A Stranger at Castonbury(54)
Now, with the cold night closing around them and her sleeping next to him, he could see that she was still not his. She said she could not truly be his wife. She pushed him away and he didn’t know why. His family wanted him to marry but his Catalina had come back to him. No matter what she said, he couldn’t be free of her nor she of him. They were married. The only thing that made any practical sense was to acknowledge that and learn to make a new life together.
Catalina murmured in her sleep and he closed his arms around her. He had to make her see sense, that was all. Yet he could tell she had lost none of her Spanish stubborn spirit, that in fact it had grown over the years. She was determined to do what was right as she saw it, but then so was he.
He owed Catalina for all she had suffered in the years since they parted. He had to make it up to her somehow, to make sure she was cared for. He only needed a plan to make her see that, to make her let him help her. His proud Spanish lady.
Jamie tightened his arms around her and he breathed in the sweet scent of her hair. For just a moment he let himself feel the exultation of being here with Catalina again, his beautiful, lost Catalina, and forget everything else. Holding her there in his arms, he let himself find the first restful sleep he had known in years.
* * *
Catalina slowly drifted up from the haze of dreams. She couldn’t remember what her visions were while she slept, but she somehow knew they were sweet because she felt peaceful and content as she hadn’t in so very long. Smiling, she stretched out beneath the rough wool blanket—and then she felt a large, warm hand at her waist.
And she remembered everything. Jamie and their lovemaking. How strong and sweet and perfect it had been, just like in her memories. She rolled onto her side and studied his face in the dying light of the fire.
His dark hair was rumpled over his forehead, and asleep he looked so much younger. The sharpness of his features was relaxed, his wariness and watchfulness gone for the moment. Catalina felt as if she was seeing him as he must have been long ago, before the horrors of Spain and the burdens of his family had descended on him.
Before he married her.
Filled with the longing to give him back that lost peace, that idyll, Catalina leaned towards him and softly pressed her lips to his. Jamie moaned as he woke up to her kiss, and she felt his hand gently caress her cheek, the loose fall of her hair. She drew back to look deeply into his eyes, those beautiful grey eyes, and let herself have this too-short, eternal moment with him.
‘Catalina,’ he whispered, and claimed her lips again in a fierce, desperate kiss.
She needed him so much, and in that kiss she could tell he needed her too. Through the blurry haze of desire, she felt his hands close around her hips and he shifted their bodies so that she lay on top of him. His tongue traced the curve of her lower lip, softly, teasingly, before he slid inside.
Catalina moaned at the taste of him, so familiar and yet so strange at the same time. His kiss trailed away from her lips, over her cheek and along the curve of her throat. Jamie touched the tip of his tongue to her bare shoulder and then blew on it lightly until she shivered. That wild, yearning feeling inside of her expanded until she thought she might burst with it all. He did that, only Jamie.
He traced the edge of his teeth gently along her shoulder, making her shiver again, before he pressed an open-mouthed kiss on the soft spot where her shoulder met her neck. He drew the blanket away from her body and his hand traced the edge of her waist and her abdomen, lower and lower, sliding aside the cloth until she was bare to him.
Catalina tilted back her head and stared up at his face, chiselled and half shadowed in the firelight. His grey eyes glittered in the darkness, and his lips curved in a smile that made her smile too. This was her Jamie, the man she had married. The man she had missed.
She traced a light touch slowly up his chest and felt the strong, hard heat of him. He was so very alive under her caress, so wondrous. And he made her feel as if she was coming back to life too, after she had felt so cold and numb for so long. And she was intoxicated with that feeling, with being with him again at last.
She felt his stomach muscles tighten as her hand slid lower and lower. The tips of her fingers brushed his erection and she felt him harden even more.
‘Catalina...’ he said tightly, but he didn’t move under her touch. He just watched her closely with those jewel-like eyes.
Catalina smiled, and slid her palms up over his chest and touched every inch of him. Full of wonder, she traced a soft caress over his strong shoulders, down his corded arms, her fingertips fluttering over his chest. He seemed thinner than he had been in Spain, leaner, harder, but she was still fascinated by every inch of him, by being close to him.