The disconnect between the desperation of his thoughts and her luminous beauty was so shocking that for a moment he couldn’t speak.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
The concern in her voice made the ache in his chest spread out like an oil spill, and suddenly the need to confess was like a weight in his stomach.
But could he tell her? Could he tell Nia the truth about why he had backed her into a corner, forced her to choose between her family and an unknown, uncertain future with a man she had known for only a little over six months?
Thinking about the tangle of fresh starts and failures that had made up his childhood, he felt his spine tense.
He wouldn’t even know where to begin.
And there wasn’t time to unravel everything.
Not right now. Not when all he wanted to do was spin out these precious moments with her, with this beautiful woman he had loved and lost, before morning came and he had to lose her again.
‘I’m fine. I was just getting a glass of water.’
Her eyes were fixed on his face, soft and questioning, and he knew she wanted to believe his words.
And yet this was not a normal night for either of them.
Should he tell her about his life? About the loneliness and the rejection? About how for most of his childhood he had felt like an unwanted birthday present that was always being regifted?
Watching her hover in the doorway, he tried out a few sentences in his head. But then his gaze dropped from her face to the pale curves of her breasts, then lower, to the tiny thistle tattoo, and a beat of pure dark need pulsed across his skin.
The time for talking was over.
Right now he wanted—needed—to blank out his mind to everything except the feel of her mouth on his and, walking swiftly across the room, he kissed her hungrily, nudging her backwards into the warm darkness.
Nia woke to the sound of someone humming.
No, not someone. Farlan.
Rolling over, she gazed blindly across the room as memories of the night before spilled into her head.
Farlan.
She felt her face grow warm. Her body felt almost weighed down with a kind of languid satisfaction and, shifting onto her side, she pressed her thighs together, feeling a pleasurable chafe of ten
derness.
Last night had been like a febrile erotic dream, every movement, every touch rich and enticing.
They had kept on reaching for each other, their mouths and hands insistent, stirring, tormenting, pleasuring one another.
It had been as though they’d both understood that time was short.
Without saying so out loud they had known that this was one night of bliss they could steal back from time, suspended, separate somehow, from the onward progress of minutes and hours.
Had known that when it was morning they would wake, and the dream would fade away, and they would go back to their separate lives.
Across the room, the pale square of the window was clearly visible behind the curtains. She hugged the blanket closer. It was morning already.
Her heart contracted.
Last night it had been so simple. Reaching for one another had been all that was required. They hadn’t thought further than that. Sex had been both the starting and the finishing line.
Remembering the feel of his mouth on hers, she shivered beneath the blanket.