Page 38 of Vows of Revenge

She was dazed, breathless, and her heart was hammering yet, pounding within her—echoing, she knew, with a kind of exultation, the pounding of his own heart, beating against hers.

He lifted away from her a little, his torso only, and she felt him drop a shaky hand on her still-flushed cheek, smoothing it softly, gazing down at her with an expression in his eyes that made her breath catch.

‘Kassia—’

Her name—that was all—and it was all she wanted to hear.

A smile curved across her mouth, wide and tender and embracing. ‘I don’t think I’ll be shy next time,’ she said softly, her gaze clinging to his, that smile still playing on her lips.

A crack of laughter broke from him.

‘Dear God, Kassia, if this was you beingshy...’

He swept her over to her side, still in her embrace, so that his own embrace could tighten. Their thighs tangled now, as they slipped from each other, and he was kissing her now—not with passion, for passion was exhausted, but with a kind of sealing of what had been between them...and a promise, too.

Kassia felt again that catching of her breath in wonder and wonderment. It was a promise of all that was yet to come before the night was over...

Damos lay drowsily and contentedly, Kassia tight in his arms, as daylight finally pricked its way into the room, edging around the drawn curtains. Amazement still possessed him. After the first time he’d set eyes on her, crouched in that dusty trench, could he ever have thought to this moment now? To how it would be for him? For her...?

Yet again that strange, powerful emotion swept through him. He did not know what it was—knew only that it possessed him. Filled his being.

Idly, languorously, he smoothed his hand over her hip as she lay cradled against him. He let his mouth softly kiss her shoulder, snuggled into his, as memory of the night that had just passed played in his head.

A night of passion—oh, such passion!

Kassia had made love without inhibition. He smiled reminiscently at his saying to her,‘If this was you being shy...’She had given of herself without stint, with an ardent desire that had more than matched his own, that had had her body...her beautiful, slender body...clinging to his in her ecstasy. An ecstasy that had come time and time again...

Perhaps remembering that right now, while she lay cradled against him, was not the wisest thing... The feel of her body tight against his own was having an effect on him that, as full wakefulness came over him, was increasingly impossible to ignore.

His lazy smoothing of her hip moved forward, reached towards the vee of her thighs, and his mouth at her shoulder started to glide, to taste the delicate line of her throat, to tease...to arouse. Even as he himself was aroused...

She stirred in his arms, a little sigh breathing from her, as he nestled the hand at her vee into the contour of her body, trailing his mouth up from her throat to catch at her lips...

His own arousal was growing...intensifying. She was waking too now, half turning in his arms, her mouth moving to his, tasting and teasing, her thighs slackening. Her body was still pressing back against his...knowingly, sensually. He gave a low laugh, luxuriating in her effect on him, and his kiss deepened, no longer teasing and tasting but probing, possessing. And she answered in kind, turning fully now, so that the engorged tips of her already ripening breasts grazed his chest, arousing him yet more.

He gave a growl, sliding his hand around her hip once more to pull her against him, so that the full strength of his arousal was tangible. His thighs moved over hers in possession...his of her...hers of him. Their bodies were fusing yet again, desire crescendoing. He felt her back arch, her thighs strain. Her head was thrown back, the heat of her shuddering climax flushing her skin, her hair a wanton tangle on the pillow as her head threshed from side to side and she cried out with abandon. Then his own moment was upon him, and nothing else in the world existed except Kassia—this amazing, incredible woman who was his...

In a way he had never known she could be.

CHAPTER EIGHT

KASSIASTOODNEXTto Damos, gazing out over the loch in front of them, a dreamy expression in her eyes. Had she ever dreamt that life could be so wonderful? No, she never had—it would have been impossible that she could ever have dreamt it so. Because never had she dreamt that a man like Damos could be in her life.

But the very expression ‘a manlikeDamos’ was wrong—it was Damos himself she had never dreamt about.

How wonderful he was! Just wonderful! And since thatwonderfulnight she had spent with him her life had been transformed. Transformed into blissful happiness.

She turned to look at him now, her gaze drinking him in. He was standing beside her on the beach, binoculars pressed to his eyes, watching a large bird soaring over the forested far shore, behind which the ground rose upwards to a high, rounded ben.

She felt her heart give a little skip, the way it always did when she looked at Damos.

Is this really real...me being here with him?

That first morning, surfacing from that wonderful night, it had seemed almost a dream to her. But it was a dream he’d made real—was making real every day.

They’d spent all that first day together in his suite—in his bed—dining in as well. It had been another whole day until they’d surfaced.

‘Let’s get out of London,’he had said.‘I want you all to myself—somewhere miles and miles from anywhere.’

---