Was there a more precious gift?
His fingers skimmed through her careless cap of hair, with tones like a deer moving through sun and shadow. He knew the angles of her face, her body, and the fierce, vulnerable, courageous spirit inside it all.
He’d wanted her, somehow recognized something … something in her, of her, almost from that first instant. And the wanting had only deepened with the having.
Even as he let his hands roam over her, he knew he’d fall deeper yet.
She slid his shirt away; he tugged hers up and off. When they were skin to skin, she rolled, a lazy move to change the angle of the kiss, to draw it out and out. Hands gliding over him, kindling already glowing sparks. Fingers kneading into muscle, tongues sliding.
He rolled, unhooking her belt as he did. His teeth grazed her shoulder, her collarbone, her breast. Everything in her went soft. He could melt her, seduce her so she craved the yielding, arouse her so her world contracted down to the two of them, only the two of them, mating in the dark.
Already her heartbeat thickened, her pulse quickened. She could float and float and float on the clouds of pleasure he conjured like a sorcerer. Before she lost herself—so easy, nearly there—she pushed away.
“Gotta get these damn clothes off.” Breathless, she dragged at her boots.
When they thudded to the floor along with his shoes, he pulled her to him again.
“I’ll handle the rest.”
He could, and would, she knew, again like that sorcerer—or the nimble-fingered thief he’d been. She shifted her weight, overbalanced him so her body stretched over his.
“I’ll start,” she said, and unhooked his belt.
She’d float, and she’d fly, but she’d make certain he did the same.
She loved the feel of him under her, the warm skin, the taut muscle. She loved feeling him yield to her, though she found him granite hard, heard the drum of his heart against her mouth before she traveled down.
She destroyed him, stretched his control to a thin, vibrating wire. Slowly, relentlessly, she took that wire to the edge of snapping before easing back just enough, barely enough for him to maintain a slippery grip.
“A ghrá.” He murmured it, and other words in the language of his heart as the air grew so thick he could barely draw it in.
“Tá grá agam duit.” She mangled the Irish, and touched his speeding heart as she slid slowly, so slowly up his body. “Tell me. Say it to me.”
“Tá grá agam duit. I love you.”
She pressed her lips to his as if to taste the words.
He rolled her onto her back, then lowered his forehead to hers. To steady himself for a moment, just a moment.
“I’ll finish.”
She cupped his face. “I want you inside me.”
“I know.” He pressed his lips to her throat. “I know.”
Her pulse beat against his lips, her heart thudded against them as he took her breast. Her hips arched as he stripped away the last barrier.
He pressed his hand to the heat of her, the core of her. “Let go,” he said, then his clever fingers gave her no choice.
When her gasp of pleasure wasn’t enough, he drove her up and over again until she shuddered, until she went to candlewax in the sun.
“Take me now. A ghrá, mo chroí.”
At last, he slipped inside her, full, deep. Again she shuddered, and thought: This. This.
With the world gone and time stopped, she took him. They took each other, rising, falling, falling, rising, until they flew.
When they slept, wrapped close, the cat jumped back on the bed.
* * *
She woke with dawn breaking, shedding pinks through the sky window over the bed. Roarke sat—fully dressed, of course—in the sitting area, tablet in hand, cat across his lap, wall screen muted.
She wondered if she’d wake this way when she hit, oh, maybe a hundred and ten. Would they have slept through the night, sated from sex, or …
A sudden thought struck and shot her straight up in bed.
Roarke glanced over. “Well then, good morning to you.”
“We had all that sex, and while we were having it, clothes got tossed around.”
“Something that happens with happy regularity, thank the gods.”
“Yeah, yeah, but it just hit me. The clothes aren’t all tossed around in the morning. You pick them up, right? Right? Summerset doesn’t come slinking in here while I’m conked and do that.”
“Summerset doesn’t slink.” Roarke reached for his coffee. “Or, I suppose he does, now and then. But no, he doesn’t come in while you’re asleep.”
“Okay. Good, really good. Listen, I help toss them around. I can take turns or whatever scooping them up.”
“It’s not a problem.”
“Well, if you ever have to skip it to go buy Canada, I’ll take care of it.”
“If I ever get a tip Canada’s for sale, I’ll leave the rest to you.”
“Deal. Jesus, that sudden thought was almost like a jolt of coffee. Almost,” she repeated, and got up to get the real thing.
“I had a bunch of dreams. Not bad ones,” she added quickly when those eyes lasered on her. “Just weird ones all jumbled up. Like I have this lineup, but it’s like an audition, and all the suspects are in there singing and dancing around.”
She gulped coffee, shaking her head as she headed to the bathroom. “Just weird.”
“Not especially for her, is it?” Roarke asked the cat.
When she came out, he had two domed plates and a pot of coffee waiting. He’d banished the cat, who sat in front of the fireplace staring at the plates as if the power of his mind could transport them.
“Novak was there.”
“In the lineup audition?”
“Yeah, that. She’s more telling the others what to do. Like ‘Kick! Plié! Jump!’ What the hell is step ball change?”
“A dance step.”
“I know that. I’ve heard it or she wouldn’t have been telling people to do it. What the hell is it? You step while you juggle balls?”
“No, darling. It’s the balls of your feet.” He tapped his fingers on the table to illustrate.
“Okay, that makes more sense. How do you know that?”
He smiled charmingly. “I’ve known a few dancers.”
“As in banged a few dancers.”
“There’s no one I’d rather dance with than you.”
“Decent save.” And when he removed the domes to uncover waffles, she sat beside him. “An even better save.” She immediately soaked them in syrup.
“So, the choreographer’s the one telling everybody to change their balls. And all the rest,” she continued over Roarke’s burst of laughter. “That’s key when you’ve got a musical deal with the singing and dancing. You’ve got a big bunch of people to coordinate. It’s like … artistic crowd control.”
“That’s an interesting take on it.” He poured her more coffee.
“You could have a dozen people onstage during one of those big numbers, and you’ve got to figure out what each one of them does, the steps, the timing, the placement, and how it comes together, how it’s going to look from the audience.”