Jumping half a mile, she swirled around and saw that Matt was back.
“I can’t find anyone,” he told her, his voice polite, and still curt.
“Wait a minute here,” she said angrily, planting her hands on her hips. “You’re the one so convinced that there aren’t any ghosts, that some kind of real, outside force is causing the ‘haunting’ here. So why are you so mad when I think that I’ve heard someone prowling around on the balcony?”
He had that chiseled stone expression one that she had learned when she had first met him at the Wayside Inn. His arms were still crossed over the breadth of his chest.
“Sorry. But I didn’t hear anything. And I have really sharp ears.”
“Even when you’re sleeping?”
“Even when I’m sleeping.”
“You still might have missed something.”
“Anything is possible.”
“Glad to hear you believe that.”
“I think I told you to keep your balcony doors locked. If I’m not mistaken, you seemed to be the one totally oblivious to danger in the night.”
For a moment she was still, locking her jaw as she stared at him.
“Someone hit me in the head!” she said, indignant.
“What?” His attitude changed. He stepped forward, lifting her chin, searching out her eyes. “You were hurt?”
She shook her head, still feeling his fingers against her cheek and chin. He was too close, but she didn’t draw away. “I’m not…hurt. But there was someone here, and…well, I don’t…it was just a way for the person to disappear.”
“A real person?”
“Yes.”
“Not like Clara. She said that a ghost struck her in the face. You didn’t fall…trip…or bang your head another way?”
There was concern, and more. Maybe he was feeling a certain triumph, as she had that afternoon. He didn’t believe in ghosts. Well, he had ghosts, whether he wanted them or not. But this time, he had been right. A real person had been on the balcony.
“There was someone—flesh and blood—out here tonight,” she said. He hadn’t moved. The scent of his skin seemed very rich, and ridiculously intoxicating. She didn’t want to move. She wanted to lay her head against his bare chest.
He was closer, somehow.
His finger-feathered over her hair then, touched down gently on her temple. “Where…uh…were you struck?”
“I…uh…side of the head.”
“Is there a bump?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Are you dizzy?”
“No.” A lie, but her state of physical rubber had nothing to do with the knock on the head.
“You’re all right? Really all right?”
His breath caressed her forehead. Her lips were dry. She nodded, still not moving. His hands still cradled around her head. Her lips could almost brush his flesh.
“I’m…fine.”
Then he tilted her chin again, looked into her eyes. A hint of five o’clock shadow teased his cheeks. His dark hair was sleep-mussed. His body seemed to emit heat like a radiator, making the night chilly, and the length of him a beacon. Tension gripped his muscles, appeared with his every breath. She could hear his heart beat. And her own.
“This would be crazy,” he whispered.
“You bet,” she agreed, and yet, still, neither of them moved, and the breeze seemed to grow cooler, making the rise of tension between them a delectable, taunting warmth.
Then the warmth of his breath touched her ear and just the timbre of his voice created a cascade of hot blood rushing through her veins.
“Are you feeling crazy?” he asked.
“Totally insane,” she whispered back.
His hand molded around her chin again and a moment later, his mouth covered hers. It should have been a slow and gentle kiss, a getting-to-know-you kiss, and it started out that way. But the very movement erupted almost instantly into something else, deep, consuming, passionate, ravaging. Maybe it was the way his arms wrapped around her, or that last eighth of an inch between their bodies was pressed away, the feel of the full length of his form, the sheerness of her clothing, the raw feel of the so nearly naked man. Their mouths clung together, tongues became weapons of seduction, and just standing in the night, a violent hunger seized them both, and the kiss was the most sweepingly carnal she had ever experienced, the very movement of his lips, teeth, and tongue seeming suggestive of everything that was to come. It wasn’t her, Darcy thought, realizing that she responded with blatant urgency, almost awed, wanting everything and more. Life didn’t usually offer her such a feast, and their exchange had been the truth, for this was lunacy. But there was no thought about tomorrow, what she did, what he did, thought, or believed. Tomorrow did not exist, for as he held her, as his mouth seared her, as the force of his arousal pressed and drummed and taunted, there was nothing she could care about except for the culmination of the storm of wonder that swept through her with such fantastic force.
