She wants you, an insidious little voice said inside his head as he turned over again. You could have her. It would be so easy.
Easy in one way, yes. Juliana loved him, and she would give him her body as willingly as she had given him her heart. He could make love to her as he’d yearned to do for the past two years. But he’d been having this same argument with himself—and winning—for those same two years. He wasn’t falling into that trap now.
Because he knew himself, knew his constant nature. Knew he was like the first Andre Alexei, who had loved his Eleonora beyond all reason, even unto death. Making love to Juliana would seal his fate...and hers. He could never make love to her until it meant as much to her as it meant to him. Until she knew there could be no going back after that moment. Until she acknowledged she belonged to him the same way he belonged to her.
Forever and a day.
Eventually he dozed fretfully, only to dream of her. Come to me, Juliana, he dreamed. Come to me.
He woke to the sound of hoofbeats and a horse neighing softly. At first he thought he’d dreamed it, although that wasn’t how his dreams usually ended. Then he heard a voice that was both dream and reality calling his name. He pulled on his riding breeches and was outside the cottage even before she’d dismounted.
“What are you doing here, Juliana?” he demanded harshly, his hand automatically grasping the reins below the bridle. She just gazed down at him in the moonlight, and she didn’t have to say a word. He knew. “No,” he told her, steeling himself against temptation.
She slid off her horse’s back before he could stop her, and then she was standing so close to him he could feel her trembling. “Please,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I know you want me, too. I know it. I heard you calling to me. I can’t go away without...”
“No,” he said again, leading her horse to the tiny stable, putting distance between them as he cared for the horse. When he looked up from his task she was nowhere in sight.
“Juliana?” he called, but she didn’t answer. He put the currycomb down and walked outside. Still no sign of her. But the door to the cottage was open the way he’d left it when he’d come outside. And he knew where she’d gone. “No,” he whispered to himself. But the insidious little voice inside his head insisted, Yes. Yes!
The open doorway pulled him, lured him, and when he stood on the threshold he saw by moonlight what he’d known in his heart he would see. Juliana was sitting on the edge of the single bed, her clothes a pile on the floor where she’d dropped them in her haste to disrobe. If she’d been completely naked he might have been able to resist her. But she’d pulled the cotton top sheet so it was draped over the most vulnerable parts of her body, and that one insecure gesture pierced his defenses as nothing else could have.
“Juliana...” he said helplessly, his body reacting in predictable fashion, blood pooling between his thighs, until he could count his heartbeats in the pulses.
“Please, Andre...I love you...and I have to know...”
From the safety of the doorway he said in a guttural voice, “You do not know what you are asking.”
Her face resolved into a maturity that was unexpected, and the pleading look changed into determination. “Yes, I do know,” she told him quietly in the voice of a woman, not a girl. “If you care for me at all, don’t let me leave tomorrow without knowing what it means to be yours...just once. Please give me tonight. And let me give you tonight, too.”
It swept over him like a tidal wave, the wanting and not having, the desire to hold her tight and never let her go, the need to show her how precious she was to him. And something more. The sure knowledge that he could no more walk away from the gift she was offering than he could walk out of his skin. He was shaking with the force of his desire, but one shred of sanity remained. One last chance for both of them. If he could make her run...
He quickly unzipped his riding breeches and stripped them off, letting her see him naked, letting her see the enormity of his need. Then he slowly walked toward her, until he stood only a step away. “This is what you are asking for, little one,” he said softly, grasping himself crudely. “Is this really what you want? Me, inside you?”
He had hoped to shock her with his words, his size, with the realization of what was to come and the very real possibility of pain, but he was the one who was shocked. Without hesitation she reached out a hand and touched him, and a spark of electricity passed between them. Andre felt her touch everywhere, sizzling through him, leaving him gasping. His erection swelled even more, the skin feeling as if it would burst. And then it was too late. It had already been too late from the moment he’d seen her wearing nothing but moonlight and a cotton sheet.