A Stranger at Castonbury(44)

She felt his palm slide up from her waist to lightly cup her breast, stroking it through her thin gown.

‘Blast it all, Catalina,’ he growled. ‘I need—need...’

‘I know,’ she gasped as his touch slid over her. She twined her fingers in his hair and drew his kiss back to the soft curve of her neck. She trembled as his warm breath washed over her skin and cried out when his hand closed hard over her breast.

‘I don’t want to still need you like this,’ he said roughly.

‘I don’t want to need you either. I worked so very hard to forget you.’ To forget what he had done.

‘Did you forget me?’

Catalina shook her head. She closed her eyes tightly, shutting out the rest of the world so she could revel in the bright pleasure of knowing his touch again. ‘I never could.’

‘I never forgot you either. Never, Catalina.’

He tugged down her light silk bodice and chemise, baring her breast to the moonlight. Catalina bit back a sob as he rubbed the roughened pad of his thumb over her nipple. It hardened and ached under his caress.

‘You’re still so beautiful,’ he said. She opened her eyes to watch, mesmerised, as he bent his head and took her nipple into his mouth, his tongue swirling around it lightly until she couldn’t breathe. Her legs tightened around his waist and she pulled him closer into the curve of her body.

He drew her deeper into the hot wetness of his mouth, biting down lightly and then soothing it with the edge of his tongue. She heard the mingling of their breath, harsh and uneven, the swirl of the wind around the marble walls, the lapping of the water from the lake along the shore. But none of it mattered. Only Jamie, his mouth, his hands, his body against hers. Just him.

His hand traced along her bent leg until he caught the hem of her skirt in his fist. He drew it up and up, over her bare skin until he traced the soft curve just where her hip met her thigh. Catalina was suddenly glad there hadn’t been time to put her stockings back on.

Then she felt his fingers move even lower. He nudged her thighs wider and traced his thumb along her damp folds. She cried out his name as he slid his touch inside her and pressed deep.

‘Jamie,’ she sobbed, and his open mouth came over hers to catch her words.

She reached out for him desperately, her hand flattening over his chest where she felt the pounding of his heart. She slid her touch down, down, over his flat stomach, the sharp angle of his hip. At last she covered that hardness in his breeches and closed her fingers around him in the way she remembered he liked so much.

He groaned deeply as she moved her hand down and up again, harder, faster.

‘Are you trying to kill me?’ he said.

Catalina laughed and wrapped her legs even tighter around him. ‘Do you not like that now? You certainly used to.’

‘I like it too well. That’s the problem.’ Jamie’s hand slid away from her, slowly trailing along her leg as if he couldn’t quite let her go. But he gently lowered her to her feet and her hand fell away from him. He braced his palms to the marble railing on either side of her, not touching her. But she could feel him shaking just as she was.

On trembling legs, Catalina moved away from him and sat down on one of the stone benches that lined the folly. She braced her palms on her legs and dragged in a shuddering breath.

‘I should go back soon,’ she said. ‘It grows very late.’

Jamie nodded brusquely. He sat down beside her, close but not touching, as the darkness closed in around them again.

‘I am sorry, Catalina,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask you to meet me here so I could grab you like that.’

Catalina laughed. ‘Obviously I did not mind it so much.’

Jamie laughed too, and leaned his head back against the wall as he stared up into the dome of the folly. ‘Neither did I. That has not changed between us.’

‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s just everything else that has changed.’

He was quiet for a long moment. ‘And some things will never change.’

Like his family? His duty? ‘Why did you ask me to meet you here, Jamie?’ she asked.

‘Only this,’ he said. ‘To tell you that you were right.’

Puzzled, Catalina examined his expressionless face in the shadows. ‘Right about what?’

‘About Spain, the Bourbons.’

Catalina went very still and stared at him in the moonlight. She remembered their old quarrels, the memory of what had happened to her country under the iron fist of King Ferdinand. How she could never go back there. And Jamie was a part of that.