Beneath him, Catriona clung to him, opened her body and heart to him, knowing full well this might be the last time. If she could have held him with sheer lust she would have-she burned with her need of him and was too desperate to hide it. Desire, unleashed, gave her strength-strength to challenge him on a field that had hitherto been his. Stroked and caressed and loved to flashpoint, still she urged him on-pushed him back and pressed her own wild caresses on him, placed hot, open-mouthed kisses all over his hard body, then, driven by her wildness, took him into her mouth.
And felt the shudder that racked him, the bone deep groan she drew from him.
She loved him with abandon, with her heart, with her soul. Until he, his hands sunk in her hair, helplessly guiding her, suddenly clutched and drew her away. Suddenly sat up, suddenly swung behind her.
And entered her from behind.
Her gasp hung like spun silver in the dark; she arched, clamping tightly about him-he pushed her down, and thrust deeper.
Ultimately, he was stronger-much stronger-than she.
He held her down and raced her straight up the mountain and into earth-shattering delight. Then waited only until her senses were hers again before pressing her on, up the next slope.
Through the dark hours he loved her as he would, and she was his willing slave. She wanted to be everything to him, so she gave all he asked, and offered more.
And he took. He drank from her until she thought she would die, then filled her relentlessly until she did. Until her senses were consumed in a blaze of glory, and she shattered beneath him.
They came together again and again, until there was nothing between them. No space, no feeling, no sense of separate existence. They became, in the dead of that night, one soul melded from the fusion of two.
The final end, when it came, shattered them both, but not even the force of that implosion could undo what the night had wrought.
Richard's return to life-to reality-was a slow, bitter journey.
He couldn't conceive how she could be as she was-so totally abandoned in his arms, yet quite prepared, come the time, to smile sweetly and wave him good bye.
Lips twisting in bitter self deprecation, he accepted that he had to have been wrong-that despite his expertise in this theatre, she was an exception. A woman who could love with her heart and soul, without, in tact, loving at all.
He was, it seemed, just like Thunderer-a stud whose physical attributes she appreciated.
She was wrapped half-about him, lying in his arms; he lifted his head and looked at her face, only barely discernible in the dark. She was still on her way back from heaven-he could tell by the lack of tension in her limbs. Lying back again, he waited for her to return to the living. And him.
When she did, however, she simply murmured sleepily and snuggled down, her head on his shoulder, her arm over his chest, one thigh intimately wedged between his.
Richard frowned. "I'll be leaving in the morning."
Catriona heard the words-words she'd been expecting-and felt them in her heart. She'd already heard from her staff of the packing and carriage arrangements. She hesitated for as long as she dared, while frantically wondering what he expected her to say. "I know," she eventually murmured.
The hard body beneath her stiffened fractionally, then, after a second, eased. His chest swelled.
"Well," he said, his tone
light but grating, "I suppose there really isn't anything more you need from me, now-at least, not for some time."
He paused; when, bewildered, she said nothing, he continued. "Now you have the child The Lady told you to get from me."
His bitterness rang clearly; bowing her head, biting her lower lip, Catriona accepted it.
She should have told him.
"I… " How to tell him it had slipped her mind? "Forgot." She rushed on "It's just that I've been so…"
"Busy?"
So caught up with him. Her temper flashed-a weak flame, but enough to sour her. She'd been so focused on him, she'd totally forgotten the one thing, the one being, that should have been at the center of her consciousness. If she'd needed any proof of how totally obsessed with him she was, how he completely overshadowed everything else in her life, she had it now.
She couldn't think of any response to his rejoinder, so she let it pass. Slowly, she drew her limbs from his and turned away.
Only to be swept by a desolate bleakness, a bone-deep sense of loss. They'd been cheated. A moment that should have been so special, so joyful and filled with love, had instead been soured by hurt and bitterness.