Andrea Kane (32 page)

She was greeted by Pierce’s brooding stare.

“Pierce?” She pushed herself to a sitting position, wondering with sleepy disorientation why her husband looked so angry. “What time is it?”

“Five after twelve. You’ve been asleep for nearly three hours.”

“Three hours? I must have been more exhausted than I realized.” She inclined her head quizzically. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong? Yes.” Pierce bolted to his feet, snatching the journal from her nightstand and thrusting it at her. “This is wrong.”

Briefly, Daphne glanced at the journal. Then, her gaze lifted back to her husband. “It’s a collection of articles reporting the triumphs of the Tin Cup Bandit.”

“I
know
what it is,” he snapped. “What I
don’t
know is why you have it.”

Daphne gave him a baffled look. “I collected it.”

“Obviously. But why?”

She blinked. “Because I admire him more than I can say. Because he’s a hero. In my opinion, one of the greatest heroes of our time, despite his unorthodox methods.”

“How touching.” Pierce tossed the journal aside, struggling with a blistering resurgence of jealousy.

“I don’t understand why this angers you so.” Daphne rose from the bed, staring at Pierce with a thoroughly perplexed expression. “Surely you don’t condemn me for applauding someone who takes from the rich and greedy and bestows upon those in need?”

“For applauding him, no. But that,” Pierce gestured toward the journal, “is not acclaim, it’s preoccupation.”

Daphne looked torn between annoyance and laughter. “This conversation is ridiculous.”

“Why? Because it troubles me that my wife keeps an ever growing testimonial to another man?”

“Another man? My only link to the bandit is through these articles, Pierce. I would hardly describe that as a scandalous relationship. Why, I’ve scarcely even spoken to—” She broke off, blushing furiously.

“You’ve scarcely even spoken to him?” Pierce jumped on her words. “So you’ve met this incomparable bandit.”

“Only once.” Daphne averted her head. “The night he robbed Tragmore. I awakened during the theft. We exchanged a few words, nothing more.”

“And where did you come upon him? The library? The sitting room?”

“No.” Her voice was barely audible. “My bedchamber.”

“Your bedchamber,” Pierce repeated.

“Yes. He came to take my jewelry. I arose and assisted him.” With a deep breath, Daphne raised her head, her chin set proudly. “I asked that he give the night’s booty to the House of Perpetual Hope. He agreed. I then placed his jewel and tin cup on my father’s pillow, thus allowing him to make his escape.”

A muscle worked in Pierce’s jaw. “Have you any idea what your father would have done to you if he’d discovered your actions?”

“Of course. It didn’t dissuade me then. It wouldn’t now. I’d do the same thing all over again, given the chance. And so would you.”

Pierce couldn’t dispute that logic. Neither, however, could he dispel his aching sense of betrayal, ludicrous or not. “Tell me about him.”

“The bandit? There’s nothing to tell. As I said, we scarcely spoke. If it’s his appearance you’re curious about, I could make out very little. He was swathed in black, from boots to hood. Completely concealed. As was his voice, which he kept to a rasp.” Daphne shrugged. “That’s the entirety of it.”

“Did he touch you?” Pierce was appalled to hear himself blurt.

“Touch me?” The color was back on her cheeks. “I believe he touched my hair.”

“You
believe?”

“All right, yes, he touched my hair. It was clearly an expression of appreciation. He made no improper advances, if that’s what you’re attempting to discern.”

“Would you recognize it if he had?”

Her eyes widened. “Pardon me?”

“You were so bloody innocent. How would you know if a man were making an advance?”

Daphne’s lips twitched. “I recall identifying your advances, despite my lack of experience.” She wrapped her arms about Pierce’s waist. “You’re behaving irrationally, you know.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” he bit out, enfolding her against him, tangling his fingers in her hair. “I’ve been wild ever since I discovered that journal, smoldering while I waited for you to awaken and explain it away. And, yes, I hear every senseless word I’m raving. I sound like a crazed lunatic, and yet I can’t seem to stop myself. I, the consummate gambler, the unruffleable, level-headed essence of reason. I’m jealous of a bloody phantom? A marauder of the night who exists more in people’s minds than in fact? Damn it!” He shook his head in self-deprecating amazement, struck by the full irony of the situation. What would his wife say if she knew that the man he resented was none other than himself? “I must be losing my mind.”

