BY THE TIME GRAY LEFT the woods and circled up the drive to the gatehouse, her heart had stopped pounding. But her cheeks were still flushed.
Damn the man! Who did he think he was?
Then even he was swept from Gray’s mind as Draycott Abbey’s massive granite walls burst into view before her.
Her first thought as she looked upon the ancient structure was that she was glad she wasn’t psychic. Within such a place there must be many ghosts. Even she, who’d never felt a hint of special intuition, sensed an off prickle at her spine as she stared up at the crenellated roof and mullioned windows.
The granite walls gleamed back at her, bathed with light in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. Beneath the sheer stone faces, white swans skimmed across a lily-studded moat.
Gray’s breath caught. There was a sense of timelessness to the place, a sense of utter peace that invaded one’s very soul. It was almost as if past and present merged here, then formed a boundless, eternal present.
Oh, right, Mackenzie! Next you’ll be seeing mounted knights jousting for their ladies’ honor!
Somewhere over the hills came the sound of bells and the faint bleating of sheep. The engine died with a cough. Suddenly Gray was enveloped in a vast, luminous silence.
It was then that the house began to sing to her.
So long…so long since she had known such peace.
Her azure eyes rose to the granite parapets. For a moment, she thought she saw a hint of movement in a corner tower. But that was unlikely, of course, since Lord Draycott and his new bride were almost certainly in Paris by now, enjoying their honeymoon.
And Gray knew just how much Kacey and Nicholas deserved that happiness after escaping death at the hands of a pair of cold-blooded murderers searching for secrets Nicholas didn’t possess.
Kacey had said little about the ordeal and Gray had known enough not to press her. In the meantime, Gray was delighted when Kacey had phoned with a commission to do a detailed rendering of the abbey. She was determined to give her friend the very best work she had ever done.
Already her practiced eye was at work, scanning the abbey for balance points, shadow values and angles of perspective. For these things were Gray’s life now, the source of her few pleasures.
And in the last year, she had finally begun to make her mark. Offers poured in and she had actually had to turn down commissions. But a house had to sing to her, to give of itself freely before she agreed to take on an assignment, no matter how impressive the fee.
And Gray invariably left her clients delighted. As any one of them would have agreed, to own one of Gray Mackenzie’s sketches was to own the heart of a house, its very soul.
But, oh, this house—this proud, magnificent abbey sang to Gray already and in many voices. Of heroic days, of bards and warriors girded in leather and mail. Of dark seasons when brother turned against brother and father against son.
As she sat silent, listening to a lark trill out a gay tune, Gray lost her heart. Somewhere behind her a fat trout jumped from the sparkling moat.
Already she knew that the sketches she did here would be her very finest work.
She was still sitting wide-eyed, fingers taut on the wheel, when the crunch of gravel roused her. She turned her head to see a man in a black jacket and incongruous red running shoes striding toward her, a careful smile on his ruddy face.
“Miss Mackenzie? Welcome to Draycott Abbey. I am Marston.”
As Gray stepped from the car, she remembered Kacey’s last, hasty note, which had reached her barely a week before.
Marston, Nicholas’s butler, is a dear, but I’m sure the man will be overjoyed to see the last of us. He claims he can’t concentrate on his work with the two of us forever mooning about. He swears it’s making him dangerously matrimonial.
Gray smiled to herself at the thought of this sober, correct gentleman’s gentleman feeling “dangerously matrimonial.”
The man looked about as emotional as a mackerel.
“Shall I take your bags up, Miss Mackenzie?”
Gray nodded, still enthralled by the massive walls hung with climbing roses. Quickly she dug into her satchel and tugged out a spiral sketchbook. Without another word, she settled herself against the hood of her rental car and began to work. Already her mind was humming with ways to capture the elegant angles of the ancient stone edifice.
Yes, the lovely centifolia roses would curl and climb just so, and the swans would glide just a little left of center…
Footfalls crunched softly over gravel. Gray heard them only dimly, already lost in balance points and texture sources.
