The sensation exceeded all experience. The delay had built him to a pitch that he no longer felt connected to earth. She claimed his whole body. This act pleasured him from the soles of his feet to the tips of his hair. She’d marked him forever. More deeply than the scars disfiguring his face. Every cell sang her name.
Just as he reached the limits of restraint, so did she. She rippled around him, shooting wild shocks through him with each exquisite fraction of withdrawal. She lowered once more and clasped his length. He gasped and the slight shift set off new quakes. She sighed with voluptuous enjoyment. His vision cleared. The beautiful face, the abandoned expression, the flushed lips and cheeks. His fear had deprived him of so much. The blindfold had denied him this. He hadn’t known what he’d been missing.
Her nipples pressed wantonly against her bodice. His hands curled uselessly above his head. Hell, she must untie him. He couldn’t bear not touching her. Before he could articulate this demand through the jumble in his mind, she reared, with less control this time. On a choked cry, she came down hard and the world ignited.
Chapter Twenty-One
When Sidonie returned to earth after that astonishing climax, she was boneless with exhaustion, as if she’d built a mountain single-handed with a spade. She mustered energy to untie Jonas and tug the crumpled silk dress over her head. Then she curled up in his arms and sought oblivion.
Now as she stirred from sleep, she felt warm and sated and safe. Making Jonas wait had nearly killed her, but it had been worth it. He’d become completely hers in a way he never had before. And she knew at the height of his pleasure, his ever-present awareness of the scars separating him from other men had faded to blind rapture. She’d longed to give him surcease from his torments. Watching his eyes as he lost himself to her, she knew she’d succeeded.
She didn’t move, afraid to disturb him. Then realized that much of her current contentment radiated from his lazy caresses across her back. He stroked her like a cat. Like a cat, she stretched and purred delight, loving the way her skin slid against his.
“Did I sleep long?” Her voice sounded rusty, as though she hadn’t used it for a long time. Or she’d screamed at the peak of pleasure.
“Not long.” His voice was a deep rumble under her ear.
Tonight was too short to waste in sleep. She rubbed her cheek against the soft hair on his chest. Impossible to believe that in the morning she’d dress in old clothes and step into Jonas’s carriage to leave. She’d imagined this last night would prove a melancholy experience. Instead they’d fortified their bond rather than spoken a last good-bye.
As she rose on one elbow, the candlelit mirrors reflected a brazen woman, draped naked across her lover. Meeting her eyes in the mirror, she drew courage from the level gaze. No mistake that she’d need courage for what she intended now. More courage than she’d needed to tie Jonas to the bed and have her wicked way with him.
She thought he might draw her down for a kiss, but he stared up at her as though memorizing every pore of her skin. He skimmed his hand across her features. Forehead. Eyes fluttering under his touch. Nose. Cheeks. Chin. Lips.
“How adventurous you’ve become, bella.” He sounded drowsy and reflective. In the flickering candlelight, the gray eyes were soft like morning mist.
She smiled under his fingers. “You forgive me for binding you?”
“If I can return the favor.”
“Of course.” She shivered with anticipation, then unhappy awareness punctured her excitement as she realized their time together was now measured in hours. She slanted her lips across his in a kiss that she hoped conveyed everything she’d felt during the last miraculous days. The kiss was also a silent apology. She didn’t fool herself that he’d appreciate what she meant to do.
He intensified the kiss, shifted it into passion.
So tempting to cede. But she couldn’t. Slowly, she lifted her head and brushed his black hair back from his angular face. She’d come to know him so well. More compelling than her curiosity, compelling as that was, was the desperate need she sensed in him to unburden his lonely soul. She longed above all to give him peace.
As if he guessed her intentions, his relaxed expression leached away. She paused to repent the loss of his contentment. Courage, Sidonie.
She sucked in a breath. “Jonas, how did you get your scars?”
Jonas’s gut lurched with horrified denial. Hell, he should have expected this. Which didn’t make Sidonie’s question any more welcome. Once she’d asked him and he’d rebuffed her, but after tonight, they’d reached a point where he could no longer deny her the truth.
Unable to hold her searching, compassionate gaze, he rolled away to sit on the edge of the bed with his back to her. In the mirrors, he watched her rise to her knees behind him. He knew that stubborn expression too well to imagine he’d avoid interrogation.
Unfortunately for his efforts to keep her out of his head and heart, determination wasn’t the only emotion she displayed. Worse than stubbornness was vulnerability in the downturned corners of her lush mouth, and uncertainty in her deep brown eyes. Eyes that expressed no judgment, merely a profound concern for him, concern that a more sentimental man than Jonas Merrick might describe as loving.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said grimly, burying his face in his hands so he didn’t have to see his hideous reflection.
“I know you don’t.” Her voice ached with sadness.
He raised his head. “It’s our last night, carissima. We should be lost in pleasure.”
“Tell me, Jonas.” She sucked in a shaky breath, then her hands snaked around him. He stiffened even as he yearned to accept her embrace. Her hold felt protective, as if she defended him from unknown terrors. The sensation of someone watching out for him was unfamiliar and fiendishly alluring.
He flinched when she laid her cheek against his back, pressed her breasts against him. Her skin felt silky and warm. Odd how affecting these gestures of comfort were. Jonas strove to insist her gentleness meant nothing, but not even he believed that. It was a sobering reflection upon his life that he couldn’t remember anyone else offering him open affection. His father had loved him, but he’d been an Englishman with an Englishman’s inhibitions. A handshake or an arm flung around his son’s shoulders tested the heights of demonstrativeness. And his father’s affection for his son had always been a pallid emotion compared to his grief for his wife.
Sidonie’s silence and undemanding embrace wore down defenses fortified over more than twenty years. He linked his hands over hers. “It’s not a pretty story,” he said gruffly.
Sidonie hadn’t been sure Jonas would tell her. There was no real reason he should. She felt his shuddering tension. She’d known almost from the first that his scars were a forbidden area for curiosity and now she forced him to confront the events that left him so horribly marked. Dredging up words to describe past horrors would hurt him.