by Kay Hooper
“Then you must have touched one,” he said in a voice he hardly recognized as his own.
She came into his arms naturally, the great, dark, glowing eyes fixed on his face. “No. Not then. But now, I think.”
He felt her meaning more than understood it. And he was humbled by it. “Addie…”
The lips beneath his own were fire, searing through his body until the blood in his veins was rushing as never before. The delicate arms of a dream held him with the strength of impossible reality, and the body clothed in illusion trembled beneath the onslaught of tangible desire.
“Addie…” He kept her close beside him as they moved toward the inn, their steps hurried yet perfectly paced. They drifted up the steps to the veranda, and along it to the unlocked French doors of Addie’s room, noticing nothing and no one along the way.
In her bedroom they found the covers turned back invitingly on the large bed and lamplight providing a golden welcome. And she returned to his arms with a smile of such certainty and glowing love it wrenched his heart.
There was no fumbling in her touch, no awkwardness. His jacket and tie fell away, and when the buttons of his shirt parted beneath her slender fingers, he felt the burning touch of her lips on his chest. Somehow, he found the zipper of her dress and slid it down, his hands returning to her shoulders to push the filmy straps over her arms.
The dress slid to the floor in a rustle of material, pooling around her feet until she stepped from the sandals and kicked dress and shoes aside. Shrugging his shirt away, he found himself unable to move or breathe or do anything but stare at her.
Her creamy body was perfectly formed, as delicate as that of a porcelain doll. The silver medallion nestled between her small, firm breasts, the green stone glowing warmly. Her waist was tiny, her hips curved gently, the silken panties she wore almost the color of her flesh. Her vibrant red hair was the only outward sign of the flame within.
“Addie…dear heaven, you’re lovely,” he whispered hoarsely.
She came to him, her hands sliding up his chest to his shoulders. Her breasts brushed the mat of golden hair on his chest and became twin points of fire, burning them both. Her gasp was lost as his mouth covered hers, and tongues dueled in hot need as their bodies strained to be closer.
Unable to bear it any longer, Shane lifted her swiftly in his arms and placed her on the bed, straightening to rid himself of the few remaining barriers of clothing. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, and her gaze was intent, unselfconscious as she watched him until he stood before her as nature had intended a man to stand before a woman.
Her eyes moved slowly over him, over broad shoulders and down over the muscled chest and flat stomach, the narrow hips and long, powerful legs. And she saw again a perfect male animal in all his strength and pride, his desire unhidden, his virility a palpable force.
And all the woman in Addie responded to that force. She held out her arms to him without thought, and Shane joined her on the bed with a curiously broken sound from somewhere deep in his chest.
He kissed her again and again, fiery kisses just this side of savagery. His mouth blazed a path down her throat, and his hands surrounded her breasts with a rough yet tender touch. She gasped, her fingers biting into his shoulders when she felt the swirling caress of his tongue as he captured an aching nipple. She couldn’t breathe; he’d stolen her breath somehow, but it didn’t matter.
Her hands moved over his shoulders, tracing rippling muscles, her senses glorying in the feeling of explosive power beneath the smooth bronze sheen of his flesh. The hard strength of him sapped her own, made tremulous yearning invade her body.
Addie felt the familiar pain of growing need, felt the coiling of hot tension winding tighter and tighter. Her head moved restlessly on the pillow, and she bit her lip when his caresses swept lower, when she felt the slide of silk as the last barrier of clothing was removed by impatient hands.
His touch gentled her restless legs, the slightly rough texture of his hands a potent seduction as he stroked her flesh, awakening all her nerve endings until they were sensitized almost beyond bearing.
“Addie, I’ve dreamed about this.” He trailed his lips over the hollow of her hip, his hands stroking, sliding beneath her to shape and hold quivering flesh. His voice was thick, impeded, each word a shivering caress to her hot skin. “Over and over, every night since I met you. Dreamed of holding you naked in my arms, dreamed of touching you and tasting you.” His tongue probed her navel with a heat that caused her stomach to contract convulsively.
