Kate Hardy - One Night of Passion

Since Ben she’d had nothing—felt nothing.

Until tonight.

Tonight she had Nick—and Nick had her. He was experienced. No doubt about that. But he wasn’t self-centered. He wasn’t going through the motions in order to get what he wanted. He was focused. He was involved, as intent on learning her secrets as he was on learning the details of these buildings he took apart and put back together again.

She felt as if he was doing the same to her.

The featherlight touch of his fingers as he explored her made Edie aware of nerve endings she hadn’t even known existed. The graze of his tongue on the inside of her elbow made her shiver. The soft stroke of his thumb swirling around first one nipple and then the other made her breasts peak. The dance of fingers down the middle of her abdomen, then brushing lightly through the curls that hid the place that longed for his touch roused her senses, made her quiver.

She wanted him to hurry, to touch her, to find her and shatter her and make her whole again. At the same time she wanted it to last forever.

What Nick apparently wanted was to drive her insane.

His fingers moved back up her body again. She swallowed her desperation. Then he traced her ribs, swirled circles round her navel, then with his thumbs he caressed the juncture of her thighs. Edie bit her lip as his hands slid around beneath her to cup her buttocks. He lifted her, spread her, stroked her.

Edie nearly whimpered. “Now,” she urged him, reaching out to grasp his hips and draw him to her.

He came to her then, thrust into her with a desperation belied by his earlier slow, leisurely caresses. There was nothing casual or leisurely now. His need, like hers, was naked and urgent. His teeth clenched. The skin drew taut across his cheekbones. His breathing grew quick and hard as did his movement. And Edie moved to meet him, to join him. She dug her nails into his back just as he gave a hoarse cry, and they shattered together again.

This time there was no edge taken off. There were no edges at all—just bone-deep contentment, relaxation, a sense of serenity and well-being as Nick’s weight settled against her. He would have moved off. She held him where he was—wasn’t ready to let go. Not now. Not yet.

Their hearts were still hammering in unison. His sweat-dampened cheek rested against hers. Midnight shadow whiskers abraded her sensitive skin. Instinctively Edie turned her head toward them, pressed her lips to his cheek, breathed in the scent of him.

Slowly he turned his head, too, so that they lay facing each other, sharing the pillow, their noses nearly touching, their eyes open, watching each other silently.

There were no words. At least Edie couldn’t think of any. So she smiled. It said everything she couldn’t find words for.

Nick didn’t smile. He looked like a man who didn’t know what had hit him. That made Edie’s smile widen.

His eyelids flickered shut. He opened them again, seemed to focus on her once more. But within moments his eyes shut again, and this time they stayed shut. His breathing slowed and deepened.

He was asleep.

This time Edie didn’t sleep at all. Her breathing, like Nick’s, slowed and settled into a regular peaceful rhythm once more. But she felt no exhaustion now, no lassitude. She felt centered. Settled. Physically a little sore because she hadn’t done this sort of thing in a while. But on the whole she felt astonishingly good.

Great sex will do that for you, she thought, remembering similar feelings after she’d made love with Ben. But with Ben it hadn’t only been great sex. There had always been something more.

There had been a connection between them, the sense that together they made beautiful music, that together they created something greater than the two of them could on their own.

Could that happen with Nick, too?

The thought came from out of nowhere—or from some wellspring deep within. Edie didn’t know where. She knew only that even thinking such a thing was a mistake.

Nick didn’t want that. He’d made it absolutely, perfectly clear that he wasn’t interested. And she had agreed to that. She’d assured him—and herself—that she wasn’t interested in anything else, either.

She wasn’t. She hoped.

And if she was?

Well, Edie acknowledged, that was her problem.

Now she lay quietly and allowed her gaze to trace Nick’s sleeping features. He looked younger asleep, his hard features gentled. Was it the “great sex” that had softened them? Edie wondered. Or was it the great sex with her?

Had he felt the sense of connection, too?

Or—Edie forced herself to confront the possibility—was she just a lonely widow trying to rationalize a night of very uncharacteristic behavior?

She didn’t have the answer to those questions. All she knew is that she wouldn’t get those answers tonight. Maybe she never would.

But lying here was not helping. It was only making her want things she had no right to, with a man she didn’t really know.

Except a part of her thought she knew Nick Savas very well indeed.

He had showed her tonight that it was possible to find life after Ben. And she certainly knew she would be thinking about him—and not about Kyle Robbins—for some time to come.

But now she needed to get up and get dressed and go back to her own room—to her own life.

There, over the next days or weeks or months, she might discover the answer to what she’d been doing tonight.

Carefully Edie eased herself from beneath his arm, then slipped out of the bed, wincing as she began to move about and gather up her clothing. Muscles she never knew she had were reminding her of their existence now.

In the bathroom—thank heavens for some modern conveniences!—she put on a small light and dressed as quickly as she could, which wasn’t very as she had to slither into the dress since no one was available to button it up the back for her, and she could hardly saunter down the corridors of Mont Chamion castle with her dress hanging half open.

Fortunately it was still the middle of the night. Even the earliest risers would not be in the hallways just yet. But she had a plane to catch in a scant six hours.

So she slipped back out of the bathroom and started toward the door, then stopped. She couldn’t just leave—not without looking back. Not without one last memory.

So she crept back to the bed and stood over Nick’s sleeping form, drinking in the sight of him. He’d rolled onto his back now. The sheet barely covered the essentials, but she had indelible muscle memory of them—and the soreness to remind her for a while at least.

Now she memorized the rest of him—the broad, hair-roughened chest, the strong shoulders, the blade-sharp nose, the sensuous lips, the hard planes of his cheeks, the delicate black half-moon lashes and the tousled dark hair. She wished she could see his eyes—sometimes laughing, sometimes haunted—again. The mirror of his soul.

Tonight he had touched her soul as well as her body. He had given her back a part of herself that had died with Ben. She hoped she had given him something, too. She took her time, imprinting him in her mind’s eye now the way he had imprinted himself on her body during the night.

She looked. And looked. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, she bent and brushed a kiss over his mouth. His lips moved, sought hers. But when she pulled away, when he didn’t find her, his lips parted. He sighed.

Edie did, too. “Good night, Nick,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She allowed herself one last light touch on his bare shoulder. “I think.”

And then she turned and slipped silently out into the night.

The unexpected sound of the front doorbell of her mother’s Santa Barbara mansion startled her.