“Stop.” He shook her wrist. “For God’s sake, stop. This has been too much for you. You like to think you’re invincible, but you are a sweet maiden who should be sheltered.”
“Oh, Don Damian.”
“Don’t interrupt.” Her crying slacked off and she peered at him from bloodshot eyes. “In the future, you’ll stay close by me. I can’t stand this kind of worry. I can’t stand to live in crippling fear. Whether or not we like it, there seems to be a reason behind Tobias’s death, and we need to discuss it.”
Her hand reached out and touched his chest.
He froze. First her fingers, then her palm smoothed his pectoral, following the line of the muscle. Intently, she watched her hand, fixated by the motion and his involuntary contraction.
Pushing her hand back toward her, he said, “What kind of man would love a woman who’d just had the experiences you’ve had?” His breath caught. She held her nightgown wadded in her hands, and her body lay exposed. Her braid rested on her shoulder, her arms hid her breasts, the sheet—God knew where the sheet was. It wasn’t doing what it should, of that he was positive.
When he jerked his gaze from her anatomy and wrestled it back to her face, he saw the way she looked at him. Wistful, sad. “No,” he said. The hoarseness of his denial worried him, and he tried again. “No, Catriona, you’re too weak.”
She picked up his hand and kissed it.
“You’ve had a horrible experience. Look at the nightmare you just had.”
Her tears still swept her cheeks. She whispered, “Make the nightmares go away.”
“I can’t.”
She leaned forward and kissed the curve of his shoulder, ran her tongue along the ridge of his collar bone. Her tears wet him, trickling down his breast bone.
“Querida, you can’t.” He put his hand against her cheek and wiped away the moisture. “We can’t.”
She bit him lightly on the neck.
“Madre de Dios.” His surrender was quiet as a breath, but she recognized it, and laid her head against him with a sigh. He cupped her head and placed her against the pillows. His voice broke as he said, “You are so fragile, and I almost lost you. You are so beautiful.” He never thought of her blotchy face, her red eyes. He only thought of his Catriona, stretched beneath his hands, needing comfort and giving comfort by her very acquiescence.
“Let me touch you here. . . .” His palm stroked the moisture from her cheeks. “And here . . .”He stroked down each arm, lifting her hands and kissing her fingers in a multitude of tiny pressures.
The tears halted under the influence of his adoration, and she kept her gaze fixed on his face as if he were the provider of all life. His eyes, dark with passion. His nose, strong and beaked. His chin, jutting with determination.
His palms skimmed her skin, trailing tiny sparks of sensation behind him. Pain, terror had no place between them. There was no room for anything but Damian and Katherine. He brushed away horror as he massaged her. A slow transformation led her from wide-open stares and shudders to the brief sighs of yearning. How did he do it? How could one man’s calloused hands be so comforting, so erotic?
He whispered things, things one could shout on the street and no one would be shocked. But in his husky voice, rumbling with pleasure, they became a chant of worship.
When his palms molded her breasts, his eyes drifted closed, as if the combination of sight and touch were too much. He kept them closed as he leaned closer to nuzzle her lips, and his breath was as warm and sweet as the flutter of an evening breeze. His lips touched her eyelashes, her nose; they skimmed up her cheekbones and back down her chin. He caressed her lips, not kissing, but exploring the shape and texture. He moved to her neck, and her relaxation was so complete she let him touch it with his mouth. When he came up over her face again, his eyes were open and a faint smile brought the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth to life.
“I adore your body,” he whispered with relish. “So relaxed, so sensual. Soft and feminine as I had never imagined. So accepting, yet giving me what I want. You trust me, don’t you?”
Reveling in the luxury of his pampering, she rubbed her head against his hand. “I trust you. I told you I did.” It was a pledge, a token that said far more than she realized. She saw the slash of his grin, and wondered belatedly if she should have prevaricated, but she couldn’t work up the energy for alarm.
This was Damian. She did trust him, with her emotions, her body, her life if necessary.