“Shane…” It was a thread of sound.
“So perfect,” he murmured, his hands molding her breasts, one knee between her tense, restless legs. “You fit my hands so well.” His tongue flicked a hardened nipple, teasing, and his leg moved between hers to stroke the sensitive inner flesh of her thighs. One hand slipped downward over her quivering stomach, lower, gently probing the slick hot center of her desire while his mouth abruptly captured the bud his tongue had tormented.
Addie’s fingers locked in his thick hair, and a kittenlike sound escaped her lips. She could feel the swollen heat of him against her hip, and his exploring fingers were touching her as she’d never been touched before. Every muscle in her body tautened in an instinctive expectation, the tension within her coiling unbearably until she was a single gigantic ache.
“Shane!” It was still little more than a thread of sound, a tremor of desperate need, but he responded to it.
“Darling…lovely Addie…”
Her legs obeyed the gentle pressure, parting, cradling him as he moved between them. She could feel the frantic necessity of his need in a probing touch, feel the taut muscles of his shoulders beneath her hands. He was kissing her, deep, drugging kisses holding her own desire at a fever pitch, and her arms strained to draw him closer.
“You’re so tiny,” he whispered raggedly, lifting his head to look at her with hot, glazed eyes. “I’ll hurt you. Addie…”
She couldn’t find the breath for words, but blind instinct demanded what he withheld from her and her body moved seductively against his. Her thigh stroked his hip in a smooth caress and her hand traced the length of his spine. Her body arched, her breasts brushing his chest like an electric current.
He shuddered, his chest moving in a harsh breath, his eyes half-closing. “Oh, dear Lord—I can’t stop, can’t wait. Addie!” The probing touch became a pressure as he moved, then thrust, and with a primitive shock he was with her completely.
What little breath she could still claim left her body in a gasp as he entered it, and her eyes widened as she absorbed the alien, throbbing fullness of him within her. There was no pain, only a sense of having an aching emptiness filled at last.
Shane was still, his throat moving convulsively and his eyes closing briefly, his body holding itself motionless as if he needed to savor their joining. “Did I…hurt you?” he whispered.
“No. Oh, no.” She held him tightly, feeling a surge of primitive emotions, a dizzying pleasure in the knowledge that he was hers now. “Shane…”
He began moving and the still, hovering tension within Addie began coiling again, winding tighter and tighter. Her body caught his rhythm, responded to it, moving with him. She was conscious only of building heat and gathering force and a new, restless ache that tortured her. A moan left her throat and her nails bit into his shoulders, her tense, striving body reaching mindlessly for release, for an end to the tension.
And then something snapped with a force that tore a wild, breathless cry from the depths of her, searing her nerves with pleasure, and tension shattered into ecstasy.
Shane groaned harshly as her body contracted around him and he buried himself in her, the quivering strain of his need giving way suddenly in a rush of sheer, boundless delight….
—
Addie held his trembling body with instinctively possessive limbs, murmuring a wordless protest when he would have left her.
“I’m too heavy,” he said hu
skily, gently kissing her throat, her lips.
Her eyes were closed, then she slowly opened them, and they gleamed darkly in the lamplit softness. She smiled. “When are you going to learn that I don’t break so easily?”
His hands surrounded her face warmly, and his smile was twisted. “Never.”
She smoothed the damp flesh of his back, and sudden imps danced in her eyes. “We could arm-wrestle,” she said solemnly.
His laugh was a breath of sound, and rueful. “If it were only that simple.”
She looked into jade eyes, and her own smile twisted. “Yes. I realized it wasn’t that simple tonight. And I suppose some women would feel flattered to be…fragile in the eyes of a man. But I’m not some women, Shane. And I’m not a china doll to shatter at the first bump. I’m flesh and blood—and I love you.”
