The moon peeping through the scudding clouds picked up the crystals in the moonstone, causing the headstone to seem to glow. Anna stood looking at it, her hands clasped in front of her, her head bowed.
As a girl she had loved him so much. He had been the embodiment of her every childhood dream. The handsome son of the local lord, as far above her touch as if he were a prince of the blood, and also her dearest friend. They had played together, had lessons together, and learned about loving together. Finally, they had run off together, married, come to this strange land and begotten Chelsea. And then he had died.
Now she had no more of him than this shimmering stone atop a plot of earth, and fading memories.
Surely a man as fine and good as Paul deserved more of a memorial than that.
Anna tried to conjure up his face, but his features kept getting confused with Chelsea’s in her mind. His face would not become clear. The admission brought tears to her eyes, scalding tears that spilled over her lids to run unchecked down her face.
How could she have forgotten already?
Falling to her knees beside the grave, she dropped her head in her hands and cried.
It began to rain. At first the drops were hesitant, slow fat drops that plopped when they landed. Then they increased in number and intensity until the rain was pouring down with as much force as her tears.
The wind whistled, the rain fell, and Anna wept on, oblivious.
Until a voice cut through the darkness with the angry ferocity of a sharpened knife.
“Just what the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?”
XXIII
A
nna looked up to find Julian looming beside her, looking bigger and more powerful than ever with the night turning him into an enormous shape shrouded in shadows. Hastily she averted her face, swiping at her cheeks with her hands, desperate that he not know she had been crying as if all the oceans of tears in the world were hers to command. But he ignored her bid for privacy, if he even saw it, leaning over her and catching her chin with his hand, tilting her face up to his.
His eyes glittered down at her, black as jet in the darkness. He looked angry—no, furious. The rain washed her face. Her eyes closed against it—and him.
“You bloody little fool,” he snarled. “You’ll catch your death.”
Then, before she could gather her facilities enough to enable her to reply, he scooped her up in his arms, his movements rough, and bore her out of the graveyard. Anna turned her face into the damp cloth of his shirt, breathing in the smell of him, burrowing against the solid warmth of his shoulder.
He was so blessedly alive. She was so horribly, guiltily, glad of that.
The thought brought more tears with it.
As he felt fresh sobs shake her, Julian cursed viciously under his breath. Then, so abruptly that it shocked her, the arm beneath her knees dropped. Anna found herself on her feet, her breasts pressed against his chest as his other arm wrapped around her back. She looked up at him, surprised, only to find that his head was descending. Before she could so much as register his intent, his mouth found hers, claimed it. He kissed her with savage hunger that left no room for gentleness, kissed her with a fierceness that rocked her to her toes and made her insides quake.
That kiss reduced her to mindlessness. Anna felt her wits and her will melt away, leaving her helpless to deny him or herself.
Julian gathered her close, pulling her up on tiptoe so that she was aware of the whole muscled length of him with every millimeter of her skin. Anna quivered in his hold, then gave in to what every instinct she possessed screamed for her to do and slid her arms around his neck. He pressed her head against his shoulder, his mouth ruthlessly forcing apart her lips, and she did not resist. Did not want to resist.
With a tiny whimper she surrendered utterly, her hands curling into the broad damp shoulders, her mouth opening for his plundering.
And plunder he did. His tongue was a bold invader, claiming everything in its path. He stroked her tongue and the roof of her mouth and her teeth, demanding an equal response from her. Anna gave it to him, quivering and quaking as she returned passion for passion, kissing him back with all the pent-up longing she had tried in vain to suppress.
Never in her life had she felt anything like the burning desire that was turning her into flame in his arms. Never in her life had she wanted anything as, in that moment, she wanted him.
They stood like that for countless moments, kissing in the night-dark, rain-washed garden with the wind blowing her hair and her skirts and both their garments getting soaked to the skin.
Then he seemed to come to some awareness of their surroundings. He muttered something and gathered her up in his arms again.
Heart pounding, arms curled around his neck, Anna lay quiescent in his arms as he carried her across the gallery and into the house.
