Cardiff Siblings 01 - Seven Minutes in Devon (37 page)

He couldn’t finish his thought because
her hands kept fluttering over his chest and arms, and it was all
he could do to remember his name or where he was.

“
Please,” she repeated. Her
lips settled on that spot just below his earlobe, her warm breath
fanning over him and tickling the sensitive flesh of his
neck.

This was madness. There could be no
other explanation for why, instead of taking both her hands in his,
putting a good foot or more between them, and telling her precisely
the reason what she was doing must stop, he fisted his hand in her
hair and lowered his head to capture her mouth with his.

Emma had been happily sinking in
Aidan’s kiss for what could have been hours when he broke away
again. He had both hands in her hair, holding her captive as he
trailed wet kisses over her neck, her jaw, her shoulder
blade.

Then, just as suddenly, he pulled
back. His eyes were nearly black with intensity, and his chest was
heaving as erratically as hers. “Not here.”

Not here? She barely had, “Wha—” out
of her mouth before he’d taken one of her hands in his and started
walking, rapidly, across the lawn.

She almost had to run to keep up with
him, he was moving so fast. By the time he slowed at the trail
through the woods, she was far more breathless than
before.

“
Where are we going?” Emma
finally asked. He seemed to be in such a rush, she couldn’t imagine
what the hurry might be.

“
The hermitage.”

The hermitage? “Do you feel the need
to sculpt right now?” One minute, he’d been kissing her
passionately and the next, he wanted to hammer away at marble. No
matter how much she thought she was beginning to know him, she
would never truly understand the manner his mind worked.

“
I can’t very well take you
up to my chambers, can I? Even though the rest of the guests are
out hawking, the servants are all in the house.”

She’d only thought she was breathless
before. Now she knew she was, yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself
from wanting to move faster. As frustrating and infuriating as
Aidan could be at times, Emma was fairly certain she loved him. Or
at least that she was falling in love with him.

And there wasn’t a doubt in
her mind that she wanted to be with him, at least this one time. If
he couldn’t fall in love with her, then perhaps they
would
have a marriage in
name only. If that was to be her fate, she didn’t want to spend the
rest of her life without at least knowing what was missing in her
marriage.

Then she could resign herself to her
fate, whatever it may be.

But for now, for this moment in time,
she wanted to experience all she could with this man. She wanted to
know the source of the ache in her core, to see if he could help
her relieve it. She wanted to feel his body against hers like it
had been that first time he kissed her, when they were so tangled
together she couldn’t think. And maybe, if fortune decided to favor
her, maybe it would be enough to convince him to love her in
return.

How could a man, even one as jaded as
Aidan, share such an intimate act with another and not give at
least part of himself to that other person?

Finally, they reached the hermitage.
Aidan hastily undid the lock and threw back the door, and before it
had fully closed behind them, he’d hauled her into his
arms.

He kissed her and drew her closer, his
strong hands pulling against her until their bodies were nearly
joined despite the barrier of their clothing.

After that, everything happened in
frenetic fashion. Hands and fingers, lips and tongue. Aidan removed
their clothing, frenzied and hot and needy in his quest. It was so
fast, so new, Emma didn’t know what to do or how to react. A rabid
need built within her, straining at her core and tingling through
her limbs all the way to the ends of her fingers and tips of her
toes. A rush of heat fled to each place he touched, and all the
while a pervasive ache built higher and higher in her
center.

Then he was above her, surrounding
her, sliding over and within her. Everywhere. He was everywhere,
filling her like she’d never known was possible. Nothing in her
imagination could have prepared her for the sensations racing
neck-or-nothing through her veins. From head to toe, every pore of
her body felt alive. Her mind couldn’t contain it all. One thought
chased the next, none of them settling or fixing permanently in
place.

Then it was as though a dam burst. A
flood of heat.

Aidan lay over her, covered in a sheen
of perspiration. His weight trapped her between his body and
something soft—a settee?

“
I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I
shouldn’t have…that was too fast.”

She shook her head. Too fast? It was
all a blur, but it had been a wonderful blur.

Lifting his head to look down into her
eyes, he kissed her, his tongue delving between her lips and making
it impossible for her to speak. Not that she could have anyway. His
hands brushed over her, molding against her breasts. With his
thumbs, he teased her swollen nipples.

“
Ah,” Emma cried, and her
back arched up to meet his ministrations.

The warm heat of his mouth came down
over one breast, and he suckled and licked. That desperate pull,
the gathering of wetness and heat started between her thighs again,
pooling together and pulsing. Aching.

Aidan moved his attentions to the
other breast and slid one hand down between their bodies, lower,
until his fingers tangled in the wetness of her curls.