“Addie…”
Deep inside Addie, some age-old instinct roused with a primitive growl. He was hers. Hers. Whether he knew it or not, would admit it or not. The fierceness of her own certainty tautened her muscles physically, tightening her tangible hold on him. Even muscles she had no conscious awareness of held him in a purely feminine possessiveness.
Shane closed his eyes abruptly, a harsh indrawn breath hissing between his teeth, and he moved against her compulsively. “I’ve never…how can I want you again so soon?” His voice was strained, hoarse suddenly.
Addie could feel the rapid surge of his need, the swelling fullness within her, and now she held him consciously. “Because I want you to want me,” she murmured in the dark velvet voice that was a caress. “To want me the way I want you…always…every minute…with every breath…until nothing else matters.”
He bent his head with a soft, rough sound, his lips finding hers; then trailing along her jaw. “You’re a witch,” he whispered. “I’ve known that from the beginning.”
She bit her lip as the shivery tension gripped her own body, trying to control her muscles because it was giving them both such pleasure. Breathing shallowly, her eyes half open, she knew her fierce response came straight from the same primitive awareness seeking to hold him in any and every way she could.
“If I were a witch, I’d use my powers, Shane. I’d bewitch you, enchant you. I’d weave a thousand spells around you, around us.” She had no conscious awareness of the words, the fierce, dusky tone; all her senses were focused on the building, throbbing heat that needed no movement but their own intimate closeness to sustain it.
“You do that now,” he murmured, all his muscles as rigid as hers in the striving, suspended waiting. “You’ve always done that…spells in your eyes…your voice…until I can’t think, can’t breathe.”
The throaty sound of her laugh caught almost like a whimper as her body protested the sweet, aching strain of holding him so strongly for so long, and her nails dug into his back. But words, dark, beguiling vows somehow found their way past trembling lips.
“I’d trap your heart and make it mine if I could. I’d whisper incantations…fashion a talisman from a lock of your hair…shake hands with the devil if it would make you mine—” Then she lost her breath in a moaning gasp as strain splintered suddenly in a pleasure that shook her entire body.
Shane cried out, then shuddered violently, burying his face against her neck, the molten release so devastating, he thought he might have given her his soul….
—
In some way neither fully understood, the stark honesty of words spoken without thought and the sensual delight they had found in taut, still waiting had changed them irrevocably. There no longer seemed a need for words, for questions or explanations. What they felt, what they had found together, overwhelmed them both. Whatever problems or uncertainties still lay between them, neither was willing to back away, to erect barriers.
With so much pleasure to be found, not even the exhaustion of their bodies could summon sleep quickly. They discovered the heated, slippery delight of a steamy shower, and muted laughter in soapy exploration. They found darkness to be an intimate blanket, wrapping them in a secret world where soft murmurs were not words but simply sounds that passed from one heart to another. And when sleep finally claimed them, it was not an abrupt cessation but only a gentle slide into yet another kind of sharing.
—
Addie woke with a start, needing no clock to tell her that it was just before dawn. She smiled a little ruefully to herself, thinking that nothing would change her lifelong habit of waking before the sun. She lifted her head cautiously from Shane’s shoulder, feeling his arms tighten instantly. But he was sleeping soundly, his face relaxed and vulnerable. She just looked at him in the faint gray light, loving him so much, remembering the wondrous hours together.
And she remembered her own words, the vow that she would use any enchantment she could master to hold him.
Something moved through her mind, an old memory long forgotten, and she frowned a little. It came back to her slowly, but once she remembered, the memory was incredibly clear in her mind.
It might have been the talk of magic and spells, or it might have been Addie’s own instinctive nature—whatever the reasons, she didn’t hesitate. She slipped carefully from Shane’s embrace, holding her breath when he stirred and murmured something inaudible. When he was still again, she reached under her pillow for the nightgown placed there hours before, smiling a little because the garment chosen so carefully in Melbourne had remained hidden until now; she had bought it for Shane.