In the only thing that had saved her life five years before.
THE SUN HUNG GOLDEN atop the trees when Gray finally looked up. Beside her lay her first three renderings of the abbey.
Slowly, she sat back and massaged her aching neck.
And then she saw the letter, cream vellum stock with an embossed coronet surrounded with double dragons. Vaguely Gray recalled Marston saying something about a letter—a letter from the viscountess, was it?
A smile flitted about the corners of her mouth. Gray wondered if she would ever get used to the idea of sweet, forthright Kacey Mallory being a viscountess.
Her smile grew as she tore open the envelope and read her friend’s scrawled note, dated only two days earlier.
Sorry, Gray, not to be there to meet you, but our flight has been changed yet again. Marston will take care of anything you need though. The man is truly a wonder!
Thanks again for coming on such short notice. I wanted the very best person for these renderings, and you were it. By the way, I’d like to keep these a secret from Nicholas until his birthday. Only Marston is to know about them for now.
But I absolutely forbid you to bury yourself in your work the way you usually do. As your employer I hereby order you to borrow the car. Take a walk around the downs. The Sussex countryside is lovely in high summer. And you, my girl, were looking far too pale the last time I saw you.
Gray’s eyes crinkled as she recalled the last time they’d met. Their lunch had consisted of soft pretzels loaded with mustard, which they’d gulped down on a crowded Philadelphia street corner between jobs. Had it been only two months ago?
Gray’s eyes returned to her friend’s letter.
By the way, if you should happen to hear thirteen bells, don’t be upset. The locals say it has to do with an old abbey legend. You see, along with a moat and a priceless art collection, the abbey also has a resident ghost. And then the bells ring thirteen times—
Here the letter ended in a jagged scrawl, then picked up a line lower, with the scrawl even more pronounced.
Sorry, but Nicholas is growing impatient (as usual) and I really must go. I believe I have a way to put a smile back on his face, however. The limousine taking us to Heathrow has curtained windows and a smoked glass divider. The mind positively boggles at the possibilities…
Love you.
K.C.
Gray found herself chuckling. No doubt Kacey would find a way to coax a smile from her husband. A certifiable beauty, she was also something even rarer: a kind and generous person. Only she seemed unaware of her beauty, and perhaps that was part of her charm.
Now she was a different matter entirely, Gray thought ruefully. Tall, auburn-haired, she had always been a little too tall, a little too shy, a little too bony. Most men felt uncomfortable just looking at her.
Or looking up at her, since she neared six feet without shoes.
For years, she had never seemed to fit into any mold and that had bothered her keenly. Then she had begun making her own mold.
That had worked well for a time. And then she’d met Matt…
Gray’s fingers stiffened. Frowning, she brushed back a wild strand of wine-dark hair.
No, she refused to think about him. Her ex-husband belonged to that other life, to that dark time she was not supposed to think about anymore. The only way her change would be complete was if she made it inside, or so the counselors had warned her.
But it had been hard, far harder than she’d thought. She hadn’t dreamed there would be so many cues, so many tiny details that bound a person to a specific place, a specific time, a specific identity.
But your identity became a threat, she reminded herself grimly. Because of that it had to be changed, and the truth buried forever.
Beyond the moat a curlew exploded from the woods and hurtled through the air, gray wings outlined as it cut through a cloudless turquoise sky.
Do you really think that will stop him? a cold voice whispered. Do you think anything can stop a man like that?
And now he’s free. The first thing he’ll do is come looking for you. And when he finds you, he’s going to—
Gray bit her lip, feeling the old, familiar fear gnaw at her stomach. But I’m safe here! she told herself, watching the sun melt like warm honey over the forested hills above the moat.
He can never trace me here.
Yes, here at Draycott Abbey she would be safe.
Wouldn’t she?