Neither of them spoke as he bore her along the hall, and this time Anna wasn’t even aware of the gleaming watchfulness of Moti’s eyes. Her own heart pounded like a kettledrum as she listened, head nestled against his chest, to the rapid thudding of his. Dizzy with passion, she drank in the strength of his arms as he carried her up the stairs with obvious ease, reveling in the solid breadth of his chest, the warmth of him, the smell of him.
There, in the silent darkness of the sleeping house, she somehow lost the person she knew herself to be. She wasn’t Anna anymore, but only a woman, and he wasn’t Julian, but only a man.
The woman in her, hungry, needy, cried out to the man in him.
Her arms tightened around his neck as he bore her along the upstairs hallway and then, easing open the door, carried her into her room.
XXIV
“Y
ou’re not going to send me away.” It was a rough whisper, part order, part question.
Her face buried in his shoulder, Anna shook her head. She felt rather than saw the harsh indrawing of his breath. The door clicked shut behind him, and then he was standing her on her own two feet with rather more gentleness than he had shown so far.
“Let’s get these wet things off you.”
The curtain that she had drawn away from the window earlier permitted the smallest glimmer of pale gray light to invade the darkness. By it, she was able to watch him as he undressed her. He was very big, very dark, very intent as his long fingers dealt clumsily with her bows and buttons. His head was bowed to her so that she could just make out the beads of water glinting on his black hair. His lashes veiled his eyes, but his mouth was hard and straight, not smiling but rather almost grim. Sliding the wrapper from her shoulders, he chanced to glance up and meet her eyes. Still he didn’t smile, just watched her, those gypsy-dark eyes glittering.
Still watching her, he reached out and closed a hand around one small, taut breast. The single layer of damp cloth that still covered her was no protection from the fierce heat of his touch.
Anna gasped as a pleasure so exquisite that it was almost an ache quaked through her. Her head fell back on her neck, and her eyes closed. She trembled, but she didn’t back away. Instead one small hand lifted to close over the large, masculine one that was holding her breast.
It was Julian who broke the spell, muttering something hard and fast under his breath as he pulled her into his arms again. He kissed her, endlessly, passionately, and she rose up on her tiptoes and locked her arms around his neck and kissed him back. When his mouth slid down to her ear and then her neck, he, like she, was trembling. Anna could feel the shudders racking the arms that held her, and trembled more in reply.
“Christ,” he breathed, and put her away from him. When she reached for him, he shook his head and set himself to undoing the dozens of tiny buttons that closed her gown from neck to waist. His fingers shook so that each button took him several tries. Finally Anna brushed his hands away.
“Let me,” she whispered, more wanton than she had ever dreamed she could be. Still she could not quite bring herself to look up at him as she unfastened her gown. When at last it was done she chanced a glance, feeling both bold and incredibly shy. He was watching her with a dark, hooded expression that she couldn’t read. The only thing that told her he was as hungry as she was the obsidian gleam of his eyes.
“Take it off,” he directed her, his voice hoarse and low. Anna saw the glitter in his eyes intensify as he waited for her to do his bidding. She felt her mouth go dry. Slowly, feeling both sinful and deliciously free, she shrugged the gown from her shoulders, deliberately delaying its fall to expose first small, pink-tipped breasts, then the slenderness of her waist, the gentle flare of her hips, the ash-brown triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs, the creamy length of her legs. When, finally, she let the gown drop to puddle at her feet, his eyes were aflame, and a tiny muscle twitched noticeably at the corner of his mouth.
“You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, his hands lifting as though to draw her to him. Anna stepped quickly out of reach, shaking her head.
“You’re wet, too,” she reminded him in a throaty whisper. For a moment he merely looked at her, his eyes hungry on her flesh, but then his lips curved upwards in the smallest of wicked smiles.
XXV
“S
hall I strip for you, sweetheart?” The question was almost teasing despite its husky undertone. Unable to trust herself to speak, Anna nodded.
Then she watched, barely breathing, as he proceeded to do as she asked.
