Owen looked completely winded. In the light from the fire Tess watched his expression. There was shock there, she thought, but also temptation. She felt a flare of hope.
“Teresa,” he said. “It’s too soon.”
“Ten years is not too soon,” Tess said.
Owen rubbed his forehead. “This morning you wanted a divorce.”
“I didn’t really,” Tess said. “But fear has become a habit for me. I was accustomed to running away, but you made me stand and face it.” She spread her hands in a gesture of appeal. “Owen, if we wait I shall only become more anxious, not less so. I shall be forever worrying about what will happen when finally you…we…” She stopped, groped for words. “The longer it goes on, the worse it will be.”
“So you want to get it over with.” Owen’s face was impassive. “Not precisely the approach I would wish.”
“It’s like riding a horse…?.” Tess stopped again and blushed. “Well, perhaps that is an infelicitous analogy, but what I mean is that I should have tried again long ago, instead of becoming imprisoned in my own fears.” Her voice dropped. “But until now I had not met anyone I would have trusted sufficiently to make love to me.” She raised her eyes to his. “Please don’t refuse me.”
She could sense the conflict in him. “Teresa,” he said. “Damn it, I’m trying to do the right thing here.”
“This is right,” Tess said. She came across to him and laid her mouth on his. “It could not be more right,” she whispered against his lips.
For a moment Owen did not respond, but then his hand came up to cup the back of her head and his lips parted hers and he kissed her back, fierce and sweet.
Then he put her away from him. “Teresa,” he said.
Tess was not going to give him the chance to refuse her again. She slid onto his lap and kissed him again, her hand delving beneath the linen of his shirt to find the warmth of the skin beneath, splaying her fingers over his heart.
“You know you want me,” she said. “Owen, please…”
Owen gave a small groan. The heat and light in his eyes was so bright it scorched her, arousing in her an excitement that eclipsed the fear as the sun eclipsed the moonlight.
“Please,” she whispered again.
Owen made an inarticulate sound that Tess interpreted as encouragement to kiss him again. She snuggled closer and felt the resistance in him falter. He pulled her to him with sudden need and then he was kissing her deeply, desperately, and the light burst in Tess’s mind like a scattering of stars and she was not afraid at all, but fiercely glad.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said, as his lips left hers briefly and she was able to draw breath. “At last—”
He kissed her again. It was blissful, wicked and delicious. She opened her mouth to the demand of his and every desire flared into life.
Owen drew back a little. He rested his forehead against hers. He was breathing hard. “You can change your mind at any point, you know,” he said. There was amusement, desire and deep understanding in his eyes and it made Tess’s heart turn over.
“Yes,” she said. “No. I won’t want to.”
She wanted to run from the heat she saw in his eyes. But she wanted to be caught as well.
“You think too much,” she said, smiling. She drew his head back down to hers for another kiss.
“Not here.” A long, breathless, heated time later he released her. “Upstairs.”
It was fortunate that the night was so inclement and the visitors to the inn so few so no one could see them as they stumbled up the twisting stairs and into one of the rooms that the landlord had set aside. Tess barely noticed it, registering only that it had a huge, deep bed. The curtains were closed against the snowy night and the room was warm and intimately dark with only one candle and the light from the fire.
Owen closed the door and stood resting his palms against it, looking at her. He looked wonderfully dishevelled, she thought, his shirt hanging open, the hair falling across his brow. Her pulse was hammering, nervousness and anticipation inextricably bound together in a taut knot inside her.
“Are you scared too?” she asked.
Owen laughed. “It would be an unusual man who would admit to such a thing.”
“You are an unusual man,” Tess said. “So?”
“A little.” He lightly touched a curl of auburn hair that nestled in the hollow of her throat. “It’s a responsibility as well as a privilege.”
It was not, she soon realised, a responsibility that he was going to hurry. He drew her down beside him on the bed and kissed her until she felt dizzy and wanting, and her body felt heavy with desire and her clothes felt as though they were an intolerable imposition.
