Why now, in this timeless, enchanted moment, when he thought he’d been granted a brief reprieve from his greatest sin, did he have to relive it? Cruel timing, just when he was about to… had been about to…
“Christ.” It would be a pointless effort now, his erection having waned.
“Luke?”
He opened his eyes and saw her sitting up and looking at him, her gaze full of concern. With one hand she held her kirtle closed; the other reached for him. He instinctively recoiled from her touch.
“Luke?” Thunder exploded again, accompanied by a burst of lightning. Her beautiful face tightened with worry. She moved toward him, her arm outstretched.
He stood abruptly. “I have to go.”
Her eyes were huge. “Go?”
“Faithe…” He dragged his hand through his hair, loosening it from its braid. What could he say? How could he possibly make this all right?
For an endless moment she stared at him, wide-eyed in the heavy darkness. And then her face took on a horrible stillness. The light left her eyes, her throat moved convulsively.
“Faithe.” Why was this happening? What could he do? What could he possibly say? He went to her and knelt in the straw, reaching out to gather her up while his mind raced to find words, any words, to explain why he couldn’t do this.
“Nay!” She jerked away from him, backing up hurriedly and gaining her feet as she clutched the bodice of her kirtle with both hands. “Don’t touch me.” It wasn’t her anger that twisted the knife in his gut, but the chill in her gaze, a detachment that had never been there before. He’d pushed her too far. She was closing herself off to him.
“Oh, God, Faithe.” Luke rose on unsteady legs, raking the hair out of his eyes. He’d never begged in his life, but he begged now, in a raw, choked voice. “Don’t do this. Please. I couldn’t bear it. I need you.”
“You need no one. You’ve never needed anyone, least of all me.”
His chest shook with a kind of tragic laughter. Not need her? She’d given him his heart; she was his heart. She’d made him human again. Without her, he’d revert into the beast he’d once been. “Dear God, Faithe, if you knew how untrue that was…”
“Then why can’t you—” Her voice caught in her throat. “Why?” Her chin wobbled; her eyes shimmered. “Why? I don’t understand. Explain it to me. Can you just explain it to me?”
“Don’t cry,” he said gruffly, taking a wary step toward her.
She sidestepped him and lifted her chin, making a heartbreaking effort to compose herself. “Fear not, my lord. I’ll make every effort not to cry in front of you again.”
“Faithe…” He buried his face in his hands. God, think of something to say. You can’t lose her. You can’t let this happen.
“You wanted me to trust you,” she said in a wavering voice. When he uncovered his face, she was studying him with that dreadfully remote gaze, one fist keeping her kirtle together, the other clutching her skirt. Unshed tears pooled in her eyes. “You didn’t want me on just any terms. You wanted me willing. You wanted me to want you. You said… you said our marriage may have been a coldhearted arrangement, but that didn’t mean it had to be a coldhearted marriage. And I believed you.” A huff of bleak laughter escaped her.
“Faithe…”
“Fool that I am, I believed you. I thought you wanted…” She faltered, covering her mouth with her hand as tears slid from her eyes.
“I did. I do.” Luke took a step toward her, and she took a step back.
She rubbed her cheeks with her sleeve. “Perhaps you actually believe that. But I’m not so deluded, not anymore. How can our marriage be anything but coldhearted? You haven’t got it in you to make it otherwise.”
“You’re wrong, Faithe.”
“Am I? I took you at your word, Luke. I took a chance. I opened myself to you. I gave you everything that was in me, more than I’ve ever given anyone, simply because you asked for it. You made me take off my armor, but yours is welded on tight. That’s why you can’t…” She glanced toward the nest of straw where they had lain. “You don’t want me that close to you. Deep inside you, there’s a place I’ll never touch. But you touched me, Luke.” Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, hated tears that she couldn’t bear to shed in his presence, but couldn’t seem to stop. “You made me fall in love with you.”
She loved him. She loved him! Joy and despair warred dizzily within him.
