The room turned suffocatingly hot. Although the fire had burned down to embers, and he’d nearly frozen when he’d stood outside, trying to gather the courage to come in.
He gulped for air, which seemed to be in remarkably short supply. It didn’t make any noticeable difference to his troubles. His heart pounded as if it fought to break free of his chest. And his skin burned all along his side where she touched him. Thank God she lay still now, although the soft brush of her breath across his bare shoulder threatened to send him mad.
Since he’d been gone, he’d faced a thousand dangerous situations. He’d been in constant pain and fear for his life. He’d suffered torture and injury and fever.
Nothing compared to the agony of lying beside the wife he loved and restraining his impulse to take her.
Fate continued to have a laugh at his expense.
Just as he whispered a prayer of gratitude for her stillness, she started to wriggle again, nudging closer. This time, blast her, she used her hands.
At first, he thought the soft strokes across his chest were purposeless. He could almost resist, when he knew her actions verged on innocence.
Then that seeking hand drifted lower. His belly shrank away from her touch, but the heat seared him from head to toe.
Impossible to resist when her hand ventured further and curled around his cock. He’d imagined he couldn’t get any harder, but the touch of Morwenna’s fingers almost sent him shooting out of the bed.
She made a sleepy sound of satisfaction and tightened her grip until he saw stars.
When they’d first met, she’d been sweetly virginal. But she’d soon become a lover whose passion had fueled his fantasies for the past five years. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d have survived his privations—and nor would his sanity have survived either—if he hadn’t been able to escape into his head to relive their sultry nights.
Her touch was beguilingly clumsy. But before he could ponder what that might mean, she crushed her hot face into his bicep and kissed him.
The subtle movement of her lips on his skin beggared resistance. The poignant tenderness bypassed all his elaborately constructed defenses, and damn it if he didn’t blink away a tear as he stared into the darkness. Since he’d left her, tenderness had been a cruel absence in his life. He was powerless against it.
With a groan, Robert rolled over and pulled Morwenna under him.
* * *
Morwenna knew she wasn’t dreaming, although in a thousand fantasies since she’d lost him, Robert had seized her in his arms and risen above her in the darkness.
She was half-asleep, but she recognized that the living man was here with her. That this time at last she wouldn’t wake empty and unfulfilled and crying. Sometimes she’d reached such a pitch of need that she’d touched herself to take the edge off her desperation.
Even as she’d shuddered in lonely pleasure, it had been a barren release.
She missed the marital act, but nowhere near as much as she missed her dead husband. The banal touch of her hand where she wanted to feel Robert, hard, vital, ardent, couldn’t satisfy her heart’s cravings.
But this time, Robert’s presence was too solid, the details too physical for her to mistake this as anything but reality. His rich scent, heightened with arousal. The hot weight of his rod in her brazen hold. The rasp of the hairs on his bare legs against her skin as he settled between her thighs.
Her heart was racing. She caught one shallow breath, then another.
He hadn’t spoken, and she, afraid to break the spell binding them, stayed silent, too.
As he positioned himself, she raised her knees on either side of his narrow hips and tilted upward. The dying fire gave enough light for her to catch the gleam of his black eyes. He was staring down into her face, but she couldn’t begin to guess what he saw. Was he in the grip of a
purely animal impulse? She wasn’t sure he was aware of what he did.
Perhaps it was wrong to surrender like this, when they had so much still to resolve. Perhaps for her pride’s sake, she should wait for him to court her again, so he felt she was worth winning.
But sorrow and pride made bad friends. She was overwhelmingly grateful that her husband was alive. If he wanted her, he could have her. However he chose.
Tender. Slow. Quick.
She’d expected swift and rough, but before accepting her unspoken invitation to thrust inside her body, he paused. She curled her arms around his back, holding tight, daring fate to steal him away again. At this moment, she didn’t particularly care if he didn’t love her. As long as he was here and not drowned.
She hadn’t expected any consideration, was so desperate to feel him moving inside her, she didn’t seek it. But he bent his head, and for the first time in five years, her husband kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t sweet. Instead, it was a primitive claiming.