Destined to Last (21 page)

H
unter stifled the urge to race his stallion across the countryside. He couldn’t be certain where Kate was. The groom had seen her ride east, but she could have veered off to the north, or down to the beach after she’d been out of sight. He couldn’t risk missing her in haste, or—

He saw her, a dark spot in the distance—too far in the distance, well past the edge of the grounds, and moving much too fast. His heart stopped in his chest, the air backed up in his lungs.

Somehow, something Miss Willory had done had caused Kate to lose control of her horse.

Battling back a sick roll of fear, he gave the stallion his head.

Kate was a fine horsewoman, he assured himself as he closed the distance between them at a breakneck pace. He’d heard Whit mention as much more than once. She hadn’t lost her seat when the horse bolted, so there was no reason for her to lose it now. If she could just hang on until her mount wore himself out—

Kate’s horse veered sharply, heading straight toward the bluffs.

The roll of fear became a wave of terror. He bent low in the saddle and pushed his mount for more speed. He had to reach Kate before her horse reached the bluffs.

No horse would run off a cliff intentionally, not even a panicked one. But the terrain was unfamiliar to Kate’s mount, rocky and markedly uneven in places. The earth at the edge of the bluffs was loose and unstable in patches. The horse could slip, fall, and tumble off the cliff. Or come to a sliding halt at the edge and throw Kate off the cliff, or…

Bloody hell, he wouldn’t think about it. It didn’t do either of them any good for him to think about it. Ruthlessly wiping his mind clear of all visions of Kate tumbling off the bluffs into the sea, he concentrated on going faster.

How far away was he, now? Fifty yards? How far away were the bluffs? Two hundred, three hundred yards? There was time, he told himself. He could see where their paths would intersect. They had time. He would make it.

Leaning low over the stallion’s neck, he brought his horse alongside Kate’s less than fifty yards before the cliff. Kate was clinging to her mount’s back, her fingers tangled in the mane. Hunter stretched out his hand for the left rein, only to discover it was missing. He leaned farther to grab the bridle, only to have the horse toss his head and veer out of reach.

The cliff loomed closer.

Bloody, buggering, hell.

He reached over one last time, grabbed Kate around the waist and dragged her off the horse.

“I have you,” he said hoarsely, setting her in the saddle in front of him. He wrapped one arm tightly around her and slowed his mount with his free hand. “I have you. You’re safe.”

He wasn’t certain whose benefit he was speaking for, he only knew he needed to say the words.

As his horse slowed to a walk, he watched in horror as Kate’s mount rushed the last few yards to the cliff. He came to a sliding stop not three feet from the edge, his hoofs digging deep grooves into the loose earth. Kate wouldn’t have been able to keep her seat. She’d have been thrown clear off the edge into the water below.

Kate seemed to realize how close she’d come to catastrophe. He could feel her trembling, hear the way her breath came in ragged gasps. “The rein…”

He pulled her harder against him, brushed his lips through her hair. “It’s all right, Kate. You’re all right.”

“The rein. It came off in my hands.” She stared down at them now as if she expected to find an explanation there. “I pulled, and it came straight off.”

“It’s all right. It’s over.”

The trembling grew more pronounced. “I’d have gone over. Right over the cliff.”

Hunter stifled a frustrated groan. He couldn’t hold her properly in the damn saddle. And he couldn’t pull her off and into his arms, not the way he wanted, while they were in an open field.

He turned his mount about and led him at an easy trot back along the coast until the bluffs smoothed out into a small slope that ran into the sandy beach. He followed the beach back up until the bluffs formed once again, blocking the beach from the view of anyone riding along the fields above.

He dismounted, lifted Kate down after him and gathered her into his arms.

She was still trembling.

He kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, her mouth. His hands moved over her, brushing along her arms and back, her face and shoulders. He wanted to soothe and comfort. He wanted to make her stop shaking.

“It’s all right, Kate. It’s all right.”

