The world transformed into hot, scarlet lightning. As the mighty climax thundered through him, he let go of her hips and cupped her breasts in his hands. She pressed her back up toward him, urging him on as he shuddered over her.
When at last he withdrew, she was trembling beneath him. She clung to him as he slipped free, as if she never wanted him to leave her. He bent to kiss her nape, inhaling the delicious fragrance of floral soap and musky perspiration.
Half-falling, Diarmid dragged her down until they were sitting on the thick layer of pine needles. He leaned back against the tree and hauled her into his arms.
With a choked sound, Fiona plastered herself against him, and buried her face in his shirt. It took him far too long to realize that she was crying.
“Tears, Fiona?” he asked in dismay. For the love of heaven, had he been too rough with her? “Dinna tell me that I hurt ye?”
She shook her disheveled head without answering. On a broken sob, she pressed into him and her hands made frantic fists in his shirt.
“Please, talk to me, mo chridhe.” Seriously worried now, Diarmid tightened his embrace. “Tell me I havenae done anything too bad.”
“Nothing…nothing bad at all,” she forced out. She struggled to sit up, and shaking hands dashed the tears from her eyes. “Good. Wonderful. Glorious.”
All of that would have sounded fine, if she wasn’t bawling her heart out when she said it. As he struggled to make sense of what was going on, he fastened his breeches. “Then why on earth are ye crying, lassie?”
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“I feel…”
He caught her chin in his hand, so she couldn’t hide the truth from him. If he’d hurt her in his desperate passion, he wanted to know. “What do ye feel? Tell me.”
“What can I say? I feel overcome, transformed, swept away from myself. Sometimes it’s just too much. The beauty of it all makes me want to cry.” She twisted out of his hold and surveyed him with eyes glittering with tears. “It happens whenever we’re…together.”
He gradually came to realize that whatever had brought on this emotional storm, his headlong seduction hadn’t caused her any injury, at least. But he was still at a loss to explain her powerful reaction. “Pleasure?”
“That.” She kneeled at his side, her green dress crushed and drooping at the neck where he’d tugged on it, touching her breasts. Her once-tidy chignon was half-undone, and strands of hair hung about her intent face. He’d never seen her look more beautiful. “But much, much more than just pleasure.”
“Good more?”
“Oh, yes.” She bit her lip as she seemed to struggle to find the words to explain. Instinct told him not to interrupt her with more questions. “When you’re inside me, Diarmid, I feel like we become one person.”
The unexpected answer slammed through him like a killer punch from a champion bare-knuckle fighter. He swallowed to loosen his tight throat and made himself respond with a calmness he didn’t feel. “I feel like that, too.”
“Do you?”
“Aye. Always.”
“With other women?”
He frowned. Where the devil was Fiona going with this? “Since I met you, there havenae been any other women. I promised ye my fidelity.”
“But before we married, you had lovers.”
Diarmid shifted in discomfort. “Aye.”
“Did it feel the same?”
“No.” Now it was his turn to struggle for an answer. “It was nice. But what I feel when I’m with ye shakes the whole world.”
It was no mystery why. When their bodies united, she felt like the only woman in the world, because to him, she was the only woman in the world. He loved his wife beyond all reason. A year of marriage had only worsened his affliction.
“That’s what it’s like for me.” She went on in an urgent rush. “But I don’t just feel like that when we’re in bed together. I feel like that all the time. Every morning, my heart overflows with joy when I see you. I miss you when you’re not with me. I hardly have a thought that doesn’t relate to you in some way. It’s like you’ve become a part of me. Every day my sense of the two of us joined heart and soul grows stronger and stronger.”
Heart and soul? His own yearning heart slammed to a halt, then set off on a wild gallop.
“Have I made ye happy, Fiona?” he asked unsteadily, as fragile hope stirred inside him that against all his expectations, the impossible might have come to pass.