In the Shadow of Midnight - By Marsha Canham Page 0,145

spilled downward, had spread and become a trembling, throbbing heat that shivered into her belly and between her thighs, rendering her speechless. And because she could not speak, her eyes implored him for the truth, eyes that were wide and dark and so completely stripped of pride, they left him no choice but to answer.

He made a sound deep in his throat—a groan or a curse, she could not be certain—and his lips crushed down over hers, his response delivered so fiercely, so possessively, the shock of it left her breathless, drowning in her own heat.

Rain beat on their shoulders and splattered on the stones. The sea and sky rumbled like shifting boulders, offering a final warning, but it went unheeded. Eduard’s good and noble intentions were lost in the consummation of taste, touch, and desperately clinging mouths.

His body crowded hers against the rampart and their mouths slanted this way and that, their tongues lashing together, their breaths raging hot and fast. Their heartbeats clamored a challenge to the storm unleashing itself around them and the trembling needs in their bodies rivalled the tumultuous, recoiling shocks that echoed off the stone walls.

“Eduard,” she gasped. “Eduard …”

Rainwater bathed her face, made her hair cling to her temples and throat in dark, wet streaks. Eduard tore his mouth away and searched the shadows like a wild man, seeking a sheltered corner, an archway, a protected lee …

“Here,” she demanded. “Now. With God watching, we shall defy the oaths made in His name. I am not afraid, Eduard. If you love me, I am not afraid.”

Eduard blinked the rain and wind out of his eyes. He lifted his hands away from her long enough to loosen the buckles at his shoulders and to shrug his belts and baldric aside along with the heavily quilted surcoat. Within seconds the rain began to soak the linen of his shirt, plastering it to his skin, molding it to the hard slabs of muscle across his chest and shoulders. Seconds more and he might as well have been naked for all that the mysteries of his body were revealed in bold, rising magnificence.

He made short work of removing Ariel’s cloak and loosening the green velvet tunic. His hands caressed her through the gaping layer of velvet before his fingers curled around bunches of fabric and tore the two halves asunder. Ariel arched her head back, her neck and throat glistening under the sheeting rain, her hands cradling the heat of his mouth to her bared flesh as he buried his face between her breasts. He reached for the hem of her skirt and pulled the crush of velvet up over her hips, his fingers greedy and searching as he sent them delving into the moist, deep heat of her.

A jolt of lightning traced across the sky as Ariel opened herself to the pressure of his stroking fingers. She was wettest there, where the rain had yet to find her, and hot … so hot he groaned and dragged her down onto the spread folds of her cloak, his hands moving swiftly, feverishly to free his own pounding flesh from the confines of his clothes.

With a mindlessness fueled by passion and long-denied hunger, he was between her thighs, he was pushing himself forward, he was thrusting into the lush folds of her body and stretching up inside, furrowing into her with a sense of urgency echoed by her long, shivering cry of fulfillment.

Ariel’s mindless need forgave him his haste. Indeed, she revelled in the obvious agony of his own blinding demands, for there was but a moment of resistance, gone in the passing of a heartbeat, leaving only the more astounding awareness of being filled, impaled, glutted with hard male flesh. She groaned and arched her hips instinctively, straining to feel even more of him inside her. He obliged by thrusting again … and again … by plunging his hands beneath her bottom and lifting her until she learned how to lift herself, how to twine her legs around his waist and lock them there so that she could move with him, move against him, move for him.

Lightning bathed their bodies in a blue-white lustre, the rain causing their exposed flesh to gleam like marble. The sound of the wind and the sea drowned out the groans, muffled the ragged gasps of ecstasy that sent Ariel’s hands clawing into the rapid rise and fall of his hips. Something burst within her. Something brilliant and beautiful, something bright and