He took her mouth, trying with the gentle play of his lips to express what he was feeling. And Selena responded in kind. When his kiss questioned, asking forgiveness, hers answered and gave it. When his tongue sought hers, stirring and soothing, she matched him with an abandoned intimacy. Yet when his kiss deepened, promising pleasure and lavish sensuality, hers did more; it vowed peace. Kyle accepted her unspoken pledge cautiously, his body trembling with the powerful sensations it engendered.
His vulnerable response resto
red some of her shaken confidence. With love for him welling inside her, she reached up to hold his face with her slender hands.
He could think of only one thing. Yes… Yes, touch me, Moonwitch, with your cool hands and quicksilver passion. Take me inside you, into your serene world of shadows and silver-bright light....
His breathing altered, and his lips moved to her hair as he drew off her nightdress. When he had shed his dressing gown, he joined her quickly, wanting and finding the fulfillment she’d promised; her mouth was welcoming, her body completely yielding to his as he possessed her.
And Selena quivered in turn as she dissolved into throbbing, impassioned need. He filled her completely, moving over her, within her, unraveling the hard knot of doubt and pain.
Later, as they lay entwined, their skin damp and clinging, their heartbeats gradually slowing, Kyle finally let his drifting mind focus on the turmoil that had raged inside him from the first time he’d met Selena.
He’d once thought it was his son he was fighting for. But he’d been fighting against himself, Kyle realized suddenly. Against the admission that he needed and wanted Selena.
Yet to be truthful, it had never been much of a battle. He’d lost it the moment he’d kissed her on the streets of St. John’s.
And having admitted that to himself, he could at last accept what he’d been too stubborn or too blind to see. His heart was irrevocably committed to Selena. He loved her.
Kyle’s mouth fashioned in a twisted smile as he finally recognized the powerful emotion he’d been unable, perhaps unwilling to name. He had never thought he would find love; he’d always expected it to be something tantalizing and elusive, like Selena herself. Instead, it was like a tempest at sea, and it frightened him… both the force of it and the power it held over him.
The trouble was, fear at sea could be deadly. He would have to face it, Kyle knew. But that he could handle. What scared the blazes out of him was the possibility that Selena didn’t return his feelings.
He tensed, his arms tightening around Selena as he remembered what she’d said about losing someone she loved.
“What was his name?” Kyle murmured suddenly in the silence.
Selena’s head moved on his shoulder as she lifted a puzzled glance. “Whose name?”
Feigning nonchalance, Kyle raised a lock of her silken hair to his lips. “The man you were betrothed to.”
“Edward.”
Kyle took a deep breath. “You said you loved him.”
“Yes,” she answered after a brief nod.
Kyle longed to ask how much she had loved this Edward, but he couldn’t frame the question. He wanted to know precisely how deep that love had been and how it compared to what she felt for him…if she felt anything at all. He wanted her to soothe the savage jealousy that was raging in his breast. But his own feelings were too new, too raw and tender to risk rejection.
And so instead of pressing her, he merely held her close in a wordless embrace.
“Why did you ask about Edward?”
Her tone was tentative, questioning, but he only murmured a disclaimer as he moved his lips gently against her hair. “I was curious.”
Yet even as he said it, Kyle made a vow to himself: he would make her forget, if he could, the man she had loved. And with that vow came the fragile hope that he might someday succeed in winning Selena’s love for himself. Until now it hadn’t really been a fair test. He had never attempted to woo Selena or to earn her regard. He had done nothing to prove himself worthy of her. Indeed, at the beginning of their brief marriage, he had virtually ignored her in his effort to keep his distance and maintain his sanity.
But all that would change.
He would pursue her with every skill he possessed, with every ounce of charm and gallantry he could muster. He would court Selena properly, the way she deserved....
Hearing her soft sigh, Kyle shifted his weight to gaze down at her, at her quicksilver eyes, which were searching his so intently. And as tenderly he brushed back the cloud of pale hair from her face, he renewed his vow. He would make Selena love him. And then he would ask her to share his bed, his children, his life.
July, the onset of full summer. How could such a short span of time make such a difference in one’s life? Selena wondered as she reread the letter from her friend Beth in Antigua.
Beth had written a lengthy epistle full of news from the island, including a postscript that said Selena’s stepmother, Edith, was expected to snare Avery Warner any day—a just reward, Beth declared, since they deserved each other. Yet only now, while Kyle was out in the fields and the girls had scattered to pursue their own amusements, had Selena found time to pen a reply.
Her thoughts, as they had countless times during the past week since the night Kyle had come to her bed, soon turned to Kyle and her marriage, to her happiness, which ran quiet and deep. Her days were filled with small pleasures—pleasures that were sharpest when shared with Kyle…a glance, a smile, a brushing of hands. Her nights were filled with ecstasy.