Chapter 25

The moment shifted on its axis.

Secrets may abound between them, snugged deep inside hard, twisted shells, but as they stared into each other's eyes across flickering flame, deeper truth showed itself. Raw, vulnerable, the real Callie stared out at him, and he couldn't help but give her the real Nylander in return.

On this day, they'd entrusted the most vulnerable pieces of themselves into each other's keeping. Only these selves populated this cave. He'd never experienced a day, not a single instant, like this with another person, and he suspected she hadn't either.

Headlong, they'd slipped into an important moment. Nothing in his life had ever mattered more. It fed a side of him that he hadn't known existed.

And it was ravenous for yet more.

For everything.

Of her.

She shifted on her stone seat. Again, that wince.

"Is it your ankle?"

"It's really nothing."

For the second time tonight, he crossed to her side of the cave when he knew full well he should stay away. No good could come of it. Still, he couldn't see her in pain and do nothing. Her foot was in his hand before he could fully process that he was touching her, again. He couldn't seem not to.

Below, from his supplicant's position, he found her staring down at him, not like a goddess, but, eyes narrowed, considering, like a very curious woman. "Why do you have to be so, so…" She was searching for a word. "So nice."

This pulled a laugh from him. "Many epithets have been cast at me over the years, but never that one."

"I have a feeling that's because they haven't glimpsed the real you."

He focused on her foot and allowed her words to slide off him like water off a duck's back. It wouldn't do to take those words inside. They might fill him with boundless joy. "How does it feel when I press along here?"

"Fine." She sounded annoyed. Better.

"And here?"

That pulled a squawk from her. "Not nice."

He began rubbing the area and remained silent.

Her eyebrows crinkled together, like a woman of science studying an especially curious specimen. "You're really nothing like a Viking."

He released her foot and sat back on his heels. "I never claimed to be."

A laugh conscious of itself sounded from her. Her hand emerged from her blanket and reached out to touch his cheek. He went very, very still as she caressed the line of his stubbled jaw. "In this imperfect world, you're just so perfect."

Bitterness, uncontrollable and familiar, roiled his stomach. It always came back to this with her ilk. "I've been told. A perfect specimen of man. A perfect fuck," he flung at her.

She blinked at the vulgarity, but she didn't pull away. Instead, understanding dawned in her eyes. "I can't deny that, but where you are most perfect"—her hand trailed beneath the blanket down to his chest and stopped directly above his heart—"is here."

It answered with a hard thud, and his breath froze between an inhale and exhale. Time wound to a stop.

"Has no one ever told you?"

No one had. Well, mayhap his ma, so many years and lifetimes ago. But he couldn't speak the words, not beneath the spell Callie was weaving around him. She pushed the blanket aside, revealing the tattoo above his heart. Feather-light fingertips traced every straight and curve of black ink. "Is this script?"

"Aye."

"What does it say?"

"It's the meaning of my name."

"Which is?"

"Dweller on new land." His blood fizzed hot and fast through his veins as if he'd exposed a raw nerve to oxygen. "'Tis the fate of all sailors to seek new lands."

"And this is the name you gave yourself?"

"Aye."

"But it isn't seeker of new lands. It's dweller."

She would catch the distinction.

"Writ above your heart. It isn't simply the meaning of your name. It's your heart's desire."

This woman… She knew him.

He'd experienced a good variety of intimacies with a good number of women, but never an intimacy like this. She didn't simply care about what lay between his legs, she cared about what lay inside his heart. Something new and wondrous was happening inside this cave.

"You're shivering."

Was that concern in her eyes?

"It's nothing," he dismissed.

He wasn't trembling from cold.

"It's not nothing," she pressed. "You have needs, too."

"I've been colder."

Why was he pushing her concern away?

"That's not relevant," she said in her tart, schoolmarm voice. When had he grown to like it so much? "Your needs matter. Take my blanket." She shifted to remove it.

As much as he'd like to see her in her full, naked glory, he couldn't lower himself to that level. It was cheap. "I'm not taking your blanket. You need it more. You're small."

Her eyebrows met and held before she barked out a laugh. Free and unguarded, it was a laugh of utter abandon, and the loveliest sound he'd heard in all his life. "You're the only man in the world who sees me as small."

