Exhausted, they slid to their knees. Under her palms, Matthew’s shirt clung to his damp back. The sharp scent of their coupling surrounded her. With a weary gesture, he rested his forehead on her shoulder and sucked air into his lungs. She smoothed his tousled dark hair, a gesture of aching tenderness after their unfettered passion. As her heart slowed and strength filtered back into her limbs, she leaned into him in silence.
The bleak fact of impending separation swam up through Grace’s dazed reaction.
How could she live without this? There would never be anyone like Matthew. Her hands curled into claws on his shoulders as if she dared anyone to take him away. Then deliberately, she relaxed her frantic hold.
What use defying a fate already ordained? They must part. That had been foretold from their first kiss.
Her body ached from his ferocious possession. Her face was wet with tears. She shifted to ease the pressure on her knees and touched his cheek. He’d shaved before dinner, but bristles already prickled her palm. By dawn, his face would abrade her skin like sand. She didn’t mind. She wanted him to mark her. Tonight more than ever.
“I love you, Grace.” He lifted his head and stared at her as though he etched each feature into his memory.
“And I love you,” she returned, needing to join in the old dance of vows given and returned. She never should have told him she loved him. Now she had, she couldn’t stop saying the words. “You make me forget everything but you.”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. She wanted to seduce him with the same ruthless single-mindedness he’d just demonstrated. But anguish and love surged up too strongly. Her lips softened and her kiss became an expression of endless longing instead of a brand of ownership. He sighed into her mouth and returned her kiss with a sad sweetness that sliced to her soul.
Slowly, with a sense of wonder her time as his lover had never lessened, she rose on her knees. With trembling lips, she kissed his brow, his eyes, his cheeks, the hard angles of his jaw, the pounding pulse in his neck. She wanted to claim every inch as hers.
Usually he led when they made love, but for now, he seemed content to allow her sway. He clasped her waist but made no other attempt to touch her.
She took her time, inhaling his lemony scent, tasting his warmth, listening to the slight hitches in his breathing as she anointed his skin with her mouth. This was their last night together and strangely that drew her to linger. She wanted this memory honed sharp as a new blade so it stayed with her for the rest of her life.
With each delicate touch, her heart whispered, “This I will remember. And this. And this.”
She slid his shirt up and over his head and let it fall to the floor. Her eyes feasted on the lean strength of chest and shoulders. The pattern of fine black body hair. The long powerful arms. The gleaming, bare skin that stretched across his bones.
Tonight, when she knew how little time remained, his masculine beauty hurt her like walking on broken glass. She drew in a shuddering breath and pressed her lips to the ridge of his collarbone then moved to kiss each hollow and curve of arms and torso.
Slowly, Grace. Slowly. Polish every moment like a diamond.
His breathing roughened with each brush of her mouth. The spicy scent of his arousal grew more piquant.
Her gentle, inexorable exploration teased, made him burn. Still he knelt before her and let her continue. He cared enough to allow her this freedom. The thought only made her love him more. And lent her courage.
She breathed in a lungful of air redolent of Matthew and slid behind him. His hands fell away from her as she shifted.
The sight of his ruined back always made her stomach knot in sick denial. How had he borne this abuse yet emerged as the wonderful man she loved? It was a miracle.
She paused, gathering her nerve, then very deliberately placed her mouth on the obscene scar that curled from his left shoulder blade to his right hip.
He recoiled as if she hurt him, although the wound had long ago knitted. “Grace, don’t,” he hissed in warning.
She leaned her cheek into his back. “I want to do this.”
“My scars should disgust you,” he said hoarsely. His long muscles were hard as iron with tension and shame.
“Never,” she said softly, her voice thick with emotion. “These are marks of bravery, Matthew. Wear them with pride. They make you the man you are, the man I love with all my heart.”
She trailed away into silence. Words were such frail vehicles to convey her love. She kissed the whiplash again, following its length until she reached the hard edge of his hip. Then carefully, methodically, tenderly, she moved around him and pressed her lips to every welt. Scars from the scourge. Scars whose cause she couldn’t identify. Scars that could only be burns. She dwelled over each patch of shiny white skin. It was as if by acknowledging his torture, she could leach away his pain, then and now.
With every kiss, her determination to save him firmed. Whatever it cost, she would defeat the fiends who had perpetrated this evil.
When she’d launched her act of homage, his body was stiff, resistant. But gradually, she felt him accept her touch, even move into it as though her love soothed his old agonies.
His ragged breathing, his beckoning heat, the taste of his skin stirred excitement low in her belly. She nibbled and licked her way across one shoulder to his bare chest. Her hand slipped forward to brush his nipple and she heard him bite back a groan. Under her palm, his heart raced in a crazy gallop. The slow seduction worked simmering magic on him as well as her.
With every kiss, forbidden curiosity tormented her. She’d kissed so much of him. Now she wanted to kiss all of him.
No! The idea was unholy. She’d never heard of such a thing. She couldn’t do it.