Gather the Stars

  She reached out, running her fingertips up the inside of his knee, where a faint scar trailed into the ghosting of hair along his thigh. Then she grasped his hand and held onto it, hard, drawing him downward. He sank again to his knees and cradled her in his arms, guiding her down onto the heather ticking, his mouth supplicant, inciting madness as he kissed her—her breast, her mouth, her throat, her eyelids.

  He followed her down onto the mattress, the naked length of his body brushing hers, the sensation wild and right and bursting with wonder.

  "Rachel," he gasped, his hands sculpting the contours of her body, conquering the last vestiges of her pride, her arrogance, her detachment, with his worship-filled touch. "We can't do this—this is wrong, Rachel. God, Rachel, I need—"

  "I need, too. I ache. When you kiss me, when you suckle at my breast—I never knew I could feel that way. The touch of your mouth, it opens me, Gavin, deep inside, in a place only you can fill. When you drink me in, I don't care about anything except your lips, your hands, the soft moans of pleasure and pain."

  "I don't want you to taste my pain, love. I don't want to poison you with it."

  "It's part of you. I want it, all of it—everything you feel. Beauty, agony, dreams, and nightmares. All of it. If you love me, it's my right."

  "Love you? Christ, how could you doubt it?" The words were torn from him like some dark confession, his mouth a harsh slash of impossible longing, his features shadowed and tormented, filled with an ecstasy beyond the power of words to describe.

  His hands delved into her hair, his mouth on hers as if the passion in his kiss could shatter the barriers that would ever stand between them—his lost future, her life back in England. Eternity separated them, a yawning chasm between them.

  As if Gavin sensed it too, he caught her mouth in a hard, hot kiss. His tongue thrust deep into her mouth, as if to brand the taste of his kiss into the soft, moist cavern he conquered. Every sweep of his tongue was exquisite, making her quake, her own tongue venturing out to stroke the rough, wet tip of his. He shuddered and groaned, gathering her closer.

  Her skin molded against the hard planes of his body, his chest flattening her breasts, the gold-spun dusting of hair abrading her nipples into aching points of sensation. His thigh curved over the restless columns of her legs, hard and sinewy, the muscles taut with need. Yet most fiery of all was his shaft—steel encased in velvet, mystery, and magic.

  At the brush of her silky hip against that hot flesh, Gavin gave a guttural moan and circled his loins around her.

  Upon her betrothal to Dunstan, she'd known about the anatomy of a man, had tried so hard to discover what occurred between two people when they made love. Yet she had never dared ask her acquaintances, already brides. She'd been so jealous of her dignity, so afraid of being seen a fool. The whisperings she had heard of marital duty and pleasant companionship did nothing to prepare her for Gavin Carstares's tender onslaught.

  He plied his touch with the same mastery as his paintbrush, stroking layers of vivid sensations across every nerve ending in her body with the same patience and genius used to create interlacing.

  Rachel felt the twisting and coiling of the linking strands of need and desire, enchantment and confusion, hunger and maddening fulfillment, as if it were a design only Gavin could create, a pattern of touch and kiss, sigh and love words that could weave for her a mystic ladder to climb to the stars.

  "I never knew..." she whispered. "Never knew it could be so... a single touch could..."

  "Shatter your very soul?" His mouth found hers, with a tender hunger that nearly undid her. "Feel me, Rachel, shattering under your hands."

  Hot kisses seared Rachel's breasts, her cheeks, her shoulders. Her hands clung to his sinewy arms, searched the planes of his back as his fingers stroked down to the fragile skin of her belly.

  "Soft... so soft and warm..." he muttered. "God, I don't deserve you."

  Catching her lip between her teeth, Rachel instinctively arched against his hand. He groaned at her silent plea, his fingers threading through the downy curls at the apex of her thighs with torturous gentleness. "Beautiful..."

  And as his fingers slipped lower, his face contorted in pain and joy, triumph and defeat. Rachel stiffened at the white-hot pleasure that erupted inside her at the tiniest brush of the calloused pad of his finger.

