Midnight Rose (22 page)

Gideon didn’t have to pull at her jeans to remove them; the denim slid easily beneath his palms and she lifted her hips to aid him as he drew them down her legs to her ankles. Then he rose, and his fingers wrapped around one bare calf and urged her foot free of the denim. An innocent touch, really, but Kate swallowed the unexpected cry of pleasure that surged in her chest. Everywhere his hands made contact with her skin, tiny waves of sensation fluttered outward, until the erogenous zones of her body connected like a road map where desire traveled the paths uninterrupted.

A single, gentle tug and her bottom poised on the edge of the mattress, thighs bracketing his hips. His fingers traced tiny circles over the triangle of her panties, dodging the wet, aching place where she most craved his touch.

“Lie back,” he said, caressing the sensitive skin behind her knees.

She relaxed against the mattress and dug her fingers into the feather comforter, waiting for ecstasy. What came instead was a rush of cold air, as though something ominous and hulking passed over her in the blackness. Fingers closed around her ankles. Two hands. Three. Four. Grabbing at her wrists. Pinning her down .

Panic fisted around her heart and she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound would emerge. Myriad voices whispered from the infinite space around her.

Mai l’ange du passage de la mort au-dessus de vous…

“No!” She broke free, scrambled backward and hit the headboard. “Gideon… Gideon! Who’s there? Who’s touching me?”

She heard a rustle, the soft fall of footsteps leaving the space beside the bed. Then soft light flooded the space around them.

Kate blinked in the pale glow of the night table lamp, her heartbeat crashing in her chest. No one was in the room except Gideon, who stood watching her with brows lowered, hair tousled, panting and gloriously naked.

“What is it?” He glanced around the room. “What happened?”

“There were others here. Someone else…it wasn’t you.” She sounded ridiculous and she couldn’t stop the tears welling on her lashes. “I just…freaked out, I guess. The darkness. I thought…it didn’t seem like you.” “It’s okay, Kate. You’re okay. We don’t have to do this.” His words were low, soothing, his movements graceful and easy as he returned to the bed and sat down beside her.

“No…I want to. I want you, Gideon. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Look, the light’s on now. You can watch everything we’re doing.” He dropped a languid kiss on her lips, fingertips drifting over her breast, circling her nipple, drawing her back to a place of aching arousal. “You can watch everything I do to you.” Easing back against the mattress, she tilted her head to watch him, wanting to trust him, but suddenly unsure this was the same Gideon who moved in and out of her daylight hours. Despite his soothing voice, the man before her now was someone darker, more predatory, with sleepy, hungry eyes and a knowing touch. The lover from the shadows of her dream.Shadows . The room was swathed in them.

She blinked once and never saw him move, but somehow he knelt between her thighs, fingers playing along the elastic of her panties.

Everything about him was beautifully aroused and gleaming in the dim bedside glow—his tight muscles, his imposing erection, the fire in his black eyes.

Even her lingering uneasiness stoked the heat of her desire in an unexpected and titillating way. In a moment she’d finally know the hard, silky thrust of him inside her body, and she closed her eyes, seared by a mixture of apprehension and excitement.

“I’m protected,” she said abruptly, and the declaration rent the sultry air, high and anxious to her own ears.

“Are you?” His smile disappeared as he bent to nuzzle the curve of her breast. “Tell me, Kate. From what?”

“From pregnancy,” she whispered, caressing the dark hair at the crown of his head. “But not from you.”

“Are you still frightened?”

Why should she be? The room was shadowed but empty. She’d imagined multiple hands touching her; it wasn’t real. Gideon was real, about to become her lover, to bring her mind-boggling delight and the fulfillment of countless fantasies. Yet she was afraid…of him, of the power in his cool, talented hands, the gleam of perception in his gaze. She feared the magnitude of the pleasure he would give her, unsure of what he’d take in return.

For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to expect.

“Are you afraid of losing control?” He drew her panties down her legs, and the silk moving over her skin left a trail of goose bumps in its wake. “Of feeling too much, of going too far?” “Yes.” She touched his face with a trembling hand, the shape of his chiseled jaw, his chin, the sensuous curve of his lips.

