A breeze flew across Rosalie’s skin as the carriage door was opened, a cool brush of gossamer that sent soft chills chasing through her body. The faltering moonlight barely illuminated Rand’s set features as he helped her out of the vehicle. His eyes flickered with a brief smile, but the set of his mouth was inscrutable, the expression of his features almost emotionless. Rosalie accepted his hand as she descended to the ground, wondering why her fingers were cold when his were so warm.
“You must be tired,” Rand said, and Rosalie nodded automatically, although she was not tired at all. She had no idea of what hour it was, but the sky was as dark as velvet and there was no promise of daybreak in sight. She could find no explanation for the excitement and apprehension richocheting through her stomach, except that somewhere inside burned a premonition of what would happen soon. The dance was over, the night fertile and young, the air seasoned with the intoxicating flavor of romance.
Silently they entered the quiet, dimly lit hotel and proceeded up the long, straight flights and landings of a deep-welled staircase. Rosalie could detect an odd blend of fragrances that mingled in the hotel: tobacco smoke, hot candle wax, strong tea, ladies’ cologne. The treads of each step were finished with brackets that pressed into the sensitive soles of Rosalie’s slippers. Finally they reached a hallway off which branched several rooms.
“It’s so quiet,” Rosalie whispered. “The guests must all be asleep.”
“More likely they’re all out dancing,” Rand said, ushering her inside a room with studied aplomb. They shared two chambers that were connected by a giltframed door, rooms that were decorated in only a degree or two less luxury than the Lothaire. The golddraped windows opened out onto small balconies, and Rosalie went over to peer out through a thin glass pane. “What a beautiful view,” she remarked in a small voice, and Rand frowned quizzically. Beautiful view? He knew that she could hardly see more than the dark outlines of the street. Was she uneasy because she didn’t trust him? He didn’t blame her; he hardly trusted himself around her. Sighing, he walked over to the connecting door and opened it gingerly.
“Your bags and trunks are all next door,” he said. “Call for me if you have any difficulties.”
Rosalie stared at him, making no move to leave. As she thought of what she wanted, of what was in her power to bring about, her heart pounded so heavily that she wondered if her pulse were visible. Jerkily she clasped her hands before her and ignored the faint tugs of panic along her veins. A quick glint of memory appeared before her eyes . . . the image of Rand as he had possessed her, his eyes hot with desire, his body tense with need of her, his skin and hair damp with the exertion of striving for the pleasure that she had brought him. I want him to hold me again, she thought, and her cheeks flamed. I want him to need me desperately, whisper my name, press me tightly against his body. And what of the pain the joining had brought her? Would it occur again? It did not matter anymore. She remembered how he had seemed to forget everything in the world except for her during those minutes of passion.
“Actually . . . I do have a small difficulty,” she murmured, and turned partially away from him. “I . . . need help with my gown.”
For a split second Rand remained rooted to the floor. Her words hung in the air, soft sounds that his tortured imagination had twisted into tones of enticement. Wanting her desperately and reminding himself that he had sworn not to take her again, he swallowed painfully before moving toward her. What had he done, he wondered miserably, to deserve this kind of torture? Tonight he did not have the patience to resist his own clamorings of need for her. Helplessly he drew near her, all of his renowned skill at unfastening women’s apparel fleeing in a hazy instant. Rand took special care not to let his fingers brush against her back as he fumbled with the miniature buttons of her gown, muttering something about needing a lamp, his senses soaking up the details of her nearness, the feminine scent of her, the sleekness of her pinned-up hair. Then the job was done, and he caught a glimpse of her brief white chemise before she turned around quickly.
“Thank you,” Rosalie said, her eyes huge as she turned her face upward.
“Good night,” he said curtly, praying for her to leave before he could no longer keep a rein on his raging impulse to scoop her up, carry her to the bed, and drive into her greedily. To his confusion, she didn’t move away from him, and Rand’s every muscle protested against the tight control he exercised to keep still.