The effort of holding her eyelids up became too much. Lazily she let them drop and considered the way he had encouraged her.
No longer did she jump in shock when he touched her.
She wasn’t doing anything.
She wasn’t embarrassed or wondering what to do. She didn’t feel constrained to give back what he gave her. With Damian, it was all right—more than all right, it was wonderful—to accept his gifts. He seemed to relish her acceptance of him, her acceptance of anything he chose to do.
She opened her eyes. His smile displayed his satisfaction, but she’d allow him that.
He had just performed a miracle.
He pressed a kiss to her ear, circling the shell with his tongue, following it with a breath. All over, her skin tightened. He murmured encouragement and lifted her wrists to his mouth. On first one and then the other, he kissed the spot where the pulse throbbed. “The heart of my beloved beats here. It’s a precious spot.” Holding her arms cradled in his, he kissed the inside of her elbow. “The heart of my beloved beats here. It’s a precious spot.” Moving up to her neck, he kissed the bandage and repeated the formula. He kissed between her breasts, kissed her stomach, her thighs, the arch of her foot. Turning her over, he kissed the delicate skin behind her knee, the curve of each buttock, the base of her spine. “The heart of my beloved beats here. It’s a precious spot.” In each place, she found it was true. Her heart beat there, accelerating, warming her, bringing every nerve to life. A string of kisses up her back, and he rolled her over again. Putting his forehead against hers, he looked into her eyes and vowed, “The heart of my beloved, the body of my beloved is precious. But the soul of my beloved resides here, inside her head, and that is most precious of all. When time has gone and we are no longer, still the soul of Katherine will be precious to the soul of Damian.”
Her chest tightened; she couldn’t breathe beneath the weight of his vow.
“Knowing that, you’ll let me love you?”
She sighed; it meant yes.
He understood perfectly and his eyes widened. She was the one who didn’t understand until he pressed closer in a slow dance of titillation. The roughness of his feet tangled with hers. The warmth of his legs covered hers. His thighs slid inside her thighs; one knee came up and pushed for a brief moment.
Her toes curled.
In deliberate tardiness, he lowered his groin against her stomach. Unnoticed by Katherine, a spiral of heat had already begun, ignited by his indulgence, his words. Now it grew, nourished by the proof that she excited him. He rocked against her, the length of him rubbing where his knee had been previously.
His arms held him up, and he assessed the reflection of her emotions as a master jeweler assessed the facets of an emerald. What he saw must have satisfied him, for he lowered his chest so the frost of his hair tickled her nipples. The weight of him compressed her. Briefly, she wondered why he had cut her off from the comfort of his hands and mouth; then the wave of response hit her. All of her skin against his, all of her self against his. All that exquisite stimuli, contained in the bone and sinew of one Damian de la Sola.
Had she ever felt stifled in the act of love? Now she felt covered, protected.
“Kiss me. Let me taste you.”
His voice was an audible extension of himself, and as such excited her, intoxicated her. Her parted lips met his straight on. Their noses clashed. She tilted her head and their mouths settled together. His tongue touched her lips, wet them, dabbed at her teeth. They reminded her of the
delicious kisses he had administered before—before she knew she liked them. She knew now, and she touched the tip of his tongue with hers. She felt the surge of his excitement. It was evident in his gasp, in the stir of his legs, in the growth of his manhood. Surprised by the reaction, she experimented with the stroke of her hand against his hip. He groaned and followed her tongue into her mouth.
The heat in her expanded, pushing out her relaxation, her sense of comfort. She let them go reluctantly, for the replacement was something she didn’t recognize. It came from within, and that surprised her. Where had this coil of feeling been hidden? Cautiously, she explored it. It grew with the touch of his hands on her. It grew with the touch of her hands on him. It fed on tactile sensation. It fed on the sight of his face and body. It fed on his pleasured sounds. It fed on the scent of his hair, on the nip of his teeth on her nipple and the slow apology of his tongue on the tingling place.
“Don Damian?” She blinked, bewildered by the fright in her voice.