MARSTON WAS EVERY BIT as efficient as Kacey had promised. After an elegant dinner of marinated white asparagus, feather-light salmon mousse and an unforgettable crème brûlée, he’d led Gray out to the flower-hung gatehouse flanking the moat.
The taciturn butler had first offered her a room in the main house, but the gatehouse’s floor-to-ceiling French doors overlooking the moat had instantly captured Gray’s imagination.
And there she had stayed.
Now, after sketching for several hours, Gray still found herself no closer to sleep.
She glanced down at her watch. 3:00 a.m. Jet lag for sure.
Not that she could have slept anyway. There was something too rich about the air in this ancient, history-haunted place.
Yes, she could well believe that phantoms walked the parapets of Draycott Abbey. Hadn’t Kacey mentioned something about a legendary family ghost?
A shiver played down her spine. She realized the night was growing cool. Pulling a wool throw over her shoulders, Gray curled up on an armchair before the opened doors, watching moonlight play over the shifting silver water.
Somewhere in the distance came the first faint peal of bells.
What was it Kacey had said about bells?
Gray frowned, unable to remember. She stifled a yawn as the scent of roses enveloped her, warm and inviting. Nice, she thought. More than nice…
Not that she’d be able to sleep, of course. She was far too keyed up. But at least she could rest and run through several possible compositions to try out in the morning.
Moments later, clutching an architecture manual in one hand and a Royal Geological Survey guide in the other, she sank onto the bed. Her eyes fluttered, then closed. Her head slid forward, auburn hair spilling over an embossed leather cover.
She never even heard the thirteenth chime.
THE ROSES SWAYED. A cloud ran before the three-quarter moon.
Mars in Scorpio. Saturn trine Uranus.
The house seemed to catch its breath—to shudder. Quiet and yet not entirely quiet, the great walls slept on, caught in a restless silence.
Moonlight touched the edge of the opened French doors and a shadow that was not quite a shadow fell across the threshold.
Dear God, she was beautiful, he thought.
Her skin was like finest bisque, her lashes a dark curve against her cheeks.
And that glorious auburn hair…
The figure in the doorway moved closer, making no sound in these, the dead hours of night. Just as before, he sensed the danger enveloping her like a sullen black cloud.
Had she no idea at all?
At the window the curtains fluttered. A large cat crept through their swaying folds, gray tail all at witch. Leaping to the white coverlet, he stretched out comfortably, his body curved like a dark comma against the apricot damask pillows.
Moonlight bounced off the moat, poured through the window and gleamed back from a small gilt mirror opposite the French doors. The room seemed to shimmer, ablaze with light, while the air filled with the dense summer scent of honeysuckle and roses.
On the bed, Gideon stirred. Flicking his tail, he gave a soft meow.
The man at the threshold frowned. She was nothing like Kacey, Adrian Draycott realized. She was nothing like any woman he’d ever known.
Or maybe she was…
A hint of memory pricked at his consciousness. A dim image of sad eyes in a pale and very noble face.
A flowing gown cut from silk that flashed like hammered gold.
The black-clad figure stiffened. Where in the blazes had that image come from?
A dream?
Or was it something more?
Faint, so faint, the phantom images danced before him, teasing and elusive, finally fading away into nothingness. Smothering a curse, Adrian Draycott slipped past the drifting curtains, then laughed bitterly at his unnecessary care.
For no one could hear his curses or his footfalls. Just as no one could see him when he walked his ancient parapets and gazed upon his beloved roses.
Not until she had come, that is.
The sense of uneasiness that had dogged Adrian grew sharper. Once more he was being pulled in, and he liked the prospect not at all. Aye, whether the obdurate female was a rare beauty or not!
After all, he’d succeeded once. After that precarious chase upon the cliffs, during which he’d saved Kacey and his brother from death, Adrian had bloody well earned the right to be left alone for a century or two!
The newly married couple was probably ensconced in a lovely old auberge outside Paris right now, resting and enjoying the fruits of Adrian’s work at reconciling them.
