"Listen…" she temporized, pulling her eyes away from their hands to glance up at him. "I-I think we should—"
"Should what?" he interjected with a challenging glint in his eye.
She gazed at him for another long moment and then laughed. "You tell me," she returned his challenge. "You started this."
He grinned at her like the conquistador he was also probably descended from. Then he suddenly looked serious. "I think," he began judiciously, "…we should make love. Right here."
"You do?" she said, barely above a whisper.
"I don't think either of us can help it."
"You don't?" she repeated, sounding to herself like some woefully deranged parrot.
"Indeed, we cannot," he said gravely, pulling her against his chest. "You're right about those letters, though," he murmured against her hair. "They're positively…"
"Hypnotic?" she whispered against his cheek.
"Erotic…"
"Practically pornographic," she countered with a helpless laugh, feeling a shocking rush of warmth radiating throughout her abdomen.
You've been here… done this!
a voice shouted in her head.
"Wrong, cowgirl," Luke whispered fiercely in her ear. "This is going to be much, much better…"
He began to kiss her then, deeply, and with growing fervor. Aroused by the echo of her namesake's forbidden passion, Blythe leaned back on the brass daybed and held out her arms to him, inhaling a slight musty scent floating up from the antique feather mattress that only served to link her even more strongly to the past.
Luke stretched out next to her and began to nuzzle the sensitive spot beneath her ear.
"God, Blythe…" he groaned as his lips moved lower to kiss the hollow at the base of her neck, and then the tops of her breasts through her cotton work shirt. She had no idea which Blythe he was thinking of.
"Blythe Barton Trevelyan really lived," she whispered against the dark shock of hair grazing his forehead. "She wrote those words we read today, all that time ago. She really felt like this… she felt like I do now."
And, behaving as wantonly as her ancestress, she began to place excited kisses on his ears, his eyelids, and finally his mouth.
Suddenly Luke pulled himself from her embrace and abruptly stood up.
Oh, no, she cried silently, he couldn't be having second thoughts! Not now. Not after this?
To her relief, he began to peel off his shirt in a few graceful motions. He swiftly unbuckled his belt and shed his Wellington boots and moleskin trousers. She caught an arresting view of the man, reflected in the antique pier glass, as he flung his underclothes to one side. Just as quickly, she became aware of another invasion of warmth and moisture, this time within the private world of her own, erotic self.
Without his clothes Luke looked as strong as a Wyoming bronco rider, tall and lean and tanned from working outdoors. And unlike any Englishman she'd ever known, his chest— like his face—was bronzed.
Conquistador, indeed.
By now the ghostly lovers who had once inhabited Barton Hall had faded into the stone stable's dark corners, and Lucas Teague was all that filled Blythe's thoughts. He remained standing, his heightened state of arousal piercing her dreamy state and bringing her abruptly to an excruciating awareness of his insistent presence.
"This is actually pretty terrifying for me," she ventured, pulling herself upright on the feather mattress and clutching a comer of the dust sheet in her fist. "It's… ah… it's been a long time—"
"It's the same for me, Blythe," he said. "I haven't been to bed with a woman for nearly three years now. Not since Lindsay became ill." Then he added, "I haven't wanted to."
"What about Chloe?" she couldn't refrain from asking.
He sat down beside her and slowly began to unfasten the top buttons on her cotton work shirt. "I am going to try frightfully hard to convince you of something," he announced with a ghost of a smile. "You… my Yankee cousin… are all I want."
Then Luke removed her denim shirt. Next, he swiftly skinned her jeans down the length of her legs and made fast work of the rest of her clothing.
At first only their hands were joined in a dance of light and tender touches. Luke brushed her cheeks with the back of his fingertips. In response she slowly smoothed her palms along the contours of his naked shoulders, his arms, his hands, until her thumbs gently chafed the inside of his wrists in a deliberate echo of his earlier success arousing her to her present heated state. Then, with a satisfied smile, she slid her hands in the reverse direction to gently explore the nape of his neck.
The curve of his elbow, the crease where her thigh met her torso—these once forbidden territories now defined the perimeters of their desire.
Soon, however, Luke was seized by an irresistible craving to engulf the woman who now clung to him fiercely, to melt into her body and stake his claim, like a Cornish miner certain of finding a rich vein of copper. A violent sexual yearning took hold of him suddenly, fueled by abstinence, and stoked with a hunger that had been driven for too long by dutiful denial. He pulled her down on the bed once again and smothered her body beneath his own before he rolled them both onto their sides. In his ear rang the litany of the first Blythe Barton's carnal yearnings.
Sinew and bone… flesh against flesh… the touch of my thigh…
the taste of my lips…
Her thighs, her lips, her ravishing breasts—he couldn't seem to get his fill of the woman he held in his arms. On the contrary, he was experiencing a disturbing blend of pent-up desire mixed with an overwhelming urge to protect this Blythe Barton from her painful past. This potent brew resulted in his being forced to reckon with an urgent, unswerving compulsion to fuse himself to her—and soon.
As she had done when they'd kissed in the cave, Blythe offered him a sure sign that she had no intention of playing the coquette. With infinite grace she parted her long legs and whispered a seductive invitation that told him she was a woman who knew exactly what she wanted—and that she wanted it now.
When he reached for her, he wondered if he would embarrass himself with a feverish need to merge his body with her intoxicating warmth. An instant later, when he sheathed himself with wondrous ease, he raised his head and stared down at her flushed face, drinking in the sight of Botticelli hair spread like a fan upon the bed.
He was shocked when she opened her eyes, for he could see in their depths that she, too, was mad with yearning, impatient, as was he, to surrender to the sheer, physical imperative of this mystical fusion. The force driving them both now was pure energy, pure light, something out of the past and part of the present as well, a reunion and a new beginning, a forgetting of old wounds and a remembering of this day, forevermore. He wanted her. He was her. She was him. They were one force heading toward oblivion.