Kate couldn’t keep still. She couldn’t keep the tremors from wracking her body. She tried pressing herself closer to Hunter, burrowing her face against his chest, wrapping her arms around him, and gripping handfuls of his coat at his back. But nothing seemed to help. Nothing erased the memory of the cliff rushing up before her and being powerless to save herself.

“I couldn’t stop him. He wouldn’t stop.”

He slipped an arm under her knees, carried her to a sheltered spot between two towering boulders, and sat in the sand, cradling her in his lap.

“It’s over, sweetheart. It’s done. I have you.”

He did have her—wrapped warm and safe in his arms. She relaxed in his hold as his voice floated over her, pushing aside the memory of the wind whipping in her ears and the sound of hoofs pounding on the ground. She breathed in his familiar scent, letting it erase the smell of Whistler’s sweat. Hunter had her now. She was safe.

His arms tightened around her. “Stop shaking, sweetheart.”

She let out a shuddering sigh against his chest. “I have,” she whispered. “That’s you.”

Hunter blinked at Kate’s words.

That’s you.

Bloody hell, he
was
shaking. He hadn’t realized. He’d
been too focused on Kate’s distress to notice the tremor in his arms. Merely a reaction to extreme physical exertion, he assured himself, and patently refused to acknowledge that he’d engaged in physical acts in the past that were far and away more extreme. And not once had they ended with him shaking.

Kate lifted her head and pressed her lips to his in a soft kiss. “I’m all right.”

Was she comforting him now? Was he being
soothed
?

Did he care as long as she kept doing it? He decided he didn’t, not when it involved feeling the heat of her mouth against his. Willing to be consoled, he wrapped a hand around the base of her neck, pulled her closer, and took the kiss deeper.

On a quiet sigh, she shifted in his lap and twined her arms around his neck. And then
she
took the kiss deeper, tasting him with her tongue, parting her lips in an invitation for him to do the same.

He accepted what she offered, slanting his mouth over hers again and again until the remnants of the panic he refused to acknowledge were washed away by desire; until they were both trembling with need instead of fear.

He should stop, a small part of his brain admonished. He shouldn’t allow the encounter to progress past a kiss. They were on a beach, for pity’s sake.

A larger part of his brain reminded him that it was a beach at least a mile from the house and hidden from both field and sea by rock. He wouldn’t be able to take his time, he wouldn’t be able to do all the things he’d fantasized, but he could have her. He could make her his.

He’d always been a proponent of majority rule.

He let his hands slip to her shoulders, careful of her healing cut, down her torso, around and up her back to work the buttons of her gown. Just a few, just enough to pull the bodice down over her shoulders, until there was only her thin chemise
between him and the skin he craved. He didn’t let himself take at first. Lowering her to the sand, he tormented them both by tracing kisses down her neck, along her collarbone, and finally across the neckline of her chemise where fabric met heated flesh. He dallied there, enjoying the sharp contrast in textures, almost as much as he enjoyed her sharp gasp of pleasure when he used his tongue to sample the skin just beneath the seam.

He could have stayed there, teasing her, listening to the sounds of her pleasure for endless minutes. He would have, if they’d been in a bed behind a locked door. And if an extended period of denied passion hadn’t been tearing at his control.

“I want you.” He pulled the chemise down slowly, following the movement with his mouth, whispering words against her breast. “Want you.” He brushed his hand lightly over a small pink nipple, squeezed his eyes shut on a groan when she arched toward him. “Please.”

It wasn’t begging. He didn’t beg. It was seduction—the sweet words any man gave any woman he was trying to bed. Even as he made the excuse, a small part of Hunter knew it to be a lie. But not even the smallest part of him cared. Not now, not while Kate’s soft form was arched beneath him in desire.

Whatever words he needed to speak, whatever lies he needed to hear, he’d offer them and more. Though he’d deny it later, in that moment, he’d have offered anything, everything he had, if it meant he could have
her.

“Kate.”

“Yes.”

Another tremor ran through him and he wasn’t certain if it was one of relief or anticipation or even, heaven help him, nerves. She would be his now.
His.

