Thought had been eradicated long ago; for both there was only sensation. That, and a oneness, a sharing, bone-deep.
A connection that flowered, fully and completely, as their breathing grew more labored, as at the last their lids fell as they took the final teetering steps up to the peak….
Glory burst upon them, taking her, then him. A bright sun of sensation imploding within, sending shards of delight lancing through their veins, sending pleasure beyond reckoning coursing through them, swamping and sweeping all consciousness away.
Sundering them from the world, whirling them beyond the stars, a single brilliant moment of unutterable bliss, stretching, holding…until the void, that place beyond feeling, gently closed around them, hiding them away, enfolding them in peace.
They drifted back to earth.
Slowly.
Like water dripping into a bowl, consciousness returned, the ability to think only gradually restored.
Gervase lay on his back, eyes closed. Nothing—no previous encounter—in his life had prepared him for this.
For complete and utter satiation.
It lay heavy in his veins, had sunk deep into his muscles.
Had touched something within him, some element inside him, that had never before been involved.
Frightening, exciting, thrilling…addictive. All that, and more.
Madeline lay slumped, beyond boneless, over him. His arms lay protectively across her back; he didn’t intend to ever let her go.
But she’d surprised him.
The strength she possessed, the determination, too, but it was her Valkyrie will—a feminine strength—that had held and fascinated and conquered him.
He smiled ironically, inside; his facial muscles were still too relaxed to manage any expression.
The strength she’d wielded to conquer him hadn’t been hers alone. At least half had come from him, from his willingness to cede to her, to surrender…not to her, herself, but to the power that between them, together naked in the night, rose up and bound them. Controlled them. Drove them.
Ruled them.
The power that, through her, commanded him.
A scarifying notion in some ways.
Before he could think further, she stirred. She lifted from him, then sank back into his arms, leaving their legs entwined. Her hair was a gilded mass hiding her face, but he felt her press her cheek to his chest, then touch her lips to his skin.
“Thank you.” Madeline let the words whisper past her lips, an intimate confession in the dark. “That, more than anything else, was what I wanted for my birthday. I wanted you. Just you.”
For me. For my own. For one night out of time.
Chapter 14
“I cannot tell you, my lord, how pleased I am to see you back in the district, in your rightful place.” Lady Felgate fixed her protuberant eyes on Gervase as he made his bow to her. “Absentee earls—indeed, gallivanting senior noblemen of any sort—are to be deplored. It is not what the country needs.”
Straightening, Gervase knew better than to argue. “Indeed. I plan to remain at the castle for the foreseeable future.”
Lady Felgate brightened. “Excellent! We must see what we can do about finding you a local gel to take to wife.” Her ladyship waved at her ballroom. “Plenty here—go and look.”
Gervase promptly complied, at least as far as following Sybil into her ladyship’s ballroom. His looking, however, consisted of scanning the heads, searching for a bright one taller than most. Not finding her, he inwardly sighed and consigned himself to escorting Sybil to a nearby chaise, then attempting to cling to his own company until Madeline arrived.
Lady Felgate was a character, one of those ancient beldames whose eccentricities everyone put up with simply because doing so was easier than resisting. The ball she held every summer at Felgate Priory was a local institution, one everyone attended—again because it was easier than attempting to avoid it.
That did, however, mean that everyone—literally every lady and gentleman in the district older than eighteen—would appear in her ladyship’s ballroom that night.