He hovered above her lithe form like a soaring seabird lifted on the currents of a blaze so intense, its heat began to consume him, and he thought he might incinerate to ashes. He pressed her to him and watched, transfixed, as she began to tremble and cry out his name. He closed his own eyes quickly to hide the moisture that rose behind his lids. Then he fell on top of her and buried his face in her hair, yielding to Blythe's body the essence of things he could not say, nor even dare to witness.
For several minutes Luke languished in a kind of daze, cushioned by the splendid softness of her breasts. With his eyes still closed and holding her against his chest, he offered a silent prayer of gratitude to Lindsay for having taught him to cherish a woman—as well as desire her.
Then, to his dismay, he sensed that Blythe was struggling to suppress a sob. His breath caught, a part of him enraged suddenly to think that the experience they had just shared had been anything but perfect for both of them. Instinctively he knew she was doing her level best to quell another wave of emotion. Even so, he was chagrined to think that, by this act, a deep well of sadness in Blythe had been tapped and was bubbling to the surface.
Then, despite the fact that she was crying softly, she burrowed the top of her head beneath his chin and tightened her arms around his waist. He was even more surprised when she kissed him tenderly beneath his ear.
"Darling… what is it?"
"Shh…" she whispered, shifting her weight onto her side.
He wondered bleakly if she hadn't been too fragile to have taken this step. Could it be possible that what he had just been feeling had been a one-sided fantasy?
Before his customary remorse could take hold, however, he felt a poignant combination of kisses and tears brush against his chest, against his stomach, trailing lower and lower in an exquisitely slow and blatantly obvious attempt to arouse him once again.
"Whoa, Miss Wyoming," he protested softly. "What have we here?"
"What we have here," murmured a husky voice against his thigh, "is a wanton expression of my undying gratitude."
"For what just happened to both of us?"
"Yes. And for wanting me as much as you did, Luke."
"As much as I do," he corrected her.
"Do?" she repeated in a provocative whisper, looking up at him. Her solemn mood had shifted to one of deliberate teasing. "You mean, do this?"
Her hand cupped him intimately, and then she lowered her head once more in a gesture of erotic benediction.
"Oh… yes…" he groaned, fresh waves of pleasure coursing through his entire body.
Luke could only marvel at the cloud of her auburn curls that felt like angel feathers grazing his skin. This time it would be completely different, he realized. This time would be full of fun and laughter and earthy familiarity—a celebration of the end to such a dark season of sadness.
And before long Luke was playfully entreating Blythe to sit astride his legs and provide them both with a firsthand demonstration of rodeo riding.
"I was wonderin' when you'd ask me to do that," she replied with a throaty chuckle, "and I'd be most happy to oblige."
***
Later that night, alone under the eaves of Painter's Cottage, Blythe fell into an exhausted sleep. She dreamed that she could hear Lucas's Land Rover honking its way through clusters of sheep in the cliff side field that plunged down to her private beach. However, when she ran downstairs to greet him, an impenetrable mist billowing up from the Channel made it impossible for her to spot the car's approach. Feeling utterly bereft, she stood shivering on the slate step, vainly peering through the fog for a glimpse of his headlights, but the world outside her door was damp and dark.
Oddly, someone was pounding a fist against that same door. How strange, she thought groggily, for wasn't she standing on the threshold? No… she was in her bed and the clock on her nightstand said two a.m.
The heavy oak door downstairs creaked open. Early in her stay she'd ceased bothering to lock it, day or night.
"Blythe?" a voice whispered hoarsely.
"Lucas?" she answered, her thudding heart recovering its normal rhythm.
"Yes… it's me."
She fumbled for her dressing gown, couldn't find it, and scrambled out of bed, embarrassed to be wearing only her pajama tops. A light had been turned on below. When she stared down the steep wooden staircase, Luke was standing in its golden pool in the middle of the room, looking exceedingly sheepish. He'd donned only a pair of trousers, Wellington boots, and his Barbour coat, as if he'd responded to a clanging fire bell. His tanned chest appeared even darker than usual against his forest-green jacket.
"I couldn't sleep," he announced. He glanced at her tousled hair. "I'm sorry… I see that you were."
"Having horrible dreams," she said with a rueful smile. "I had a nightmare that I heard the Land Rover honking, but I couldn't find you in the mist. It was awful. Is it foggy outside?"
"No… the sky's studded with stars. Come down and have a look."
"No," she answered with a grin any Cheshire cat would envy. "You come up here… and have a look."
He vaulted up the ladder, ducking his head to keep from bumping against the rafters, and enfolded her in his arms.
"I began to think that perhaps this afternoon was a dream," he murmured, kissing her neck. "After Richard went to sleep, I watched CNN till midnight and then lay in that bloody Barton Bed and wondered why Miss Barton wasn't in it."
"Because I'm here." She smiled, snuggling close. "Waiting for you in Painter's Cottage in my cozy double bed, designed for citizens of this century."
"May I stay with you tonight?" he asked humbly. "Make love to you again? Sleep with you? Really sleep until the sun wakes us up?"
"Yes!" she whispered, flinging her arms around his shoulders, "you most certainly may." Then she blurted, "That was one of the best parts of marriage, wasn't it? Waking up beside…"
She halted mid sentence, wishing she could bite off her tongue.
"It's all right to say it, Blythe," Luke reassured her, drawing back to study her expression. "We'll both have quite a few ghosts to banish, I suspect."
There were some ghosts this local landowner wasn't aware were lurking around Barton Hall, she thought unhappily. She wouldn't think about that now, not when the evidence of Luke's rising ardor was pressing erotically against her thigh.