“I need…” She struggled for a moment to be free and Owen released her instantly. He was pale and breathing hard.
“To get rid of my clothes,” Tess finished, and his expression relaxed.
“I can help,” he said, with a wicked smile, “but you will find me a poor lady’s maid.”
“No matter.” Tess started to unfasten the buttons on her bodice. Her hands shook and slipped a little with impatience, matching the quiver of eager need that was inside her. Owen was watching the movement of her fingers, his head bent and his expression intent. Tess looked up.
“I thought you said you would help.”
His methods, she found, were as direct as the man himself. Direct and intensely exciting. He tumbled her back down onto the bed, pushed aside the bodice of her gown and tugged the ribbon on her chemise. His hands were warm on her bare shoulders as he slid the material down over the curves of her breasts. Tess lay still, pleasurably, sublimely shocked, absorbing the kiss of the air against her naked skin, absorbing too the heat and desire in Owen’s gaze as he looked on her.
“You’re so beautiful…?.”
He sounded almost reverent. His hands swept over her, every curve and every hollow, worshipping her just as he had promised. He feathered kisses along her neck and down to the tender line of her collarbone. His tongue flicked the hot skin there and moved on to taste the base of her throat. Tess found she wanted to arch upwards to the mastery of his touch.
He bent his head to her breasts then paused, his lips an inch away from her nipple. In a second she was back in the Blackheath Cavern, remembering the tug and pull of his mouth on her. The memory conjured a hot, sliding excitement inside her. She could not help herself then; she arched to meet his lips and gave a broken cry as he took her in his mouth.
She wanted more of this. More of the sensuous flick of his tongue over her, more of the teasing nip of his teeth, more of this extraordinary pleasure. She had never known this, never imagined it.
“You taste delicious.” Owen raised his head a little. “I want to eat you.”
He did. Tiny biting kisses that raised the goose bumps all over her breasts as his teeth grazed her and his tongue salved away the hurt, and Tess groaned at the ecstasy of it and writhed against the covers, feeling the provocative chafing of the brocade bedspread against her naked back.
“I should have shaved,” Owen said, looking up, seeing the stung pink skin of her breasts.
“No,” Tess said, with feeling. “You should not.”
He laughed and came down beside her. “My darling.” He kissed her, deep and hot, his hand replacing his lips at her breast, fingers teasing the hard nipple until she squirmed.
She wanted to ask him to hurry. She wanted to beg him to make love to her. There was such a hot, demanding ache inside her. Her legs were all tangled in the weight of her skirts and the linen of her petticoats. The folds of material felt unbearably heavy, holding her down.
“Please…” The word slipped from her lips before she could prevent it and she saw his lips curve into a smile of delight.
“You like it.” He sounded relieved. He licked the underside of her breast and she gave a laugh that broke on a moan. Liking was far too small a word for what she was feeling. She reached out and unfastened his pantaloons,
fumbling a little with the button. She heard his breath hiss through his teeth in shock.
“Teresa—” There was a harsh edge to his tone, a warning that if she really was not certain she should stop now. But she was not afraid. She tested her feelings and felt the triumph. The fear had been crowded out, banished by wicked, wanton desire. She wanted to touch him. She needed to touch him.
She raised herself on one elbow and turned towards him. She tugged stealthily on his drawers, pulling them down. His cock sprang free, smooth, hard and hot in the palm of her hand. No indeed, he was not impotent and she could not remember why on earth she had wanted him to be.
“Ah…” His gasp told her how close he was to the edge of control.
“Keep still.” She pressed her lips to his ear. She could feel every muscle tense in his body. “You have to be patient with me, Owen. Remember? You said I could explore.” She ran a hand along his length to emphasise her words and felt the shudder rack him. Such power she had. She loved it. She tried another caress, from base to tip. She squeezed.
His hand closed about her wrist like iron.
