Cast a Pale Shadow(37)

Nicholas set down the basket, took the blanket from her and tossed it across the ticket desk. He caught her around the waist and drew her close.

"We can't stay. We--" was all she managed before her silenced her protest with a kiss.

"We're the captives of spring now. She'll never let us go," he said against her lips, his promise and vow. The full moon Roger had promised showed its face through the green glass panes, casting eerie shadows in the leaves. They ambled the winding stone paths among the ferns, fichus trees, and trailing philodendron. The lilies smiled their approval when they paused to kiss again by the old mill, the rock bridge, and the grotto.

When they circled back to where they had begun, they took up their basket, blanket, and the record player and carried them to a wide spot in the brick path near the waterfall. Nicholas spread the blanket on the ground and Trissa opened the basket and lay the dinner before them. He placed the candle stubs like soldiers along the rock rim of the grotto and lit them. They both groaned at the size of the feast and sat down to nibble at their sandwiches and pinch tiny morsels from the corners of the giant wedges of chocolate cake Ruth had wrapped for them.

"My stomach is so fluttery, I can hardly swallow."

"Are you sick?"

"No, it's not that." She looked up at him, her eyes veiled in a haze of fear. "I'm scared, Nicholas. I'm scared to have so much and know I'll lose it. I'm scared the price is too high for all of this, and I'm scared of how I'll have to pay."

"There is no paying for it. You won't go back to him. Or think of running away. Promise me, Trissa. Promise."

"I can't. I love you too much. He said -- my father swore he'd hurt you. I won't go back. But if I ran away, he'd have no reason. You'd be safer if I were far away."

The stem of his wine glass snapped in Nicholas' hands, a shard of it piercing his wrist. A bright dot of blood sprang from the wound and trickled down his arm. She gasped and reached for him to press it with her napkin and stop the bleeding. He kissed the top of her head as she bent over it.

"He can't hurt me, Trissa. And I won't let him hurt you. He's done with destroying your life. He lost you and I have you and I will never let you go." He pushed aside the broken glass and gathered her to his lap. "I need your promise to trust me in this. I have to have it."

"I don't know. Leaving is such a simple thing. My bags are packed. Georgia Pulasky would help me. She said she would. I still have her card." Silent tears brimmed from her eyes, and he held her close and soothed her. "It will hurt. And I'll be lonely. I'd miss Augusta and Roger. And the others. Even Hattie. But I would survive. The worst. The worst of all is that you would not be there."

"I can't lose you, Trissa. Don't leave. Promise me. I love you."

"Then make love to me." His thoughtful silence brought a wistful smile to her lips and she scooted from his lap to get her purse. "Look what I brought." She reached in and withdrew the scallop shell he had given her after their first dinner out together. "Do you think it still holds its secret, potent powers?"

"We can find out." He took it from her and filled the shallow, white shell with wine and held it to her lips. She sipped from it, then pushed it toward him. He drank the rest then kissed her, like the seal on a wish, like the touch of a wand on a spell.

Without a word, she cleared dinner away, and he set up the record player on a stone bench. They finished at the same time, and when the music started, Nat King Cole's husky baritone sang. "Pretend you're happy when you're blue. It isn't very hard to do." Nicholas drew her to her feet and swept her into his arms to dance.

Their feet kept shuffling the steps long after the record ended. Nicholas dipped his head to kiss her and Trissa's fingers wavered over his shirt buttons. "You broke in this place and made us criminals, Nicholas. Now, it's my turn to break some rules."

Deftly, she slipped each button from its hole and nestled her head in the crisp, sandy hair on his chest. With a light, brushing caress, her hand moved over it like a whisper flickers a candle flame.

He caught her hand and brought it to his lips and kissed each fingertip, her palm, and her wrist. "Promise, Trissa. Promise."

"I promise."

Their next kiss weakened her knees, and Nicholas clutched her close and bore her down to the floor. All the boundaries broken, all the honor dismissed for some greater virtue, they lay upon the blanket that had once been the wall between them. The same pearl buttons Nicholas had fastened with such brisk efficiency submitted to his touch again.

