Winter Garden (22 page)

She had never felt like this in her life, Madeleine realized, never experienced a rush of such incredible heights of passion and pleasure as she did with this man. This marvelous man who made her sigh with a look from his dark, dangerous eyes, tingle with a word from his resonant voice, and climax with such ease and complete abandonment from his exquisite touch. It had never been like this with another, and she was almost as certain that it never would be again. Thomas made her feel beautiful without telling her so, made her feel so very wanted by only his presence at her side. Now she wanted to give him everything.

With a sudden nervousness she couldn't explain, Madeleine reached for the buttons of his trousers, fumbling with them quickly, until she felt his palms wrap around her wrists.

“Madeleine, we have to talk first,” he murmured huskily, his lips once more meeting hers.

Talk?
Talk?

“Maddie,” he tried again, pulling back a bit and
raising his hands to weave his fingers through her hair. “There's something I need to show you, some things I need to tell you.”

Desire still burned within her like a soaring flame, never extinguished, but she forced herself to do what he wanted and wait for him.

His gaze penetrated hers with warmth, as well as a level of anxiousness she not only saw, but felt within. Curiosity mounting, she reached up with her hand and ran her thumb once across his chin. “Talk to me, then.”

He inhaled deeply, then turned to his side and, pushing her discarded gown and underthings beneath the tea table, sat upon the soft rug, his long, muscular legs spread wide and around her body. She sat when he did, as daintily as she could between his thighs, warm from the fire at their side, staring at the rippling muscles of his unclothed, chiseled chest, relishing the comforting closeness that only this man had ever seemed to give her unconditionally.

He hesitated, scrubbing his face with one hand before beginning.

“I told you once that I was injured in the war,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” she answered, meeting his gaze.

His jaw tightened, and his eyes bore into hers. “I was injured badly, Madeleine.”

She wasn't sure how to take that, how he wanted her to react, so she simply replied, “How badly?”

He dropped his gaze to her breasts, then her belly and exposed pubic area, then shifted his attention uncomfortably to the fire. Stalling.

His uneasiness, coupled with what she could only
term mild insecurity, melted her inside, and she reached for him, her palm to his cheek. “Tell me, Thomas,” she insisted as sternly as the situation allowed.

He squinted, and she had a difficult time discerning whether it was due to mental or physical pain. She decided it was the former but chose not to comment, waiting for him.

After wrestling with his thoughts uncomfortably, he finally revealed, “A burning, wooden pillar fell on top of me in a shipyard in Hong Kong, pinning me beneath it and breaking both of my legs below the knees. They didn't heal properly.”

Questions immediately filled her mind. Why? How? “Show them to me,” she demanded softly instead.

With resolve, he reached for his left leg, rolled up the cuff of his trousers to the top of his black leather boot, and very slowly pulled it by the heel, twisting his foot until his leg gave way and came out of the rim. He rolled down his sock and exposed it to her view.

Madeleine looked at it curiously, carefully withholding a reaction due to his penetrating focus on her, noting the badly burned and mangled flesh from knee to toes, two of which—the two on the end—were missing. The color of the injured area was hard to distinguish in dim firelight, but she could tell it was an odd mixture of dark red and purple—the shade of a day-old bruise. The muscles of his calf had been torn and healed over incorrectly, and scars abounded from top to bottom, from the deep to the superficial, which undoubtedly accounted for the pain in his walk.

“Oh, Thomas,” she whispered, reaching out to touch it. He let her, sitting still as death, watching, anticipat
ing her resistance, though she only felt his gaze on the side of her face. The skin was rough and knotty, but she skimmed the area with her palm, up and down in a soothing motion.

Silently he reached for his right leg, pulling up on the cuff of his pants as he had with the left. This time, however, she noticed a difference in his boot. At the top, near the knee, were two buckled straps, one below the other and an inch or so apart, which he unfastened very slowly. That finished, and with a tug of one hand at the heel, one at the calf, the boot gave way, exposing the core of his fear.

