Maybe we share the same resonant frequency, she thought with flickering amusement. Was that it?
She let the thought slip away, focussing only on the immediate present. On the present that was beckoning her. And on what, she was now thrillingly aware, was yet to come.
She felt her heart rate give that now familiar little skip, a flush of warmth going through her. Life seemed good—an adventure, and different, headily so, but very good.
Thanks to her being here with Nic.
CHAPTER THREE
‘OK, DOC FRAN, tell me about the stars.’
Nic’s invitation was just that—inviting, and Fran could not resist it. They had come out into the night, after a leisurely, easy-going Tex-Mex dinner, and taken a paved path that led up to the top of the bluff, where the lights from the resort did not reach. The low level lighting for the path showed where several benches were, and they had settled down on one. Nic’s arm was around her shoulders and it felt warm, the right place for it to be.
He was lifting his face up to the heavens and so was she, and her breath caught. The night sky was ablaze, the moon not yet risen, and the stars were putting on a show that was unmatched in this clear, unpolluted air.
An exuberance filled her, fuelled by the night and the stars and the desert and their distance from her everyday life. The world she’d been born to—of castles and palazzos and titles and estates—and the world she now lived in—of arcane academia and erudite research—seemed very far away.
And it wasn’t the daiquiri running in her veins that was making her feel elated. It had everything to do with the warm, heavy arm around her shoulders, the solid mass of Nic at her side as she leant against him and gazed upwards into the blazing glory of the heavens.
‘Where do I begin?’ she breathed, wondering how to convey to Nic all that she knew, knowing it was impossible.
She knew she must start with opening his eyes to the searing power of the universe itself.
‘So—stars.’ She took another breath, her eyes lighting with her eagerness to share with him what she knew, what she felt, what filled her life. She waved a hand upwards. ‘Fiery, burning balls of gas, each one a powerhouse of energy, nuclear fusion, born in stellar nurseries deep in the galaxy, blazing their time, then burning away. Some stars are small, some huge, and how big they are, and how hot, tells us their fate. Some—the largest—will explode in fantastic supernovae that collapse into black holes, while smaller ones become red giants, as our sun will one day—’
She was away, and he let her talk. She regaled him with Main Sequence and Hertzsprung-Russell and Chandrasekhar Limits and every variety of dwarf star, and neutron star and pulsars and quasars, star clusters and nebulae, until his head was spinning. And in the end he heard not her words but the passion in her voice for the subject she loved. It warmed him to do so, for passion was passion, and it could be expressed in more than cerebral enthusiasm...
His could—oh, his could, indeed!
He felt the slender weight of her body against him as they gazed upwards, so soft. The scent of her freshly washed hair caught at him, the silken fall of its lush tresses beneath his bare forearm inflaming all his senses.
Desire was kindled in him, and all of a sudden he wanted no more of stars. His free hand came to her face and he laid one finger across her lips, silencing her.
She paused, her eyes lowering to his, meeting his. Seeing in his, under the starlight, a blaze that was nothing to do with the heavens above. A blaze that lit up in her own eyes.
Her breath caught in her throat. Her gaze worked over his face. ‘Enough with the stars?’ she asked, and her voice was husky suddenly.
Long lashes dipped over blue eyes turned inky in the dim light. ‘For now,’ he answered, and the huskiness was in his voice too. His strong fingers cupped her cheek as if it were the rarest porcelain, his gaze pouring into hers. ‘You love your subject so much...’
‘I adore it,’ she whispered.
But her hand was lifting to his face now, exploring its rough contours with the delicate tips of her fingers, tracing the planes and edges, the outline of his mouth.
‘The stars will burn for aeons, for a time we cannot grasp or fathom...’ her voice was still husky, a whisper, and her eyes were clinging to his, his to hers ‘...but this night, now, is ours.’
Slowly, sensuously, she reached her mouth to his, feeling its familiarity, its acceptance as he let her explore, slowly and sensuously, taking her time, all the time she needed, as her fingertips slid into his sable hair, cupping the nape of his sinewy neck, as his muscles flexed minutely—as, slowly and sensuously, he began to kiss her back.
How long they kissed she did not know—only knew that at some point she was drawn against his body, that strong, powerful body, folded to him as if she were silver tissue paper.
She could feel her breasts crushed, then engorged, peaking, and she gloried in it, gloried in the way his hand around her shoulder was pulling her to him, the way his mouth was foraging deep within hers, and she gloried in her answering response, eager, quickening the desire that was filling her, overwhelming her.
She heard her own voice, low in her throat, heard a kind of primitive growl in his, and then with a sudden movement he had swept her to her feet, then into his arms, as if she were a feather.
She gave a cry of laughter, exhilarated, enchanted. ‘You can’t carry me all the way back to the motel!’
He only laughed, carrying her down the path to the motel while she clung to him, setting her down outside the door. His hand clasping hers, he led her inside, down the corridor to his room, opening the door with a rapid swipe of the key card.
Then his arms were around her again, and he was yielding to all the overpowering impulses of his heated desire for her, setting it ablaze in her as a heady exhilaration filled her. Whatever it was that was happening between them, she was giving herself to it totally, consumingly.