“No,” Daphne whispered, rubbing her cheek against Pierce’s shirt, “Your heart, perhaps, but not your mind. As for sounding like a crazed lunatic, I disagree. What you sound is possessive and perhaps a bit vulnerable. Given the circumstances, both are understandable.” She lay her hand over his heart. “The vulnerability will subside once you accept the truth: that the risk you fear is unfounded and nonexistent.”

“Daphne.” Pierce’s gaze bore into hers, her name an agonized rumble from deep within his chest.

“I love you,” she breathed back, a healing balm to his tortured senses. “Only you. Always you.”

The inescapable prison he carried inside him shattered, capitulating at last beneath his wife’s gentle attempts to breach its unyielding walls. The senseless envy that had dominated his heart until moments ago receded beneath the intensity of something far more powerful, and the knowledge that, once he gave voice to the words, the circle would be complete and no one, bandit or otherwise, could sever the bond that forged between them.

Pierce brought Daphne’s palms to his lips, determined, now more than ever, to say aloud what he knew to be true, thus relinquishing the emotional isolation that had defined his past. “I want to give you the words,” he began.

Daphne silenced him with a gentle forefinger to his lips. “You already have. It isn’t necessary for you to speak them.”

“Yes, it is. Moreover, I
want
to speak them.” Pierce kissed the delicate veins at her wrists, the scented skin of her forearms, her shoulders. Slowly, his fingers traced the lacy edge of her chemise where it dipped down at her breasts. “But I want to speak them my way.”

Daphne’s gaze was fixed on his roving hand, her breath already unsteady. “Your way?”

“Um hum.” Pierce watched as soft color suffused her skin, his own body quickening in response. “I’ve waited thirty years to say these words, precious words I never expected to feel, much less say. So forgive me for being a bit selfish about the circumstances under which they are said.”

“How do you wish—”

Daphne’s question caught in her throat as Pierce reached down, catching the hem of her chemise and tugging it up and over her head, “In bed,” he answered, drinking in her flawless nudity with a hotly intimate look that made her tremble. “When I’m deep inside you. When I can watch your face, your every expression, when I can see, taste, savor your reaction as I tell you, show you, how I feel. Is that all right?”

Dazedly, Daphne nodded, her husband’s vows shivering through her. “Can it be now?” she asked in a hushed, heated whisper. “I don’t think I can wait.”

“And I’ve waited too long already.” Pierce yanked his clothes from his body, flinging them haphazardly about the room, pressing Daphne back into the bedcovers and following her down. “No barriers, my beautiful wife,” he murmured, taking her mouth under his. “Nothing but us—and this.”

Daphne whimpered, opening instantly to the demand of Pierce’s lips. Passion exploded at the first glide of his tongue against hers, their kisses turning frantic, hungry, filled with poignant discovery and aching wonder.

Casting all past demons aside, Pierce gave himself to his wife as he never had before, showing her, not only that she belonged to him, but that he belonged to her as well.

“Touch me,” he commanded, capturing her hand and bringing it to his chest. “Touch me everywhere, and feel what you do to me, how much I need you.”

Daphne instantly understood what her husband’s request implied; eagerly embraced the gift she was being offered. Without hesitation, her fingers glided through the soft mat of hair that curled on his chest, the hard muscles that defined the powerful width of his shoulders and arms. Lovingly, she caressed his back, tracing a line to its base, absorbing Pierce’s shudder as she stroked his buttocks, the solid columns of his thighs. With a breathy sigh, she moved around to his abdomen, and Pierce gritted his teeth as her fingers drifted lower, lower still.

He was totally unprepared for the impact of her touch. When Daphne’s feather-light fingers brushed his rigid shaft, then curled around to explore its pulsing length, a hoarse groan erupted from his chest and he squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to curtail the hot release already clamoring at his loins.

Instantly, Daphne paused. “Am I hurting you?” she whispered.

Despite the nearly unbearable passion surging through him, Pierce smiled. “Not hurting me. Killing me. Christ.” He moved against her hand, another groan shuddering from his chest.

“Shall I stop?”

“Never. Never, Snow flame.”

“But—”

Pierce opened his eyes, forcing himself under control at least long enough to erase the concern from Daphne’s face. “When you cry out my name, beg me to stop, do you really want me to?”

A spark of understanding lit her hazel gaze. “No.”

