Whispers at Midnight (31 page)

“I might have,” he said smoothly. With an
easy stride Ryne crossed the room and shut the door behind
Amanda.

The action brought her out of her momentary
shock. She whirled around.

“Ryne, I want you to leave at once.”

He shook his head slowly and dropped his
hands to her shoulders. His palms, through the thin silk of her
dressing gown, were like fiery brands, melting through her flesh to
melt her very soul.

“But I want to stay, my sweet,” he said
softly.

Ryne’s fingers curled into her flesh in a
slow and sensuous massage of her shoulders.

“Really?” She stiffened. It was hard to
remain angry when his hands felt so wonderfully good touching her.
“Why, Ryne?” she asked in a frosty voice which she hoped did not
betray the boiling temperature of her blood.

It wasn’t fair that her body should respond
so quickly to his touch. Her emotions waged war. She ought to pull
away, but somehow she could not.

“Must you always ask why?” The moment he
touched her, he knew there was fire, not ice in her veins. The
flame burned as hotly in him. With a flick of his fingers he
loosened the tie on her dressing gown and let it fall away. He
could feel the heated flesh beneath his fingertips as he ran them
over her bare shoulders and over the soft swells that rose
enticingly out of the low neckline of her gown. “You must know,
Amanda, you’ve poisoned my blood and stolen my thoughts, until
nothing will ease me but holding you in my arms and having you
again.”

As he spoke, he lifted her hair, so fragrant
and soft, from her neck and kissed the tender spot underneath.

A sigh slipped lightly from her lips.
“Please do leave, Ryne,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t be
here.”

Her voice was like soft shimmering silk and
her breath a sweet warm breeze on his cheek. If the truth were
known, he had not come here for this but to try to prove to himself
once more that he did not need her. But as her slender arms wrapped
about his waist and her head dropped caressingly against his chest,
he found he was proving something entirely different.

“I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t want to be
here,” he whispered unsteadily. “But I am here and I want you more
than I want to breathe.”

Amanda tried to steel herself against his
dangerous magnetism. She must not want what she was wanting, must
not even think it. She tried to ignore the wild hammering of her
heart. If he kissed her again or held her a moment longer, she
would not be able to resist.

“No, Ryne. I don’t want you.” She fought him
with words, a feeble weapon against his nearness, but the only one
she could use. Her body had long ago surrendered to his touch.

Ryne answered her first with a kiss, and as
his lips fastened to hers, he pushed the straps of the pink silk
gown from her shoulders, baring her breasts to the candlelight and
to the caress of his gaze.

“You do,” he whispered, reading the desire
in the emerald mists of her eyes. “Oh yes, love. You do.”

His lips recaptured hers, gentle but more
demanding as she lost the last bit of desire to make him leave. In
a moment she had stepped out of her gown and Ryne had torn his
shirt away. He took her in his arms and carried her to the bed, her
mind now as pliable and willing as her body.

There on the soft linen sheets she waited in
trembling anticipation as he stripped off his boots and breeches.
He stood for a moment looking at her, the hard muscles rippling
beneath his bronzed skin, his eyes the blue-black of midnight, his
state of arousal evident. He was superb, beautiful, and dangerous.
Her heart pounded and she quivered all over.

She needed him. She wanted him. And it was
wrong. She ought to hate him, ought to despise him for making her
feel this way. But he was looking at her with eyes full of desire
and tenderness and she could see he was as mystified as she by the
compelling force that brought them together.

That look on his face unleashed something
gentle and forgiving inside her. She would be satisfied that he had
come to her, that he wanted her so badly he could not stay away
even when he wanted to. For now it would be enough.

She wanted to tell him those things, to
share all the thoughts racing through her mind, but her lips could
only whisper his name.

Ryne groaned at the sight of Amanda lying on
the snowy sheets, her skin almost as white as the fine linen. In
the candlelight her eyes were brilliant, flickering shards of
green, her lashes a dusky flittering shadow around them. She was
the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her rosy lips parted as
she formed his name, her cheeks glowed with the blush of inner
heat.