“That was cruel of you,” she added grimly. “You didn’t have to make me love you.” She tried to sweep past him. He grabbed her arm. “Let me go!”
“I can’t.” He knew if he let her go now, it would never be the same between them. They would have crossed a line, shattered the fragile bond they’d forged. That bond was all he had; his whole world was built around it. He couldn’t lose it.
“What do you want from me, Luke?” She tried to wrestle out of his grasp. “How much more do you mean to take from me? When will it be enough?”
“Faithe, be still. Let me try to explain—”
“Your words mean naught to me. Actions are more telling by far.”
He nodded slowly. “You’re right. I’ve been a fool.” His sins be damned. Caedmon be damned. All Luke had been and done, all his remorse and torment, all that had gone before be damned and forgotten. The only thing that mattered now was Faithe and him, and he could think of only one way to renew their delicate bond. Why resist anymore what he wanted so desperately—what they both wanted? Banding his arms around her, he bent his head to kiss her, but she wrested it to the side.
“Save your kisses. Let me go!”
“Nay. You’re not leaving here until I’ve convinced you—”
A thunderclap crashed overhead, accompanied by a sputter of lightning; they both started. Faithe took advantage of the diversion to extract herself from his grip. Turning, she fled toward the entrance to the stall, but Luke leapt upon her before she could slip through.
“Let me go!” She fought him, lashing out wildly, raining frenzied punches on him until he pinioned her arms. Her fury took him aback; he must have mishandled things very badly to have driven her to this. Now he had to try and repair the damage, if only she would let him.
“Stop this!” he demanded, but she squirmed and kicked until he lost his balance, toppling over with his arms locked around her. He deliberately twisted as they went down, landing on his back in order to take the brunt of the fall himself, but the gesture was lost on her. She was like a savage thing, enraged and determined to get free.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and grabbed both flailing fists in one of his as she grappled with him. Her kirtle fell open as she struggled to rise off him, her breasts brushing heavily against his bare chest, along with the cold scrape of the keys. As she thrashed to get free, her hair fell across his face, inundating him with her scent; her hips ground against his. His body responded with a mindless resurgence of arousal, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“Be still!” he growled.
“Burn in hell!”
“I’m quite sure I will.” He rolled her onto her back and pressed her into the straw. Pinning her wrists above her head with one hand, he closed the other around her face, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Faithe, listen to me.”
She whipped back and forth beneath him, oblivious to the effect this was having on him. He was painfully erect beneath his braies, and it was all he could do to keep from thrusting against her.
“Let me go! I hate you!”
He brought his face close to hers to be heard over the rumbling of the thunder. The soft weight of her breasts, the silk of her skin, the scent and warmth of her, nearly robbed him of his self-control. “I love you.”
That seemed to confound her for a moment. She gazed searchingly into his eyes, then shook her head. “You don’t love me.”
“God help me, I do,” he rasped. “I do.”
“You don’t know the meaning of love.”
“Not before, perhaps, but I do
now. I love you, Faithe, and I can’t let you leave here thinking otherwise. I can’t lose you now. Christ, ‘twould kill me.” He kissed her quickly, before she could object, a fierce kiss of possession that she didn’t return.
“Words,” she ground out, trying vainly to free her imprisoned hands. “Words and kisses. They mean nothing. Let me go.”
He released her. She blinked in surprise when he raised her skirt and knelt between her legs, whispered his name in disbelief when he yanked open his braies and fell upon her.
“Why are you doing this?” she gasped, pushing futilely against his shoulders. “Because you think I want it?”
“We both want it. We both need it.” Luke wished she could rise above her rage and hurt long enough to see that.
“Nay, ‘tis naught but an act of pity. Let me go!” She struck out with her fists. He grabbed them and held them tight as she bucked beneath him.
“Don’t make me hold you down, Faithe.”
“Let me go!”
He shifted to position himself between her legs. “This” —he nudged her with his organ’s broad tip— “was hardly born of pity.” She felt slick and hot and very tight against him. She grew very still and closed her eyes.