He ran his hands over her possessively, wishing he could strip away all the layers of clothes between them. He wanted
to see her naked and spread out before him like an offering. He wanted to feel every inch of her skin pressed against every inch of his own. Next time, he assured himself. Next time, when they were married, he would undress her in slow stages and linger over every curve and plane. For now, it was enough, it was more than enough, to remove or push aside the most inhibiting articles of clothing, to feel the soft weight of her breasts, to slowly push up her skirts as he followed the long curves of her leg with his palm, to swallow her gasp when he discovered the heat at the juncture of her thighs.

He listened to her whimpers and sighs, relished the way she twisted beneath him in need as he poised himself against her entrance. Not yet, he ordered himself, not until she was moaning. Not until she moaned his name.

“Hunter.”

“Andrew,” he whispered. For reasons he didn’t care to ponder, he needed to hear her say it.

“Andrew,” she moaned against his mouth, sending a shiver racing along his skin.

He entered her slowly, giving her body a chance to grow accustomed to his, and giving himself the chance to savor every glorious moment.

She dug her fingers into his shoulders, lightly at first, then with increasing pressure as he pressed deeper. When he pushed through the barrier that marked her as an innocent, he could have sworn the nails in his shoulders drew blood.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart.” He wrapped his arms tight around her. “I’m sorry. It will get better.”

Her voice was hesitant, notably devoid of passion, and unless he was much mistaken, just a little patronizing. “Yes…all right.”

She was attempting to spare his feelings, he realized, and nearly laughed. He might have laughed, if they hadn’t both been experiencing two very different, but very real varieties of discomfort in that moment.

He wanted to move. He
needed
to move.

“We’ll wait,” he whispered, brushing his lips across hers. “As long as you like. We’ll wait.”

Ignoring the instinct that demanded he push inside her until he was sated, he kept his arms around her and stayed still, perfectly still, until her grip eased and he could no longer feel the hard pounding of her heart against his chest. When he was certain, absolutely certain, the worst of her pain had passed, he loosened his hold and set himself to the task of rekindling her passion.

He took her mouth in a long, drugging kiss and ran his hands over her again, rediscovering the places that had made her whimper and sigh before. He whispered words of encouragement, sweet endearments that made her smile and blush.

She sighed when he slid his palms down the sides of her breasts, whimpered when he brushed the sensitive skin at the back of her knee and moaned when his fingers found the spot where their bodies were joined.

He moved inside her then—slowly at first, gauging her reaction. When she moaned again and arched up to meet him, he quickened the pace. He watched her, transfixed, as she threw her head back, her eyes closed and her lips parted on a cry of pleasure.

Beautiful, he thought through a haze of desire. She was beautiful in her passion.

And then all thought was lost to him. There was only the building need, the long, hard strain to meet it, and the breathtaking sight and feel of Kate finding her release a moment before he took his own.

It was several long minutes before Hunter had the wherewithal to roll onto his back and tuck Kate against his side.

“Did I hurt you, sweetheart?” He’d meant to have more control. He’d meant to give her his name, a bed, and
then
his control, but it was a bit late to change the order of things now.

“No. Well, some at first,” she admitted, and he could have
sworn he felt the cheek on his chest warm. “But then no. It was…I don’t know what to call it…Wonderful?”

He shouldn’t ask. He shouldn’t. He just couldn’t help himself. “Did you hear music?”

“Music?” She lifted her head to peer at him, then the water, then him again. “No. I told you, the sea stops it…Why are you laughing?”

“Never mind, sweetheart,” he chuckled, tucking her head back down to his chest. “I’ll explain another time.”

Kate considered insisting he tell her now, then decided she had neither the energy, nor the interest. Her body felt deliciously weary, as if she’d spent the whole day running about in the sun and now wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in the cool shade. Her mind, on the other hand, was a riot of thoughts and feelings. She couldn’t have fallen asleep if her very life depended on it.

She’d lain with a man. She frowned a little against Hunter’s chest. What a terrible misrepresentation of the facts that turn of phrase was. It rather sounded as if the two of them had taken a nap.

She’d made love with Hunter, that description was far superior. And it fit her circumstances perfectly, because she was, in fact, in love with Hunter.