‘Thank God.’ He caught her tightly to him.
Their mouths fused and within seconds they were lost in each other. No more words, no gentle patience, the fierceness of their hunger taking them towards the big waiting bed on steps punctuated with powerful kisses and mad flurries of activity as they took the clothes from each other’s bodies.
By the time Dominic pushed her down on the bed and followed her, they were naked and trembling with eagerness. Only once did he moderate his desire to a more controllable level, when their bodies, hot and burning, drenched in the sweat of love, were ready to join, and he eased himself away a little and caught her restless face in his hands, demanding she look at him.
‘Pain and pleasure, Madeline,’ he said thickly, his eyes black with passion and nostrils flaring at the control he was placing on himself. ‘It has to be.’
‘You know I haven’t—?’
‘You couldn’t. I couldn’t. We belong to each other.’ And as she trembled at the full meaning of his words, he lowered his mouth back to hers, and slowly began the ultimate thrust of his hips which would unite their bodies.
He caught her soft cry of pain with his mouth, savouring it, holding her still beneath him until he felt her tension begin to wane, then he was moving fiercely, the moment of temperance gone and the full violence of their shared passion driving them to the ultimate victory, a mutual shattering of everything earthly, leaving only the spirit, stripped and vulnerable to attack. It was a woman’s right to yield to the superior strength of her man—and a man’s karma to have his very soul laid bare to the woman he impregnated with his need.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MADELINE was over by the window, watching the rain pour from a storm-blackened sky, the wind lashing it against the leaded glass almost obliterating the view beyond.
Dom lay watching her from the bed, the sheet drawn down low on his hips, his body still languid from the slumber he had just woken from. His eyes were lazily enjoying the picture she presented, dressed only in his discarded shirt, her long legs bare, and her hair, that wonderful glory of black silk he so loved to smother himself in, rippling down her back in a tangle of soft glistening waves.
‘What’s so interesting out there?’ he questioned after a while.
‘Rain, rain and more rain,’ she sighed, still staring outwards. ‘I do hope it improves before Nina’s wedding.’
‘It will,’ he assured with all the optimism of a true Englishman. ‘Come back here to me, Madeline,’ he held out his hand to her. ‘I’m missing you.’
She hesitated only a moment before going to curl herself up against the warmth of his muscled body. She tucked her head into the warmth of his throat and Dominic’s arms closed comfortably around her.
‘I love you,’ he said softly.
‘I know.’ She placed a kiss on his throat, but her mood was subdued, brooding, her arms folded tightly across her shirt-covered breasts.
‘Hey!’ Dom lifted his head from the pillow to frown at her, her strange tone making his heart miss a beat beneath her resting cheek. ‘What’s the matter? What’s wrong, Madeline?’ he demanded brusquely.
‘I wish—I wish… Oh, Dom,’ she sighed, suddenly stretching up to wind her arms tightly around his neck. ‘I don’t want to ever leave you again! I don’t want to leave this house, this room—I don’t want all those people out there spoiling things for us a second time!’
‘They won’t,’ he assured, holding her tightly to him. ‘We won’t let them come near us if you don’t want them to!’ He was frowning in angry confusion at her sudden and unexpected flight into anxiety. She was actually trembling with it, her tears damp against his throat. It hadn’t occurred to him that the old Madeline was back with a vengeance, wild passions and fears alike.
‘But they’ll know,’ she choked. ‘They’ll have to know, and then it will all start up again. The teasing, the interfering advice. They’ll be questioning your sanity in taking me on again, and warning me not to make the same mistakes a second time! And—and then all the taunts will start, the reminiscences of how it was between us the first time around, and what fools we made of ourselves, and—and before we know it we’ll be fighting instead of loving, and it will all turn sour!’
‘No, it won’t,’ he stated grimly. ‘Because we won’t let it. Listen to me!’ he commanded. ‘We’ll get married. Now, tomorrow, as soon as I can arrange it. We’ll get married and lock ourselves away in this house where none of them can get at us if that’s what you want!’
‘Marry? You mean you actually want to marry me?’ She sounded so sincerely shocked that Dominic shook her.
‘Of course I want to marry you, you bloody fool!’ he growled.
‘You don’t have to, you know,’ she told him softly, beginning to smile because she was suddenly feeling warm and safe and very loved, and the old Madeline way of flipping from one emotion to another had happened again. ‘I’m quite happy to be your mistress. In fact it sounds a rather exciting thing to be, a man’s secret mistress.’
With a jerk, he rolled her on to her back so that he could loom angrily over her. ‘And if you think I’ll accept anything less than marriage from you, then you can damned well think again! And stop smiling at me like that!’ he growled, his blue eyes fierce.
‘Like what?’ she asked, her fingers coming up to stroke sensuously at his taut cheeks.
‘Like the cat who’s just pinched all the cream!’
‘I love you, Dominic,’ she murmured huskily.
‘God,’ he groaned, closing his eyes against the devilment gleaming in hers. ‘I must be mad, getting myself involved with a teasing little witch like you.’
‘I love you,’ she repeated, and drew his head down so that she could shower his angry face with kisses. ‘Love you—love you—love you.’