“I really am interested in the roses,” she pronounced stiffly.
“Of course you are.” His tone was warm with humor, but this time when he moved forward, her hand firmly caught beneath his, she went without resistance.
They moved down the pea-gravel path to the glass house, where he opened the door, waiting for her to enter before following her in. Not many of the roses inside were still blooming, though all of them retained their green foliage. He stopped first beside a small shrubby plant, bristling with thousands of needlelike thorns. “Rosa gallica. Judging from its size and habit, this would be the Rose of Lancaster. It is the only rose that finds favor with Brother Martin, as it is also known as the Apothecary Rose.”
“And what of its bloom?”
“It blooms profusely. But only once.” He pointed to a similarly shaped shrub next to it. “This is Rosa Mundi. It is a Gallica, also, but its petals are striped with red.”
“I’ve seen this,” Kate said with an air of discovery.
“I dare say you have. They are a very ancient variety.” He moved on, passing several more low-growing plants before stopping beside one taller and with more elongated leaves than the others. “Here would be a Damask, brought to Britain from Persia.”
She leaned over to search for a bloom and was disappointed to find none. She straightened to find he’d moved close behind her. She could feel his breath stirring the hair at the nape of her neck.
She froze. Her heartbeat grew heavy as a drumbeat in her chest. From back and shoulder, to hip and thigh, she was tingling, alive to his proximity.
“When you sit at your toilette some far-distant morning”—his richly accented burr was a low purr, reaching into her thoughts and caressing her—“and dab some scent here”—he touched the side of her throat and her breath checked, on a gasp or a sigh she couldn’t have said—“or here”—his fingertips skated up her throat and stroked the tender skin behind her ear with gossamer lightness—“remember the roses sacrificed by the thousands to distill that fragrance, and grieve a little for their loss.”
He shouldn’t take such liberties. She shouldn’t allow him to. And yet she couldn’t seem to move. A sheath of awareness shimmered along her skin’s surface. His head dipped, his lips hovered inches above her throat. She trembled, swaying toward him.
“But isn’t that the way of it?” he whispered, the movement of his mouth causing his lips to flirt with the nape of her neck. “The world must sacrifice beauty for beauty’s sake.”
She held her breath, waiting for him to kiss her. He didn’t. She felt the teasing imprint of his smile against the curve where neck flowed into shoulder, and then he lifted his head, moved to her side, and secured her hand in his arm. Disappointment flooded through her. He started forward, and she went with him, a little breathless, much confused. He only guided her to a side path and from there to a patch of bushes as tall as she, their foliage silvery green dotted with bright persimmon-colored rose hips.
“Rosa alba,” he instructed as if he hadn’t touched her, as if she hadn’t leaned into his caress, willing him to give more. “Supposedly a Roman introduction. When it flowers, its blooms are, as you might guess, primarily white. This particular one would be alba semiplena, historically assumed to be the White Rose of York.
“Come along, I’m saving the best for last,” he said, taking her hand and pulling her beneath a small trellis covered in heavy green leaves. On the other side, a smaller path took them down a short, circuitous path where the green foliage grew brighter, glossier. Above them, the glass panes dripped with moisture, as if something breathing dwelt back here. The loamy scent of wet soil gave way to a different fragrance— not the clove spice of the roses she knew but a sweeter, more piercing aroma.
He stopped suddenly, smiling down at her, and lightly clasped her shoulders. Then he spun her around, pulling her sharply back against him and clamp his hands over her eyes. She reached up, disconcerted.
“Wait,” he said.
He moved forward into her, herding her with his body as he covered her eyes, forcing her to either walk or endure the intimacy of his thighs against her buttocks. Tension swirled up her throat, and another sort of tension pooled in her belly as the half-remembered pangs of desire taunted her with their slow reawakening.
It wasn’t more than a few seconds; it seemed like hours. Even through his shirt, she gauged the exact degree of heat he radiated, felt the impression of each long finger covering her eyes, was cognizant of his lower body brushing against her skirts and, mortifyingly, knew she sought the evidence of his own desire in that contact, and even more humiliatingly, felt the thrill of undeniable feminine triumph when she felt him, hard and aroused, against her.
