She was crucial to his future, and not having her agreement to be that critical and necessary part of it wasn’t a situation he could any longer accept.
Before he went out to face the Black Cobra, he needed to know she would be there-his-when he got back.
Determination hardening to resolution, he reached for the knob and opened the door.
Firelight flickered inside. A single candle was burning on the table by the bed. Beyond its glow, the rest of the room lay in deep shadow.
Deliah was waiting, already in her nightgown with a warm shawl draped about her shoulders to defeat the winter chill. Arms folded, she’d been standing before the hearth gazing at the fire. She turned as he entered, and smiled.
That smile embodied everything he wanted, not just for tonight but for every night for the rest of his life.
He returned it as he crossed to halt before her. He looked into her eyes as he drew her into his arms.
She held his gaze. Searched it.
Read something in his eyes-saw something of his resolution, his purpose. Head tilting, she parted her lips-
He bent his head and kissed her. Gathered her closer as, after an instant’s surprise, she responded. Ardent as always, instantly willing to follow his lead, to waltz into the fire and the flames with him.
To let mutual passions flare and burn.
The last thing he needed was for her to ask questions-not yet, not now. So he kissed her to distract her.
Then he realized, and kissed her to persuade.
To convince.
To woo.
She was supple and giving in his arms, all feminine curves and lush challenge. Raising her arms, she wound them about his neck and kissed him back, enticing and provoking. His arms locked as she pressed against him, into him, and his world narrowed and condensed.
To just this. To her, and all he’d found in her arms.
To her, and all he felt for her.
Sunk in her mouth, his tongue dueling with hers, he seized the moment, used it to show her.
What she meant to him.
How much he needed her, wanted her, desired her.
Deliah read his message with ease, but when he lingered, holding her in the kiss, letting the exchange stretch until her wits and senses spun, some part of her wondered.
Some tiny rational part of her mind looked, and saw. Sensed and felt with every heartbeat something deeper. Some element she hadn’t seen, or hadn’t noticed, hadn’t felt before. It didn’t feel new, just…more.
Even as she sensed it, and wondered, he pressed deeper, tasting her, inciting her to taste him, to drown in the flavors she now knew so well-him, all heady masculinity and passion, strength, desire, and the promise of possession.
All there, all familiar, yet there was a deeper thread running beneath all. A powerful current that fed all the rest, that gave the rest life.
For the first time she could touch it.
Stroke it, know it.
Welcome it as his hand closed over her breast and, pulling back from the kiss, she gasped.
Eyes closed, head back, she drew that novel power in with every racing beat of her heart as his hands, hard, possessive, sculpted her curves. Arousing, yet not driving.
This was lovemaking with a different slant. With something else in the mix. Something he was letting rise up and fill him, and pour into her.
It was glory of a different degree. It took desire and passion, hunger and need, and gilded them. Made them shimmer with meaning, with purpose.
She drank it in, focused on each and every caress. Every explicit act of claiming. Reveled in the heat, the deeper warmth that suffused every inch of skin, and sank to her bones.
Raising her heavy lids, from beneath her lashes she studied his face. His features were set, harshly passion-etched, his lips a firm, unyielding line, yet his eyes as he surveyed the bounty of her breast, filling one of his hands, held an expression of…reverence.
Possession, too, but there was a deeper joy, a deeper appreciation beneath.
Before she could concentrate and identify the impression, he saw her watching him. He bent his head and took her lips again.
Again swept her away on the familiar tide…but slowly.
As if their heartbeats were counting the bars, marking time.
He waltzed her to the bed, but before he could tug away her shawl, she stopped him with a hand on his chest. He paused, but didn’t break the kiss.
She seized the moment, and slowly-still keeping to that deeper, slower, compulsive beat-pushed his coat off his shoulders. Unwound his cravat and let it fall from her fingers, unbuttoned his waistcoat and pushed it away. Spread her hands over the fine linen of his shirt, traced, unlaced, then pulled the tails from his waistband, slid her hands beneath to find his heated skin, and stroked, caressed.
Del broke from the kiss, and drew the shirt off over his head. Watched as her eyes fastened on his chest, watched them gleam, watched her lips curve with feminine greed and blatant anticipation.
She touched him. Spread her small hands and possessed.
He let her, captive to some compulsion he didn’t fully understand, yet he was the one who had let it free. His pulse drummed in a slow cadence-powerful, controlled, all passion and driving need held subservient to that greater force.
Together, they dispensed with his trousers, his stockings, his shoes, until he stood naked before her.
He reached for her, needing the promise of her body against his. She came, but with one hand on his chest, stayed him from locking her against him. Looking down, she closed her other hand about his jutting staff.
Caressed, possessed.
Deliah traced his heavy erection, took it in her palm and stroked down, up, then she ran her fingertips around the bulbous head.
And he shuddered.
She glanced up, and their eyes met. Gaze to gaze in the candlelit gloom, the dark pools of his eyes drew her in. Held her. Even as she cradled him. Then she felt him tug at her shawl; this time she let it go. Let him divest her of shawl and nightgown, let him pull back the covers, lift her and lay her down, and join her.
He drew the covers over them, creating a cocoon of warmth, a cave, a place that, with the firelight flickering over the walls, was safe and theirs. She’d expected him to join with her immediately, but he propped himself on his elbow beside her, leaned over her, captured her mouth once more with his, filled it, her mind and her senses, then set his hands once more to her body.
Stroked, caressed…worshipped.
There was no other word to describe what she felt, what she sensed through his touch. He’d never made her feel less than desired. This night he made her feel…
Loved.
Cherished.
Desired not just in a physical sense but on some deeper emotional plane. While one part of her mind scoffed at such thoughts, at such an interpretation of his motives, another part saw, and knew.
She felt it in her heart, recognized it in every slow beat of his.
Sensed it in the rise of their pulses as desire thundered anew.
As passion rose and claimed them, and he lifted over her, spread her thighs with his, and filled her.
Completed her.
As she took him in and gloried.
Del wasn’t holding the reins. He’d given them over, ceded all control, surrendered to the compulsive force that was the reality of what he felt for her.
That was the reality of why he needed her.
Giving that reality free rein had been easier than he’d thought-showing her, letting her see. But now it whipped them both, raged through them both, leaving them blind, deaf and consumed, victims to the fire raging in their blood. To the molten heat, to the need to be one, caught in the inexorable drive to consummation.
Their blood pounded in their veins, and glory beckoned.
Desire lifted them on a wave of raw, exquisite, mind-numbing sensation.
Ecstacy sharpened, heightened, brightened, then exploded.
And they shattered, fragmented.