Thunder reverberated as he whispered her name. She couldn’t have heard him, yet she opened her eyes and met his gaze as quavering flashes of lightning played over her. There was a clear-eyed calm about her—an understanding, an acceptance. Thank God.
Squeezing her hands, he flexed his hips, driving himself deep, deep inside her with one long thrust. Another blast of thunder swallowed up his shuddering groan. Faithe might have cried out; he couldn’t hear her. She threw her head back, her expression unreadable in the dark.
For one long, heart-stopping moment she lay inert beneath him, gripping his hands as tightly as he gripped hers. She felt impossibly snug where he was buried within her, and hot. How he’d hungered for this; how often he’d awakened, soaked with sweat and shivering on the edge of ecstasy, after dreaming of this. ‘Tis no dream this time. ‘Tis very, very real.
“I love you, Faithe,” he said shakily. “I do, I swear it to God.” He released her hands slowly, experimentally. Let her want this, Luke silently prayed. Please let her want this.
A crack of thunder made them both flinch. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close, her damp face pressed into the crook of his neck. Slipping an arm beneath her shoulders and curling the other around her head, he breathed incoherent words of comfort into her hair amid a flurry of kisses. She wants this. I know she wants this.
Lightning flared as the sky burst open. Rain sizzled onto the thatch—a hard, steady, cleansing rain that drained the sodden heaviness from the air. Within moments, it felt lighter, cooler; Luke could breathe deeply for the first time all day.
Faithe’s chest rose and fell slowly. She untucked her face to look at him. Her hazel eyes were transparent in the stormy half-light. Threads of rusty gold feathered out from her enormous pupils, like veins of precious ore trapped in polished crystals. The effect was striking, but it was the human warmth in their crystalline depths—the tender reassurance—that squeezed his throat with emotion.
She raised a tentative hand to his cheek and rubbed it lightly; his stubble rasped against her palm. His eyes stung suddenly; he shut them and lowered his forehead to hers. He tried to say her name, but choked on the simple word.
“Shh.” She slid her hands beneath his shirt and rubbed his back and shoulders. “Shh.”
He sank on top of her, inhaling the tranquil scents of rain and straw, almonds and thyme… listening to the rhythmic hush of her breathing, the constant pattering on the thatch… basking in the sweet, warm, limitless comfort of her body.
To lie so peacefully within a woman’s arms, while intimately connected with her, was a novel experience for Luke. Sex had always been a quick, primitive labor of lust. None of the women he’d paid to release that lust had ever stroked his back with cool, gentle hands, or whispered soothingly into his ear. None of them had loved him. Nor had he loved them. He’d never truly made love to a woman, although he had, on occasion, called it that. He’d never lain united in quiet contentment with a woman as their breathing synchronized and their hearts beat as one. He’d never been a part of anyone else, until now.
Her fingers drew soft, languorous circles over his shoulders and back, down the length of his spine, and beneath his loosened braies, over the slope of his buttocks. The airy massage was both pacifying and stimulating. His skin tingled all over; his body felt heavy, yet charged with sensation. As she continued this feathery touch, that sensation gravitated to where they were joined. His senses focused in on his body penetrating hers. Deep inside her, within her warmth and softness, he felt her heart pulsing in time with his.
The pulses became a steady throb. Still unmoving, he felt his ardor quicken, felt himself grow harder still, within her. She noticed this; her hands stopped moving.
“Would you tell me again?” she asked, very quietly.
He knew what she meant. Lifting himself up on an elbow, he brushed her hair off her face and whispered, just loudly enough to be heard over the rain, “I love you, Faithe.” He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her tenderly. “I love you.” He kissed her again, and again, breathing words of love and need upon her lips, as his body strained and quivered inside her.
There was something exquisitely maddening about lying perfectly still while his craving for release grew more intense, more undeniable, with every moment that passed. The source of that craving, sheathed within her, vibrated with the need to push, and push, and push again.
He trailed his hand down from her face to a breast, fondling its silken weight until her breath came fast. When he took her nipple between thumb and forefinger and pressed, she gasped. A spasm rippled through her from within, clenching him.