  Never, in all her imaginings, had she dreamed the sensations that intimate caress could awaken. She moaned. "Gavin, please." She did not know what she wanted or needed, but she trusted this man from her soul. He would take care of the tender places in her spirit, the wild, wanting places in her body. He would guard them as fiercely as he did everything else he cherished.

  "Shhh," he gentled her. "Let me in, Rachel. Open your legs for me, love. I'll take care of you. I swear it."

  Heat stung Rachel's cheeks, but she let her thighs part. The firelight glowed in a rivulet of orange gold, trickling down the length of her body to darken in the curls half covered by Gavin's questing hand. The sight of those long, bronzed fingers against the ivory paleness of her skin made Rachel quiver, quake.

  Ever so softly, he teased the curls, the delicate petals, the innermost fragile skin of her thighs. He circled the hot nub where all sensation was centered, flicking gently with his fingertip, whispering circles with his thumb, his eyes shifting to a midnight blue with desire.

  "This is insanity, Rachel..." he whispered, one long finger discovering the opening to her body, penetrating just a little. "But, God help me, if this is madness, I never want to be sane again."

  "We'll both be insane." She laughed quietly. "We'll forget who we are."

  Bleakness stole into his passionate gaze, a hopelessness that wrenched at Rachel's heart. "We can never forget—"

  "Tonight we can forget," she said fiercely, her fingers framing his face, afraid he might turn away. "Tonight there is no Rachel de Lacey, no renegade Earl of Glenlyon, and no rebellion. Tonight, this is our cottage, and our fire, our cradle waiting to be filled. Tonight we have forever."

  His soul was bare for her to see—every lost dream; every hope, pain, grief; the forever he would have sold his soul to give her. She drank it in, a bittersweet gift all the more beautiful because of its impossibility.

  "Forever." He murmured the word as if it were a prayer, then rained kisses across her face. "Tonight, you're my wife, Rachel, my beloved, my life. Just for tonight..."

  He knelt between her legs, his hands exploring her breasts, her waist, the curve of her hips. He circled her ankles with his hands, flattening her feet against the mattress, moving them upward, until her knees were raised, opening that most secret part of her to the seething intensity of his gaze. She felt beautiful, exquisite, treasured—not because of her body or the symmetry of her face, not because she was the general's daughter. She felt beautiful in her soul for the first time in her life.

  Gavin's lips whispered across her knee, trailing kisses up the inside of her thigh, his dark-gold locks silky and tantalizing against delicate skin, his breath hot and moist and dizzying where it brushed her most intimate places.

  Rachel gasped, unnerved by his slow, delicious explorations, yet trusting him, placing all that she was into his knowing hands. Still, nothing prepared her for the brush of his kiss atop her feminine curls, the whispered plea.

  "Tonight is our forever.... Rachel, I need to taste you."

  She sucked in a shuddering breath as he raised his gaze, peering up her nakedness to find her eyes. His fingers stirred against those fragile petals, and she whispered.

  "I trust you, Gavin. Anything. Anything you want or need. I want to... to give you everything tonight."

  Was it possible for more passion to drench that handsome, embattled face? "You've already given me more than I ever dreamed. Let me give you... wonder."

  He kissed the slight swell of her belly with hot fervor, dragging his mouth down. His hands spread, strong and insistent on the backs of her thighs, lifting them over his broad shoulders, openin
g her to him, wide, so wide, until nothing was hidden, no part of her kept back from his touch. Then he lowered that hot, fervent mouth to the place that raged with hunger, with primal needs she was only beginning to understand.

  The part of her spirit encased in rigid discipline, high expectations, and fierce duty split, like an insistent bud against its hard casing of green in spring's first warmth. It forced emotion to unfurl, one velvety petal at a time, each a miracle because it had been denied for so long. It released pounding pain, grief, and pleasure so intense that incoherent cries ripped from between Rachel's lips. And still Gavin sought out her pleasure with an intensity that sizzled like lightning in the wildest storm.

  She gripped those strong shoulders until her nails dug into Gavin's flesh, her whole body shaking as he lured her, seduced her toward something so bright, so unexpected, she couldn't begin to imagine where he might lead her. She didn't care—as long as he kept touching her, holding her, urging her into ever-swifter rivers of passion.