Finally he stopped. His velvet lips swept against her ear. “ ‘And I will make thee beds of roses. And a thousand fragrant posies.’ ”
A scarred young soldier who quoted Christopher Marlowe? She could not make the pieces fit. His hands dropped away, and she opened her eyes and promptly forgot her consternation.
They stood in a small bower of greenery spangled over with sprays of bright golden yellow roses, their heavy heads bobbing in the slight movement of air. She took a step forward, and the lush fragrance she’d noted before swept up and over her. She looked down. She’d stepped on a carpet of glistening petals, crushing their ambrosial silkiness and releasing an otherworldly scent that filled her nostrils.
“What are they?” she breathed. “How can they be blooming now? Is it magic?”
“Of a sort. These are the children of the rose we brought your family.”
“Children?”
“The offspring of your rose and a bonny Damask lady, a perpetually blooming rose.”
“It never stops blooming?” she asked, reaching up to a spray of flowers. At once a shower of golden petals fluttered down, shimmering in the light. She drew back sharply and looked over her shoulder to find Kit watching her, an unreadable expression on his face.
“Nothing blooms forever.”
His simple denial touched Kate with melancholy. Time moved on. Roses died. Worlds changed. Winter always came. She reached out from her side and plucked a single blossom from the branch.
Ah, yes. The magic was fading. Seen close, the satiny petals were lightly rimmed with brown; the dewy center had lost color and was more translucent than gold.
“It’s sad, isn’t it?”
He understood. He moved toward her. This time she didn’t shy away from him like some scared sleek little cat. She stood quietly, pensively regarding the flower. He reached over her head and gave the branch a sharp tug, sending cascades of petals down to veil her dark hair and cloak her shoulders. She looked up at him in surprise.
“Kiss me,” he said.
She drew back, and he followed her; when she would have darted past him, he reached out, grabbing hold of the trellis and barring her way.
“You said I would have nothing to be afraid of.”
“Are you afraid?”
“I think I am.”
“You needn’t be,” he said, striving for a calm, light tone. He wanted her. He had never wanted anything as much as he wanted to taste her mouth, to bury his hands in her jet hair, and crush her to him. But he wouldn’t. “But I cannot help it if you choose to be afraid of nothing.”
“You are not nothing.”
She’d brokered a twisted smile from him after all. “But I am. Nothing to you. Just an anecdote to recall some day when you are bored.”
She blushed furiously, hating that his words so closely echoed her earlier thoughts. But she had never intended him to be the anecdote. Never that. She couldn’t stand for him to think otherwise.
“And if I kiss you, you will let me go?”
“I’ll let you go whether you kiss me or not,” he said. “I am simply pressing my suit.”
“Really?”
“Really.” To prove his point, he dropped the arm barring her way. She looked at him, trying to read his heart in his eyes. But that he kept well guarded, secret even from himself, so how could she hope to divine its intent? And that, finally, is what decided her. He was too dangerous, after all.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, ducking her head and scooting past him.
He grabbed her wrist, spun her around, and pulled her into his arms. She had a glimpse of arctic eyes burning with emotion, of his face set in rough and hungry lines.
“Don’t hurt me.”
He canted back as if she’d struck him, but then…
“Christ!” he muttered thickly and seized her head between his big, scarred soldier’s hands. She closed her eyes tightly and waited, unable to control her shaking but perversely wanting this now that the moment was here, now that all choice had been stripped from her.
“Damn it!” He swore again under his breath, harsh, angry, rough words.
“Please.”
He kissed her, at first nothing more than a touch of his lips as soft as the petals under their feet. A whisper caress of his mouth, utterly unexpected, utterly undoing her. With exquisite tenderness he siphoned her breath from her, gently, softly, brushing his lips over hers again and again, sweet… but sinful, each kiss milking her of her will, stealing her thoughts and burying them in sensation. He paused to tease each corner of her mouth, then with shattering delicacy drew the tip of his tongue down her neck in a slow, melting path and… oh, dear God! Deliberately, he licked the pulse fluttering in the hollow at the base of her neck.
Her knees went then. She flung her arms around his neck to keep herself from slipping to the floor.
