Page 24 of The Autumn Wife
Marshaling his will, he pulled away a fraction. Her lower lip clung to his for a moment before separating.
There.
It was done.
Their faces hovered as closely as two people could without touching. Through his lashes, he saw, even in the dim starlight, a spray of freckles across her nose and cheeks, kissed darker by sun during the summer weeks. He began to count them—a way to distract himself from wanting too much from her. As he did, the wind soughed through the pines at the edge of the woods while the river sang its gurgling song.
Cecile.
Her name rang in his head like a prayer. He yearned to whisper it aloud. In a moment—any second now—she would bend back, shuffle across the grass, or stiffen into stone. She’d turn her face away and lift her chin and raise the walls she’d built between them.
As the moment stretched, his control wavered, cracks spidering through. Why had he thought kissing her would ease her fears or increase her trust in him?
Was he mad to believe he could resist temptation? His count of her freckles passed twenty-five and still she remained unmoved, eyes lowered but lashes fluttering. He dug his fingers into the grass, wondering, for the first time, if it could possibly be affection—or desire—that held her in thrall.
Didn’t matter. He should be the one to put an end to what he’d started.
The grass ran smooth under his hip as, against all desire, he slid himself away, pulling back from the promise of those parted lips, that gleaming mouth.
“No.”
She whispered the word and seized him with her dark, churning gaze.
His pulse jumped. He’d watched her mouth form the word, but what did she mean? Was she finally coming to her senses and telling him that she didn’twantto be kissed? Or did she mean… Did she want him to—
No, he shook off the idea. It was madness to let his wishful hopes rise.
He glanced down at his hand splayed against the ground to find her warm, paler one sliding over it. The wind stopped sighing in his ears and the stars tilted in his sight.
“Don’t stop, Theo.”
The whispered command burrowed deep. His control fell away. His palm ached to feel the brush of her hair against it—and now his hand filled with the silky warmth, gritty with ash, damp in places. He cupped her head, guiding her so he could set his lips against hers with the urgency he’d held leashed for too long. Their bodies pressed together. Ripples of sensation vibrated through him.
He could feel them rippling through her, too.
Easy, easy,whispered his better nature as he covered her mouth with his. He’d banked these urges but now there was no holding back the surge. As he tilted his head to tease her lips apart, justifications burbled and roiled—Cecile had been married, her husband was lost to the wilderness, she was no virginfeeling a man’s touch for the first time, she knew what this kind of kissing led to, he couldfeelthat she wanted him.
He coaxed with the tip of his tongue to open her mouth—then she moaned.
A low sound, a flutter of the larynx.
White light exploded in his mind. He curled his other arm around her. He knew he could shift her down to the grass, tug her skirts over her thighs, touch her in all the places he wanted to taste. She would arch her back in excitement when they joined together. He knew she would.
Dark thoughts gathered. He would make it good for her. He would make her scream his name. In the long years to come, she would remember their merging, hungry bodies moving as one toward joy on the banks of this river.
She would rememberhim.
The madness of that thought jolted him back to sanity. Here he was, eroding her will with a promise of pleasure when he didn’t know what she wanted—or if their minds were as one. Wasn’t he just a laborer in tattered breeches, a convicted felon who had nothing to offer this woman but an evening’s delight?
Cecile deserved a thousand times better.
Damn it.
He yanked back far enough for the cool air to sweep between them.
“Cecile.”
Her name was all he could manage.