The ghost of Draycott Abbey frowned, one brow rising.
Well, perhaps resting was not precisely the word for what the two would be doing in that great silk-hung bed…
Adrian tensed, feeling the old bitterness, the gnawing memories of regret and betrayal. Once, long ago, Kacey had been his, but in his arrogance, he had lost her.
Now it was Nicholas’s chance to know the joy of her love.
Frowning, Adrian gazed down at the woman asleep on the bed, sensing the black wall around her grow ever more solid.
At her feet, Gideon stirred and raised his head.
“Yes, my friend, there is danger here—great danger. Perhaps even more than my brother faced from his old enemies.”
Adrian sighed. He had a choice, of course. There was always a choice. But he had never before shirked a duty to his abbey, and he didn’t intend to do so now.
Yet something told him this time there would be other complications. Complications that included all the heated demands of this uncertain physical form he’d been given.
Lord, what was the use of it?
Gideon meowed softly from the bed.
“Yes, I know there are some things a body is useful for, old friend.” As Adrian’s eyes returned to the figure on the bed, he felt a sharp current of heat sweep down his spine.
His frown grew. Damn and blast! He hadn’t felt such things for years. Even with Kacey it had been merely a remembered response. But with this woman…
The heat twisted, shimmered, coiled about him like a bright mist. Dim memories gathered, teased, took tangible form in the ashes of a desire he’d thought dead and long buried.
Buried, yes, but far from dead, as Adrian soon discovered.
It seemed desire had merely slept, century after century, awaiting this moment.
Time ground to a halt. Adrian stood rigid, staring at the auburn hair spread upon the pillow. His heart seemed to lurch, his hands to tremble. Who was she to affect him so?
Suddenly he was tasked with all the old dreams, all the thoughts of things that could never be his.
Because it was too late for him, far too late.
Outside in the moonlight a fish leaped from the moat and fell back in an explosion of light. Water scattered in a fury of silver, flashing ever outward beneath the moon.
Gideon blinked as the curtains danced, then drifted back to stillness. A moment later, the abbey’s resident ghost disappeared into the night, trailing sadness behind him like a shimmering stream of silver.
Sussex, England
February, 1191
Out beyond the moat, out beyond the old Roman track and the quiet rowan wood, blood-red fingers of light gathered across the darkening Western sky. Even now, the first beacon fires were being lit.
Dressed in a rough cloak and wimple, a woman moved past the unfinished stone tower and leaned over the crenellated wall. Tall and fair, she stared out into the gathering night while somewhere in the darkness a lone wolf howled. In the far hills above her others took up the wild, sad chant.
Desolation. It sat upon her like a shroud, inexorable as the coming of night.
Not even in her native Brittany, where the iron-gray seas heaved against the barren cliffs, had she known such dolor, such utter loneliness.
She shivered, clutching her homespun cloak closer about her shoulders. Gone the furs, gone the velvets in her liege’s absence. And as so oft of late, she was gripped with ominous premonitions.
When would he return, the man she loved so well? Seven long months had passed, and yet she’d had no word, no news at all from the Holy Land where he marched at Richard’s side.
She gripped the granite parapet with trembling fingers, in desperate need of the stone’s reassuring strength.
His strength. Gleaned from his beloved stone walls.
Now they were among the few things she had left to remember her husband by. Even the brooch he had given her was gone, stolen in the night while she slept. Carefully worked in gold and jewel-like enamels, it was a clever piece, with two dragons intertwined about a golden coronet.
His device. And the Lady Anne of Draycotte knew she would never see the treasured brooch again.
She sighed. There was still so much to be done here. The south tower of the great house was only half-finished, its inner and outer faces truncated in a jagged shell. Only half the merlons rose above the high parapets. Even now, mounds of carefully made mortar lay discarded in heaps near the gaping wall.
But masons, quarrymen and smiths were gone, dismissed just as the rest of Draycotte’s loyal servants had been. And now, the walls stood jagged and unfinished, a silent mockery of all that Draycotte’s lord had sought to create here.