Again, that uninhibited laugh sounded, and unfettered joy surged inside him.

"You're a blasted difficult man to care for, you know that?"

"I've been told."

Solemnity replaced impulsivity in her eyes. "Won't you allow anyone to care for you?"

Her question stole the answer from his mouth. She shifted forward and winced.

"Your hip."

"Don't worry about my hip."

"You're a sight difficult to care for yourself, you know that?"

"Aren't we quite a pair?"

"Aren't we?"

She pressed herself up just high enough to slide off her stone perch and onto the ground. There she sat opposite him, legs crossed, his mirror image. The timeless feeling that had entered the cave continued to cocoon them.

He reached out and tucked a damp string of flame-red hair behind her ear. "I love the color of your hair."

The words—that word—were out of his mouth before he could control them. And, inside this protected bubble the two of them had created, he didn't want to.

"You love it?" she whispered.

"Aye." Emboldened, he continued, "And I love the smattering of freckles across your nose."

"You love them?"

She sounded breathless, and a wave of joy crested at the sound of her breathlessness.

"Aye."

"Your eyes," she began, a hitch in each syllable. "There's a forever blue sky contained inside them, even on the cloudiest day. It's the most truthful blue in the world. I lo—" She swallowed. "I love it."

"You love it?" His heart might stop. Could too much joy be lethal?

She nodded. "And I love—" She tripped over that word again. Like him, she didn't have much practice speaking it. "I love the crooked curl of your mouth when you smile, like now."

His smile crooked further. "You love it?"

Solemnity, vulnerability, shone out from her eyes as she nodded and angled her body forward, over her crossed legs, over his crossed legs, until her lips stopped a hairsbreadth away from his. "Right," she murmured, her breath whispering across his mouth, "here." She pressed her lips to the curled up corner of his mouth in a kiss gentle, pure, sacred.

She shifted back. He could howl for the loss of her.

"And I love"—he leaned forward, pitching into her space—"this blush right"—he slanted his face into the bare patch of skin between the top of the blanket and her jaw—"here."

He pressed his mouth to the pulse point of her neck, her heartbeat thrumming beneath his lips. She exhaled a soft sigh into his ear, and his manhood stirred. The sweet purity of their intimacy slid into the carnal.

She edged backward, ever so slightly, and knowing eyes met his. Her grasp eased on the blanket enough so it slipped off her shoulders, barely held at breast level, revealing the hollow at the base of her throat, the creamy slope of her shoulders in the flickering light of the lantern.

She released the blanket entirely, and rough wool dropped in a gray puddle at her hips. Here she was, revealed in all the ways she feared: vulnerable, exposed, naked, not only in the flesh, but in her dark, solemn eyes.

For him.

This glorious woman was baring her entire being, for him.

He allowed his blanket to fall. He wouldn't have her alone in her vulnerability.

She would see his, too.

For her.

She reached out and touched his face. He reached out and touched hers.

Again, she angled forward. "I love the tremble of your fingers when you touch me," she murmured against his lips.

The lightning streaking the sky outside didn't come close to packing the electrical punch delivered to him by the soft press of her lips. It shimmered through his veins with light and energy, longing and joy.

His fingers reached around and tangled in her hair, pulling her forward, deepening the kiss. She rose to her knees. Her face slanted down, and his head tilted back, refusing to break from her as she straddled his legs. His arms encircled her back and drew her closer so her chest pressed against his, and her slick, soft cunny against his cock, rigid, ready.

"Callie," he groaned. He might never let her go.

She trailed feather-light kisses until she reached the cup of his ear. "I want you."

He pulled back and met her eyes. He needed to see if what he thought he'd heard within her words was really there. And, with a sense of wonder, he saw it was.

The wanting wasn't merely, or purely, physical. A possibility lay within those words, within her solemn eyes, that she wanted more of him than his body and the pleasure it could provide her. It was possible that she wanted him… all of him. How they'd arrived at this place after weeks of a cat-and-mouse game, he wasn't certain, but they were here, now. It was what mattered.

It was all that would ever matter.

