Silken Dreams (25 page)

He moved toward her, interrupting Lettie with the line he knew followed her own: “From the one so unwilling to have me leave, and me just as unwilling to leave.”

He pushed her hair away from her face, absorbing the silky texture of the well-brushed strands against his calloused palms. Her eyes flickered closed in delight, and he watched as her entire body seemed to soak in the sensation of his touch. He had never known a woman who reveled in him so much. He had never known a woman who cared for him so much.

And he ached to be the man she wanted him to be.

Dipping his head, he kissed her, allowing his mouth and hands and body to tell her all of the things that he knew he could never say. That he cared for her. That he wished they could have a future together.

Finally, he pulled away, squeezing his eyes shut and muttering one last time, “Your husband should be the first.”

Her hands tunneled through his hair, forcing him to look at her. “Don’t say that, Ethan. You’re the only man I’ll ever love.”

“Lettie.” His voice was husky, filled with raw emotion.

“Love me.”

“You’ll be hurt. It’s wrong to take you like this.”

“It’s not wrong. It’s beautiful.”

“You aren’t thinking right now.”

“Maybe not. But I’m feeling. And what I’m feeling for you is special.”

He looked at her, and he found his strength of will weakening beneath the firm intensity of his gaze.

She frowned. “You think I’m too young, don’t you?”

He shook his head and held tightly to her hand when she tried to lay it on his chest. “I think you’re too special.” His thumb brushed against her palm. “You don’t know yet what it means to make love.”

“I
do
know.”

“I’m not talking about the mechanics, Lettie. I’m talking about the emotions, the feelings, the responsibilities. No one ever forgets the first time, Lettie. Especially a woman. It should be special. Something that can be remembered without regret. I won’t take that from you.”

“The only way you can take the memory is by not giving it to me tonight. In my heart, you will always be the first.” Her arms wound about his neck. “And the last.”

She hesitated, then drew him toward her for her kiss. Ethan moaned when he realized that he had taught her too well the art of seduction, because even now he felt himself weakening. He wanted to abandon his conscience. He wanted to delight in the fervor of her embrace and the simple passion of her caresses.

Lettie drew back, and her eyes lifted to study him. She smiled as if she saw just how much she had affected him. And just how fragile his control remained. Then she placed her hands upon his breast. Her touch was tender, almost reverent. “I love you,” she whispered, then bent to place a kiss upon his chest. “I love you.” She kissed one brown male nipple, then the other, then glanced up. “I love you.”

He swallowed against the pure emotions that shone from her eyes. Desire and passion. Pure adoration. And something more. Something that could only be the light of her love.

His hands lifted to frame her face.

She purred, nudging into the pressure of his hands.

And he was lost.

“Just promise me you won’t ever regret this night,” he whispered, closing his eyes and crushing his mouth against her own before she could reply, or before he could see any flickerings of doubt that might flash across her features.

But her hands slid up his chest, and she melted into his embrace as if she were coming home after a long journey. Her arms, strong and supple from her work at the boardinghouse, held him with a strength he never would have imagined. Ethan could feel her breasts flattening against his chest. The fabric of her wrapper was cool and damp with the moisture it had absorbed from his own skin.

His arms swept down her back, grasping at her hips and pulling her closer still, and Ethan was shaken to the core. Dear heaven, how he wanted her. Needed her. Not just physically but emotionally as well. He needed her laughter, her passion, and her hope. And he didn’t know what he was going to do when he was forced to leave her.

Breaking free, he gazed down at her flushed features. “If I had my way, you and I would be together forever.”

“I know.”

He lifted his hand and pushed the hair away from her features. “You’d live with me in Chicago in a big white house, and—”

She covered his lips with her fingers, knowing that neither of them were ready to hear might-have-beens. “I know,” she whispered. “But right now, we have tonight. And we have each other.” Her hands lifted to caress his face and the features she had grown to love so much. “Love me, Ethan,” she murmured. “Love me tonight as if you and I were man and wife with a whole future spreading out before us.” She raised herself on tiptoe to press her lips against his own, whispering again, “Love me.”