“Rose, you’d better leave,” he said, his voice harsher than he had intended.
“Rand . . .” She withheld the other words she wanted to say, wondering wildly how to continue. She had no experience at seducing a man. How could she please him? What if she disappointed him? This is a terrible idea, she thought, and yet she stood there mutely as she met his eyes.
Rand took one, two, three even breaths as he tried to read her thoughts. “Do you understand what you’re doing?” he finally asked hoarsely. “Rose, do you understand what I’m thinking, and what’s going to happen if you don’t go?”
She managed to nod jerkily.
Suddenly Rand reached for her with a smothered curse and enveloped her in his arms, his hands sliding inside the gaping back of her gown. His mouth sought hers and found it instantly, tasting, devouring. Rosalie closed her eyes, wrapping her arms around him loosely. As the kiss forced her head back, she opened her mouth under the pressure of his, allowing the steel bands of his arms to crush her against him. Her nostrils were filled with the fresh, intoxicating scent of him, a pleasant masculine distillation that had a peculiarly seductive effect on her. A strange warmth seeped lazily through her body, and Rosalie discovered that her knees had suddenly turned to rubber. Rand’s fingers tangled in her hair, anchoring her in one position as his head moved slowly over hers, his tongue mating with hers and then exploring the deepest recesses of her mouth.
Heady desire pounded through her relentlessly, a delicious excitement that overwhelmed every inch of her body. She had dreamed of a lover who would be tender and gentle, but Rand was impatient, insistent, voracious, kissing her as if he were a starving man partaking of life-giving sustenance. She didn’t mind his roughness, she welcomed it as the hard, unyielding masculinity of him provided relief for the hunger of her aroused flesh.
He lifted his mouth from hers, and Rosalie heard with shock the sound of her own voice as the cool air robbed the moistness from her lips. Don’t stop, she seemed to be pleading, and he pulled her up against him as the scorching heat of his mouth slid along her fragile neck. She felt the bold hardness of him between her legs, the strident masculinity of his body both threatening and arousing, and she shuddered in rapidly awakening anticipation of what was yet to happen.
“Rose . . .” he rasped, his arms tightening around her as his hands wandered fervently over her slender form, “I’ve wanted you more every day. I’ve tried to forget what it was like to hold you . . . it’s no use, you’re mine, and I can’t last one more night without you.” Recklessly she pressed closer, her mind clouded with misty excitement.
“You told me . . . it could be different from how it was before,” Rosalie said breathlessly. “Prove it to me.” Rand stared down at her with eyes that had dark
ened to velvet green, focusing on the swollen curve of her lips.
“It will be different,” he said thickly, and his thumbs caressed the exquisite line of her jaw. Burying his mouth in the curve of her neck and shoulder, Rand stilled himself for a moment as he fought for selfpossession. He could so easily be overcome by the urgency of his own passion, but that was not what he wanted. He intended to make Rosalie as drunk with desire as he was, and that would take much more time. Painstakingly Rand pulled the pins from her hair, his heartbeat seeming to triple as the heavy mass of satin fell down her back. Heady thoughts surged through his mind: she was more beautiful to him than any woman he had ever seen, she was everything he wanted, she was here in his arms. He felt her stir against him with the beginnings of arousal, and as painful as it was, Rand forced himself to go slowly.
The sleeves of Rosalie’s gown were halfway down her arms. Easing the garment down, Rand pulled her hands free and bade her to lock them around his neck. Her breath came fast and shallow through her lips, mingling with his as he caressed her breasts through the light, filmy chemise. Light-headed and filled with an unfamiliar languor, Rosalie made no protest as he eased the undergarment down to her waist. The night air struck her bare flesh with a gentle chill, and then the warmth of his hands was splayed over her skin. An odd quake shook her as she stood half-naked before him, realizing that he was still fully dressed. Rand took the weight of her breast in his hand and stroked the soft nipple with his thumb until it contracted from the vibrant sensation. She started in surprise as hunger tightened inside her abdomen, her first impulse to shrink away.