“Not this time, unless you want to kill me.” He did genuinely sound as though he was in extremity. His eyes were tightly shut. He looked as though he were making some complex mathematical calculations in his head. His fingers gentled on her wrist. “You probably don’t understand,” he said, “but I will not last two seconds if you touch me again.”
Tess might never have experienced it before but she understood his predicament perfectly well. She put out a hand and cupped his balls, just to test the truth of his words.
“Liar.” She breathed the word against the hot skin of his neck.
“Ah…” The groan was wrenched from him. He rolled her over so that his weight held her down, drove his hands into her hair and kissed her hard.
For a second Tess felt a flicker of fear at the sheer physical power he was exercising over her. She felt her mind stray towards those dark places and the force and the compulsion that had been imposed on her before. But she was starting to realise that such domination, such taking without consent, had nothing to do with love. With Owen it was different; his kiss held a demand she wanted to meet. He was easing back now, cupping her face, kissing her gently, softly, with such persuasive seduction that she felt her tense body softening into acquiescence again, and from there sliding into eager, sensuous wanting.
He kissed her throat, the tender hollow beneath her ear, the sides of her breasts and then the valley between them. Tess wriggled. The knot of her skirts binding her lower body was becoming intolerable. She was too hot, too constrained.
Owen’s hand slid down over the bare curve of her stomach until it reached the edge of her gown, bunched about her hips. The muscles jumped deep in Tess’s belly. Now. She had to be rid of these horribly constricting layers of material.
“Take it off. Please.”
She heard him laugh at the abject entreaty in her voice. She could hear it herself, so uneven, so eager. She would have been ashamed to give away the depths of her desperation had she not been so utterly desperate that actually she did not care.
He laughed. “Oh, all right then. As you ask so nicely.”
She felt anything but nice. She felt wanton and wild and full of shock and delight to be that way. Her feelings should have scared her. Instead she was stunned to realise that she felt hopelessly aroused. Her entire upper body was naked, exposed to the cool air, the candlelight and to Owen’s gaze. Below she was weighted down with silks and linens, unable to move except to shift restlessly against what felt like unbearable pressure.
Then, at last, she felt the ties of her skirt loosen. Something shifted, the tightness easing, and then she felt cool air against her legs.
“I’m afraid your gown is crushed.” Owen sounded polite but not particularly repentant.
“I don’t care.”
It had been a pretty dress but it was in the way.
Tess felt Owen’s hand warm against her ankle and then on the curve of her calf. She was still wearing her stockings; she felt his fingers reach the edge of her garter and pause. She wriggled. She could not help herself. Time spun out whilst she hung suspended in an agony of waiting, then Owen’s hand resumed its stealthy slide, inching up the soft skin of her inner thigh. He reached her drawers and paused again.
It was intolerable.
Owen kissed her, his tongue stroking hers, plunging deep, and Tess’s mind spun away, fracturing with delight. It took her a moment to realise that the drawers were gone now too. She had not noticed.
“Oh,” she said, as she realised, “you are very good at this.”
His lips twitched into a smile but his eyes were dark, his jaw tense, and she realised with a pang of shock just how much control he was exercising over himself. There was no haste, no hurry. He was waiting for her every step of the way. His fingers moved gently, persuasively, touching the very core of her. Tess arched again, cried out in shock and astonishment, cascades of sensation shivering through her body. He touched her again and again, such subtle strokes, and Tess thought she would come apart. She ached in the most delicious and wicked ways imaginable. Except that she wanted Owen, not just this blinding delight. It was her last thought before the light exploded in her mind and her body was seized by wave after wave of raking pleasure.
When she came back to herself she was in Owen’s arms, skin against skin, lying along the whole length of his body, his lips against her hair. He gathered her close and held her slick body against his, kissing her with persuasive tenderness.
“Did you like that too?” Tess could feel his arousal hard against her thigh and she lay quite still, absorbing the thought that she was naked with a man for the first time in ten long years. She allowed herself to think about the last time, to think about it properly, when before she had always pushed the memories away before they were no more than half-formed. Tears stung her eyes, not for what had happened to her then but for the difference now, for the tenderness and the wonder. Owen brushed the tangled curls away from her cheek, his fingertips gentle against her face.