At least his beloved roses, gathered from far-flung Aquitaine and Castile, were now settled in fresh beds, the Lady Anne thought. This she had done with her own hands, trusting the job to no one else. Soon they would begin to put forth their first green shoots.
How sad her lord would be to miss their first budding against his granite walls.
Another beacon took flame, blazing in the black hills. The cottagers and villeins moved about it, keeping their silent vigil.
Just as Draycotte’s lady did.
Where are you, my love? her heart cried out, as if it could cross the thousand lonely miles to his side. Are you fallen before an infidel blade? Is your broad brow even now dry and baking beneath a cruel desert sun?
The Lady Anne flinched and nearly cried aloud at the thought of it, her fingers pressed to fists.
No, he must be alive! He had sworn he would return to her. Had he been felled with mortal wound, she must know it, feel it in her very limbs!
No, he would return, her liege and lord. He would come back to Draycotte and this land he loved so well. She had to believe that. Even on this blackest of nights when her hope was nigh gone, she had to remember and be strong.
Crying shrilly, a kestrel winged home through the night. The manor’s lady hoped that the bird found a safer roost than she had done, surrounded by sullen enemies who never let her from their sight.
But such was the lawlessness on the land. And now, by royal writ, her home was no longer her own.
She pushed back her wimple, feeling the coarse linen flow loose at her cheeks. Her fingers flexed, easing around her ripening stomach. At her gentle touch the babe within stirred and kicked.
Once she would have smiled at such a movement, but now it only made her catch her fingers tighter to protect the fragile life growing inside her. Feeling a moment of dizziness, she reached out to the granite parapet, pressing her fingers into the smooth, honed stone.
In two more months, the babe would come. She prayed that his father would be home in time to see his son’s birth. And a son she knew the child would be. Yet somehow in her restless dreams she could never see more than a glimpse of the tiny face and keen, bright eyes.
And then naught but darkness…
To cheer herself, she tried to think of brighter things, recalling the image of their last meeting, out by the witch’s pool.
There in the ferns he had loosed her kirtle and cloth-of-gold gown. Swiftly he had caught her to him, his fingers desperate, searching, his manhood hot and pulsing. All through the long hours of night he had held her and claimed her, ever more fierce, ever more urgent, almost as if he could drive away the morrow with the raw force of his desire.
Her eyes blurred with tears as she gazed out at the distant glitter of the pool. There they had loved and laughed seven months before.
It might have been a lifetime, in truth.
If only he would come to her again.
If only there were some way to drive these sullen wolves from her hearth.
But she knew it was impossible. Not even with a score of able men could such a thing be done.
And the Lady Anne had no more protectors. One by one they had sickened and died, or simply gone beyond the walls and never returned.
Now she was left alone, without waiting-maid or kin, a prisoner attended by those who wished her only ill.
Out in the darkness another beacon flamed white-hot to life. Watching the sparks shoot up, the Lady of Draycotte straightened her shoulders and shoved down her fear, knowing her lord would expect that of her. Aye, his pride was fierce; he would have demanded no less from her.
For those were his people out there in the darkness. Serf, villein, and cottager, they waited, with no other way than this to show their loyalty.
Now more than a score of fires glowed golden through the valley, turning night to day. The sight heartened her as nothing else could have. The Lord of Draycotte would have been proud, so proud of them.
Her hands curved protectively over her stomach. In the meantime, she must be strong, just as he would wish her to be. She must wait and pray for her own true love’s return, even if it took ten years more, and a hundred after that!
Still, she would remember and still, she would be here waiting when he returned from his holy quest.
By the witch’s pool at midnight. ’Tis there I’ll seek you. Forget it not.
Even as the wrenching loneliness gripped her, the Lady Anne vowed to remember. And she would be there waiting for her lord and love when he came riding back to her over the lush green Draycotte hills.