Enough . Closing his hand around her hip, and still braced on his elbow, he slowly pulled out of her. He paused at the snug little opening, willing himself to go slowly, to be gentle and solicitous.
Curling his hand beneath her to lift her hips, he pressed inward, gradually this time, gritting his teeth against the astonishing pleasure, against the urge to plunge hard and fast. She sighed as he seated himself within her, and again as he slid out and in, out and in, taking his time, his entire body taut with desire.
Faithe kissed his throat as he rocked slowly within her, all his muscles tensed and shivering. She closed her hands over his shoulders and met his measured thrusts with sinuous grace. The rhythmic crush of straw beneath them provided counterpoint to the rain’s cool, steady hiss.
“You feel wonderful inside me,” she murmured, snaking her hands down to his hips.
“You feel… oh, God. I can hardly bear it.” He felt as if his heart were going to burst; every beat pummeled him from within. Her body milked him like a hot fist. With each partial withdrawal, it seemed to pull him back in. It was too much; at this rate, he’d explode within moments, and he didn’t want this to end yet.
He altered his thrusts to make himself last, penetrating her again and again with a rotating movement that coaxed soft moans from her. Sliding his hand out from under her hip, he caressed her breasts, teasing the nipples in a way she seemed to like. Her breathing turned ragged. “Yes… oh, Luke.”
Just hearing her whisper his name as she writhed in his arms fired his loins. Truly, I’m lost, he thought as he spiraled inexorably toward orgasm, his thrusts accelerating despite his desire to go slowly for Faithe’s sake. His body took over, tightening and lunging, ramming deep, deep…
Faithe’s expression of easy delight soon fled. Looking almost pained, she grew rigid beneath him, her fingers digging into his hips. Her body trembled; she arched, grinding herself against him, her head rolling back in the straw. He heard a low, whimpering cry as her body bucked and shuddered. Her internal muscles pumped him frantically.
“Oh, God.” His body recognized what was happening before his mind did, responding t
o her climax by driving into her with savage urgency. Animal instinct propelled him, tearing a roar of fulfillment from him as tremors shot like lightning up his extremities, meeting and igniting in his groin, shooting out of him with blissful violence. The intensity of it blinded and deafened him. Amid the delirious frenzy of release, he felt Faithe’s arms and legs lock around him, holding him tight even as her own crisis ran its course.
I was lost , he thought dazedly as the convulsive pleasure crested and then slowly ebbed, racking him with its aftershocks. But Faithe has found me. I’m lost no more.
Chapter 14
*
FAITHE LAY SATED and drowsy in Luke’s arms, absorbing his heat, reveling in his quiet strength. His chest hair felt springy, cushioning her cheek against the rock-solid muscle underneath. She breathed deeply, savoring the damp, tangy smell of him—of both of them. Hard work and sex were a heady combination, one that affected her like strong wine. Directly beneath her ear, his heart thudded with steady resonance.
The straw underneath them crackled softly as he shifted. He’d not retied his shirt, nor his braies, although he’d pulled them up. Her clothing was similarly disheveled. She had no idea what became of the cord that had laced up her kirtle, once, long ago, in what felt like another lifetime. Where the gown parted, she felt his warm torso against her bare breasts. Her skirt was tucked around her thighs, and her legs were comfortably intertwined with his.
Rain still whispered against the thatch. The livestock had quieted, save for the occasional contented grunt. In the aftermath of the storm’s worst fury, the light had lost its strange, purplish cast and taken on a silvery radiance, enhancing the mystic aura surrounding them. Never had Faithe felt more at peace. The day’s distressing revelations about Caedmon—although she would have to find a way to deal with them—seemed for the time being to recede into the distant past. She felt a happy sense of fruition mingled with hope.
“This is a perfect moment,” she murmured, nestling against her husband as she slid her fingers through his chest hair. “Everything is good. We love each other… we have each other. Naught is amiss.”
Bad Boy Heroes Boxed Set Page 21