Lady Midnight (31 page)

"Do I have to beg, Michael?" she repeated, whispering roughly.

"No," he groaned. "I could never leave you now, Kate, even if I tried."

"Then make love to me. I need you."

"'That day they read no more,'" he muttered. His lips covered hers in a new, ardent kiss. There was heat still, the force of unstoppable passion and sheer need, but also the bittersweet tenderness of destiny.

Kate had always secretly doubted, and even feared, Julian Kirkwood when he said they were
meant
to be together. She felt no such draw with him, no tug of memory or necessity or overwhelming love, and thus his words felt strange and unclean. Now she had an inkling of what he meant, for this moment felt like one she was fated for.

She opened her mouth to Michael's kiss, welcoming him joyfully even as her legs fell apart and she felt the force of him against her opening. He was so thick, so heavy, she feared for an instant that he might not fit, and she
needed
him to fit. Those ridiculous thoughts vanished as he slid inside her, slowly, carefully, one exquisite centimeter at a time. It was vaguely uncomfortable, like the burning stretching she felt when he put his fingers there, only greater. But Kate knew to expect that, and she knew she had to relax, to ease his entry.

It would hurt for only a moment, an instant, and then he would be hers entirely. As she would be his.

"It will be fine, my love," he whispered. "My sweet Kate."

She wrapped her arms around his back, her hands sliding against their mingled sweat. She closed her eyes as she felt him still against the thin membrane of her virginity—the membrane that had been meant to earn her mother a great deal of money. But Kate gave it now freely, happily, her heart suffused with a glow of joy.

"I'm sorry, Kate," she heard him mutter.

"Michael," she answered. "Just love me. It is all that matters."

"I do. God help me, but I do." He braced himself on his arms and drove forward with one quick, clean lunge.

"Ah!" Kate squealed. The pain was sharper than she had imagined. But Michael held still inside of her, letting her slowly become accustomed to his length, and soon all she could feel was the great heaviness of him joined with her. Joining
them
—making them as one.

She opened her eyes and stared up at him, watching his face as he slowly moved against her. The discomfort was fading, and tiny prickles of some delicious new sensation danced along her nerves. It felt like the lightning outside, quick flashes of a heated glow, delight that built and built until the passion was too great. It had to explode into thunder.

There was a hum inside her brain, and everything vanished but their skin touching and sliding, his movement inside her, barely brushing deep, against her womb, then pounding away. She heard him moan and answered it with her own cry, closing her eyes so she could fully absorb this new, amazing delight, could feel his lips on hers, his body inside her own.

Then—the thunder. Like an explosion of stars, blue, purple, red, silver, shooting, up into the sky. She tightened her legs about his waist, sobbing at the glorious release, while above her he shouted out her name.

"Kate!" he shouted. Then, softer, as he collapsed against her shoulder, "Katerina."

"Michael, my angel," she whispered. She reached up to caress his damp hair, sifting the silken strands through her fingers. She reveled in the weight of his body against hers, the ragged sound of his breath. Their skin was wet and sticky, clinging and catching. All around her in the fire-warm air was the sweet scent of passion and release.

She felt an odd sensation of
triumph
as they lay tangled together. She had given herself to him, and in doing so had not only found physical delights, but claimed a part of her life for her own. She was not Katerina Bruni any longer—no part of her was. She was Kate. Kate Brown, who loved Michael Lindley.

It could not last, of course. Daylight would come, and with it reality. But right now she was his. They were the only people in all the world.

He shifted his weight off of her and sank into the pillows at her side. A rush of cooler air skipped down her damp body, but she did not have time to feel bereft for long. He drew her against his shoulder, holding her close as their breathing slowed.

"Kate... ," he whispered. His breath exhaled on a soft sigh, and she knew he was asleep.

Dark, exhausted oblivion encroached on the edges of her own consciousness, and she slipped into sleep with a joyful abandon, a trust and peace, she had never known before.