He understood. “It’s normal, love. As inevitable as the tides, as pure as a mountain stream.”
“I don’t think—” His fingers entered her; the heel of his hand massaged her. A spasm struck her, blinding her, pushing her towards some danger in the dark.
“You’re fighting it.” He removed his hand; she opened her eyes in relief and protest. “Stop fighting it. I won’t let you go alone.” He swept a kiss back up her body, his face intent, monitoring her every respiration and reaction.
With an effort, she groped for his wrist and squeezed it. “There’s something happening in me. This won’t work.”
He listened as if she told him a profound truth, serious, encouraging. “This is like laughter or tears or a good sneeze. It’s physical, natural.” Wetting his thumb in his mouth, he rubbed it across her lips. “You said you trusted me. Trust me now.”
She searched his face, seeking reassurance and finding it. “All right. But hurry. I don’t like this anticipation.”
Chuckling in a kind of choked pleasure, he lay between her legs again. “I don’t have to hurry.” With his hand, he rubbed himself against her. The touch of him brought her knees convulsively tight against his hips. His eyelids drooped as he entered her, stretching her.
She must have made a sound, for he halted and considered her. She stared at him in appeal; he nodded in encouragement and said, “You’re hurrying to me. Keep coming, beloved. Only a little farther.”
Slowly, he thrust inside, driving a spur in her flesh. The pressure of his groin against hers made it worse, or better. His withdrawal tempted her to cry out; his return brought the cry to her lips.
She didn’t know what this was, but he said it was natural. He said to trust him. He said . . . oh, God, what had he said? She couldn’t remember, only knew his body carried a madness. She clutched at his back with slippery hands; she wrapped her heels tight against his buttocks. She wanted to push him out; she tried to keep him in. The spiral of heat became a conflagration.
Damian incited it. Damian comprised it. Damian.
The spasm took her, and this time there was no resisting. Her body took over, performing a ritual both sacred and spontaneous. She clenched her teeth, clenched her hands. She pushed her heels against the mattress, pushed herself against him. Breathlessly, she sought the heat and found it in Damian.
She heard him groan her name, felt his body strain and shudder in response to hers. Felt a moment of panic—or was it excitement?—as her body lifted again, produced a brief convulsion and relaxed into an almost oblivious stupor. Almost oblivious, except for the surprise that burst like a bubble in her mind. “Why didn’t somebody tell me?” she murmured.
“This bed is too small,” she pronounced without opening her eyes.
He grinned. It had taken her an hour of recovery to form the words, an hour in which she’d remained close and unprotesting. “I like it. I may buy it and take it back to the hacienda for us to sleep in.”
She didn’t respond in any way. That didn’t surprise him. She’d succumbed to more than he’d hoped for this night. Later, he promised himself, she’d give him all; for the moment, he’d let her rest. With stirring guilt, he worried about her. After all, she’d just been attacked by someone with a knife, then attacked again, by himself. Different intentions, yet possibly too much for such a delicate woman. In his own actions, the element of selfindulgence niggled at his conscience. His hands on her hips, he eased her down towards the middle of the bed. “Scoot a little bit, querida, so I can rest on the pillow and take the weight off of you.”
She wiggled cooperatively, and he sighed with renewed delight. He shifted until they were as comfortable as the tiny mattress would allow. A wisp of her hair straggled over her forehead, and he brushed it back. “You’re so beautiful.”
As if she were exhausted, she closed her eyes again. As if the sight of him recalled too much. As if she weren’t ready to face him. Yet her voice teased as she complained, “You’re so heavy.”
Reluctantly, he separated them, his hands lingering, and he squeezed beside her. “Perhaps I won’t take this bed home with me,” he conceded. “Are you all right?”
“I’m all right.”
She said it quickly, defensively, and he winced. “I should never have taken you with such—”
“Vigor?”
“Vigor may be the word,” he admitted, pulling the sheet over them. “I have only one excuse I can offer.”
“I don’t want any excuses,” she protested.
