anticipation of feeling skin against skin, the wizard's kiss upon his eager apprentice.
Nicholas brushed her slip and panties down and away in a silken glide, the shiver of their passing warmed by the starry fire of his touch along her bared flesh. Somehow she controlled her trembling hands enough to slide Nicholas' shirt from his shoulders. But when Nicholas' body, too, was bare to her exploration, she could not bring herself up through the haze of desire that swept her to remember how or who had made it possible.
Her heart filled with the wonder of it in the flickering shadows of candlelight and moon glow, she touched and kissed his neck, his collarbone, the sinew of his arm, the curve of his ribs. There was a white, jagged ridge below his ribcage and another just above his right nipple. Scars. "Nicholas?"
"Old battles. Long forgotten." As if to make her forget as well, he moved his gentle fingers to caress her intimate places. And she forgot. Yes, she forgot. A whimper of longing escaped her as she felt him press tenderly, slowly within her.
"One rule is still in force, Trissa, sweet. Say stop and I will stop," his words drifted to her like mist.
"I won't say stop. Let it never stop," was her strained reply.
His smile darkened with passion. "Then this is the last apprentice kiss, my love. After this, you are the master." His lips came down hard and demanding and she felt the hot, swirl of his desire as he kissed her. He moved over her and she opened to him, like the deep-throated, moonlit lilies.
More than she had wanted anything in her life, she wanted this man to become hers, to take her up and possess her, to end her old life once and for all and begin her new. With each insistent stroke of his hand, the wanting in her grew. She trembled on the brink of something she ached to understand.
Then his hand was replaced with a greater power. "I'm coming inside you, Trissa. If I hurt you, I--"
"Oh, Nicholas. Don't say you're sorry. I need you. I want you. So much." She moved her hand to touch the leashed power of him, to guide him home.
But still, he held back. He controlled his tender, loving progress toward their union, moving with gentle, deliberate grace, entering her so slowly, so he would not hurt her -- when she yearned to have it done, to be his, to be reborn one with him.
With sudden, white-hot urgency, she pressed up toward him, and it was done. She caught her breath sharply with the searing pain and held it, a bubble of laughter gurgled deep in her throat.
"Trissa?"
"You are ever the photographer, Nicholas. 'Press gently,'" she said breathlessly, mocking his oft-repeated instructions to her about the shutter release. "'Never poke or jab.'"
He smiled his relief and kissed the beaded sweat from her brow, holding himself still within her. Then he touched his lips to hers urging them to part and drew her tongue, soft and sweet, into his mouth. With an innocent's sense of desire and destiny, she touched the tip to the roof of his mouth behind his teeth and slowly trailed it deep to the back then forward again in a languorous rhythm all of her body reached to simulate.
He let himself catch the rhythm she taught him, and they moved together with such agonizing grace that all pain, physical, emotional, spiritual, was forgotten, melted into the pattering water and the moonlight and the jewel-green shadows.
When the magic started, when the enchantment of touch and motion and heat sparked and ignited and shattered into crystal splinters, she clung to him with such passion and love and life that it burned away the knot of fear within him that she might ever again choose to escape life. They held each other fiercely in the rippling aftershocks and she whispered, "Keep me safe, Nicholas. Never let me go."
"Never," he promised. "Never."
Chapter Fourteen
Dawn found Nicholas and Trissa tucked safely in their own bed. Her warm, well-loved body lay snuggled along the length of his with her head and one hand resting protectively on his chest. His chin touched the top of her head and his arms encircled her. Their legs were a tangle of his and hers, his and hers. Nicholas was awake, savoring the soft puffs of air that rippled across his chest as she breathed in and out against him. He would not be able to extricate himself