* * *

Kate's eyes slowly blinked open, and for an instant she did not know where she was. It wasn't her bedroom in Venice, or her cozy chamber at Thorn Hill. She was covered in a pile of rough blankets, and the space around her was dark and chilly.

Something hovered at the edges of her blurry memory, but she could not quite grasp it. Was it a dream?

Then she heard a soft noise beside her, a sigh, a shuffle. A hand, large, rough, gentle, brushed her hip, and flattened in a soft caress over her skin. And she remembered. She remembered
everything.
The storm, Michael's coming after her in the tempest and pulling her to safety in this cottage. The force of their love-making, a wild squall to rival any the clouds and sky could produce.

She smiled, and shivered at the memory of his caresses and kisses, the heavy, sweet feeling of his body moving on hers. She had read of lovemaking, studied it, listened to her mother's friends laughing about it, but
nothing
could have prepared her for the reality. The amazing delight and overwhelming intimacy.

Kate rolled onto her side against the pillows. The driving storm had ceased. There were no more silvery flashes of lightning, and the lash of the rain against the window had slowed to a gentle patter. But there was enough light from the fading embers of the fire for her to study Michael's face as he slept beside her, his hand against her hip.

In his slumber, he looked so very young. So powerful. The lines on his brow and bracketing his beautiful mouth—lines that spoke of his daily labors and tensions—were eased, his skin smooth, burnished by the firelight. His hair was tousled, falling over his brow and ears in a wild tumble of waves. Along the sharp line of his jaw, early-morning whiskers roughened, casting new shadows over his face. He exhaled softly, and reached for her again in his sleep, drawing her into the curve of his body.

Kate went very willingly, fitting the contours of her flesh neatly into the hollows of his. Her head tucked beneath his chin, her cheek rested on the muscled plane of his chest, and she breathed in deeply the intoxicating scent of
him.
It was a dark, rich scent, his soap overlaid with the sheen of sweat and musk, the lingering perfume of their lovemaking. He also smelled of woodsmoke, and the sweetness of rain lingered in his hair. There was even a trace of her rose-water perfume, clinging just
there
to the hollow of his shoulder.

Kate leaned forward to kiss that spot, very softly and gently so she would not wake him. He tasted salty-sweet, delicious. "Mmm," she murmured, and rested against him, closing her eyes to let this one perfect moment envelop her completely.

It was not yet dawn. The sky she had glimpsed outside the window was still dark, but turning the faintest pale gray at the edges. Soon, the sun would begin its inexorable climb into the sky, casting its morning radiance of pinks and oranges and yellows into every hidden corner, dispelling last night's storm entirely. A new day would be laid out for the world.

And especially for Kate. The night when she possessed Michael was magical, beautiful beyond all belief. But soon she would have to let go of it, tuck it into the most secret recesses of her heart, and move on with the day-to-day deceptions of her existence.

But, oh! It
had
been lovely. She had always halfway imagined that sex was something to be calculated, managed, almost playacted. Every movement, every cry and murmur, thought out to best advantage. Yet with Michael there had been none of that. She had not cared one whit what she looked like, sounded like. She wanted only to give and receive pleasure, to be with him at every second, to know they were
together.
And that was the way it had been, because he was who he was. Michael. And she trusted him, loved him.

"Caro mio,"
she whispered, stroking the very tips of her fingers softly over his skin, the crisp, light brown curls covering his chest. She felt his heart beating, steadily, reassuringly. "Thank you."

Kate wanted to stay there for all eternity, curled up against him beneath the shelter of their peasant-rough blankets. Yet even now, as she reveled in remembered delights and present warm contentment, she could feel something shifting inside of her. The knowledge of the swiftly approaching dawn, perhaps, reminding her that she had to make her way back to Thorn Hill. Back to her own quiet chamber before the household stirred and a new day began. Her muscles were beginning to tense at the thought of the consummate actress she would have to be today, meeting Christina and Amelia in the schoolroom and pretending that nothing had changed. That her whole world hadn't shifted and reformed beneath her feet yet again.

