Stretching, he plucked the rose from the vase, stripped it of thorns with a Word, and tossed it upon her. Droplets of water beaded on her abdomen and she shivered. His aim had been true. The full blossom lay just above her tight right nipple.
Desire started a drumbeat cadence within him. The sight of her seared the memory of every other woman from his mind.
“Yes,” his voice came thick. “Exactly the same color.”
She blinked, and the cloudiness in her eyes cleared as she glanced down. And she blushed. Her cheeks, still pink with passion, flushed redder, and the blush flowed down her torso.
Delight mixed with desire in him. He bent and scooped her into his arms. “This time, the bedsponge,” he managed. He decided if he hurried, kisses could wait. If he started kissing her here, it wouldn’t be the sofa again, it would be the floor.
At least he hadn’t tumbled her to the floor. He ran to her bedroom, got an impression of a coral bedspread splashed with red poppies before he tore the thing aside and placed her on cream-colored sheets.
He caught his breath. Now the only color he saw was her hair and her eyes, the rose matching her nipples. He moaned, feeling his sex thicken and throb and rise, ready again. He’d been sure he could go slowly this time. He reached for the wisps of his mantra that eluded him when her eyelids lowered and she licked her lips.
Kissing. He remembered that much. His lips ached, nearly as much as his shaft, for the taste of her. He’d never kissed her after she’d climaxed. Surely her fulfilled passion would change the taste of her mouth and her skin.
He settled himself on his side next to her, groaning as his sex brushed her thigh. He held himself still until he regained a shred of discipline. He wanted to love her slowly. He hoped he could. His fingers traced the curve of her shoulder. Her body was beautiful, unflawed. Unscarred. Suddenly he was aware of his many scars, scars that emphasized the differences between them. She, a Healer, would never scar. He, a fighter, would gain scars by the year.
She touched his cheek with fingertips. “Holm,” she said.
His name on her lips, spoken with tenderness and desire, shot through him, moving him as nothing ever had before.
“That’s my name,” he said, slipping his hand behind her head to encompass the nape of her neck, raise her head, and bring her lips close for his mouth. He caressed her lips and tempted her to open them, then his tongue plunged into her mouth to conquer just as his body had claimed hers moments before. The need to bury himself again in her and link them physically, intimately, rushed through him, and he grabbed at self-restraint.
He opened the bond between them, wide, and found what pleased her most. When he sucked on her tongue, her whimper of pleasure pushed him to a new level of heated desire.
Slowly he withdrew from her mouth, and she raised her head to follow him, to rub his lips with her own, to tangle tongues in his mouth, and he knew when she trembled in delight at his taste.
It nearly undid him. Every second tested him.
He lifted his head, breaking the kiss, and glided his lips down the curve of her jaw to the hollow of her throat. Skin damp with perspiration greeted him, a touch of perfume and her own elusive taste. Not enough. Other places of her body would have their own tastes, and he needed to imprint them on his memory, to know in his soul every aspect of her taste. Something HeartMates knew, he now understood.
He would learn every note and tone of her voice. Every tint of her skin. Every scent of her body. Every millimeter of her under his hands, every sensation of her skin against his.
And he would start with taste.
Her heart slowed a bit and she shifted in surprise as she realized his intentions. Pink embarrassment fuzzed her mind.
He took in the fragrance and sweetness of the top of her breasts, touching on the tips and swirling his tongue to know this taste, reveling when her body arched to his mouth. Ah, he could tempt her with the pleasures he could teach her, he thought triumphantly—with wonder she was so unschooled in the many levels of passion.
Her essential taste was slightly stronger between her breasts and on the underside of them. He spent some time there, then nibbled with questing tongue to her belly.
Her hands curved around his shoulders and tugged. Her embarrassment was endearing, but irrelevant. He was on a mission.
From her thoughts, he knew that her husband had never tasted her womanflesh, never cherished it with his mouth, never brought her to ecstasy in that way. And she’d had no other lover.
Through his own thoughts he let her know the challenge was too much to resist, that nothing would stop him, that he would touch her as no other man had, body, mind, and heart.
His hands caressed her, exploring the curves and dips of her body, liking the fine turn of her collarbone, the soft smoothness of her skin, and the velvet plush of her nipples. He reveled in the sensations he gave her. She’d never forget his mouth or his touch.
She tugged on his hair, exciting him more.
He chuckled as he tasted more sweet Bélla-essence below her hipbones, held her wriggling body and sent the bolts of lust he felt through their tie until she quieted and her breathing came ragged and her heart pounded in the same beat as his own.
The scent and taste of her at the apex of her thighs pulled a growl from him. He smelled her, his woman. And he smelled himself, his mark on his woman, his seed, the results of the ecstasy they found together, and it was the most perfect smell in the universe. Once more his primal nature swamped all reason.
She lay still as if his emotions pulsing through their bond overwhelmed her. No remnant of embarrassment, only surrender to his touch and his will mixed with the rising passion twisting inside her.