Each time he suckled, he slipped his
fingers deeper, searching, tantalizing.

Emma writhed beneath him, her hips
driving her closer to his touch. “Oh my.”

The pad of his thumb found a nub much
like her nipples, swollen and tender, and he rubbed it, circled it,
tickled and teased it until she thought she would die from the
pleasure.

This time it was a wave, building and
gathering speed until it washed over her and she collapsed, sated,
against the cushions.

“
So beautiful,” he
murmured, then he kissed her again.

They lay together like that, Aidan
atop her, Emma desperately seeking the return of her ability to
think, for a long time. She lost track of anything but the weight
of his body, the feel of his breathing, the musky scent permeating
the air around them.

He repeated something in her ear. But
she couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t make it out. Couldn’t focus on
anything but the shivery weightlessness the heat left
behind.

Eventually, he rolled off her and
lowered himself to lie on the floor, then pulled her to drape over
him. His hands moved in lazy trails over her back, the rough
calluses of his fingers scraping in a pleasant way along her overly
sensitive skin.

When once again she felt the effect of
gravity upon her person, when the bones returned to her limbs and
she was no longer just a limp mass, Emma lifted her head and met
Aidan’s gaze.

In all the time they’d known one
another, Emma had seen countless expressions on his face—but never
this one before. He seemed almost confused. Distraught. The urge to
comfort him became overwhelming, so she lowered her lips to his and
kissed him long and slow.

When she lifted her head away again,
Aidan raised his hand to her face. He tucked her hair behind her
ear, then cupped her cheek.

“
Did you not hear me?” he
asked, with a harsh edge in his tone. Then he shook his head, a
wave of pain rushing through his eyes. “Never mind. It is probably
best this—”

“
Hear what?”

His other hand came up, and he held
her head between the two of them. The pads of his thumbs repeatedly
smoothed over her cheekbones. “I said I love you.”

Aidan could hardly believe that the
words were coming out of his mouth the first dozen or so times he’d
said them, when he knew Emma was in such a fog of sensation that
she couldn’t possibly know what he was telling her.

But then for him to tell her again,
when there was no more possibility that she could misunderstand
him? And more importantly, for him to mean what he’d said? It left
him shaken through to his core.

He did love her. He loved how she
cared so much for her friends that she would do anything she
possibly could do to help them. He loved the way her eyes turned
down at the corners, and how her nose tugged to the right when she
was upset. He loved her awkwardness, and how she was so unaware of
her own beauty and the effect she could have on others. He loved
that she would argue with him for hours over a book.

More than anything, he loved that she
attracted fragile and broken things, and that she never turned them
away.

He loved her.

And, most importantly of all, he’d
told her so.

Yet, instead of saying that she loved
him, and instead of reacting with the sort of unbridled joy he’d
felt upon uttering the words aloud, she lay there draped across
him, simply staring.

No, that wasn’t quite
right. There was something decidedly not
simple
in her stare. He couldn’t
quite make up his mind if it was shock, or perhaps fear.

Shock was a sensation he could well
understand, since he felt rather surprised himself, but why would
Emma be afraid? She had essentially given him an ultimatum, telling
him they must come to love one another or she would not go along
with having a normal marriage with him. And now that he truly was
in love with her, now that it was not simply something he was
feigning in order to get her into his bed, she was
afraid?

“
Emma?” he said
quietly.

Instead of responding, she abruptly
removed herself from his grip and stood, reaching for her
clothing.

“
Stop,” he said
softly.

But she wouldn’t stop. She kept
frantically trying to sort out her undergarments and get them on,
but she was making a muck of it. Aidan put out a hand and stilled
hers, and her eyes shot over to meet his.

At least she wasn’t crying. He could
handle a great many reactions she might have, but
tears—particularly when he wasn’t certain of the source of her
reaction—might have been too much for him.

Since Emma wasn’t talking, Aidan
decided he’d better do so or he’d never understand what was wrong.
“You wanted us to fall in love—”

“
Yes, I did. I do. I want
us to love one another.” She finally got her drawers on properly
and then grabbed her shift, tugging it into place as quickly as she
could. Her movements were harsh. Sharp.

Angry.

“
What I do
not
want,” she rasped,
her voice cracking, “is for you to say you love me, try to fool me
into believing you love me, only so that I’ll be biddable in your
bed.”

She didn’t honestly think
he would have said those words if he didn’t mean them—did she? But
then again, the manner in which he’d always glared at her had to
cause her some doubts.
Damnation
! Aidan dragged a hand
through his hair, then reached for his clothes as well. Once she
was dressed, there was no telling what she would do, and he needed
to be prepared to chase after her if she should try to run
off.