Her lips trailed to the crook of his neck, and his breath caught in his throat when she sucked the sensitive flesh into her mouth. Goose bumps prickled across his skin, and he took her hips in hand.

"Oh, yes," she breathed against his neck, her sweet breath filling the space with a sultry warmth. "I need you now."

From here, his body knew what to do.

His cock pressed against the slick, sweetness of her quim, and her hips gave a subtle rotation. On the roll forward, she took him inside on a long, slow grind. A moan, deep and animal, crawled from her very depths. Her long legs wrapped around his back.

"More," she groaned.

His fingers closed hard on her hips, steadying her, as he impaled her on every last inch of his thick length until he was fully seated. Raw lust licking at him, he pulled back, then drove into her, eliciting that raw, animal groan of hers that incited a hunger in him that grew more ravenous with each stroke.

Her eyes drifted shut, and her mouth parted, shallow breaths rasping from her lungs with every thrust, abandon seizing her and… taking her away from him.

"Open your eyes," he demanded.

Eyes lust-glazed and wanton slid open and met his. But he saw something else, too, beyond mad desire: connection… soul-deep intimacy.

This feeling wasn't his alone.

Her hands cupped his face, and her mouth closed in on his. Her tongue glided along the seam of his lips, pressed into his mouth, and tangled with him. His hands wrapped around her sweet arse and squeezed, driving her harder on his cock. Her mouth tore away from his, and her head tipped back on her neck as she released the longest, most sultry moan ever to cross a pair of lips.

He licked up the elegant length of her sweat-sheened neck and pressed his mouth to her ear. "You like it hard?"

He thrust, she gasped, and a wicked smile curved her lips. "I love it."

His heart kicked a fierce beat inside his chest, and he folded her deeper into his embrace. He would feel all of her at once. He would take her into himself, if he could. "Far be it from me to deny a lady what she loves."

Another time, with another woman, the statement would have been an irony laced with bitterness. Not tonight, not with this woman.

He took one cherry-hard bud into his mouth and sucked. Like an apple blossom, she bloomed before him, her sweet surface scent complicated with one deeper, more complex, more animal. A scent that spurred on the animal inside him.

In and out, he drove into her, one relentless thrust after another. Her fingers wove through his hair and formed tight fists, threatening to pull it out by the roots as she steadied herself against the pleasure that had begun washing over her in waves that were arriving by increasingly tighter sets, deep groans now punctuated by sharp gasps.

She was close.

As was he.

"You're there," he murmured against her breast.

His fingers found her mons pubis, golden red in the flickering light. If it was possible he grew harder as he pressed through soft curls and sweet slit toward the hood of her sex, slick and swollen with lust. He rubbed it between forefinger and thumb, and squeezed, gently. Her hips gave a hard buck, and her wild, unfettered, "Oh!" sang in echo through the cave.

One more thrust of his cock, and he squeezed her again. "Come for me, Callie."

Her breath hitched in her chest, her back arched, and, for an untamed moment, time stood still. Then she broke, her quim clenching and pulsing around his cock.

His face buried in the hollow of her neck, he followed her over the edge of release. Her fingernails bit into his shoulders, and his seed spent inside her, transporting him to a plane known only to him and her.

An airy sigh whissed in his ear, pulling him back into his physical form, his cells bursting to life on a rolling wave, attuned to the press of her hot, sticky skin against his, her delicious weight sunk into him. He blew cooling breath along her neck, her clavicle, between the delicate curves of her breasts to her navel, her pebbled nipples. Her eyes shut, a sated smile curled about her mouth.

This act had never brought him an ounce of satisfaction or fulfillment beyond release, his and his partner's. Now he was full to the brim, overflowing with satiety. With this woman, it was a different act altogether.

His thumb hitched beneath her chin and tipped her face up. Eyes shining with wonder and uncertainty met his. They only reflected the emotions that surely shone out from his. This day and this night had shifted the earth beneath their feet, and he was no longer sure of his footing. But it was within this newly loose soil that hope could bud and grow.

"How is your ankle?"

She shrugged.

"Your hip?"

"Never felt better." She laughed. "In fact, no part of me has ever felt better in my entire life."

Her laughter infected him, shimmering through his veins, shooting light from his fingertips for all he knew.