“Then don’t even consider ending your torture. It’s heaven—and hell.”

Tentatively, Daphne caressed him again, lingering at the velvety tip when Pierce growled harshly, caught her wrist in a vise grip. “Is that good?”

He couldn’t speak.

She repeated the caress, fascinated by the warm droplets of fluid that greeted her touch, awed by the very essence that was Pierce.

“Men and women are more alike than I realized,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “I wonder—what pleases me, would it please you as well?”

He might have nodded. He didn’t know, or care. For at that moment Daphne bent her head, her silky hair sweeping across his thighs as she took him into her mouth, learning his taste as he had hers.

And the world ceased to exist.

Pierce unraveled at her first exquisite contact, the first brush of her tongue against his throbbing flesh. He heard his irrepressible shout, felt his body and his mind reel out of control. Nothing existed but Daphne’s touch, the unendurable ecstasy of being possessed by her hands, her mouth, her breath as it rippled over his painfully sensitive shaft. He tangled his hands in her hair, urging her closer, begging her to take more and more of him, a dark haze dominating his senses as every fiber of his being screamed for release.

In an instant it would be too late.

Abruptly, he shook his head, pushing her away with his last remaining shred of sanity. “No,” he gasped. “Not this time. Not this way.” He rolled her beneath him before she could finish her initial protest. “Daphne.” Every muscle in his body was taut to breaking as he fought back his raging climax.

She responded to the urgency of his tone, her lashes lifting to meet the smoldering frenzy of his gaze.

“Do you feel it?” he demanded, dragging air into his lungs in great gulps. “Do you, Snow flame?”

“Yes,” she whispered, opening herself to him as she caressed his trembling forearms. “Oh, yes.”

Pierce captured her hands in his, lifting both arms over her head and interlacing their fingers, all the while refusing to relinquish her stare. “I love you.” His words coincided with his body’s initial penetration. Parting the delicate folds of her skin, he pressed into her welcome wetness, tightening his grasp on her fingers as he battled for a final vestige of control. “I love you,” he repeated hoarsely, pushing forward until they were one.

Two tears slid down Daphne’s cheeks.

Instantly, Pierce stilled. “Am I hurting you?”

Daphne smiled through her tears, reiterating the very words he had used mere moments ago. “Not hurting me. Killing me. But don’t even consider ending your torture.”

Pierce laughed, a husky, primitive sound of pure male satisfaction. “Never, my beautiful wife. Never.” His words ended on an agonized groan as Daphne raised her hips, drew him deeper inside her. And everything inside him snapped.

Throwing his head back, Pierce began to move in hard, frantic strokes. “I can’t.” Sweat drenched his back. “Daphne, I can’t wait.”

From far away he heard her high, feverish cry. Dimly, he felt her legs clamp around his waist, her fingers tighten in his as she met his wildness, thrust for thrust. Already delayed beyond endurance, his climax erupted in a heartbeat, tearing through his loins, setting fire to his every nerve ending as it exploded from his body into Daphne’s in an endless, scalding torrent. He shouted her name, unable to still the driving motion of his hips, lunging forward again and again as he poured his being into hers.

He felt Daphne tense, her body arching like a bowstring as the fire ignited, spread as wildly through his wife as it had through him. She cried out, once, twice, then tossed her head on the pillow as the spiraling began, spasms of completion that escalated higher and harder than ever before.

Pierce shuddered, dropped his head into the curve of her shoulder as he reveled in her climax, surrendered himself to the hard contractions that gripped his shaft, made him shudder anew. Amazingly, another wrenching spasm was torn from his loins, liquid heat merging with his wife’s final, glorious tremors.

Weak, utterly spent, they collapsed in each other’s arms, both loathe to move, unable to speak.

Pierce felt his wife’s tears, the gentle quaking of her body as she wept.

“Don’t cry, Snow flame,” he murmured into her disheveled cloud of hair. “Please, don’t cry.”

“I never knew such joy existed,” Daphne whispered. “Thank you, Pierce. You’ve just given me the most wondrous gift.”

A hard lump formed in Pierce’s throat, a constriction too vast to overcome with words, even those he’d just uttered for the first time. Daphne believed his love to be a gift, and so it was. But it was she, not he, who had bestowed it, offering him unconditional love and faith and, the greatest miracle of all, teaching him to do the same.