WITH A CHOKED MOAN, Gray shot upright in the soft bed, in the peaceful night, in the ancient gatehouse by the silver moat.
Her heart was hammering wildly. Her eyes were wide and haunted.
She peered into the shadows, frightened and disoriented. Her fingers dug into the damask coverlet as she tried to remember what had woken her.
A dream? If so, ’twas more real than her gray, cheerless reality.
She tried to catch back the shifting images, but her dreams poured through her fingers like white sand, leaving her with nothing but emptiness and an aching sense of loss.
And with fear, her old, familiar companion.
The room was wrapped in silence; moonlight glittered like frost before the half-open French doors.
Then Gray saw the perfect, densely petaled rose. It lay beside her on the bed, centered on an ivory pillow.
“Dear God…” she whispered.
But she was not the same person she had once been. No longer would she shove down her fear, shivering and waiting in silence and dread. This new person that she was exploded from the bed in an angry white storm of linen and damask.
Without a thought to the brevity of her satin nightshirt, she flung back the curtains, determined to find the person who dared invade the privacy of her room.
But there was no one.
Beyond the narrow flagstone terrace only a pair of swans moved, necks arched and proud as they glided beneath the moon’s opaque silver eye.
Nothing else stirred in this silent nightscape of black and glittering silver. Of soft mist and hard shadows.
Only the swans moved.
Only her dim, restless memories lingered.
Gray’s fingers tensed against the chill metal of the terrace railing. She fought to hold back a racking sob.
Dear God, when would she learn how to forget? When would she ever be truly whole again?
A rustle of the curtains drew her eyes behind her, where a gray blur slipped through a beam of moonlight. A great cat, it drifted through the curtains out onto the little flagstone terrace.
It was the same cat she had seen this morning, curling about that insufferable caretaker’s booted feet.
Amber eyes rose to study Gray, moon-bright, oddly keen.
They glittered at her, then narrowed as if in secret query.
Gray caught back a shiver. What new fancies were upon her now?
With the barest bunching of sleek muscles the cat jumped to the delicate wrought iron rail at the edge of the terrace and moved closer, stopping just short of Gray’s right hand.
The hand that still clutched the rose.
A moist, black nose shoved at her closed fingers, tongue lapping, warm and faintly rough. A low, rich purr poured from the cat’s throat.
Gray felt wild laughter build in her chest. Slowly, she slid her fingers over the soft pelt, delighting in the cat’s silken warmth.
A hint of perfume drifted on the warm, still air. She turned, sniffing to trace its source. Abruptly she saw the dark outline of a climbing rose. Crimson petals spilled across the wall to her right, where the moat lapped against the side of the gatehouse.
Centifolia roses. Just like the ones she had left behind in London.
Just like the rose clasped within her fingers.
A wild joy swept through Gray. It came unbidden, as if from some other place, some other time.
Without taking time to think, she swept over the railing and inched along the narrow strip of damp soil that ran between gatehouse and moat.
Twice her bare feet slipped, mud-slick, and twice, she caught herself.
And then she seized the vine itself. Struggling upright, she feasted on the wide-petaled beauty of the ancient roses covering the wall before her.
As if in a dream her fingers circled the satin petals. Perfume spilled around her, drowning the night in beauty, making her throat constrict with pain and a flood of exquisite, nearly forgotten memories.
In just such a place two lovers might have met to share whispered vows beneath the wind-tossed petals. Here, too, they might have shared lingering kisses, warm and gentle.
Then kisses not gentle at all…
“What in bloody hell are you doing to my roses?”
The words came at her without warning.
Gray started, let go of the vine and instantly lost her balance. Swaying wildly, she slipped down the muddy bank and realized that any second she was going to fall.
But strangely she did not.
Hard hands seized her shoulders, dragged her upright, spun her around.
And she gazed into eyes of slate, into eyes of pride and cunning.
She stared at an angular, weather-beaten face. The caretaker? But surely the man did not take his duties so seriously as this!