  "Gavin!" She gasped his name as the brightness blazed behind her eyes and pounded through her veins, making her writhe against the mattress. She would die if he didn't help her, heal her—she would break into a million fragments of unbearable need that would torment her for eternity.

  Then, suddenly, he released her, levering himself up to cover her naked beauty with the fire-hot steel of his own body. She felt the blunt tip of his sex against her fragile entrance and arched toward it, wild with the need to feel him a part of her forever, a union that no one—not fate, not rebellion, not even Gavin himself—could never take away from her.

  "God, Rachel. I don't want to—to hurt you." He groaned, bracing his hands on either side of her. "All I've done is... hurt you."

  But she pushed her hips against him, her breath torn on sobs of need. "It's hurting me not to have you inside me. Please, Gavin. I can't stand the hurting anymore."

  His jaw clenched, destruction in his eyes. His hands grasped her hips, and he drove his shaft deep, impaling her with exquisite tenderness, shuddering triumph, soul-rending defeat.

  Burning pain tore through Rachel, but she welcomed it, gloried in the feel of Gavin sheathed inside her, a part of her. He held himself rigidly still, his silver-mist eyes gleaming with what might have been tears, his face filled with ecstasy and despair. "Rachel... I love you... I love you..."

  He kissed her cheeks and eyelids, throat and breasts, his hips moving subtly, maddeningly against her, firing the brightness that had all but destroyed her when he'd touched that same place with his mouth. "Can't bear that I... hurt you."

  "Nothing can hurt me ever again. You love me." Tears burned her eyes, and for the first time, she felt no sharp twinge of shame. She ran her fingers down his back, not flinching as her palms whispered over the ridges of his scars and the thousand unanswered questions that still lay between them. Her delicate touch smoothed over the ridges where his flesh had been torn and healed, and all she felt was cold terror that he might have died of such savage wounds, that she might never have experienced the miracle of staring into those ancient, loving eyes, discover the beauty beneath his sad smile.

  Her spread hands smoothed down the hard curves of his buttocks, felt the throbbing need in him, his love melting through her, intoxicating as brandy, hot and sweet and gloriously painful in its intensity. She threw back her head, arching her hips against the pressure of his sex inside her, urging him deeper.

  A primal groan tore from his lips, and the muscles beneath her hands bunched as he thrust, slow and deep, touching the center of her. Rachel gasped at the power of him, power that would never be used to dominate or tyrannize over anyone weaker, strength that would never hurt or wound or trample. A man so secure in his masculinity that he had no need to prove it at the cost of someone else.

  He was a miracle, after a lifetime of posturing, arrogant fools. He was light after darkness, warmth after unending winter. He set himself against her with measured thrusts, pushing deep, withdrawing until she nearly sobbed with need of him, only to fill her again and again with the proud length of his arousal.

  Rigid control, fierce giving—she could feel the effort it was taking him, knew that he was crushing his own pressing needs in an effort to be gentle with her, to shield her in her innocence. His consideration moved her deeply, but she had desires as well—of giving Gavin what he needed and wanted on this one miraculous night the fates had put into their hands.

  Desperate to drive him over the brink of control, into the wild tempest of passion his eyes promised, Rachel pressed her lips to the hot satin of his chest, her tongue tasting his skin, hot and salty with sweat, musky with the scent of male passion.

  He groaned, driving a little deeper, and she could feel the sinewy columns of his arms start to tremble, the muscles whipcord taut, straining as her cheek brushed against them.

  Remembering the sensation of his mouth on her breasts, she dared stray close to the pebble-hard tips of his nipples, flat disks half-hidden in dark-gilt hair.

  "Rachel... you're driving me wild. I don't want to... hurt you—ah, God." The oath was dragged from his chest as her tongue stole out in a kittenish sweep against his nipple. He stiffened, the trembling in him intensifying, his breath torn from him. "Good... feels so... damn good. Rachel, Rachel."

