A Stranger at Castonbury(51)

But she knew that wasn’t possible. She leaned back against the blankets and stared again into the fire. She listened to the lash of the rain and let the warmth of the smoke, the clean scent of Jamie’s cologne, wrap around her as he lay down beside her.

‘Tell me a story,’ she said, remembering how he had once told her tales of English knights and chivalry on the long, hot nights in Spain, and how she would tell him Spanish tales in return.

Jamie laughed. ‘I don’t know any good tales I have not already told you. Not like you and the adventures of Don Quixote.’

‘I remember your stories of King Arthur. But I also liked your stories of Castonbury and your family,’ Catalina said. ‘It didn’t sound like a real place at all but a fairyland.’

Jamie was quiet for a long moment. ‘It seemed like a fairyland to me too, when I was in Spain for so long. But I told you everything then. I have nothing new.’

‘Did you?’

‘Yes indeed. You know of the pranks my siblings and I pulled, about my mother and what it was like when she was gone. I think I would rather hear about the don again.’

Catalina thought about the stories she had been re-reading lately with Lydia. Don Quixote and his endless quest for a perfect world that always eluded him. For a life that could never be. ‘I cannot think of a story for right now.’

‘Then will you sing that song for me again, Catalina? The one you once taught me when we walked together in Spain,’ Jamie said softly. She felt the soft brush of his breath against her shoulder and realised he had moved even closer to her as they talked. She nodded, but she feared her voice would strangle in her throat at his nearness. She touched the tip of her tongue to her dry lips and slowly began to sing, wobbly and off-key.

‘Conde Niño, por amores es niño y pasó a la mar; va a dar aqua a su...’

But she couldn’t finish. Jamie’s lips came down on hers, swallowing the song, her breath, her everything. She was surrounded only by him, by the heat and scent of him, the force of his passion that drew out her own desire all over again.

With a low moan, her arms came around him tightly as she rolled to her back, drawing him down with her, onto her. She had tried so hard to force away her feelings for him, to shatter them into oblivion, but they wouldn’t leave. They burst free at his touch, like brilliant flashes of fireworks in a dark sky. She needed him now; her desire was a force as free and elemental as the storm outside.

Jamie couldn’t be hers for ever, but he was hers right now. Just as she was, and always would be, his.

Catalina impatiently pushed the blanket away from his body. It draped to his hips, leaving his chest bare for her seeking caress. He was everything she had remembered in her dreams, his skin like hot, smooth satin over lean muscle and bone, shifting and bunching under her touch. She ran her fingernails lightly along the long line of his back, to the swell of his buttocks and then up again to twine in his hair and hold him with her.

He groaned as his tongue slid into her mouth, all a heated rush of breath and need. It wasn’t a careful, seductive kiss, but one rough with long-denied passion. Catalina’s hand threaded deeper into his hair, drawing him even closer, while her other hand slid over his shoulder to feel the pattern of those scars on her palm.

The blanket still wrapped around her seemed to abrade her sensitised skin with its texture and she shoved it away. Jamie reached down to help her, stripping the coverings away until she lay bare beneath him. She raised her leg and used her foot to push his own blanket all the way off before she wrapped her thigh around his waist. At last they were skin to skin, their bodies together. His chest slid over her breasts, raising her nipples to hard, sensitive points. She moaned and wrapped her other leg around him so he could not escape her.

Wrapped in the unreality of the storm, they were free.

Her head fell back as his lips trailed a ribbon of hot kisses down her throat and over her bare shoulder. She arched up into him and felt the heavy heat of his erection against her hip. He wanted her too, as much as she wanted him.

‘Jamie,’ she whispered. ‘Amado.’

‘Catalina,’ he groaned. ‘Catalina, how I have missed you.’ His tongue traced lightly on the soft curve of her breast. His fingertips circled one of her nipples just before he rose up above her and closed his lips around it hard, drawing it deep into his mouth.

She sobbed out incoherent Spanish love words, until slowly his mouth drew away and he breathed a light caress over her pebbled flesh.