Her heart still thundering, Gray fought to recover her control. She frowned, shoving at his hands. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Tarzan?”
“I believe I asked first, Miss Mackenzie. Your work here does not entitle you to decimate my gardens, after all.”
Fury speared through Gray. And then she realized they were trapped on the narrow band of soil between rock and water, thigh to thigh, chest to chest.
Heart to pounding heart.
And it felt sinfully, painfully good.
Most of all, it felt oddly familiar somehow…
Red-faced with fury and embarrassment, she wrenched at his hands. “Let me go, you arrogant—” Her hand lashed out, driving against his chest.
His grip only tightened. “Who are you, woman, that you try me so sorely?”
What was the madman talking about? Painfully aware that she wore nothing but a satin nightshirt that barely skimmed her thighs, Gray tried to twist free.
And got nowhere. Her hands were captured securely between hard, calloused fingers.
In her struggling, Gray’s hips brushed his taut thigh. Heat flared through her as she felt the powerful muscles bunch and flex at her touch.
Her captor flinched. His breath seemed to catch. “Who are you?” he repeated, his voice as raw as Gray’s had been. “Is this some new sort of test?”
But when her eyes rose, Adrian Draycott read nothing but bewilderment in their azure depths. Sweet heaven, what was happening here? In truth, he was at least as confused as she!
A vein hammered at Adrian’s temple as heat swept between their tense bodies. Around him the night swayed, and time slid to a halt. Had he been even halfway sane at that moment, he would have pulled away, stopped before it was too late…
But maybe it had been too late the first moment he’d seen this stubborn, exasperating creature. And sane was the very last thing Adrian Draycott was feeling right then. How could he be sane with her soft breasts caressing his chest, her slim thighs brushing his belly?
“By all the heavens above, woman, you task me beyond measure! But arrogant I always was. Damned, too, perhaps. If so, then it makes no difference if—”
It was reckless, of course. Worse yet, it was utterly dangerous. And yet…
And yet he cared not.
The next moment Gray was swept close, molded to his urgent body,
“S-stop this! What do you think you’re doing—”
She got no further, her protests drowned beneath the hot silk of his probing lips, the velvet fury of his kiss.
Kiss? she thought dimly. Kiss was far too tame a word for this total possession, this storm of heat and hunger he unleashed.
And even as she struggled, cursing, Gray felt his need kindle an answering heat within her.
Impossible! Unthinkable!
And yet…
With a gasp, she wrenched at his iron grip, kicked at his legs, but all her efforts won her only a peal of dark laughter.
Mouth to mouth they strained, caught on the very edge of the moat, where the slightest misstep would send them both flying into the water.
Neither cared in the least. In furious silence they struggled, she to wrench free, he to drive closer. To claim and possess.
Infinitely. With a hunger that Adrian Draycott realized he had never known before, nor even dreamed of in a life spent pursuing every imaginable form of pleasure.
Somehow there was a fatedness to the moment, as if his roses had been left here over the long centuries, waiting for just such a meeting.
And in spite of all her fire and struggling, Adrian knew the woman in his arms felt it, too. Her breath was too ragged, her pulse too wild for it to be otherwise.
He knew he ought to let her go. He knew he should turn and melt back into the night where he belonged. But somehow he could not. Not tonight, not when he found such searing pleasure in her touch.
Just once, he told himself.
His mouth opened. He captured her velvet underlip in his teeth and savored the mystery of her mouth.
At that single exquisite movement, desire raged full-blown through Adrian’s frame. His fingers sank into her hair as he slanted her face up to his, desperately afraid that if he released her, she would be torn from him forever.
Just a little longer, he promised himself…
Caught against his chest, Gray bit back a moan. What was wrong with her? “L-let me go, you—you snake, you—”
Too late, she found out her mistake. Her black-clad captor seized the moment and slid his tongue deep, caressing the inner textures of her mouth and searching out all its hot, forbidden secrets.