“Me, too.” He caught her fingers, turning his mouth into her palm. Then holding her gaze, he slid her hand down to enfold his erection. It pulsed and swelled in her grasp, demanding and insistent. “Feel me, Kate. I need you now. Are you ready for me?” The knot of anxiety in her stomach dissolved as heavy desire sluiced through her. “Yes,” she said, holding out her arms to receive him. “Oh, yes.” His fingers twined in her hair as he positioned himself against her slick, vulnerable center, his mouth hovering over hers. “Take me inside you.”

Her body opened to him of its own accord, rising and falling and following his slow push forward, until he sank inside her to the hilt and kissed her, muffling the wild sound that escaped her lips.

He filled her, stretched her nearly to the point of pain, but it was pleasured pain, borne more of burning need than the sweet invasion, and she pushed her hips against him in a bid to hold him when he withdrew.

His second thrust, just as slow, just as deliberate, drove her up the mattress. Lacing their fingers together, Gideon drew her hands above her head, so deeply imbedded within her that Kate felt him in her bones. Moisture dampened their skin and bound them. Her perspiration, not his. He was cool, focused, rhythmic and graceful. Kate was wild beneath him, uncontrolled, pulling him impossibly deeper, wrapping her limbs around him as though she could draw him into her soul.

For a fleeting instant she opened her eyes and watched the tightness of his features, the concentration that darkened his brow, the way his lips fell open to released ever-quickening breaths. She would never forget the beauty of his face, and stored it away in that dim place where snapshots of lovers forever linger.

Then her body arched to meet his, ravenously seeking that hard, thrusting contact, found it, and shattered with a helpless cry.

The orgasm went on and on, pleasure and pain merging, racking her and twisting a lover’s expectations into something darker and deeper than she could have ever fathomed.

And all the while she shuddered and cried, Gideon never stopped moving. He merely slowed, his mouth brushing hers and drinking in her harsh breaths as she quaked endlessly beneath him.

And then it was over, fading gently into sporadic jolts of waning delight.

Thunder rumbled directly overhead, and the soft patter of rain commenced, as steady as the sinuous thrusts he continued to make inside her body.

“Oh,” she whispered with a helpless laugh, amazed she could survive such a wrenching release.

“You…are…incredible.”

He nuzzled the side of her face, his hips rocking slowly between her thighs.

He wasn’t done.

Dazed, replete, she let her legs go lax around him, fingers tracing his spine down to revel in the undulation of his muscled buttocks. Her eyes opened, sought his, found his emotions sheltered beneath long lashes. For an instant, the tension lulled.

Then a low sound vibrated in Gideon’s chest. He buried his face in the curve of her neck, his arms slid around her and clasped tight to lift and turn her, so that she sat astride him, impaled.

“Like this,” he ordered fiercely, throwing back his head. “Ride me. Hard.” Stunned, still shivering with aftershocks of pleasure, Kate clung to him and moved with the guidance of his hands on her hips. Slow and uncertain at first, then faster, driven by the hoarse encouragement he murmured in her ear, by the steely tension building in his muscles each time she sank down on him and he thrust up to meet her.

“Harder,” he whispered. “Faster. Oh, yeah. Fuck me, Kate.” His fingers wound in her hair and he drew her mouth down to his, breathing his pleasure into her. “Fuck me.” Hard. Fast. Ecstasy laced with pain.

“Kate, now!”

“Yes,” she whispered, triumphant in the wake of his rising passion. And then, in the sweet echo of a dream, “Come.”

A gasp escaped his throat. He thrust so fiercely he nearly unseated her, clutched her motionless, his muscles like granite under her palms, and muffled his cry of release against her breast.

Heat jettisoned within her, searing and welcome. Cradling his head, she kissed his open mouth and inhaled his harsh pants. “I love you, Gideon.”

With all his darkness and duality and secrets, she loved him.

For a long time they didn’t move, just clutched each other, limbs tangled, pulses matched and slowing in tandem. Then he lifted her free and lowered her to the pillows to stretch out beside her, his fingers laced loosely through hers. And in the drift of ecstasy, the shadows no longer seemed to haunt, but embraced her and carried her down to sleep.

