***
Before Caroline could question that response, Silas shifted and she felt a seeking pressure between her legs. Spreading her thighs wider, she tilted her hips. She burned to feel him inside her. Only he could answer her frantic longing.
He moved deeper. To her surprise, his entry stretched her to the point of discomfort. A soft whimper escaped her and he stopped, looking down at her with the familiar care. “Caro?”
She made herself smile and hooked her hands over his shoulders. “It’s been a long time.”
And Silas was so much…bigger than Freddie. Lord Stone was built on monumental lines. She recalled that stunning moment when she’d first seen him naked. She’d been nervous—and sinfully thrilled.
His expression softened and she read love in his hazel eyes. She realized with surprise that he’d watched her with the eyes of love for months.
“I’m sure you’ll remember what to do.” Laughter warmed his voice despite his rough breathing.
“You might need to remind me,” she said, overwhelmingly conscious of his hard weight. She shifted again and he edged further. When he kissed her, she tasted passion. And love. It seemed Silas’s love was inescapable.
Of course it was. Here she lay beneath him, and his love was the very air she breathed, along with the rich, musky male scent that fired her senses. She waited again for the old fear of captivity to rise. Surely if she was to feel trapped, now was the moment. But joined to this marvelous man, it was impossible to feel anything but treasured. And avid for the ultimate union.
She angled toward him. “Don’t stop. I want you so much.”
I love you so much.
“Oh, my darling,” he whispered.
This time when he kissed her, she responded with all the emotion crammed unspoken in her heart. He raised his head and stared down at her with a question in his eyes—he’d notice the difference—but she bit his shoulder and rose to take him into her body.
Just as her heart flowered with love, her body flowered into delight. As he slid into her, his shuddering sigh expressed his happiness. Her fingers gripped his shoulders as he began to move. Hard, decisive thrusts that branded him on her heart as indelibly as a chisel carved wood. Swiftly her pleasure began to swell in great, engulfing waves. Over and over he plunged into her, hammering her into accepting his love.
Gasping Caroline ran her hands down the sleek skin of his back, feeling the muscles tighten and release with every stroke. She dug her fingers into the hard globes of his buttocks, encouraging him to go deeper and further and harder. Hot, restless, needy, she pressed upward.
“More,” she gasped.
Despite his fierce possession, a broken laugh escaped him. “You’re a demanding wench.”
Catching her hip with one hand, he lifted her. All pretense at control disintegrated. He kissed her on the mouth and she responded savagely, using teeth and tongue. She was desperate for relief from this endless striving toward an unreachable pinnacle.
He circled his hips, plunged deep, and sudden fire split the night. She cried out again and sank her nails into his flanks. As roaring flame gushed through her, he groaned and bucked, flooding her. She lay quaking with wonder in his arms and knew she never wanted to be anywhere else as long as she lived.
Caroline only slowly floated down from that miraculous space caught in the light between stars. Her heart beat like a thousand drums and her blood pumped through her veins like hot honey. The world she inhabited was sweet as sugar, bright as sunlight.
Silas slumped in exhaustion, burying his face in her shoulder. His crushing weight made it impossible for Caroline to snatch a full breath. But, for once, in a good way. Her body ached from the vigorous loving in a way it never had after Freddie’s desultory attentions.
And she was happier than she’d ever been before.
She sucked in a breath and blinked away the tears springing to her eyes.
Silas rose onto his elbows and glanced down at her. A frown wrinkled his brow. “Caro? Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said in a choked voice. After such a transcendent union, a woman should be proud and elated. Instead Caroline felt like a pathetic puddle of confused emotion. She untangled a hand from his hair and wiped roughly at her eyes. More idiotic tears welled. “It was wonderful. You were wonderful.”
“Yet here you are, sobbing in my arms,” he muttered. “You’re obviously as happy as a dog with two tails.”
She pushed at him until he rolled away, breaking the connection between them. Immediately she missed him. “I’m fine.”
He turned onto his side and caught the trembling hand she clenched against his chest. “That sounds more like the woman I love. The minute she says she’s fine, I know I’m in trouble. Tell me what’s wrong.”
She studied that beautiful, clever face that she should have long ago known would prove her downfall. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“I’m not sure even I understand.”
His lips stretched in a smile so warm that it made her toes curl against the sheets. “Emotions are bewildering beasts, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” she agreed, reluctantly smiling back. His smile gave her the courage to speak. “I’m feeling at such a loss. I hardly know where to turn. I’ve never…never known anything like what just happened between us. Freddie wasn’t a bad man, but we were a bad match. I did my duty by him and he did his duty by me, but it was a sour, barren bargain.”
“No joy?”
Surprised, her vision filled with Silas, naked and virile beside her, instead of the ghosts of her lonely past. Perhaps he might understand after all. “Not one scrap of joy. Whereas what we did was—”
“Alight with joy.”
“Yes.”
“And now you regret all the wasted years.”
“Of course I do.” She freed her hand and sat up against the pillows, pulling the sheet over her breasts with belated self-consciousness. “I regret that in ten years of marriage, I experienced no satisfaction with my husband.”
“I’m sorry. You’re made for pleasure. It wasn’t your fault.”
Her mouth flattened, even as his description soothed her. “Some of it was. I was an unloving wife and Freddie knew it. Although the outside world would have looked at our match and wondered what I had to complain about. After all, however oblivious he was to anything beyond the estate boundaries, Freddie was kind and faithful and steadfast. It could have been worse.”
“And every day, your spirit died a little more.” Silas moved up on the pillows to brush back a strand of hair clinging to her damp cheek. “Don’t discount the truth of your unhappiness. That only makes it worse. Hell is two incompatible people glued together for life.”
“The definition of marriage,” she said bitterly.
“The definition of an unhappy marriage.” He leaned over her, his splendid shoulders creating their own horizon. His gaze was searching. “Who are you in love with, Caroline?”
She shrank away, would have run if he hadn’t caught her wrist. “Don’t ask me.”
“I have to,” he said gently, turning his grip into a caress as he stroked her, making her wayward pulse hop and skip under his dancing fingers. “Who, Caro?”
Her eyes narrowed on him as she struggled to summon the exasperation his prying would once have sparked. “Naturally you think I’m in love with you.”
The promise of another smile creased the corners of his eyes. “You know I love you.”
She made a despairing gesture. “I don’t want you to love me.”
Self-derision lit his eyes. “Believe me, I didn’t want to love you either.”
Startled she surveyed him. It hadn’t occurred to her that Silas, too, might have struggled against falling in love. “You didn’t?”
His laugh was short. “Good God, no. I had the perfect life, diverting, self-indulgent, hedonistic. Then one day I met a widowed friend of my sister’s, and that was the end of all my
gallivanting.”
“I want to do some gallivanting before I’m old,” she said in a subdued voice, telling her heart it would not dissolve into a pool of mush at his declaration.
His face filled with such tenderness that her heart dissolved anyway. “You could gallivant with me.”
He stroked her jaw with more of that melting tenderness. Dear heaven above, she was in terrible trouble here. She’d cried not just because she finally knew what Freddie’s discontented wife had missed. She’d cried because Silas’s possession had owned her so completely that she feared she’d never be free again.
And for over eleven years, freedom had been her goal, her only hope of happiness.
“Stop tempting me, Silas,” she said thickly.
“Never. Tell me who you love.”
“You know,” she mumbled, avoiding those keen eyes that saw too much.
“I hope.” His gentleness was more powerful than an army.
She sighed and looked directly at him. His dear, intriguing face was grave. “Oh, devil take you, you awful man. Of course I’m in love with you.”