The shadows of the garret cloaked them both in the warm velvet heat of summer, and Ethan scooped her into his arms and gently placed her on the bed. He then lay beside her, his head propped in one palm.

In the shadows, his eyes seemed even more blue and intent. For long, heart-stopping moments, he didn’t move, didn’t touch her. Then, just when she thought that she would die from wanting his touch, he reached out. One single finger dipped toward her face, tracing the jut of her cheekbone, the smooth shape of her jaw, her lips.

When she moved impatiently to wind her arms about his waist, he drew away and whispered, “Shh. My way.” His lips lifted in a tender smile. “We’re going to savor each moment.”

Lettie shivered as Ethan’s finger once again began a tingling journey, slipping to her chin, then plunging down the line of her throat. He hesitated a moment at the hollow between her collarbones, then skimmed lightly down.

Her breathing became ragged as starbursts of sensation rushed through her veins from that single inquisitive finger. As Ethan began to nudge beneath the delicate boundaries of her wrapper, she shuddered and tried to draw air into her lungs.

Needing something, anything, to ground her, she grasped his arm, just above his elbow. But she didn’t push him away. Instead, she uttered a husky moan and tacitly bade him to continue his explorations.

Ethan hesitated, his gaze lifting to tangle with her own. Then his finger lifted to caress her stomach, her ribs, then finally touched the underside of her breast.

She jerked, a jolt of pleasure racing through her veins. When he smiled at her reaction, she fought to breathe. When he hesitated, her hands slid down his arm to take his hand, forcing him to abandon the foray of his finger.

“Touch me,” she whispered.

His head dipped, and his mouth took her own in a hungry kiss even as his hand closed over her breast.

She moaned, rolling into the pressure, her own arms slipping around his shoulders and pulling him tightly against her.

As if they had tried to douse a fire with kerosene, the passion suddenly ignited between them. Lettie’s arms wrapped tighter around his shoulders, drawing him over her torso. The weight of his body against her own filled her with a delicious flood of sensation. Her pulse pounded, her body strained.

Ethan drew back suddenly. “Not so fast,” he whispered thickly, but she clutched at his shoulders, forcing him to look at her.

In his eyes she saw an echo of the raging emotions that must surely be seen in her own. Her hands dropped from his shoulders and slipped down the curve of his ribs, then burrowed between them to tug at the tie of her wrapper. When she would have torn it free, he stopped her hands, rolling away slightly so that he could gaze down at her.

Softly, tenderly, he drew the edges of her wrapper apart, then gasped. “You are so beautiful,” he murmured. His hand hesitated, then skimmed from her neck to her navel.

She moaned and grasped his wrist. “Love me,” she begged.

His eyes met her own, as if searching for last-minute doubts. But she knew that he would find no doubt there. Only a hungry passion for his touch.

Her hands reached to tug at the towel still wrapped around his waist.

“No.” His fingers clasped her wrist. At her questioning gaze, he reluctantly added, “I don’t want to scare you.”

Her lips tilted in a smile. “How gallant. But how very, very unnecessary.” She rolled him onto his back, and, before he could prevent her actions, she had tugged the fabric of the bath sheet free.

She held her breath and gazed at him, and for a moment, Ethan felt an unfamiliar flush of embarrassment rise into his cheeks. Sure that he had scared her to death with the evidence of his passion, he tried to tug the sheet over his hips.

“No.”

Lettie caught his hand and looked up at him. But it wasn’t fear that he found in her eyes; it was passion.

“Love me,” she whispered once again. Releasing his hand, she trailed the pad of her thumb down the ridges caused by his ribs, then caressed the line of his hips to the top of his thighs. There she paused, her thumb making soft, sweeping half circles that caused him to shudder in delight.

“You are a witch,” he murmured, his hands tangling into the hair on her nape and bringing her close for a hungry kiss. He had thought to slow down the pace of their lovemaking, at least until she was ready for him. But at the sensation of her bare flesh pressed so tightly against his own, he felt the last dregs of his control slipping away.

When he would have paused, however, Lettie made a soft purr of denial and returned his passion, measure for measure. Her hips pressed against his own, already mimicking a rhythm she had yet to learn.