Moving his hands from her hips to her thighs, he spread them wide. Up close he admired her womanly folds and the glistening proof of their union. He recalled the rose that matched the color of her most intimate flesh and ’ported it to just above her sex. He trembled at the sight.
With the utmost delicacy, he traced her with his tongue and her perfume exploded in his brain, demolishing all control. He reveled in the scent and taste and renewed moistness and softness against his face and arching of her body against his lips and the thundering in their blood and the swelling of his shaft and the demand of his own sex until she screamed and he tasted her climax and the instinct to mate seized him.
He rose and watched himself surge into her. The ripples of her body clasping him ignited the firestorm of orgasm.
As soon as his brain cleared from the most magnificent event of his life, Holm rolled to his side and pulled a limp and unresisting Bélla into his arms, curving his body around her. Shocks of renewed pleasure shivered through them both as their skin touched. He noted the wondering and sleepy tone of her mind and decided a nice little intimate nap would foster the complete bond that continued to weave them together.
“Sleep,” he whispered in a dark voice he knew could mesmerize. The fog of gray creeping over her thoughts thickened. “Sleep, you are safe with me, Bélla.”
“Safe,” she murmured.
“Cherished,” he said.
“Cherished?” Her mind started to spark with thought.
“Welcome,” he amended.
A slight laugh came from her. “You’re welcome, too, Holm.” She snuggled a little and fell asleep.
Finally relieved from the sexual pressure of the last several days, Holm slept.
He woke a septhour later with Bélla still in his arms. It was a very good sign that she hadn’t moved away from him in her sleep. Unconsciously, she must know they were HeartMates. Now all he had to do was convince her mind. He wished he’d thought to initiate the HeartBond, but that took one more thought than he’d had.
Unable to keep his hands to himself, he curved one hand around her hip and cupped her breast with the other, calculating how much more of the afternoon he could afford to while away with loving. Something furry moved against his hand on Bélla’s breast, and he recognized Meserv, also c
uddled against her. From the foot of the bedsponge came Phyll’s quiet snuffling.
Under his touch, Bélla awoke and stretched. When Holm brushed her mind, she refused entrance.
She was going to be difficult.
Fourteen
Holm sighed, then caught sight of the wreath that one of the kittens had dragged from Lark’s mainspace to the bedroom’s threshold and frowned. If he hadn’t placed a spell on the piece, it would have been ruined.
She hadn’t protected it. She’d made the wreath with particular flowers signaling that she was willing to have an affair with him, no more. He scowled.
Lark drew away and he turned her to face him. At least she didn’t resist that. Her expression showed vulnerability before she shuttered it, and tenderness welled.
“The blooms are wrong, Bélla,” Holm muttered. He reached out to toy with glossy black strands of her hair, assessing how soon he could love her again and what position he’d try.
“Hmmmm?” she said, shifting. Her breasts plumped out on the bedsponge, and made his voice fail and thoughts vanish.
He sucked in a breath to savor the lingering scents of the room, his woman and himself and their joining, the fragrance of roses and the faint hint of the spicy flowers that graced his wreath. Ah, the wreath.
He cleared his throat. Her deep purple eyes met his. “Your wreath speaks of desire.”
She smiled smugly and her eyelids dropped. The tips of her fingers touched his chest, trailed against him as if enjoying the consistency of his hair. “Yes,” she said. “Flaming desire. Hot passion. Greedy sex, or sexy greed.” She laughed up at him, tilting her head. He appreciated the smooth line of her long white throat. “I’m a little befuddled,” she ended.
He’d never seen her so soft and relaxed and open. So he hesitated to bring up a subject that might push her away, but he wanted her to know that he’d be in her bed that night.
He inhaled again and refused to let the exquisite scent distract him. “Yes. Passion. Desire. But”—he narrowed his eyes as he tried to recall the flowers that spoke of something more. The quickly fading flowers. The short-lived flowers.
Catching her chin in his fingers, he watched her eyes open wide and note his seriousness. “But intertwined with the An’Alcha passionflowers are dayferns, fragile Moonbeams. Flowers that die in a few hours.”
She arched her brows. “Yes?”
“This is not a simple affair, Bélla. Not short.”
Wariness came to her eyes and he hated putting it there.
At that moment the music swelled from soft and steady to singing joy.
“The music,” he said, working for smooth words to say to a woman for the first time in his life.
“It’s lovely,” she responded as she had earlier in the day.
He looked steadily at her. “It’s new. Composed by my Mamá just last night when I informed her I was courting a woman to be my—wife.”
Shock jolted through Lark. “Wife?” she squeaked. She squeezed Meserv too hard and he mewed a protest. She didn’t know what to think. Of course Holm would need a wife to carry on the Family name.
“I’m serious, Bélla. And my intentions are honorable.”
She caught her breath. “Our problems are insurmountable.”
He opened his mouth.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to have this conversation naked in bed with you. This is serious.”
“Of course it’s serious, but I do my best persuasion in bed.” He smiled with patent charm.
She shook her head, but felt heat creep into her cheeks. She suspected that he could persuade a woman to do anything if he was in bed with her. She wondered how long she could keep him satisfied, then blinked as she remembered that they were actually discussing marriage. He’d be a faithful husband, the Hollys always were, HeartMates or not.