“Love, be still,” he whispered, and slipped his other arm around her back as he wonderingly stroked her yielding flesh, arousing her with the sensitive brush of his fingers. “You’re perfect . . .”
Rosalie clung to him with love and bewildered desire, her hands slipping up his neck to caress the cool silk of his hair. “Rand,” she finally moaned, recoiling from the lightning that gnawed at her vitals. Blindly he lowered his mouth to hers, seeking the fullness of her response until she hardly noticed as her chemise and gown dropped to the floor. When she was naked Rand lifted her and carried her to the bed, her satin-skinned body fragile and supple in his arms.
“Before we go any further,” he said, shrugging out of his coat in one lithe, efficient movement, “you should understand something. This won’t be the last time. And after tonight I won’t wait for any more shy advances.” His voice was heavy with desire. It was difficult for him to say the words, for he doubted that he would ever want anything as much as he wanted in this moment to possess her—yet he intended that there would be no surprises on the morrow.
Rosalie lay before him and shivered slightly, her pale form startlingly lovely, the shine of her eyes visible even in the darkness of the room. Her hands closed and unclosed in a restlessness she had never experienced before, her body seeming to throb with fever, her very skin fervid and bereft without his soothing touch. “Please come to me,” she gasped fitfully, unaware of
anything but a distress that only he could ease. “Please.”
His passion raged, and Rand knew that he could not stop himself from taking her, any more than he could hold back the tide. Impatiently he stripped off the rest of his clothing and dragged the covers away from the place where Rosalie lay. She was still and quiescent as he moved to reclaim her, his arm sliding beneath her neck to elevate her head, and one hand coming to rest lightly on her flat stomach. Curiously attuned to her, Rand sensed the innocent shyness she felt at the intimate warmth of his hands, and his heart contracted in silent empathy. He forced himself to wait until her hands lifted to his back in a delicate, questing touch, her fingertips examining the hard, deep solidity of his muscles, the burnished smoothness of his shoulders, the masculine furring over his chest.
“Rand?” she questioned faintly, and he looked down at her in the darkness.
“What?” he murmured, his skin burning as she tentatively acquainted herself with the long, sloping firmness of his back.
“Did you feel . . . nervous your first time?” He chuckled huskily at her question, his voice catch
ing as he replied, “No. No, never until now.”
Rand whispered something unintelligible, his mouth touching hers in the most tempting of kisses. Her arms curved eagerly around his neck to pull his head closer, but still he resisted the deeper joining of their lips, preferring instead to tease and torment until she thought he was trying to drive her mad. Her fingers sank into the thickness of his hair as his head moved lower, down her neck, along the frail ridge of her collarbone. Suddenly she arched upward as his mouth possessed the sensitive peak of her breast, a sweet cry escaping her throat. Straining toward him, Rosalie held his dark head to her breast with shaking hands, searching for a way to reciprocate and yet unable to do anything but cling to him and feel what he was doing to her. After several long, lazy moments he moved to her other breast and courted it with the same attention, his hand stroking the curve of her waist as if to calm the shocked trembles that racked her.
“Rand . . . oh, that feels so . . .” she said unsteadily, trying to find words to describe the incredible rapture. Slowly he moved back upward, seeking her mouth. Heat flowed and swirled over her body like a timeless river, and Rosalie subsided beneath him with drugged satisfaction, her lips moving under his, searching for even sweeter and more thorough pleasure. Her nerves ceased their alarmed jangling and ached instead with a steady, surging rhythm. Rand’s voice floated to her ears in smoky whispers, in snatches of praise, of desire, of guidance. She obeyed him without question, moving instinctively in any way he desired, anxious to fulfill his every whim, just so long as he would not withhold this seductive rapture.