Or maybe it was the heavy burden of the secrets she bore, like a sack full of stones across her back. She had just added another rock to that store.

But somehow, she could not be truly sorry. Michael was her very first lover, and that was something she would have with her all of her life. Even when she was an old lady, snoring in front of her solitary fire, she would remember this night and smile.

If only
he
would remember
her
as fondly and sweetly. That would be all she could ask from heaven.

"Caro mio,"
she whispered. "Forgive me."

Under her gentle caresses, Michael moved and shifted, easing out of slumber. She felt the coiled strength of his muscles, the flexibility of his supple flesh, like a desert lion tumbling out of sleep. His breath escaped in one long sigh, ruffling the heavy, tangled fall of her hair.

"Hello," he murmured, his arms closing around her as his lips moved gently over her temple.

Kate closed her eyes, clinging to him for just a moment as if she would never let go. "Hello," she whispered.

"I hope you slept well?" he said, his voice still rough with sleep, and full of a lazy, sensual pleasure.

"Need you ask?" She tilted her head back, leaving herself open for the movement of his lips across hers. They brushed once, twice, before deepening into a heady kiss, sweet with the memory of their wild passion, the promise of even more, even greater, to come.

Kate's body kindled at that kiss, at the caress of his lean hands over her back, skimming lightly across her buttocks, lifting her closer to his hardness. Oh, San Marco, but she wanted him! Again. Wanted his body, his breath, his very essence. Surely there was time—surely it could not be wrong....

The sharp tap of a windblown branch against the window dragged at her consciousness, not letting her slip away beneath the drugging waves of passion. With an enormous effort of will, she pulled her mouth from his, disentangling her body from his embrace.

"It—grows late," she gasped, and eased herself up until she sat against the pillows. The cold air of the room, ill heated by the dying embers in the grate, rushed over her bare breasts and shoulders, raising prickly goose bumps and reminding her even more urgently of the coming day. "We should go back to the house."

Michael fell back into their tangle of blankets with a deep groan. He covered his face with his hands, rubbing hard as if to awaken himself from his own sensual dream haze. "I suppose we should, my sensible Kate, though I would much prefer to stay here. 'It is not yet near day. / It was the nightingale, and not the lark, / That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear.'"

"'It was the lark, the herald of the morn.'" Kate searched the dusty floor for her clothes with an increasing urgency, but she had to stop and smile at him, running the tips of her fingers along the side of his whisker-roughened face. "Oh, my dear. We quote Shakespeare even now. How can we do that?" She turned away, reaching out for her discarded stockings. They were still damp, so she cast them aside and just took up her boots.

He rolled up onto his elbow, supporting his tousled head on his palm. "What better time for Shakespeare? The old Bard of Avon was quite preoccupied with romance. I'm sure he must have written a scene much like this one." Michael's voice sounded lighter than she had ever heard it, teasing, gentle, almost whimsical.

It made Kate's heart ache with longing until she feared it might burst in her chest. How could she ever bear to be apart from such a man, ever again? Clutching the blanket against her naked body, she half turned to him and smiled, reaching out to touch him again. She couldn't resist. He grinned up at her, and caught her fingers in the alluring snare of his own, pressing warm kisses to her palm, her knuckles and wrist. She felt the rough, hot embrace of his tongue against the soft underside of her pulse, and she shivered deeply, drawing away before she damned the day and threw herself on top of him.

"A scene like this one?" she murmured, slipping her hand gently away and plucking up her chemise. "I hope not at the end of
Romeo and Juliet."

"Heaven forfend. But you need not fear, my bonny Kate—I will never kill your cousin and have to be vanished from Verona. Or if I am, I will surely take you with me. Romeo was a fool to leave without Juliet."