  He arched the muscled plane of his chest against her wet caress, and she sucked his nipple into her mouth, teasing it, toying with it the way he had when he'd driven her to madness. His breath hissed between his teeth, hot oaths, carnal promises, hot love words that flung Rachel into a sea of wanting so fierce she was drowning in it. But she didn't care.

  He thrust deep, hard, desperately, as if he wanted to bury himself in her very soul, to twine the strands of his spirit so tightly with hers that nothing could ever tear them apart.

  "Gavin! Gavin, please," she begged him, pleading for something she couldn't name. She clutched at him, arched against him, wild and wanton, a creature fashioned of the need he'd loosed inside her.

  He drove her farther, higher, wilder. He kissed her, hot and deep, as if he could devour the very essence of her being, as if he were one of the forever damned, parting from his beloved in heaven.

  Rachel sobbed with need, grasping at him in an effort to drag him closer, harder against her. A hard knot of fire swelled in her womb as he pushed against its gate, and she cried out as he pounded against it in powerful thrusts. She fought the total loss of control, the fragile handhold on reality.

  "Now, Rachel... give it to me... all your pleasure. Give it to me..." His ragged urgings made the shimmering knot pulse wildly, then suddenly it burst, flinging her into a free fall of sensation. She cried out his name as he pounded against her pain, her grief, her ecstasy, spinning out her pleasure until she went mad with it.

  He flung back his head, his face a mask of wild abandon as he drove himself deep one last time, burying himself to his hilt. Everything that he was, every dream that could never be poured into her in a melting rush of fulfillment.

  He collapsed against her, burying his face against her breasts. She stroked the sweat-damp mane of his hair as the tremors of pleasure still shook him, her heart too full to speak, the soft sheath of her body still clinging to him, cradling him.

  "Gavin," she whispered at last. "Beautiful... it was so... beautiful."

  She felt a tremor wrack him, something hot and wet against her breasts. He was silent, achingly silent. At last, she asked him softly, "What are you thinking?"

  "That I must have done something right, something decent in all this madness for the fates to give me this precious gift." His voice was an open wound as he whispered by the flickering light of the fire. "I didn't deserve this loving, Rachel. I thought it was one more dream that I'd lost along the way, that I would never know what it was like to... truly make love with the lady of my heart." He ran his sensitive fingertips over her face, as if to memorize every curve and dip, hollow and plane, his glorious silver eyes filled with awe. "You gave me that gift, Rachel.
I vow to you that when death comes, this will be the moment I remember. I'll go to heaven or to hell cradling the memory of this loving in my heart."

  "Oh, Gavin." Her voice broke, her heart feeling bruised and torn, wide open and cherished. "You've given me so much: you taught me how to laugh, how to love." Tears welled up, exquisite, burning droplets of emotion.

  "I taught you something else," he whispered in aching regret, his thumb gliding over her cheek, gathering the warm dampness. "Ah, Rachel, Rachel. I taught you how to cry."

  "How could I cry when I never loved anyone or anything enough to shed my abominable pride? How could I cry when I wouldn't allow myself to feel... feel pain and grief, but joy as well, Gavin? And love— love so great it bursts inside me, leaving me no place to hide? Love me again, Gavin. Please, please love me again and again and again."

  With a low groan, he gathered her close, and she kissed him, as if her love alone could freeze the relentless hands of time, hold back the world beyond this tiny croft. She knew the world waited to snatch the bold rebel Glen Lyon from her arms and hurtle him back into buildings aflame, amidst sword battles and orphans' cries. The world loomed, like the reaper of death, greedy for vengeance on the one man who had dared to stand strong against the madness.

  CHAPTER 14

  Gavin lay in the firelight, Rachel draped across him like a drowsy kitten, naked and soft, vulnerable and so beautiful she broke his heart. He had loved her to madness, until the croft had rung with their cries and urgings, their groans and pleas.

  Every fantasy had been brought to glowing reality, every wisp of curiosity satisfied, each single moment crammed with as much sensation, emotion as possible. And in those astounding, wondrous moments when he had plunged deep, felt her open to him, Gavin had reeled with the exquisite beauty, the overwhelming power of that joining.