually meted out as the sun came up.
The thought saddened Kate, but it didn't frighten her. Since giving birth to Miranda, the meaning of her existence had funneled down to one thing, protecting her child into adulthood. Now that had been accomplished. If it was God's will that her life be forfeited for what she had done, then so be it. She could give herself up to an early end knowing her life had had meaning and that her child would have everything any little girl could want.
Kate wasn't surprised when she felt a pair of strong arms encircle her waist from behind to draw her against a warm, well-padded chest. A smile touched her mouth because to share the dawn with Zachariah made their one night together absolutely and perfectly complete.
"A penny for them," he whispered next to her ear.
"I was just thinking if I never get to come back home that this night has been so wonderful, I won't have any regrets."
His embrace tightened. "Don't think that way, Katie. You'll come home, if for no other reason than I don't think I can live without you."
"You'll have no choice. Because I'm leaving behind my reason for living. It's a sacred trust."
He nuzzled her neck. "I'm not worried. I lay odds they throw the case out of court. You'll come home. And I'll spend the next fifty years preserving your dignity under your pillow while I shock you from the tips of your pink little toes right up to your blushing hairline when I make love to you."
Kate grinned. "After last night, I'm well past being shocked."
"That's what you think," he whispered huskily.
Kate stirred to look over her shoulder into his twinkling hazel eyes. The knowing laughter she read there made her skin tingle. "You mean you left something out?"
He bent his head and whispered to her of the things she hadn't yet experienced, his voice so thick with passion that her own rose in a hot tide within her.
"You wouldn't!" she whispered.
"I will," he promised with a chuckle.
Kate's mind filled with shocking images, and she felt a blush rising up her neck. "I would never let you. That's scandalous."
"Delicious."
The blush turned scalding and flooded into her face. "I would never participate in something so—so base."
"Heaven-sent," he corrected.
"I don't want to talk about this."
"You're right. I'd rather just do it. Come downstairs with me before Mandy wakes up. We'll lock the sickroom door, and I'll give you something to remember me by." He flicked the tip of his tongue against her nape, sending chills the length of her body. "Just like that, Katie girl. You'll think you've died and gone straight to heaven. I swear it."
Her body felt heavy, her blood hot and thick. She settled back against him, seduced by the sultry promises he whispered in her ear, unable to resist the magnetism of him. "I'll think I've died of humiliation, that's what."
"Never with me. Nothing I do to you will ever bring anything but beautiful feelings, sweetheart, because what's between us is blessed."
"No. Maybe one day."
He chuckled and bent to scoop her into his arms. "No woman should face a murder charge without that experience under her belt."
"Zachariah!" she squeaked. "I'm not going to let you do something so—"
He cut her off with a kiss that made her senses spin, a long, hypnotizing kiss that robbed her of everything, including her certainty that what he had suggested was shameful. Out the door, down the stairs. He stubbed his toe and cursed. Kate giggled and tried to pull down her chemise. He carried her into the sickroom, locked the door, proceeded toward the bed.
As he lowered her onto the mattress, he pinioned her with a gaze that gleamed with equal parts tenderness and determination, and Kate knew she was lost.
"I—I really can't contemplate doing something so improper," she tried one last time.
He stretched out beside her and ran a heavy, thorough hand up her body, setting her skin afire. Bending his head to hers, he nibbled gently at her earlobes, her throat, her mouth. "I swear, I'll do it proper. And you won't be able to think, Katie girl, let alone contemplate."
As it turned out, he was right in more ways than one. His technique was perfect. She didn't have a thought in her head. And before he was finished with her, she felt as though she had indeed died and gone straight to heaven.