Ryne knelt above her. What was it that
brought him back to this woman he had tried so hard to forget? She
was only a woman, was she not? And he might have his pick of any.
Why, then, could he not keep himself from this lovely sprite whom
he did not even trust?

Ahh, but it was not a time to examine such
heady matters as those, not when passion flamed his loins and a
morsel as sweet and desirable as Amanda lay willingly beneath
him.

He wove his hands into her hair, rich and
brown as fertile earth shimmering with bands of gold. She smelled
sweet and fresh, as if the essence of flowers had been rubbed over
her skin.

A soft cry came from her lips as he poured
hot, searing kisses from her temple to her throat. Expertly he
slipped gentle hands under her shoulders and raised her up. Amanda
shook with excitement as the smoldering flame in his eyes swept
over her, taking in hungrily the radiant glow of her skin; the soft
rounded curves of her shoulders and breasts; the rose-crested
nipples that had hardened in response to his kisses; the flat plane
of her belly and the satin smoothness of her thighs.

She lifted her lips to his, slid her hands
slowly from his shoulders over the crisp black hair that covered
his chest, and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist. Ryne’s
lips were ravaging hers again, his tongue darting quickly in and
out of her mouth, tantalizing, teasing, tasting all the sweetness
within. Amanda kissed him back fervently, knowing she wanted him,
loved him—and no longer forcing herself to deny it.

The burn of desire grew as once more Ryne’s
mouth seared a trail from her lips to her throat. He whispered
words of love, soft and low. Amanda shuddered, feeling as if she
were suspended in the fleecy, voluminous swells of a cloud.

Moving gently, his hands found her breasts,
the small, perfect mounds that tingled with excitement under his
caress. His fingers fondled possessively the rosy crests, making
them tighten into little pink buds before he bent his head and took
one rosy peak in his mouth.

Amanda gasped his name as his tongue
caressed and his teeth nibbled gently, sending a flux of fire
surging through her veins. She was lost in the frenzied sensations
he was starting in her body. His mouth moved to the other breast,
his lips pressing a circle of kisses around that bud and his tongue
swirling gently over it.

Strong hands stroked her thighs, moving
boldly upward, one hand brushing softly over silken curls and
dipping down to intimately touch her womanhood. Writhing beneath
his touch, she whimpered as he found and caressed rhythmically,
gently, the soft, silken folds of skin.

His lips found her ear and whispered soft
words of love before he kissed a fiery path over her cheek and once
more covered her mouth with his. But his lips lingered there only a
moment before he blazed the trail to her breasts and to her belly,
where he plied the soft white skin with more hot kisses.

Faster and faster his fingers probed her
womanhood, moving inside her warm nectar, titillating all her
senses into one that heated and expanded and bloomed in a wild
explosion of light.

“Oh, Ryne, Ryne!” she cried as her body
stilled its quivering.

Rising, she touched the mat of black hair on
his chest, traced the bands of muscles beneath his bronzed
skin.

Ryne took her hand and guided it to his bold
manhood. He moved his hand over hers at first, but then left the
ancient rhythm to her as he caressed and kissed her face and ran
his hands in masterful strokes over her body. She felt the heat
rising inside her as he groaned, and drew her hand away. A moment
later he pushed her down on the pillows and raised himself, poised
above her.

She gave a small incoherent cry as he thrust
inside her. His hands were tangled in the tumbling honey-brown
tresses spread across the pillows. He lay motionless for what
seemed an eternity, his lips burning hers with a smoldering heat.
She begged him with her eyes and he responded by starting to move
within her, thrusting harder and harder with the savage passion
that consumed them.

“Sweet love, Amanda,” he whispered hoarsely
against her throat. “You are mine.”

Amanda gasped in sweet agony. She felt the
delectable heat boiling in her loins, spilling into her veins,
forging through her blood with tremors of pleasure. She clawed at
his back. The skin was damp under her fingers, the muscles hard as
steel. Her body began to shudder as if it were no longer her own,
yielding her to a floodtide of ecstasy that rolled and swelled
until at last it burst forth in a tumultuous, molten release.