Darcy felt as if she melted against him, as simply as dew against the grass when the sun rose, and she was grateful for and almost oblivious to the arms that held her, lifted her then, and carried her through the balcony doors. His room, not the Lee Room, she noted vaguely, too aware of the feel of his sinew in his arms, the cut of his face as he made his way to the bed. The surroundings didn’t matter. The sheets were cool and clean and smelled of fabric softener, and the mattress was deep and inviting, but not even that mattered; steel at her back wouldn’t have mattered because his lips had trailed from hers to her throat, and she was still in the sheer gown, which seemed no barrier. The feel of his mouth closing over her breasts, the searing wetness over and through the fabric, and his tongue chaffing her nipple sent streaks of lightning ripping through the length of her. Her fingers tore through her hair as he leaned against the bed, lowering himself against her, she was aware of his hands at her side, long, powerful, handsome hands, as arresting as…
The feel of his mouth, almost agonizingly erotic over the fabric of her gown, lowering over her abdomen, lowering still. And then those hands, those glorious hands, slipping at last beneath the fabric, and his touch on her thighs, so intimate, too intimate, and yet all that they must be for this insanity, stroking and caressing into the core of her. And then the touch of his tongue, blazing with intensity, arresting every vein and muscle within her, creating fire within every fiber of her being. And at that moment, there wasn’t the least surge of hesitance, of inhibition, within her, not a thought that they were not seasoned lovers, that this kind of shattering contact should take time, knowing, caring….
There was simply response, for every action, a reaction, and she followed every law of physics, spiraling, arching, twisting, and gasping with every electric jolt of lightning that filled and awakened her. She had to touch, stroke, taste, caress and evoke in return, and in minutes, they were tangled flesh and limb. She flourished, as if long accustomed to an arid life, her world had suddenly been filled with the thrill of a waterfall, and in the end, she wanted so much that it couldn’t be, that a hoarse and gasped out cry of impatience ripped from his lungs, and they were truly melded together. The shock of his body thrusting fully into her own sent another wave of climactic ripples tearing through her, and then the night became nothing but movement, urgent, yearning, fast and spinning. Man and flesh, bed beneath, the world rocking, and vague impressions of the tension in his face, the fire in his eyes, the hunger…and then…a catapult stiffness, ejaculation, and her climax, so violent, volatile, complete and almost devastating that she cried out, shuddering like leaves blown in winter, again, ripples of aftermath sweeping over her again and again until they subsided slowly to nothing more than the gasps of breath that still tore from her lungs.
And then…
The truth of shadows. The balcony doors, still open to the night. The massive size of his bed, the books on the shelves nearby, the very real feel of the person beside her, the one who had mocked her, who didn’t believe in ghosts, who had stared at her in such horror when she had found the skull.
She stared at a mote of shadow dust, almost like a miniature star, dancing in a pale ray of moonlight. He stroked a hand through her hair, brushing it from her face, and despite what she had always thought of as the honesty of her life, she curled against him with a soft groan, burying her face against his chest, far from the gray eyes that seemed to see far too much within her, in daylight, shadow, and even darkness.
“Sh!” he murmured softly, and she realized that reality had come back far more quickly to him, or perhaps, it had never left him.
“What?”
“I think someone is downstairs.”
“Someone…up to something?” she asked a little anxiously, and rose against him enough to see his face. He was smiling, a slow, lazy, rather self-satisfied smile. He cast an elbow behind his head to rest against it as he studied her.
“Actually,” he murmured politely, only a trace of amuse ment in his tone, “I think that we might have awakened the living and the dead.”
Shadows could never hide the flood of crimson that came to her cheeks. “Lord! I’m sorry,” she mumbled quickly, suddenly thinking to escape.
His arm was around her. She wasn’t moving.
“Are you?” he asked quietly. “I’m not.” For a moment, he was sincere, and there was something in his face and in his tone that caught at her, heart and soul. But then he added, “Do you really think we might have awakened the dead?”
And she knew that in his way, he still laughed at her.
She pushed away from him, meaning it, and he released her. It was frustrating to discover that she couldn’t find her nightgown, it had become so entangled in the covers.
“Hey!” he said softly, drawing her back. And she was forced to meet his face, and he asked, “Are you sorry? Because, most sincerely, I am not.”
“You do think I’m a fake,” she informed him, a frost of ice coming to her words.