“I’m going to the waterfall,” she said, using Flair to ’port to the cubicle. At a Word, the waterfall shot over the wide granite ledge above her and poured down. The music D’Holly had written matched and mingled with the water.
Marriage! She’d been married before, married for love—or what she thought was love, but Holm—she cut that thought off at the start. Marriage. Ethyn.
Ethyn Collinson had been the most innately gentle man she’d ever known. Now she understood it had been the contrast with her Father’s inflexibility that had drawn her to Ethyn.
His sweet smile, his intelligence, and the strength of his Healing Flair that so complemented her own, all combined in one man; a common man with no Noble arrogance had proved to be impossible for Lark to resist.
She was being tempted—when her tumbled thoughts were not being swayed by her weak body—with an actual marriage offer from one of the most confident, virile, and powerful men on Celta. A man she wasn’t even sure she respected. Oh, he had Flair enough, and cleverness, and honor—She stopped. Ah, the quality that redeemed him, his own sense of honor. An honor she believed he’d never betray. He’d follow all the rules and laws that governed everyone on Celta.
But marriage? How could such a blazing passion between them allow for anything other than a short affair? Not to mention the feuding of their Families. She winced. She’d actually forgotten that basic fact the moment Holm stepped into her apartment.
His mind reached for hers. “Bélla,” he called from outside the door.
She refused to let him have an open current between them, yet knew there existed a link on a basic level she couldn’t reject or deny.
“I’ll be right there!” she replied, using a whirlwind spell to dry and clothe her.
When she walked into the mainspace, he was lounging on the sofa, stroking its arm, with half-lidded eyes and a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. She tried to dismiss the hard thump of her heart at the sight of him. His shirt was open at the chest, but his breeches and boots were on. She knew they could vanish at a word.
The kittens stretched out on the back of the couch.
She summoned two icyblacktea cylinders from the no-time and brought one to him.
His eyebrows rose as he took it, making sure their fingers touched. “Being a hostess, Bélla? Retreating behind manners?”
Lark compressed her lips and chose a chair at an angle to the sofa. She was not getting on that couch again with Holm.
They sipped in silence, and Lark found herself too restless to sit. Leaving her half-full drink, she stood and drifted to a window. She didn’t really see the courtyard gardens, but was intensely aware of Holm.
She heard the small click as he set his own cylinder down, then the slight intake of his breath.
“Open to me, Bélla.”
“No.” But she turned to face him.
He smiled lopsidedly. “Our previous rules of engagement, Bélla, physical or mental, but one connection.”
She hissed. The kittens looked at her admiringly.
With complete grace, Holm stood and strode to within a handspan of her, dominating her space. “You can order me from this apartment, and I will go, but it will not change the fact that there is something very, very strong between us. Do you want this unresolved before we meet at the ball, tonight?”
His scent crept into her nostrils, dazing her mind with remembered images of their passion. If he touched her, the craving for him and what he could give her would begin again. And if he held her, without passion but with the tenderness she felt underlying his demands, she would surrender utterly.
Appalled at the emotion he drew from her, she knew she’d gone too far to be cautious with him ever again, and too deep to be able to play a superficial lover. What had she done?
She couldn’t retreat. “Please,” she said unsteadily, not meeting his eyes. Lark edged open her mind and their bond flashed between them, golden and pulsing and strong.
She felt rather than saw him narrow his eyes and come to a decision. He withdrew to the sofa and she found she could breathe deeper and could meet his pewter eyes.
“No flash-white spar
ks from my Bélla. I am not pushing too hard,” Holm murmured.
He was right. She felt slightly constricted, but not the feeling he’d ever hold her against her will, that he’d cage her until she was wild to escape.
“Now, Bélla,” he tapped his long, elegant fingers against the sofa arm. “Marriage.”
She met his gaze squarely and lifted her chin, denying all the yearning that swelled up inside her. “Make it easy on yourself, Holm, choose another woman.”
His lips curved in a smile. “What ever made you think the Hollys want it easy?”
“Is that why you’re pursuing me? Because it’s difficult?”
Holm looked annoyed. “Well, men don’t want to have their courtship as complicated as mine, either. I simply want you to know that I won’t be backing off because of anything that happens between our Families.”
Her brows lowered. “Your Family doesn’t know you’re courting me.”
“Of course—”
She lifted a hand. “No, I believe they know you’re wooing someone, but not me, not a Hawthorn.”
The muscles in his shoulder shifted a minute amount. It was enough for Lark. “They don’t know,” she repeated.
His gaze remained steady. “You’re the woman, the Lady, I want as a wife. No other. My Family must accept that. Will accept it.”
“How can you say that. You love your Family—”
“And you don’t?”
“Of course I do.”
“So you know how much it hurts when you’re estranged. I’m sorry about that, Bélla.”
She ignored his gentleness. “This won’t work.”
“My Family won’t hate you because you’re a Hawthorn, Bélla. They don’t see just a Family when they look at a person, they see the individual.”
Heart Duel Page 16