Beauty Tempts the Beast (Sins for All Seasons #6) - Lorraine Heath Page 0,101
no longer what I want. It’s not what I need. Because I’m happy here. With you. Because I love you.”
With a groan that sounded as though his heart had been ripped from his chest, he lowered his head to the swell of her breasts, kissed one and then the other. Then he just lingered there, breathing in and breathing out, and she feared she’d made a terrible mistake in uttering the words.
“It’s too big, Thea,” he said quietly, “to have your love. It makes me feel as though my heart will explode through my chest.”
He shifted until he was once again gazing down on her. “Do you know when I first started falling in love with you?”
Since she didn’t know he had, she could only shake her head, even as her own heart soared with the knowledge that this remarkable man loved her.
“When you told me that you were none of my bleedin’ business. The first fall wasn’t much of a drop, but every day I learned something else about you that made me fall just a little bit further. I’m still falling. I suspect I’ll keep falling until I draw my last breath.”
“Ben,” she whispered, too overcome by his admission to say much else. What they felt for each other was too big, yet not big enough.
“As small as you are, it is inconceivable to me how when I am with you, I don’t feel as though I’m a great hulking beast.”
She tried to break free of his hold so she could run her fingers through his hair, over his face, but he held tight. He always held tight.
“Make love to me. Fully, completely. I don’t want to retain my virginity. I want to feel you moving inside me. I want to be only yours. I want you to be mine.”
With a growl, he moved her hands to the small of his back before spreading his fingers over her throat, beneath her chin, and lowering his mouth to hers, his tongue sweeping along the contours. She scored her fingers up his back, outlining the defined delineations that flexed with his movements. So much strength. Such power. How could he consider himself hulking when he possessed an incredible elegance? Yes, he was taller than most and broad shouldered, but there was a sleekness about him, like a panther she’d seen at the zoological gardens.
He nipped at her collarbone, soothed it with his tongue.
She brought her hands around. He laced their fingers together. She stilled. Her brow furrowed. “Why do you do that?”
He stilled as well, although if it was possible, he was more still than she. “Do what?”
“Take hold of my hands—” No, it wasn’t hands, not always. But it was always the left one. “You won’t let me touch the right side of your face, your head.” It was an area he seemed to shelter. Never had she seen him without his hair covering it. “Why?”
She heard his swallow more than saw it. “Because I didn’t want you to discover why they first began calling me Beast.”
He shoved himself off the bed more with a sense of resignation than anger or frustration. Before they went any further, she had the right to know, to know everything about him. With the truth of him, she might decide she wanted to become another man’s mistress, might return to her original plans.
The bed creaked with whatever movements she was making.
He wished he had with him the match safe his mum had given him, that he had those matches available because they could ward off the darkness now threatening. Instead, he tapped his fingers over the bedside table until he found the matches he knew rested nearby, struck one, and lit the oil lamp, bringing forth a light that chased all the shadows away from the bed, away from her, away from him.
She was sitting with her back to the headboard, the sheet clutched in her hands just below her chin, covering what she’d bared when he’d first walked into the room. A thousand times he’d yearned to see her unveiled in the brightest of lit rooms or in a field dappled with sunshine, had even considered not dousing the lamps, but he couldn’t shine light on her without shining it on himself.
He sat on the bed, his hip resting next to hers. She’d yet to take her eyes from him. “Go ahead,” he said quietly, “touch what I’ve not let you touch, see what I’ve not let you see.”