Tears?
She blinked hard, but didn’t shift her gaze from his. “Please. Don’t leave me.”
Her voice broke on the words.
Something inside him did, too.
His resolve, his certainty, shattered.
He wanted her so much he could barely think, yet the last thing he should do was sink into her soft heat, take her, claim her, like this, now. But he wasn’t proof against the need in her eyes, a need he couldn’t place, but knew he had to fill.
About them, the house was silent, still. Outside the window, night had fallen. They were alone, draped in shadows, naked on a wide bed.
And she wanted him inside her.
He drew a deep breath, bowed his head, then abruptly pulled back and sat up.
“All right.”
One part of his mind was bellowing: “Don’t do it!” The thunder in his blood, and even more a wave of emotional conviction drowned it out.
He unfastened his trousers, then stood to strip them off. Glanced back at her as he straightened, met her eyes. “Just remember this was your idea.”
She smiled a soft madonna’s smile, but her eyes remained wide, watchful. Waiting.
He looked at her, then looked around, stalked to where her clothes had fallen and swiped up her gown. Shaking it out, turning the skirts inside out, he returned to the bed. Dropping beside her, he scooped her hips up in one arm and spread the skirts beneath her.
Glanced at her face in time to see one delicate brow arch upward, but she made no comment, simply settled back again.
Met his eyes. Still waiting.
Read his thoughts as she often did. “I’m not going to change my mind.”
He felt his face harden. Felt desire rip through him. “So be it.”
Chapter Nine
She had cooled; he hadn’t. He seriously doubted she had any idea of what she did to him, to what level she called to him, especially with them naked in the dappled dark, alone in an essentially empty house.
It was impossible to shake the aura of illicit danger; it was so much a part of him, he didn’t even try. She wanted this, knowingly. As he stretched beside her, propped on one elbow and reached for her, he didn’t try to hide anything, any part of him, from her.
Least of all the dark, primitive desire she evoked.
Their eyes had adjusted long ago; they could see each other’s faces and expressions, even, given they were so close, the emotions in each other’s eyes. He sensed the trepidation that quivered through her as he drew her to him. At the same time read the determination in her face, and didn’t pause.
He kissed her, not as he had before but as a lover who had been given free rein. He entered like a conqueror, laid claim as he wished, laid waste to her senses.
Initially passive, waiting to see, Leonora instinctively rose to his challenge. Her body stirred, came alive once more; she lifted one hand, and speared her fingers once more into his hair.
And clung tight as, once again, the flames erupted between them. This time, he made no effort to hold them, contain them; instead, he let them rage. Deliberately sent them raging with each possessive sweep of his hard palms as he shaped her body beneath his, as he claimed every inch of her softness, explored at will, even more intimately.
She shuddered, and let him. Let him sweep her into the fiery sea, the conflagration of desire, passion and simple, unavoidable need.
He touched her in ways she had never imagined, until she clung and sobbed. Until she was awash with heat and longing, with desire burning so fiercely she felt literally on fire. He shifted over her, spread her thighs, and settled between. In the deepening d
arkness, he was literally a god, powerful and intent as, braced above her, he looked down on her. Then he bent his head and took her mouth again, and his sheer vitality—the fact he was all hard muscle and bone, and hot, heated blood—captured her.
The crinkly roughness of his haired skin chafed, abraded, reminded her how soft her own skin was, how sensitive. Reminded her how vulnerable and defenseless she was against his strength.