He wanted to give his excuse while she was spent, while that ingenious brain of hers was at rest, and so he ignored her. “All the emotions I’ve lived through today have unbalanced me. First I was furious with you for running away from me. I rode like hell. It rained on me. I had to walk miles when Confite threw a shoe. I left him at the Estradas’ with their promise to send him on, and they outfitted me with one of their pathetic parcels of horseflesh. I arrived in Monterey, and when I pounded on your door, I heard you scream. I broke in and saw some bizarre person escaping out the window. You were bleeding from the throat and I thought you’d been killed. By the time I’d stopped the bleeding and could go after that man, he’d disappeared.”
“I didn’t run away from you,” she said flatly.
Leaning up on one elbow, he looked down at the face on the pillow. The serenity had disappeared and been supplanted by aloofness. It made him angry, to see her withdraw behind such a bland facade after an hour such as they’d spent. He taunted, “Is that all you can say? I tell you my tale of woe, and all you do is deny that you were afraid of me?”
Her eyes sprang open, as he’d hoped they would, and she said, “I’m not afraid of you.”
“You’re afraid of something.”
“I’m the bravest woman I know.” She looked startled when the words left her mouth, but she insisted, “Well, I am.”
“I didn’t argue with you.”
“I held my own in a law firm made up of immoral predators. I buried my father and held my mother in my arms as she died. Without the support of my family and with barely enough money, I sailed around Cape Horn to California. I didn’t even have a guarantee that Tobias would still be here or that he would marry me, but I came. I buried Tobias, too, and lived through the sorrow. And tonight, I talked to that thing in the room with me. I questioned him. I found out what he wanted. I didn’t panic until—”
Her eyes grew big; her skin blanched. On her face was etched the memory of death. Snatching her close, murmuring meaningless sounds of comfort, he rocked her. She burrowed into his chest. She shivered and clutched at him; she thrust a knee between his and he wrapped her in his legs. She sought comfort, oblivious to anything but his warmth, and he responded as if she were a frightened child.
“I was so afraid,” she murmured. “My head was so thick and fuzzy, I couldn’t think. I was afraid, and I wasn’t in control. When that . . . that monster pulled that knife on me, all I could see was Tobias and the blood. I thought I was going to
be slaughtered, and all I could feel was regret.”
“Regret?” he rumbled.
“Regret that I hadn’t . . .” She struggled, tiny movements of protest, as if she didn’t want to say the things buried in her soul. “Regret that we didn’t . . .”
Soothing her with the stroke of his fingers in her hair, he whispered, “Querida, I don’t understand what you mean.”
“I just regretted that I hadn’t given you what you wanted.”
“And learned what I could teach you,” he reminded.
She shook her head fretfully, but he ignored it. A crisis had shown her what all the words in the world couldn’t express. He said a prayer of thankfulness: that his Catriona had been saved for him, that his prize had come from this evening’s outrage.
In tiny increments, the shivering eased and her limbs relaxed.
“You can’t sleep yet,” he murmured, his lips by her ear. “You must tell me about him.”
“Who?” she mumbled.
“Your attacker.”
That she remained slack proved a tribute to his lovemaking, yet he feared she was already too deep in slumber to respond, and his restlessness demanded that he get his answers tonight. “Catriona. Tell me. Was he tall?”
“Mmm . Medium.”
“Spanish? American? Indian?”
She tried to roll away from his interrogation, but the tiny bed offered nowhere to go. “Sounded Spanish. Sounded hoarse. Sounded rich.”
That startled him. “How does someone sound rich?”
“Oh, please, Don Damian.” Opening her unfocused eyes, she flung her arm out and smacked him in the chest. “Do we have to do this now?”
“I can’t sleep. Humor me.”
“After all that, you can’t sleep? Does this activity energize you? Because if it does—”
“No, no. Normally, I’m the same as any other man.” Humor crept into his voice. “I make love, I roll away, I sleep.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight I want a cigar. I always have a cigar after.”
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