Madeleine stared, her body numbing, heart twisting with overwhelming compassion and sadness. Two inches below the scarred and deformed knee, his right leg had been expertly cut off.

“Will you love me now, Maddie?” she heard in a tender, hoarse, far away voice.

The words struck a chord within her, and her mouth went dry as she gaped in obvious shock at the forever-wounded part of a tortured soul that belonged to a beautiful man. She raised tear-filled eyes back to his, unable to speak, aching to hold him, to prove to him she didn't care, to convince him her affection went far deeper than the superficial. She understood so very vividly how the world judged appallingly by physical beauty and so little by character and goodness. Oh, how she needed him now—to show him, to be with him.

His eyes remained locked with hers, boldly probing while they fearfully hoped. With a harsh swallow to control the powerfully intense rise of confusing but wonderful emotions seizing her, she leaned over and placed her lips on the sight of his injury.

She heard a rush of air escape his chest, and then his hands were in her hair, fingers weaving through it as he gently massaged her scalp while she left tiny kisses in a circle at the end of his leg, at the tip where the prime scar had closed over what used to be healthy muscle and tissue, bone and skin.

Madeleine placed her palms on his thighs, over his pants, and pushed them up until she reached the crease at the top of his legs. Leaning up at last, she hooked her fingers over the waistband and pulled, and this time he lifted his hips, allowing her to move forward in her approach. She tugged at the woolen fabric until she'd removed it, underclothes next, and then he sat beside her as naked as she.

Thomas watched her, she knew, but she had yet to look back into his eyes. She stared at his body—his magnificent body—so strong and large and aroused. That amazed her most of all. He was still so aroused, even after the moment just shared where he'd revealed his gravest concern to her, afraid of her repulsion.

He wanted her, and he was ready for her in every regard.

Madeleine stared at his erection as it extended upward—hard and long and thick, the base surrounded by a mass of black curls that thinned to a tiny line ending at his navel. Placing her hands on his bare thighs, she leaned over and skimmed the length of it with her lips, up and down, then kissed it heartily over and over to tease, to enjoy and give enjoyment.

He groaned, tensing beneath her caress, and that gave her encouragement as she continued on her journey. She leisurely explored his body, kissing his navel, stroking it once with her tongue, then his chest and neck, finally
stretching out fully upon him as she silently revealed her intentions and he reclined on the rug beneath her.

Madeleine lay atop his hot, hard body and looked into his eyes, now dark pools expressing an infinite yearning for her alone.

“I have never wanted a man more than I want you right now, Thomas,” she said very slowly, observing the changes in his face with each calculated, sincere word. And then before he could summon a comment, she at long last captured his mouth again with hers, kissing him fully and fervidly, and in total knowledge of the flame of something undefined but obviously blazing between them, something she didn't now dare to determine.

Desire sparked anew, and he kissed her back forcefully, his tongue thrusting deep with returned hunger, his hands in her hair, taking the weight of her body with ease as her breasts flattened against his chest and her sex rested upon his as if made for it, the perfect fit, the perfect closeness.

She rubbed against him once, then again, and he moaned his pleasure, cupping her bottom, stroking her back and waist with long fingers and large warm palms. Madeleine understood his need and quickly she raised herself so that she sat upon him, her moist, ready cleft smothering his erection with intentional, indulgent care.

Then with a sensual narrowing of her lids and an impish lift to the corners of her lips, she began to move, back and forth and in slow circles on top of him, watching the longing in his eyes turn at last to centered lust, and reveling in it.

Thomas didn't think he'd ever been so aroused in his life. Her erotic movements entranced him; her small
whimpers and short, quick breaths held him under a spell of torturous bliss. And when she raised her hands, threaded her fingers through her own hair to shake it loose, then suddenly began caressing her own breasts and nipples, he had to close his eyes momentarily to keep himself under control.

It was the most sensual thing he'd ever seen a woman do. She'd touched herself on Christmas Eve, but that episode certainly didn't compare to watching her now: flickering firelight dancing on golden, shiny skin—skin that she herself stroked and teased as she moved her sex against his, slowly, evenly. Perfectly.