Gideon stared into the darkness, reading the serpentine figures that lurked around the room. They hardly moved, only watched, their topaz eyes glinting in intermittent flashes.

The rain fell steadily outside, although the thunder had long since passed. Finally he relaxed against the pillows, one arm folded behind his head and the other cradling Kate against his heart.

She slept; the silent cadence of her breathing washed him with tranquility.

He’d made love to her, man to woman. Like with Caroline so many years ago, the bloodlust had awakened within him as expected, stirring and clawing its way to the surface, its power snuffing the lights and creating an electricity all its own. But then, to Gideon’s joyous bewilderment, it had retreated in the instant Kate reached out her arms to take him inside her. Why was it different with Kate? Why hadn’t he been driven to the blood supply he kept in the wine cellar, hands shaking, barely able to control the rise of hunger that unfailingly consumed him after mating with any female, mortal or otherwise?

The answer crept over him, both painful and bittersweet. Caroline had given of herself, but never as much as she took. She’d loved him in a wild, volatile way that intoxicated him, but he hadn’t known the meaning of unconditional love in her arms. In the end she cursed him and had no desire to look upon their child’s face. The love they shared hadn’t been enough to deliver them from his black truth.

The others—and there had been many—were pleasurable diversions, a way to temporarily fill the emptiness. Like with Delilah, the give and take had been equal, and bloodlust was par for the course where love in its purest form didn’t exist.

But Kate…Kate took nothing from him. She filled him up and made him whole. And for the first time in one hundred fifty years, he saw a glimmer of a chance that he could divulge his secret without being condemned by the woman he loved.

Love is the great redeemer, the Franciscan had said. Through love, all things are possible .

Gideon bit back the triumphant laughter rising in his chest. He’d beaten the monster. Just once, but if he’d restrained it once, he could do it again.

Through love, all things are possible.

He loved her. Gazing down at her sleeping profile against his chest, the honey strands of hair brushing his skin, he felt the rare emotion rise within him, more powerful than bloodlust, more mighty than the drive to hunt and destroy. He loved her, and he would die to protect her. She belonged to him now, and he hadn’t drawn her blood to make it so. It was a phenomenon beyond him, his powers, his darkness, his sins. Kate was the touch of redemption.

Peace settled in his heart. The creature within him slept. And when the sun filtered dimly through the curtains and chased the dark figures away, Gideon slept, too.

“You’re up bright and early,” Martha said when she let herself in the kitchen door and found Gideon at the kitchen table, dressed for the day and reading the paper. “Did Jude have a bad night?” He shook his head. “He slept straight through. Still in bed, as a matter of fact.” “Hmm.” She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from him, stealing the arts and leisure section from beneath the article he was reading. “Why are you up? I thought the horticulture program was on hiatus this summer semester.” “It is.” He cleared his throat and offered nothing further.

She didn’t respond. Her gaze burned into him, though, and he tried to ignore her razor discernment by snapping the newspaper open to a new page.

“What?” he said finally, raising his eyes to hers.

“Gideon Renaud. What did you do?”

“What do you mean, ‘what did I do’?”

“There’s something funny about you this morning.”

“Thanks a lot.” He brushed a hand through his shower-damp hair and stared back at the newspaper, squelching the self-consciousness that threatened to shatter his control.

But Martha wasn’t done. “You look like the cat that ate the canary.” He gave an absent nod, staring hard at the paper. “It’s amazing what a good night’s sleep will do for you.” Silence. “Oh, Gideon. You didn’t.” He flashed her a half-hearted scowl. “What are you talking about?”

“Where’s Ms. O’Brien?”

He took a sip of coffee, annoyed at the power the older woman wielded over his decorum, and swallowed a healthy dose of embarrassment. “Where she usually is at six-thirty in the morning. Asleep.” “And if I go upstairs now and tap on her door, will she answer?”

“If you tap on the right door.” He shoved back his chair and folded the newspaper on the glass table, then retrieved a pair of sunglasses from the counter and jammed them on his face. Relief. Martha couldn’t see the guilt in his eyes. “I’m going to work in the greenhouse. Let me know when Jude wakes, will you?” “I’ll call you. But Gideon…about Kate. How can you break your own rules? You yourself said that it’d be ill-advised to—”