"Sush, it's fine," he said, grasping her hands lightly. "Listen to the storm. You can't go back out there. It's too dangerous. Stay with me. Stay, please."
His warm grip had traveled up her arms to her shoulders, his thumbs lightly caressing the bare flesh of her neck and throat, dipping into the hollow at the apex of her collarbones in an almost proprietary way, as if clasping the object of his deepest desires.
"How do you come to be here, sir?" she gasped, going hot and cold all over in an instant at the sensuous contact.
"Like you. Taking shelter from the storm."
His hands slid down to her bare arms now, and he could feel the goose-pimples rising upon her silken flesh.
"You're freezing," he said softly.
His warm breath fanning her cheeks only made her shiver more. She wanted to move, out of the cave, or at least out of his grasp, but it was as though she were somehow frozen in time.
Yet when his hands left her body, Elizabeth nearly cried aloud. She found herself stepping closer into the warm wall of his frame. She had no sense of space in the pitch darkness, and put out her hands to explore her surroundings. She came up against a rock-hard abdomen and chest encased in a heavy linen waistcoat, the muscles rippling powerfully under her hands as he removed his jacket to drape it over her shoulders.
The heat of the coat, heavier than her thin summer-weight muslin and still warm from his body, was like a caress. Almost without thinking she wrapped her arms around his waist. She shivered with heat and cold and something nameless, as shadowy as the man she was with.
She lifted her head to look into his face, but all was darkness. Her eyes closed as his lips came over hers in an exploratory kiss. His hands were light around her slender back. She knew she could step away if she wished. Instead, she stood on tiptoe, the better to deepen the contact and press herself into the delightful comfort of his body.
One part of her mind screamed that what she was doing was so incredibly wrong she was bound to burn in Hell for it. Not to mention what her brother would say if he ever found out.
The other part of her had never felt so alive. Her family was most affectionate, but this was something far more. The embrace contained need, longing, wonder, and passion. Danger, fear, pain, and sadness. It was as if he spoke the words aloud: "I need you. Don't go."
Yet Elizabeth was sure he could not have uttered a sound. As his hand stroked the damp tendrils of hair away from her cheeks, his other hand running down the length of her tresses to her bottom, her lips parted and his tongue now twined sinuously with her own. He tasted magnificent, of cinnamon and a host of exotic spices and tangy orange peel. He smelled like a rich citrus grove, along with fine leather and linen.
Elizabeth drank him in like fine wine, each sip leaving her gasping for more, each tantalizing fragrance caressing her sensitized nerve endings. She heard his heart thundering in his chest in time with her own, like the surge of the tide, the rhythm of their breathing, in, out, in, out. She moved her hands up his broad back, curving the fingers of one into his thick, longish hair. The other kneaded his left shoulder.
He flinched at once, as though a stray bolt of lightning had struck him. Damn, he thought, gasping with pain, then pleasure. He had barely had any sensation in it for so many months that he had almost forgotten the shell fragment still lodged deeply inside the muscle. No one had touched him in so long, he had not realized it was still so painful.
But as her long fingers began to insinuate themselves into the opened throat of his shirt, all pain was forgotten. He had never felt so soothed, or so rampantly aroused.
His two gasps of pain had served to deepen their kiss. He grabbed her so convulsively she was now pressed up the full length of him. Every inch of his body writhed against her, including those of his desperately yearning manhood. He half-expected her to jerk herself free and slap his face. It was what any decent, sensible girl would do.
But the lithe beauty stood her ground. His hands roved down her delectable curves, and he cupped her to him more forcefully. He flattened her against the broad smooth rock which served as the door to his cavern, pressing their bodies together from head to toe.
His shoulder still felt on fire, but her fingers continued to grip him there, while her other hand was now traveling down his back in a long sweep that ended on one of his buttocks.
Elizabeth was hanging on for dear life, trying to right her reeling world. She had had to put up with one or two bold kisses in her time. They were a sad fact of life if one was a wealthy heiress.
But this was like nothing she had ever experienced before, wild and thrilling, yet not even satisfying, for already her whole body seemed to be begging for more. More of what, she had no real idea, except that it was the forbidden fruit which she had heard spoken of in whispers. What men and women did when they were alone, when and only when they were married. And when they need have no fear of any child coming of the matter.