Kathleen Creighton - One Summer’s Knight

The sound she made when he tore his mouth from hers was like a sob. With his fingers tangled in her hair he held her head ruthlessly still, upturned so he could look into her face as he demanded in a harsh, guttural cry, “Why ? What… is… this?”

She answered him the same way, her head thrown back and defiant, while her eyes glittered with a fierce, pale light. “This is for me. For me! ” She shook her head free of his grasp. “It came to me that I’ve been too proud to admit-” she was panting, out of breath, as if she’d been swimming long and hard “-that it wasn’t the children I was protecting…it was me .” Her laughter was like moonlight on water-it touched only the surface. “My kids aren’t going to be hurt by this-how can they be? They’ll never know. I’ll find the right man for them-for us -someday. I’ll find someone who’ll be the father to them they deserve… need.”

“My God, Summer-” It was torn from him, a groan of anguish.

“No, I will-I must .” Her hands slid up his back and pressed against his shoulder blades with a strength that shamed him for all the times he’d thought her vulnerable and weak. “And when I do, the only one who’ll ever know about this…about us…is me. I’m the one that has to live with it. I’m the only one who can be hurt. So…this is for me.”

No-not the only one! “God, Summer…” He felt the emptiness yawning before him, felt as though she were the only thing keeping him from being swallowed by it Like an animal in a trap, pain-racked and dazed, he growled, “What if I don’t want to let you go? Maybe-”

She stopped him there with a shake of her head and a finger touched gently to his lips. “My children deserve more than just to be taken on as part of my…baggage. It’s okay, I understand. I don’t expect happily ever after. This is enough-for as long as I’m here, okay? It’s enough …” The last was a whisper, rough as sandpaper. And so were the words that followed. “Please, Riley…just close your eyes and…kiss me.”

He’d never felt so conflicted, so torn. He was on fire with passion, but there was a heaviness inside him; he trembled with fury, but ached with tenderness. Never in all his life had he wanted a woman as much as he wanted this one, but the thought of taking her made him feel one good breath away from crying. He wanted to lift his head and cry out from the depths of his soul, scream to the heavens his rage at fate, which had given him his demons, the demons that would not let him give her all she deserved, and take from her what he needed.

Instead, he simply did as she asked, and kissed her.

And in the end, for that moment at least, it was what he needed; she was a healer, after all.

He held her tightly at first, taking her mouth with a savagery that was more a product of frustration than of passion, plunging his tongue deep, with a growl in his throat, lungs burning and his heart exploding in primitive rhythms. And she gave it back and more, but with a little chuckle of pleasure that for some reason delighted him. It rolled up from her throat, passed from her mouth into his, rippled down into his chest, and he gave her back its echo.

He drew back a little, and she brought her hands to the back of his neck, swirled her tongue over his lips and then between, opening to him, inviting him in, deeper…deeper. She was all warmth and generosity, her body lush and humid even in the coolness of the water. Her femininity seemed to surround him like a sultry summer night; she was the air he breathed; he absorbed her through the pores of his skin. He wondered whether he’d ever really made love to a woman before… whether all the experiences he’d had before had only been leading him to this…preparing him for this. For this woman.

He slipped his arms under her buttocks and lifted her-or did he only suggest, and she come without hesitation? He didn’t know for certain-the water made it such an effortless thing. Her legs parted and slid around his hips and he nested himself in her warm and giving softness…just nestled there, hot and aching with his need. And groaned with the sweet agony of it, knowing it was a need that must not be filled. Not yet…

He walked with her to the shallow water, still plundering her mouth with a hunger that only seemed to grow more insatiable with every kiss. The air cooled on their bodies, raising shivers and goose bumps and hardening her nipples so that they abraded his chest like pebbles. He wanted them in his mouth with an intensity he could taste , sharp and edgy as brass on his tongue. But not yet. Not yet…

She made a small growling sound of protest when he lowered her to the steps, uncoiled her legs and arms from around him and tore his mouth from hers, until he muttered, “Sorry..but before this goes any further, there’s something I have to do.”

She opened her mouth to say something, to protest, and he could see the struggle play out across her expressive face-frustration warring against gratitude. Then she nodded her acceptance. He kissed her once more, lingeringly, promising… asking patience. Then he snatched up the towel he’d left on the deck, knotted it carelessly around his hips and left her there.

He wasn’t gone long; it only seemed like forever to her. She’d been afraid that the fever that had driven her to do this insane, this aberrant thing might cool before he came back, but she’d underestimated the intensity of her hunger for him. Her whole body vibrated with it She waited for him, sitting on the steps, half submerged in the tepid water, rocked by the rhythm of her own life forces and counting the seconds of his absence in the slow drumbeat of the pulses that throbbed in her swollen, secret places.

When he came it was almost without a sound, but she’d have needed none to know he was there; every nerve in her body sprang joyfully to life, humming with excitement. Languid with arousal, her breath heavy in her throat, she tilted her head and watched him as he dropped the towel on the flagstones and stepped into the pool. She couldn’t see his face; his body was a dark sculpture silhouetted against the house lights. Like a phantom, she thought. My phantom lover. And somehow that made it easier, to think of him as something not quite real. Not a real man but a fantasy…a dream that would vanish in the light of reality. Or like Cinderella’s Prince, at the stroke of midnight.

She felt him ease in behind her on the step, felt his legs slide around her so that the silky unsheathed hardness of him nestled in the cleft of her buttocks. She sighed and would have arched back against him, but unexpectedly, almost roughly, he pushed her forward, gathered her hair in his hand and thrust it aside, baring her vulnerable neck. He lowered his mouth to her nape, savagely demanding, raking her tender skin with his teeth, marking her there with his sucking, staking his claim on her in that most primitive and elemental way so that she gasped at the surprise, the raw sexuality of it. Then she began to whimper as desire exploded inside her with such force it frightened her.

She was on the edge of panic when, with a gentling sigh, he abruptly leaned back and drew her with him so that she lay on her back on top of him, completely open and exposed to his sensitive hands…his long, questing fingers. Exposed and vulnerable…bewildered at the flood of feeling that had all but swamped her. Trembling. The warm, humid night air cooled the water on her naked body, raising goose bumps and hardening her nipples until they hurt.

“This is for you. Just for you.” The words were a whisper of warm breath against her ear. She felt his hands warming her breasts, and then the pressure of his fingers on her tight, aching nipples. A shaft of pure need, bright and sharp as pain, arrowed through her belly and deep into her core, and she arched her back and uttered a high, thin, panting cry as she turned her head, frantically seeking him. His head came down, blocking light and thought. As his mouth angled across hers, swallowing up her cry with a masculine growl of satisfaction and encouragement, his hands swept down over her ribs and belly, and the friction of his fingers rubbing on her chilled skin made her burn, but inside . His hands cradled her hips, slipped down and under the backs of her thighs, lifted and drew them apart. She’d never felt so utterly vulnerable, so exposed…so naked and helpless.