“All right?” he said, and Tess nodded. Now that the moment had come she realised that she had been wrong to think this might be easy just because she wanted him. But equally she had been wrong to think it would be bad.
He kissed the corner of her mouth. “It won’t be perfect.”
She smiled. “You do yourself an injustice.” It already was perfect no matter how it ended.
His lips moved to claim hers fully this time. “We’ll see.”
Owen kissed her until she was hot and shaking again, reawakened to the need between them, and then he kissed her some more until she could not think straight anymore and did not want to. They were intimately entangled now, their skin damp and heated everywhere it touched. It felt so luxuriously decadent to be lying here naked with him that Tess wanted to sink into the feeling and let it devour her.
Owen’s hand came up to her breast, and her body, already stirring to his touch, restless for more, arched as another wave of need broke over her. She parted her legs and Owen rolled over between them. She tensed, waiting for him to move inside her but instead he slid down the bed until his head was between her thighs, the fall of his hair tickling her sensitised skin.
“Ah…” His voice was a whisper. “So beautiful. So silken.”
He spread his hand on her belly, pressing down gently with the heel of his palm to open her even more, then swept his tongue over the sweet centre of her. Tess’s body jumped and her mind splintered in disbelief and sheer sensation. Again he tasted her and she lost the last vestiges of all rational thought. She could only feel; feel the pleasure build over and over as his tongue plunged deeper and deeper. She groaned aloud, shifting beneath the renewed caress of his hands. It was impossible, she thought faintly, to bear more. And yet her body was rising to Owen’s touch; it seemed to have a will and a knowledge all its own, something she had not known, yet now understood with an awar
eness as deep as time.
Owen moved over her and then he was there, resting against her. He raised his hips and stroked her core with the tip of his cock. Once, twice, a third time whilst she writhed under him. She grabbed him and tried to hold him still, and he, damn him, just laughed. Then she tried to pull him into her but he held back, bending to kiss her with such tenderness she thought she would melt.
“Patience,” he whispered, and there was mischief in his eyes.
Tess dug her nails into the smooth muscles of his shoulders and heard him groan before he slid into her, slow and deep.
It was not as she remembered. It was nothing like anything she had ever experienced. This was smooth and tight and hot and delicious. It was so gloriously intimate and so honest that she felt her heart contract with astonishment.
Owen paused to allow her body to adjust to his presence before resuming a long, slow stroke that seemed to draw the soul from her body. Tess watched his face as he moved, the strength and the concentration, desire distilled, and she wondered to be able to do such a thing to such a man. It filled her with awe to be able to give him so much pleasure.
Yet she knew that for her it was not going to work.
It felt marvellous but somehow it was not enough for her to completely abandon herself now. She had come such a long way but not quite far enough. The deep, delicious pleasure started to drain away from her. Then she felt the first cold flicker of despair.
Owen sensed it at once. He swooped down to kiss her. “You have to trust me, Teresa.” His voice was a harsh whisper. “Don’t fight me. We’re on the same side.”
Tess wondered if she could surrender herself. It felt as though she was relinquishing everything, giving herself up to him utterly. She wanted to do it, she ached for it, but fulfilment shimmered so frustratingly just beyond her grasp.
She was within an inch of giving up. Then Owen bent his head and licked her nipple and the fire shot through her from her breast to deep in her belly and she forgot for a split second to think about anything. He did it again, his hair brushing the sensitive skin of her breast, his mouth hot and relentless on her and she moaned. His hand was there, where their bodies joined, trailing pleasure, igniting fire. And suddenly Tess did not want to fight him, did not want to deny either of them. She wanted to eclipse the past in the intensity of the present. She surrendered completely and in the next instant felt herself fall hard and fast into astonishing bliss. Her body clasped his and she heard Owen call her name and felt him spill his seed inside her, and they broke together, falling over and over into the joy of blistering-bright consummation.
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