Page 58 of My Hero
Shewasnaked beneath that cloak. He knew it. And she knew that he knew it.
“I…I couldn’t sleep,” she said.
He nodded once. He, too, could find no relief in his bed.
The moonlight glowed upon her bright curls. Her breath, quick and shallow, formed tiny mists upon the chill air.
“Th-thank you,” she said, “for…” She nodded to indicate the herb garden.
“It was the least I could—”
“They’re truly not…not devil’s herbs,” she assured him.
He nodded.
She took a step forward. “You’re very kind.”
He resisted the impulse to raise the spade in defense.
She lowered her eyes, then lifted them languidly to his. “I couldn’t sleep because I kept thinking…I kept thinking of you,” she blurted out recklessly.
His jaw tightened. How could he tell her that she haunted his every waking moment as well? That he’d paced the floor of his quarters for nearly an hour, obsessed by her? That he’d come to the herb garden to free his guilty soul and to relinquish all claims he yearned to demand of her?
He couldn’t—not while the moonlight veiled her in ethereal white, not while she stood vulnerably bare beneath a single layer of wool.
She took another step toward him. Her lips trembled with her boldness. Her eyes beckoned to him.
“I kept thinking about your eyes,” she said breathlessly. “How they’re the color of pine in a winter forest.”
She advanced slowly. There was nowhere for him to go, not without crushing the herbs he’d just planted.
“And your hands,” she murmured, reaching out to graze the back of his white knuckles with a finger. “Like a warrior’s, but…gentle.”
His hands were anything but gentle now where they clasped the shovel in a death grip. She stood close now, close enough for the curls of mist escaping his lips to wreathe her moonlit head. The spade was the last obstruction separating them.
“But your kiss…” she whispered, her eyelids dipping shyly, sensuously.
Cold sweat flecked his forehead. Aye, he remembered.
“So soft,” she breathed.
Her mouth was so inviting, so voluptuous…
“So sweet.”
Growling in his throat, he cast the shovel aside.
Chapter 14
Who reached for whom he didn’t know, or care. One moment, mist and moonlight separated them. The next, they flowed together like droplets of quicksilver. He hauled her to him, all cloak and curls and succulent mouth. And she clung to him as if she feared he’d break away. But faith, the Pope himself couldn’t have pulled him from her at this moment.
Her lips were moist and eager. Sweet mulled breath flowed from between them and into his open mouth. Her soft mewls of desire taunted his wits, stretched his nerves tauter than a bowstring. She darted her tongue across his top lip, and hot lightning snaked through his body. Blood surged through his veins. He slanted his mouth hungrily against hers, devouring her with the pent-up passion of four long, chaste years. She delved her hands into his hair, and his fingers embossed the contours of her back, arching her toward him.
The mist thickened around them, but all he could feel was the searing heat of Cynthia. All he could think about was the supple flesh concealed beneath her cloak, just a single layer away. Overcome with avarice, never stopping for breath, he hauled her with him into the concealing shadows of the castle wall.
He was past hope now, past reason. With eager fingers, he followed the line of her lowest rib forward until his thumbs met at the juncture of her cloak. An inch of her skin lay exposed there, a sliver of satin against the rough wool. Gasping against her mouth, he teased the passage wider. She gave no resistance, thrusting her breasts full against him.
His loins ached. Liquid need engorged him until he feared he would burst. Slowly, he pulled the edges of her cloak back, exposing more silken flesh to his touch. Then he let his fingers climb upward, beneath the wool, till he found the lower curve of her breasts. His breath whistled in between his teeth. He continued the ascent with the backs of his knuckles until he brushed the hardened tips nestled under the cloak.