Thomas placed his hands on her thighs but didn't move them, just held them there. He didn't want to change the intimacy as it was. His breath quickened, his chest ached, his need neared explosion, and still her moans grew louder and her breathing more shallow as she massaged her breasts and tugged at her hardened nipples.

“You feel so good,” she whispered, eyes closed, rotating her hips above him, against him.

He raised himself slightly to match her movements. Then she dropped one hand and placed her own fingers at the center of her desire to stroke and pleasure herself as he watched in absolute fascination that took him to the brink of his own release.

“You're making me crazy,” he said gruffly.

She didn't reply, but panted, whimpered, lost in her own sensual world as she rubbed her wet, hot cleft against his engorged erection, caressed the satiny skin of her breasts and nipples, and moved her fingers rhythmically between her legs, faster and faster.

When she dropped her head back, Thomas could feel her long, luxuriant hair on his knees, on his injured, mangled legs that she'd accepted without revulsion, that lay exposed to a woman for the very first time.

“I want to watch you climax,” he whispered. “Nothing is more beautiful to me, Madeleine.”

He wasn't sure if she heard him, or understood, for she was so close now. She stretched and moaned as she neared the ultimate satisfaction, and he smoothed his palms over her thighs and hips and waist, letting her experience it the way she wanted.

Suddenly she lifted her head, raised her lashes, and looked down at him, her eyes glazed over, unfocused but sharply intense.

“Thomas,” she whispered again.

“I'm watching, my love,” he returned in a voice barely heard.

Her eyes opened wider. “Thomas…Oh, God, Thomas—”

She reached her crest with a small cry of fierce pleasure through her lips, smothering his member with flowing moisture, touching herself with one hand, stroking herself with the other, and Thomas could take no more.

As soon as he sensed the tension draining from her, he grasped her waist and lifted her easily, turning over quickly so that he could enter her from above.

She didn't protest in any way as she spread her legs for him, welcoming him when he slid into her slowly, gradually, filling her to an ideal fit. She cushioned him warmly, accommodating his size as if made for him. Thomas stilled his body and braced himself
when he came to rest deeply within her, his forearms laying flat on the rug on either side of her head as he peered down to her lovely, flushed, satisfied face. He'd done that, without doing a thing. He'd pleasured her twice tonight and he would do it again, as she needed it, coaxing her along to that marvelous brink of oblivion. But first he needed gratification himself.

In a drugged haze, her lips curved up contentedly. “I want to watch you this time,” she murmured thickly, caressing his chest with her hands, grazing his arms and neck with her fingers.

He slid very gently out of her once, then back in again. “This is my heaven. You are my dream.”

She raised her hands to cup his face, her smile fading, expression intense. “I've never known lovemaking like this. Do you believe me?”

Her question was spoken timidly, although she tried to hide that. He leaned forward and kissed her chin, her cheek, her lips, and forehead with absolute tenderness. “I believe you,” he whispered, voice strained, heart pounding, “because neither have I.”

She inhaled unevenly, and he lifted himself a bit to look into her eyes once more. They were shiny and brilliant blue and charged with love. For him. He knew it, as suddenly as if he had been slapped with it. To discover it now, like this, naked and warm against her, enveloped inside of her during the greatest physical intimacy, made this without doubt the most extraordinary moment of his life.

Perspiration beaded on his brow, but still he refused to move, holding back, giving himself time to adjust physically, emotionally.

She didn't want to wait any longer. She ran her thumb
across his lips and squeezed her inner muscles that surrounded him, urging him to orgasm, and that was all it took. He withdrew from her once more, waiting, holding back, the tip of him only just inside, ready to pull out completely and let himself go against her leg with one more stroke. Then the unbelievable happened.

She grabbed his hips with her hands, tightly, and wrapped her legs around his thighs.

“Yes,” she whispered possessively, from the depths of her heart to his.