She had never known him before now, not this tender, urgent man who was a partner, a lover. He was a dream to her, a golden vision, an erotic apparition that would disappear with the first cruel light of morning. He answered her curious whispers with halfsmiles and lingering kisses, creating a world that was made of nothing but blind sensation. As she clung to him tightly, his hand stroked over her stomach and down to the softness between her legs. His head lowered to hers to catch her trembling sighs in his mouth, his fingers gently searching, moving, finding out which caresses pleased her the most.
Leisurely he sought for and discovered the wellhidden entrance to her body, and Rosalie’s eyes flew open in stunned wonder as his fingers slid inside her. She stared directly into the intentness of his green-gold gaze, her body helplessly clamping in response to the unfamiliar invasion. Then his artful and sensitive touch altered slightly. He flexed his fingers in a way that caused her entire body to gather in unbearable tension.
“I’m going to faint,” she gasped, and still he would not stop, the intimate plundering becoming more intense. Shaking, Rand lowered his mouth to the warm fragrance of her neck and tested the smoothness of her skin with the feathery brush of his tongue. Finally, light-headed with the agony of extreme arousal, Rosalie sobbed that she could stand no more. Rand’s face was taut and damp with torment as he looked down at her. Spreading apart her paralyzed limbs, he settled between her legs and pressed slowly into her.
Rosalie cried out, and immediately he stopped, full and heavy inside her.
“Hurt?” he asked against her lips, and her arms locked around his solid torso.
“No,” she breathed, lifting her hips against his as she experienced the wonder of knowing that he was a part of her. “No . . .”
Rand felt all coherence, all consciousness fade away as he eased deeper within her. He, as well as Rosalie, was a stranger to this kind of passion, for it was different from, it was more than anything he had ever experienced. They had become one body, one being that could not endure separation. Caught in the storm of passion, Rand forgot to take her slowly, and his gentleness disappeared as he thrust into her with rough desperation. A low, keening sound vibrated in Rosalie’s throat, and she moved unconsciously to make his possession more complete, instinct taking the place of what experience would have taught her. Greedily she welcomed him back to her again and again, her hips rising in answer to his, her arms wrapping around the powerful, flexing surface of his back. She wanted to touch him everywhere, wanted to stroke and explore, yet the slight fear of doing something forbidden caused her hands to be still. She would not risk displeasing him, for if he stopped, it would be impossible for her to bear.
Suddenly Rosalie was suspended in a hot, nebulous cloud, unable to move at all as violent contractions of pleasure shook her body. She caught her breath and surrendered helplessly to the tide, the undertow, the bright and smooth eddies of a sensation she had never imagined. Clinging to Rand’s hard, bare shoulders, she was only vaguely aware of the light tracing of his hands along the trim curves of her hips. Rand pushed deeper inside her, prolonging the sweet agony until the last shudders left her, and only then did he allow the powerful convulsions of fire to blot out everything else. They drifted back to sanity with the greatest reluctance, their limbs still fitted together in startling harmony. Exhausted and replete, Rand lifted his heavy lashes and stared gravely at Rosalie. For once, he was left stunned and wordless by something that had once been commonplace to him. For a man of his experience, a woman’s body was an easily accessible commodity, the act of love merely a form of entertainment, the heart unaffected by a simple physical joining. What trick, what magic did she possess to make it all so different? Was it because he had waited so long for her? Was it because of her innocence? Was it a coincidence of time and place?
Rand discarded the disturbing thoughts as soon as Rosalie shivered. He pulled the covers over them as the night air chilled the dampness of her skin.
Rosalie was amazed, shocked, profoundly worried by what had happened. He has more power over me, she thought, than I do over myself. Two tears slipped from the corners of her closed eyes, and Rand kissed them away, his mouth lingering over her satiny skin and delicate eyelids. Blindly she turned her face toward him, and he kissed her in an unhurried manner, as if he were wooing her still. Gradually he lifted his head and looked down into her midnight-blue gaze. “Any regrets?” he asked quietly, and she shook her
head.
“Only that the first time wasn’t—” “I know.”