Ethan’s hand swept down her back, holding her tightly against him. He knew now that he couldn’t stop, couldn’t wait. And Lettie was ready for him.

Awash in pleasure, Lettie barely noted when Ethan pressed her back into the pillows. Her hands clutched at his waist, then at the firm slopes of his buttocks, urging him nearer.

He broke away from their kiss and gazed down at her with eyes that blazed with his desire. “I’ll try not to hurt you,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “You could never hurt me.”

Bending, he tenderly kissed her cheek, her chin. His hand caressed her breast, then moved down her body to slip beneath her knee, drawing it up against his hip as he settled over her.

Lettie’s head arched back and her eyes closed as she absorbed the delicious weight of the man above her. Then her eyes flickered open and her arms clutched at his shoulders.

“Now,” she whispered.

When he would have hesitated one last time, she grasped his hips and gazed deeply into his eyes.

“Now.”

Thrusting the fingers of one hand into her hair, he gazed at her, long and hard. She felt him shift, the muscles of his legs tensing ever so slightly. Then, slowly, sensuously, he entered her.

Lettie gasped, and her gaze darted down to watch their bodies become one. She shuddered beneath a storm of sensations that she had never known could exist. Fullness and heat. Beauty and tenderness. “I love you,” she whispered, before her eyes closed and she surrendered to the storming passions within her.

Ethan paused for only a moment, then thrust through her last final barrier, covering her lips with his own and absorbing her cry.

Lettie’s hands dug into the muscles of his shoulders, waiting until the pain had died to a reluctant throb. Only then did she realize that Ethan had grown still. Her lashes flickered open, and she looked up at him with wide eyes, absorbing the tense set to his features and the heat of his gaze.

“Is that all?” she murmured.

She saw the way he fought the urge to smile. When he spoke, his voice was strained.

“No, sweetheart, that’s not all.”

Her brow creased when he reached down to lift her knee a little more securely against his hip. Then he began to move within her and she gasped, pressing closer. Her eyes closed in delight as Ethan began to teach her a sensual rhythm as old as time itself.

She moaned as a swelling pleasure built within her. Her eyes closed, and her pulse raced. Wrapping her arms around Ethan’s shoulders, she held on to the one thing that seemed to ground her to the earth. But she didn’t know how the pleasure could possibly grow more intense until it suddenly seemed to burst within her like a fiery implosion of sparks.

Mere moments followed before she felt Ethan stiffen and join her in the culmination of their passion. Long minutes of shimmering delight seemed to pass between them, trapping their bodies in a silken web of pleasure, until slowly, ever so slowly, the sensations melted into the darkness. Then, in the final moments of pleasure, they both closed their eyes and fought to breathe.

Folding her arms more tightly about Ethan’s shoulders, Lettie drew him against her as muscles trembled and released their exquisite tension. She took a slow, shuddering breath as reality finally returned to the fringes of her consciousness. Her body filled with a delicious warmth, and her lips curled in the barest ghost of a smile. Without a doubt, she had crossed the final boundary into womanhood.

Dredging the last bit of strength she could muster, she lifted her head and pressed a soft kiss against the hollow of his neck, then another on his shoulder. Slowly, her hands lifted and her fingers sifted through the damp strands of Ethan’s hair. How she loved this man.

His head lifted, and he gazed down at her with eyes the color of a hot summer sky. Though he didn’t speak, she sensed his concern. But more than that, she sensed his pleasure.

She shifted and pressed a kiss against his brow. He answered by dipping his head and placing a soft kiss against her shoulder.

“I love you, Ethan,” she murmured.

Once again, she felt a kiss against her shoulder. Then she smiled as the night closed about them, warm and dark, and filled with the silent echoes of their passion. And for once, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that Ethan loved her with his heart and soul, just as she loved him.

Even though he couldn’t seem to find a way to say the words.

Much, much later, Lettie awoke to see Ethan standing in his customary place by the window. She smiled, stretching and delighting in the weary ache of her body.

“Ethan?” she murmured, and rolled onto her side.