He moved his lips down her throat until they burned through the lace edging of her bra. Even so muffled, she could not resist their pledge. His fingertips lightly caressed her nipples and she shivered in anticipation of feeling skin against skin, the wizard's kiss upon his eager apprentice.

Nicholas brushed her slip and panties down and away in a silken glide, the shiver of their passing warmed by the starry fire of his touch along her bared flesh. Somehow she controlled her trembling hands enough to slide Nicholas' shirt from his shoulders. But when Nicholas' body, too, was bare to her exploration, she could not bring herself up through the haze of desire that swept her to remember how or who had made it possible.

Her heart filled with the wonder of it in the flickering shadows of candlelight and moon glow, she touched and kissed his neck, his collarbone, the sinew of his arm, the curve of his ribs. There was a white, jagged ridge below his ribcage and another just above his right nipple. Scars. "Nicholas?"

"Old battles. Long forgotten." As if to make her forget as well, he moved his gentle fingers to caress her intimate places. And she forgot. Yes, she forgot. A whimper of longing escaped her as she felt him press tenderly, slowly within her.

"One rule is still in force, Trissa, sweet. Say stop and I will stop," his words drifted to her like mist.

"I won't say stop. Let it never stop," was her strained reply.

His smile darkened with passion. "Then this is the last apprentice kiss, my love. After this, you are the master." His lips came down hard and demanding and she felt the hot, swirl of his desire as he kissed her. He moved over her and she opened to him, like the deep-throated, moonlit lilies.

More than she had wanted anything in her life, she wanted this man to become hers, to take her up and possess her, to end her old life once and for all and begin her new. With each insistent stroke of his hand, the wanting in her grew. She trembled on the brink of something she ached to understand.

Then his hand was replaced with a greater power. "I'm coming inside you, Trissa. If I hurt you, I--"

"Oh, Nicholas. Don't say you're sorry. I need you. I want you. So much." She moved her hand to touch the leashed power of him, to guide him home.

But still, he held back. He controlled his tender, loving progress toward their union, moving with gentle, deliberate grace, entering her so slowly, so he would not hurt her -- when she yearned to have it done, to be his, to be reborn one with him.

With sudden, white-hot urgency, she pressed up toward him, and it was done. She caught her breath sharply with the searing pain and held it, a bubble of laughter gurgled deep in her throat.

"Trissa?"

"You are ever the photographer, Nicholas. 'Press gently,'" she said breathlessly, mocking his oft-repeated instructions to her about the shutter release. "'Never poke or jab.'"

He smiled his relief and kissed the beaded sweat from her brow, holding himself still within her. Then he touched his lips to hers urging them to part and drew her tongue, soft and sweet, into his mouth. With an innocent's sense of desire and destiny, she touched the tip to the roof of his mouth behind his teeth and slowly trailed it deep to the back then forward again in a languorous rhythm all of her body reached to simulate.

He let himself catch the rhythm she taught him, and they moved together with such agonizing grace that all pain, physical, emotional, spiritual, was forgotten, melted into the pattering water and the moonlight and the jewel-green shadows.

When the magic started, when the enchantment of touch and motion and heat sparked and ignited and shattered into crystal splinters, she clung to him with such passion and love and life that it burned away the knot of fear within him that she might ever again choose to escape life. They held each other fiercely in the rippling aftershocks and she whispered, "Keep me safe, Nicholas. Never let me go."

"Never," he promised. "Never."





Chapter Fourteen





Dawn found Nicholas and Trissa tucked safely in their own bed. Her warm, well-loved body lay snuggled along the length of his with her head and one hand resting protectively on his chest. His chin touched the top of her head and his arms encircled her. Their legs were a tangle of his and hers, his and hers. Nicholas was awake, savoring the soft puffs of air that rippled across his chest as she breathed in and out against him. He would not be able to extricate himself without waking her, and he was not sure whether he regretted his entrapment or not.