Suddenly the night was ashimmer, electric with danger. With a wild, reckless hunger that made Gray moan and strain against him.
She, who had never moaned, had never wanted, had never even imagined that such desire existed.
And now, in the span of an instant, she had discovered a thousand exquisite textures that she could no longer deny herself. Ablaze with wonder, she combed her fingers through the long hair that swept his shoulders, feeling it part like silk at her touch. She shivered as his breath surged ragged at her neck, raw and hot against her cheek.
His pulse hammered, echoing her own.
Blindly, Gray dug her fingers into his hard shoulders, glorying in his instant stiffening, in the groan that tore from his lips.
There beneath the moonlight, hunger flared between them like summer lightning, and Gray felt herself tossed like a leaf in the wind.
She moaned restlessly, sliding closer against his hard thighs, which clenched like forged steel in response.
Shivering, she felt the unmistakable thrust of his rock-hard arousal. Even then she could not pull away, could not forsake the heat she had discovered in his granite body.
For that, too, was somehow familiar.
“Damn and bloody blast!” Strangely enough, it was he who pulled free and stared down at her, scowling. “By the name of all the saints, woman—”
He never finished. His eyes glittered down into the flushed beauty of her cheeks, the dazed depths of her eyes, bright with passion still.
And as Adrian Draycott watched, a single tear squeezed free and inched slowly down Gray’s cheek.
He cursed, his jaw clenching. Slowly his calloused finger rose to the salty bead.
As if in a dream, Gray felt his hard hands anchor her cheeks, saw his face slant down.
“I never meant…by God, I swear I never planned—”
And then, slow and infinitely gentle, his lips covered that single tear and eased it onto his tongue. Dazed, Gray felt his lips close, felt him draw the bead into his mouth.
In truth, she had no idea what had caused the tear. Not pain, of that there was no doubt. Nor did it stem from anger. Perhaps it was the sheer violence of the sensual discovery she’d just made.
And then Gray had no time left for thinking.
His lips tightened.
Slowly, exquisitely, he drew her delicate skin tight, molding every captive inch with his teeth. Heart pounding, Gray swayed, feeling the dark force of his possession. A low moan tore from her throat.
Heat.
Need.
Dear God, the unimaginable power of touching and being touched in such a way, as if the whole world began and ended in texture and sensation.
Sweet heaven, she’d never imagined the reckless wonder of it, the wild, sweet splendor of it.
She shivered, her nails digging into his neck.
An eternity passed. Around them the abbey slept and the night hung still, caught in timeless dreams while an ancient, primal drama raged on beneath its weathered walls.
Then, with one sleek tugging movement, Gray was free. Her intruder stood back, his eyes hooded, glittering.
“I’ll not apologize, so don’t expect it. For you puzzle me sorely, woman. You raise too many questions for which I have no answers. But I’ll have my answers, every one. And until then, Gray Mackenzie, I leave you with something to remember me by. It has always been the punishment for stealing a Draycott rose.” His fingers swept her flushed cheek. “Here. Here you will wear my mark.”
Overhead, ragged clouds ran before the moon. Gray shivered, realizing she was standing half-naked in the reckless, heated embrace of an utter stranger.
“You arrogant, p-pigheaded—”
His smile was the merest curve of brightness in his dark face. “Completely, I’m afraid. And yet at this moment, I could almost wish that—”
Somewhere in the night a clock began to chime. Gray felt him stiffen.
And then, with a faint rustle of the ferns along the bank, he was gone, loping across the little terrace and skirting the bridge to disappear into the shadows beyond.
Even then, Gray did not move, shaken profoundly, feeling that a new person now occupied her body, a complete stranger.
Blood leaped to her cheeks. She shivered, feeling as if the man stood before her still, his breath ragged, his body tense with need.
Just as your own is, a mocking voice whispered.
Dazed, she raised trembling fingers to her cheek and traced the flushed skin where his mouth had lingered only seconds before.
Already, she could feel his mark rising.