Almost at the same moment, Ryne plunged into
her for the last time, his body jolting in the wild ecstasy he
sought, leaving him glistening with sweat and panting for breath.
His ebony hair hung damply on his shoulders as he whispered her
name, and still entangled within her legs, rolled to his side.

They lay in each other’s arms, neither
willing to say the words that might destroy the moment. How long
they lay awake, she did not know, but before her eyes closed the
candle had burned down and flickered out and Ryne’s arms were still
wrapped tightly about her.

***

In the soft, crystalline light of morning
Ryne stood silhouetted at the window, a slow, secret smile
spreading across his face as she opened her eyes and looked for him
beside her.

“I am here.”

Amanda quickly covered her breasts with the
sheet and raked the tangles of hair from her eyes. She pushed a
pillow into a plump cushion behind her and leaned her weight
against it.

“I thought you had gone,” she said softly,
not knowing how things would be with them by the light of day.

Ryne came to her bedside. She noticed that
already he had donned his boots and breeches, and the shirt he had
cast away last night had been retrieved and hung over the back of a
chair.

“I would not deprive myself of this lovely
sight.” He tugged the sheet away, uncovering her breasts to his
smoky gaze and caress. “Nor of this sweet taste,” he added, taking
one rose-tipped breast in his mouth and nipping it lightly. His
hand rested high on her thigh and as his mouth trailed hotly to the
other breast, she felt him softly kneading her leg. “You are not
sorry I stayed, are you?”

“No, no. I am pleased.” Amanda moaned
softly. How easily he could light the fire in her blood.

His lips moved to her mouth and she quivered
at the sweet tenderness of his kiss. But too soon he pulled
away.

“You bedevil me, woman. I should have been
gone at sunrise.”

“Business?”

He laughed. “Yes, business. And count
yourself proud. You are the first woman ever to sway me from my
plans.” His voice lowered. “I watched you sleeping for an
hour.”

“Why?”

Ryne laughed again. Even with the bristle of
a beard showing on his face, he was handsome.

“More whys, Amanda? They can be dangerous,
you know. I might change my mind and stay.”

Amanda blushed. “You are dangerous, I
think.”

“No more so than you are to me. And I cannot
stay. I have arranged to meet some men who are interested in
investing in my horses. As it is, my mount will have to fly to get
me there on time.”

“No, please, wait just a moment more. I’ll
dress and walk out to the stables with you.”

“How can I refuse?” he asked with a smile.
“I’ll wash and get a shirt from my room while you cover your
charms.” Ryne dropped a kiss on her lips.

“I’ll be dressed in shortly,” she called to
him as he hurried away.

Whistling softly, Ryne raked the tousled
black hair from his face and paused for a moment, remembering he
had left the black silk shirt in Amanda’s room. But no matter, he
would get it when he returned. So lost was he in memories of Amanda
locked in an intimate embrace that he did not notice the quick
whisk of skirts as someone drew quickly into the doorway of another
room along the hall.

He shook his head in consternation. He had
been terribly wrong about her, terribly wrong. Perhaps he had
become too hard and suspicious, but that happened to a man who had
been betrayed by someone for whom he cared. It was a trait now
deeply ingrained.

He sighed. What a beautiful, tempting smile
she had. How could he have believed those soft green eyes could
mask deceit? On both occasions she had given herself to him
completely, without questioning. It was time to make amends for
what he had said and done—more than amends, if he could have his
way.

As soon as the door was shut, Amanda exhaled
a soft sigh of contentment. Her eyelids closed dreamily and she
fell to the pillows. Could this be happening? This wonderful,
blissful, happy moment. Oh, but it was. It was. And Ryne was
adoring, sweet, loving . . . and waiting.

Quickly she jumped from the bed and hurried
to the washbasin, where she scrubbed her skin until it was pink and
glowing. Working as fast as her fingers would allow, she brushed
the tangles from her hair and tied it back with a ribbon. Her
toilette completed with haste, she hurriedly slipped on a blue
muslin dress and stepped into her shoes.