“Kiss me. Once. One kiss,” he muttered urgently, shifting one arm around her waist to support her. With his free hand, he looped her braid around his fist and tugged her head back, making her neck more accessible to him.
“What can it mean to you?” he demanded hoarsely. “Why wouldn’t you— Please. Don’t make me take. Give.”
She wanted nothing else.
Her mouth opened beneath his, hungrily answering the heated demand of his kiss. With a dark sound of want, she gave herself over to his embrace, wrapping her arms more tightly around his neck, her fingers spearing through the cool, silky hair as she returned his kiss. A pleased sound rumbled up in his chest as his mouth slanted across hers, his tongue sweeping deeply into her mouth.
A riptide of want seized her, surging in her, through her, propelling her toward a crescendo, a crest, long suspected, never quite achieved. She felt his hands race down her back to clasp her hips and pull her abruptly into him. Longing became need, coursing out from and into that apex of her thighs. The sudden, potent pleasure vanquished coherent thought, and she became a creature dedicated to fulfilling her body’s demand for satisfaction.
It had been so long. Too long.
She pulled his head down, wanting more, more lush tongue mating, and more heated, breath-ending kisses. More of him, big and hard and yearning, straining with desire, a torch to the dry tinder of the years, needs she’d never recognized let alone voiced. She wanted… She wanted…
“No.” His hands clamped onto her shoulders in a painful grip. Roughly, he pushed her away. She stumbled, and if not for his hands gripping her arms, she would have fallen. Uncomprehendingly, she gazed up into his angry, strained face, still too caught in the web of desire to feel any embarrassment yet, or to feel anything other than confusion and frustration.
“What do you mean?” she asked, disoriented by the sudden shift, the rent in the fabric of pleasure.
“I swore you’d find no harm at my hands.”
“Is this harm, then?” she asked breathlessly, searching his glittering green eyes. She didn’t believe it.
His face tensed with some inner turmoil, and when he spoke it was through clenched teeth. “Yes.”
She frowned. Reached out to touch him. He flinched as if her fingertips would burn him. “But—”
“Damnation!” he exploded. “Ten minutes ago you were begging me not to hurt you, and now, Mrs. Blackburn”—he said her name as if, in calling her by her husband’s surname, he had erected a physical barrier between them—“now I am endeavoring to do as you bid me.”
Each word was bitten off, hard and rife with control, and he held his body as unyielding as his tone. “I won’t hurt you. I swear it. But, the devil take it ”—his voice shook—“it would prove a great deal easier if you would aid rather than hinder that effort!”
“Oh.”
Oh. His body felt exposed and raw. The simple kiss he’d thought to use as an antidote against her allure had proved lethal, shattering his intentions and nearly bringing him to his knees with desire for her.
He’d been deceiving himself, and he’d known it from the first: Kate wasn’t like any other woman. She didn’t taste or feel or move under his hands or mouth like any other woman. No other woman in the world, no matter how many he bedded or what exotic bents he pursued, would ever be her. The knowledge was a torment, and he cursed himself for so willingly being a victim of his self-delusions.
He stared at her, and his hands dropped abruptly away, knowing that if he held her an instant longer, he’d drag her back into his arms and— He closed his eyes, fighting primal instinct. If only his senses would stop working. If only he couldn’t see the ripe, nearly bruised color of her mouth and hear the breathy catch in her voice. If only he didn’t smell the faint astringent tang of her soap mixing with the heady fragrance of the crushed roses. If only he didn’t still feel the satiny cool fall of her hair between his fingers. But his senses still worked. He still thirsted.
Kisses only fed the appetite that had been born three years ago in her father’s barren drawing room and that he’d nurtured during long marches in the blasted furnace of the Indian desert. Imagination was supposed to have been better than the reality. That’s what he had always told himself. But it had been a lie. Her mouth, sweet and rich, her body, supple and warm—nothing in his imagination compared to the last few minutes.
And all she could say was “Oh.”
He could either laugh or go mad. So he laughed.
She blinked up at him, the hazy disconnected glow in her dark eyes slowly growing sharper. The languid, questing expression dissolved, replaced by an unreadable, and therefore utterly feminine, one. She stepped back.