She drew on the delicate gown and moved soundlessly to the French doors leading to the veranda. Leaving one of the doors half open behind her, she went out, across the veranda and down the steps. Dew lay heavily on the grass, but she walked quickly, scarcely aware of the cool wetness beneath her feet.
—
When Shane woke to find her gone, he felt instantly a terrible, empty ache. A dream? God help him if it had been only a dream…But then, sitting up, he saw her pale green dress lying on the floor, and his heart lurched in relief. No dream. But then, why had she left?
He slid from the bed, dressing quickly in the trousers and shirt of his tuxedo. Impatient and half afraid, he left the shirt unbuttoned and went to the open French doors rolling his sleeves up over his forearms as he moved. He raked fingers through his hair as he crossed the veranda and went out onto the lawn, moving by instinct to the place he had found her last night.
The deer were with her again, looking up at her, but they melted away at his approach. Just as it had been the night before, he halted simply to gaze at her, his breath catching. Again, there was something unreal, enchanted about her, but not because of the animals this time.
Against the background of dawn and a golden tree, she was a slender wraith, balanced gracefully atop the low wall as she leaned to break a single blossom from the wattle tree. Her pale peach nightgown was fashioned of eyelet lace and cotton, sheer and delicately lovely, the V neckline revealing the creamy curves of her breasts and the glint of the silver medallion she still wore.
He moved toward her without thought, and when she turned and saw him, the beguiling fey smile curved her lips. He reached her, lifting her as easily as a child into his arms, then set her on her bare feet in the wet grass. She held out the single golden blossom to him, and he took it, gazing on it for a moment before returning his eyes to her.
Answering the question in his eyes, she spoke softly, dreamily, telling him a story.
“Three small girls sat motionless, their faces absorbed, their eyes large and wondering. They gazed at an old, gnarled, wizened man, the wisdom and understanding of ages seamed into his brown face and glowing darkly in his eyes. And his voice was rich and slow with the weight of time and certainty.
“ ‘There will come a night for each of you,’ he said. ‘when you will discover your womanhood. And if the discovery is made in love, magical things are possible. If you will slip softly and secretly from your beds just before the dawn and seek out a golden wattle tree, there you may find a perfect blossom wet with dew. Be
fore the sun strikes it, pluck it from the tree, and give it to your man. You will be granted a love that will last your whole life long.’ ”
Shane looked into her dark eyes, his free hand reaching for her waist to draw her to him. “I was afraid I’d dreamed last night.” He breathed unsteadily. “Or that you were, like a dream, gone with the morning. Then I find you here, weaving spells.”
She reached up to brush back a lock of fair hair tenderly. “No spell,” she murmured. “I just…wished on a star.”
The muscles of his lean face seemed to wrench suddenly, something naked leaping at her out of the darkened jade eyes. “I can’t—Oh, God, Addie, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you!” The words were uttered roughly, his voice hurried, smothered. “But if it happens, I know there’s no way I can save myself. There never has been. I was lost the moment I first heard your voice. I told myself I could build a wall, block out most of the pain—but I can’t.”
“Shane…”
“I love you, Addie.” He kissed her desperately, his eyes flaring with the recklessness of a gambler risking everything he has on a single throw of the dice. But the wild look was fleeting, soon gone, and a kind of peace took its place. “I love you.” He touched her lips with his tenderly.
Addie’s arms went around his neck as he lifted her, and her eyes were fixed wonderingly on his face. Every nerve in her body, every shred of strength and will had been bent on holding him, on winning his love, and now that she had heard the words, she could find no voice except to whisper a response as he carried her back to their bed.
“I love you, Shane. I love you.”
—
It wasn’t until much later that Addie saw the golden blossom on the nightstand, and she wondered dimly if Shane had been conscious of what he had done. But she didn’t ask. It was right that he had brought the flower back to their room, and there was no need to question what was right.