me…”
“Home,” he provided the word she never intended, in a voice unlike any she’d ever heard. The storm was gone from his gaze. The battle he’d fought with himself had ended. When he looked at her there was only tenderness. “Home to Belle Terre. Home to me.”
“No!” Her denial was a strangled cry. The hand at her shoulder clenched and slipped to her breast. With a sweep of her lashes, shielding her from his riveting gaze, she turned her face away. A long breath shuddered through her, the pulse at her throat hammered as if her heart would race into madness. With a low moan, she lurched forward, desperate, intent on fleeing.
Maria was quick. Jericho was quicker. His hand flashed past her, closing, as the other, over the railing. Holding her in that imprisoning space, yet not touching her, he bent to her. “Stay.”
“I can’t.” Her voice was low and unsteady. “The rest of the crew will be looking for me.”
“To go back to the inn?” He moved another subtle step, his body brushed hers. The heat of him surrounded her. “To sleep alone?”
“Yes,” she flung at him. “Alone!”
“That’s what you want?” His left hand curled at her waist. With his right he turned her face to his. One gray gaze dueled with another. “Is it, truly, Mary Elena?”
Gathering courage, she glared into his probing stare. “I came to fulfill an assignment, Jericho, nothing more. When and with whom I sleep isn’t a concern.”
“Liar.” The word had the ring of an endearment as his lips slanted in a patient smile. Looking away from her stormy scowl, his gaze moved down her throat to the shadowed cleft of her demure décolletage. “Isn’t that why you wore a gown that clings like liquid gold and blazes like fire? Why have you waited alone on the gallery, except to drive me to this?”
“I came back to Belle Terre on assignment. Not home. Not to you.” The litany of her denial fell from rigid lips. When she would have looked away again, the curve of his palm about her cheek stopped her. “Don’t, Jericho.” Anger blazed out of desperation. “I came to gather news. I don’t want this. I…I don’t want you.”
“No?” He smiled in sympathy as she fought the battle he’d fought for hours. His fingertips drifted down her cheek and throat to the pulsing hollow at its base. “Then what does this mean?”
Catching his roving fingers in hers, changing his focus and avoiding his question, with thumb and forefinger she turned the scarred and worn gold band he wore. “And this?” she whispered. “A wedding band, worn on your right hand? What does it mean?”
Closing his fist over hers, lifting their joined hands, he stroked the flesh of her wrists with his lips before he met her gaze again. “It means whatever you want it to mean, Maria Elena. As little or as much and for as long. Perhaps just for the night.”
With a low sound that might have been laughter were it not for the raw note of pain, she leaned her forehead against his shoulder. “Damn you, Jericho. Damn you to hell and back. Eighteen years, and then this.”
“I take that as a yes.” Burying his hand in the dark wealth of her hair, sending the anchoring pins flying, he waited in simmering, barely contained impatience.
Raising her face to his, with her hair tumbling from the glamorous coiffeur as if it had waited as impatiently for his plundering caress, she whispered, “Yes.” Then again, “Yes!”
Finding strength in fury and need, a whisper became a low cry: “Damn you, Jericho!” Hands sliding over his jacket and the smooth tucks of his shirt, she circled his nape with clasping fingers. Drawing his mouth to hers, she whispered. “In hell or heaven, after all the years, why is it always you? Always only Jericho, with no thought of tomorrow.”
“Hell will come soon enough, my love.” Sweeping her into his embrace, he pledged, “But for tonight, I promise only heaven.”
Maria slept. Like a child too tired to toss or turn, she lay half curled on her side, her hair spread in dark rivulets over his pillow, a hand tucked beneath her chin. But it was more than a long night of unquenchable passion that caused the exhaustion marking her face and body. Far more than exhaustion that made her sleep too tense, too still, too guarded.
The first glint of dawn filtering into his bedroom woke him. Concern kept him sitting by the bed keeping watch as she slept. With each precious second, as the day grew older and first light touched the room, he worried it would disturb her. Yet he dared not risk the clatter of closing row after row of shutters.
Twice, while he watched, she frowned and tossed her head, muttering in a language he didn’t understand. Twice he caught the sliding sheet, drawing it over her naked breasts again. Returning to his chair each time with the ache of desire, he knew wherever sleep had taken her, it wasn’t to him and the night they shared.
“I want it all, sweetheart. The night, the day, your dreams. You, Maria Elena…waking or sleeping.” His voice was hushed, though there was no one to hear.
Unable to resist temptation, he took her hand in his and was surprised when her frown faded. When, unconsciously soothed by his touch, the unnatural tension of her sleep grew restful, then serene. Lacing the fingers of both hands around hers, he leaned his forehead against them and closed his burning eyes.
Perhaps he slept, steeped in the scent of her, locked away from all but the muffled sounds of a world not yet awake. Perhaps he only slipped into waking dreams as he remembered the night, the darkness, the dusky room spangled with wisps of moonlight. Soft sighs and shuddering breaths. Wandering, wondering touches, hungering kisses lingering long and deep. Low sweet cries speaking more than words.
The caress of her body gliding over his. The tease of her swaying breasts as she leaned over him discovering the changes time and manhood had wrought in the boy who had been her first lover.
The fall of her tears as she kissed the pallid scars of too many surgeries on his knee. The catch in her breathing as he drew her from her exploration, cradling her breasts in his palms, cherishing nipples furled like new rosebuds with his lips and tongue.
In his drowsy, waking dream, he remembered the play of light and darkness veiling her in tantalizing mystery as her long legs twined about him. He would remember forever the thrust of her body accepting him, enfolding him, taking him deep inside her.
He remembered the clasping heat, the sweet caressing strokes soothing him, comforting him. Maria driving him mad with delight, with ecstasy. And as he’d dreamed she would one day, with love.
“Jericho?” The whispered word and the brush of fingertips skimming over his hair brought him back.
Lifting his head, his gaze collided with Maria’s. Neither spoke. As her questing fingers grew still, neither moved.
After a moment, she smiled a contented smile. “Jericho.”
Dropping a kiss on her knuckles, he said, “Good morning, Maria Elena.”
Tracing the line of his lips, her smile softened. “Maria Elena. Only you call me that. To the rest of the world I’m simply Maria, and sometimes, Ms. Delacroix.”
“What would you have me call you?”
“I like how you say my name.” A wandering caress trailed from his face to the hands that encircled hers. Her smile wavered. “I thought I dreamed you.”
“I’m real, my love.”
“In a world of arrogant pretense, you were always my anchor, always my courage. My only reality.”
“You left me.” His voice was tender and accusing.
“It was for the best, Jericho. If I’d stayed, what would I have become? What would you?” Taking her hand from his, clutching the sheet, she sat up. Bracing against the bed, she looked around, remembering more than seeing the bold masculinity of the room. The neutral decor in ever-darkening tones, the perfect refuge for the quiet times