Her head canted to the side, and her eyes screwed up to the ceiling. "Can you hear it?"

"What is that?" He was thoroughly distracted by the perfect cup of her ear and began bussing kisses along its delicate curve.

"The storm. It's exhausted itself."

Mid-kiss, he stopped.

"I think it's safe to leave."

Safe?

It was safe here, her body snugged into his, the outside world be damned.

"Perhaps we should," she trailed.

Return to the Grangewas left unsaid.

His return to earth, to reality, was swift and hard. "Aye, perhaps we should."

He reached for her blanket and draped it across her shoulders. She took his chin in hand, made him meet her eye. "But that doesn't mean we have to return to… before."

She spoke the words shyly, as if she'd just learned them and was still unsure of their meaning. They were the bravest words he'd ever heard. Words his own insecurities had held bound inside his mouth. His heart soared.

Through their tangled mess of secrets and lies had emerged this one true thing.

And after the tangle was unraveled and sorted, it would remain.

He would see to it.

Callie laya quiet figure in bed, in her pitch black bedroom, and listened to the sounds of night beyond her window. Day would be breaking soon.

She touched fingers to lips, to the exact spot where he'd kissed her one last time before retiring to his chamber, solitary, a gentleman.

They'd picked their way home on muddy trails, across wet heath, their progress slowed by her stiff ankle. By the time they'd reached the house, it had worked out whatever small injury it had sustained earlier. It would be ready for tomorrow.

There had been something she'd been less sure about, though. On their return, they'd walked side by side, but not touching. For a dreadful instant, uncertainty had quaked her. What if—? Then his hand found hers in the dark. Reassurance in their dry warmth.

It was perfect. He was perfect. How was it possible that such a perfect man wanted to take her cold, clammy hand in his? It didn't seem like it could be. But the proof was there, in his firm, reassuring touch.

And now she lay alone, delicious ache pulsing through her. Something had happened between him and her on this day, on the moor, in the cave, beyond the physical. It was wondrous and new and a feeling she'd never experienced in her five and twenty years.

They'd shied away from speaking it aloud, from giving it solid form. It was too new. Something that would evaporate into nothingness if not properly tended. If cared for, perhaps, perhaps, it could grow into the tangible, the solid. Into something she could grasp with both hands and never let go.

Perhaps… but how?

Of one fact she was certain: it didn't stand a chance of developing into something she could hold in her hand, in her heart, if she didn't change course.

While she'd revealed to Nylander that he was St. Alban's first-choice buyer for the Grange, she'd withheld her bargain with Jack Le Grand.

Her reasoning why was obvious: shame, ugly and rotten to its vile core. The way she'd gone about securing her monies, the bargain itself, was underhanded and wrong. The person who had struck that deal with a ruthless pirate, who was endangering the Grange and its occupants, wasn't the person she'd thought she was. But it was the person she'd somehow become.

For here was the thing: the bargain had been for her own benefit. For her pride and not for the good of the Grange. It was the sort of deal her father would strike. It had been a selfish act, one that needed rectifying.

Outside her window, the first bloom of dawn appeared as did a solution to her problem. Tomorrow—today—was the Duke of Muck. She would break off the deal directly after.

Tonight.

Twin pangs of loss and relief skirred through her. She would lose the Grange, but she would rid it of Jack Le Grand. Only then, would she begin regaining her integrity.

The Grange would be in good hands with Nylander. She knew it down to her gut. It was strange to think, but he, too, had striven his whole life to achieve it, not underhanded, not like her, but nobly. He was everything a man should be and deserved the Grange. He would run it with integrity, and it would continue to prosper beneath his sure hand.

She touched awed fingertips to the plait of hair resting on her shoulder. He, that admirable, noble, gorgeous man, loved its color. Fingertips feathered up to the bridge of her nose. He loved her freckles. The way his eyes had held hers… It was possible he loved…

The thought skittered away. She couldn't find the courage to hold it in place and examine it. But even a crumb of the thought was enough to send that delicious ache racing through her as the rising sun burnished the room with its golden light.

She wouldn't get any sleep this night. How could sleep possibly compete with this glorious feeling charging through her veins?