He strained a lock of her hair through his fingers, letting it curl and wind around his hand until she was bound to him by that one skein of sable.
“Someday,” Rand said, his voice threaded with a hint of steel, “that will be such a distant memory that you won’t believe it happened.” She shook her head to deny what he said, and his jaw firmed. “I’ll make sure of it,” he asserted, and pressed a hard kiss on her mouth before she could speak. Rosalie slipped a cool hand behind his neck and parted her lips to allow him access, gentling his sudden aggression back into sated laziness. Several minutes later, as she began to drift to sleep,
Rosalie felt his hands travel over her body intimately, reawakening the tightness of desire in her abdomen and the trembling of excitement along her nerves. She murmured in drowsy protest, trying to sink back to sleep, but finally she gave up and opened her eyes.
“How much sleep,” she asked breathlessly, her body beginning to crave him with the alarming desperation of before, “are you planning to allow me tonight?” Rand’s gaze was filled with a mixture of amusement and impatience as he wedged a knee between her legs. “Not much,” he admitted, his voice sounding like a heavy purr, and lowered his body to hers as she gasped his name and writhed in the throes of potent desire.
When dawn began, Rosalie opened her eyes to stare at the window through the mists of groggy wakefulness. Beside her Rand slumbered deeply, sprawled on his stomach with his head half-buried in a pillow. Turning her head to look at him, she was oddly stricken by how young he appeared in sleep. His face was shaded a burnished gold and was unlined by worries or cares, his firmly held mouth softened with the gentleness of slumber. Lashes several shades darker than his amber-streaked hair curled slightly at the tips, a trace of vulnerability not usually detectable when he was awake. A lock of her hair was caught possessively between his fingers.
What am I now to you? she asked him silently, her lips curving in a smile that was both wry and wistful. Am I your woman, am I your new toy? Am I a habit that can be discarded as easily as it was assumed?
Randall Berkeley was most definitely not a boy, but a man full-grown, accustomed to taking care of himself. Rosalie knew, however, that he had never before assumed the responsibility of looking after anyone else, and therefore it was up to her to protect her own welfare. Could she entrust him with her heart? Miserably she admitted that the answer was no. After his initial hunger for her was sated, Rand would treat her carelessly. Aside from her form and face, both of which she considered to be pleasant but unspectacular, Rand had no need of anything she had to offer.
Slowly she detached her hair from his grasp and eased herself from the bed. All of her muscles were sore, as if she had run from one end of Paris to the other. Wincing, Rosalie bent to pick up her chemise and slipped it on before walking into the adjoining bedchamber. It was upholstered in soft green and brilliant gold. All of the silkwood and mahogany furniture was elaborate, especially the lacquered armoire where her clothes had been neatly hung. She caught a brief glimpse of her reflection as she passed by an upright gilt wall mirror of silvered glass, with colored and painted glass panels above the central plate. The design was of a garland of yellow and pink flowers, a note of cheeriness that did not complement her mood of this morning.
Wishing she had a cup of café au lait, Rosalie fumbled through her garments until she found a melon-colored robe of silk, and she pulled it on gratefully. What am I going to say when I face Rand? she asked herself numbly. She loved him. She had loved him even before he had led her through the brilliant terrain of passion. And with the strength of such love came anger, bliss, torment, fear, and the knowledge that she would slit her own wrists before telling him how she felt about him. He would only pity her, and the thought of that was revolting.
It was just then that she heard a sound at the doorway. Rand stood there with his hair ruffled over his forehead and faintly shadowed eyes, looking so sleepy and masculine that she wanted to rush to him and bury herself in his arms.
“Good morning,” he said cautiously, and Rosalie wrapped the robe more tightly around herself. “Good morning,” she replied, and distractedly she
realized that her voice had sounded as chilling as a winter snowfall. Slowly his expression changed from wariness to blankness, and Rosalie saw that he was retreating behind a familiar wall. They might have been two strangers standing there regarding each other with polite curiosity.