First he took off his boots. He sat on the end of her bed to pull them off, dropping them side by side on the floor. Then he stood up, unbuttoning his cuffs. That done, he started at the throat of his collarless shirt, undoing the buttons one by one. Anna felt her heart speed up as the broad, black-pelted chest that had seared itself on her mind was slowly revealed. When he pulled the tails of his shirt from his breeches and shrugged out of it, her eyes ran greedily over him. His shoulders were huge, wide and powerful, his arms corded with muscle. His chest was wide, tapering into a narrow waist and hips. Above his breeches were the beginnings of a muscle-ridged abdomen, the round shadow of his belly button. That thick triangle of black hair that she longed to touch arrowed past it to disappear inside his breeches.
His hands were already busy with the buttons of his pants. Anna followed their progress, feeling her heart pound harder with each new bit of flesh he revealed. Until finally the buttons were all undone, and he was sliding his breeches down his legs and stepping out of them, leaving him gloriously naked.
Anna looked at him and forgot to breathe. The thought that came to her then was, simply, that this was a man. She had never seen anything so magnificent in all her life.
Her eyes dropped down his body, rose again. He was hard with wanting her, and huge with it. Anna felt an answering ache deep within her belly. Quivering, she raised her eyes to his face.
“Come here,” he said then, and held out his arms to her. Anna drew a deep, shaking breath, and walked into them.
This time, when they closed around her, she had the sensation that he would never let her go. With no barriers left between them, she could feel the abrasion of his body hair against her breasts and thighs. She could feel the heat of his skin, seeming to burn hers everywhere they touched, and the even greater heat and silkiness of that hungry part of him, pressed against her belly.
She wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in the hollow between his neck and shoulder, inhaling deeply of the musky scent of him. His hand came up to find her chin, lift it.
“I’ve wanted you,” he said, and the tip of his thumb stroked the soft line of her mouth. Anna’s lips parted helplessly. He smiled at her then, a sweet and tender smile that made her blood heat, and bent his head to her mouth.
Anna strained against him as he kissed her, holding him tightly, kissing him back. She felt his hands slide over the bare skin of her back, and closed her eyes at the sheer wonder of it. He stroked the indentation of her waist, the roundness of her bottom, the gentle curve of her thighs, with slow, sure strokes. By the time he gripped her bottom, cradling a silky half-moon in each hand, to pull her more fully against him, Anna was shaking as with an ague.
“Have you wanted me?” he whispered, sliding his mouth across her cheek to her ear, where he pulled the lobe into his mouth and nibbled it. Anna arched her neck to give him greater access, feeling her bones turn to water. Had she wanted him?
“Yes.” Like the rest of her, her voice was shaking. “Oh, yes.”
It was such an exquisite relief to admit the truth, to give in to her craving for him, not to fight her own feelings anymore. Had she wanted him? In that moment, Anna thought she would have walked over hot coals barefoot to get to him.
“Lovely, lovely Anna,” With one hard arm under her thighs and the other supporting her back, he lifted her off her feet and carried her the few steps to the bed. The covers were pulled back from where she had left it earlier; the pillow still bore the indentation of her head. Gently he laid her down on the cool sheet, then stretched out beside her and turned on one side, one hand propping up his head. His body was very dark against the white sheets; his eyes were blacker than the blackest midnight. With his foot he pushed to the floor the bedclothes that she’d earlier left all of a heap. She lay where he had placed her, naked, exposed, quivering. His eyes roamed over her, touched her breasts and belly and thighs. Then they lifted to meet hers. Dark fires blazed in them as they moved from her eyes to her mouth, drinking in each feature. One long-fingered hand reached out, so slowly, to smooth the tendrils of hair from her face.
Anna watched him, her eyes huge and vulnerable, her hunger for him plain in her face. He was being so gentle, so careful, but suddenly she wanted him to be neither. Her blood had heated to the point where it ran through her veins like raging lava, and she thought that if he didn’t put a speedy end to her torment she would be incinerated by her own desire.