Forever His(99)

She shook her head in silent denial.

“Ah, but I will. See how quickly.” He lifted his head, his smile returning, though this time it held more sadness than humor. “I want you, sweet wife. Do not make me go. If you love me, do not make me go.”

Celine turned her face away from him, looking at the silvery moonlight that spilled in through the window.

He nuzzled her throat. Ice and fire. Silk and savagery. Sweet gentleness and rough promise. She wanted all of it, all of him. Wanted to take him into herself and her love and ease all the anguish in his soul.

She had no promise of tomorrow, only this night. This now.

Just as he had hung suspended in the air between his terrace and hers moments ago, their lives hung suspended precariously between his time and hers. And what waited below was not dark water, but the bottomless unknown.

She lifted her mouth to his, wrapped her arms around his neck. “I want you.”

And tumbled with him into the abyss.

He shifted his weight. She moaned beneath his mouth. He seemed to be everywhere at once, his hands, his kisses, and then the blunt hardness of him, where it must not be, where she most wanted it to be.

He molded himself to her, hardest where she was softest, and he lowered his cheek to hers, whispering through clenched teeth, “Hold tight, little one.”

She held him close with all her strength. “Gaston, I love you.”

She said it again in that mind-shattering second when he joined his body to hers. One swift stroke drove him home, embedded him deep inside her. She felt only a moment of pain before the feeling became a hot, pulsing fullness. He uttered a groan—whether regret or pleasure—and then he began to move, his hips arching and pressing against hers, driving him deeper. Thrusting hard and fast, he sent a building wave of pleasure spinning through her senses.

And almost as quickly as it began, it was over. Wracked by an explosive spasm, he cried out, as if in pain, and collapsed atop her, his weight pressing her down into the soft wool beneath her. He muttered a curse.

She stroked his perspiration-slick back, feeling him trembling, and she kept her eyes squeezed shut, not sure why she was blinking back tears. Anguished, burning tears. It wasn’t because it had hurt; the pain had been less than nothing. It wasn’t because she was disappointed that it had ended so quickly.

She held him while their breathing and hearts slowed and their taut muscles went slack, and still she did not understand. He slid out of her, rolling onto his side, gathering her close without a word.

He mumbled an apology, brushed a kiss through her hair, and a moment later was asleep, there beside her in the crumpled bedclothes, the light of the full moon falling across them both.

And then she knew why she was crying.

It all reminded her of the first night she had arrived, on New Year’s Eve—in his arms, in his bed, with him drunk and the moonlight surrounding her, as real as his strong arm around her waist.

Destiny. God help her, it seemed like destiny. Like they had been doomed to play out this scene until it came to this end.

Just as they were doomed to be torn apart—by time or by death or by the hostility she knew he would feel when his head cleared in the morning.

Crying silent tears, she curled closer into his arms, stealing this one sweet moment of glory, feeling whole and complete for the first time in her life.

Knowing it would be the last.





Chapter 19


Hellish did not begin to describe the agony in his head. A hulking Teutonic battle-lord with a war hammer could not have inflicted a more unrelenting pounding. Gaston had long suspected that somewhere in the brimstone depths of Hades, Satan had a special pit reserved for arrant sorts like himself—and the splitting pain between his temples told him that he had arrived.

He dared not move. To lift his head even an inch promised tortures beyond any in his vast ale-soaked experience. That fact held him prisoner, there on the threshold of awareness. He wished fervently that he could slide back into blessed unconsciousness. Wished a pox upon all Castilian wine makers. All Castilians. All wine makers. He groaned, then stopped because even that mild sound of misery struck his head like a spiked mace.

His mouth felt like someone had stuffed a crumpled ball of sackcloth into it. He opened his eyes slowly, one reluctant lash at a time, for he could tell from the touch of warmth at his back that his chamber was already flooded with daylight. The glare bit into his bleary eyes like a blade.

And then he realized two facts at once:

One, he was not in his own chamber.

Two, he had yet to truly taste the depths of Hell.

She lay beside him, her soft body curled into his, as naked as the day she was born, exactly as he had dreamed it so many times: her buttocks nestling his morning arousal, his arm draped possessively around her waist, the morning sun shimmering on her hair like dew on an innocent flower.