Again the Magic (Wallflowers 0.5)(6)

They lounged together at their favorite spot by the river, where a meadow sloped down to the banks. Tall grasses camouflaged them from view as they sat on flat rocks that had been worn smooth by the quietly persistent flow of water. The air was thick with the scents of bog myrtle and sun-warmed heather, a mixture that soothed Aline’s senses.

“Why didn’t you go with her?” Aline asked, drawing her knees up beneath her skirts and locking her arms around them.

Stretching out his long, lanky body, McKenna propped himself up on one elbow. “With whom?”

She rolled her eyes at his pretended ignorance. “Lady Brading—the woman who wanted to hire you. Why did you refuse her?”

His slow smile nearly blinded her. “Because I belong here.”

“With me?”

McKenna was silent, his smile lingering as he stared into her eyes. Unspoken words drifted between them…words as tangible as the very air they breathed.

Aline wanted to curl up beside him like a drowsing cat, relaxing in the sunshine and the shelter of his body. Instead she forced herself to remain still. “I overheard one of the footmen saying that you could have gotten double the salary you earn now—only you would have to provide her with a different kind of service than you’re used to.”

“That must have been James talking,” McKenna muttered. “Damn his loose tongue. How would he know, anyway?”

Aline was fascinated to see a blush crossing the crests of his cheeks and the heavy bridge of his nose. Then she understood. The woman had wanted to hire McKenna to come to her bed. A woman at least twice his age. Aline felt her own face begin to heat, and she let her gaze slip over the broad slope of his shoulder, down to the large hand that rested on a green-black berth of moss.

“She wanted you to sleep with her,” Aline said rather than asked, breaking a silence that had become painfully intimate.

McKenna’s shoulders twitched in the barest hint of a shrug. “I doubt that sleeping was her intention.”

Her heart was spurred into a violent cadence as she realized that this had not been the first time that such a thing had happened to McKenna. She had never allowed herself to dwell fully on McKenna’s sexual experience—the prospect was too disturbing to contemplate. He was hers, and it was unbearable to think of him turning to someone else for needs that she longed to fulfill. If only, if only…

Smothering beneath the weight of jealousy, Aline fixed her gaze on McKenna’s big, callused hand. Some other woman knew more of McKenna than she did, than she ever would. Someone had taken his body over hers, inside hers, and had known the warm sweetness of his mouth, and the glide of his hand on her skin.

Carefully she pushed back a lock of hair that had blown across her eyes. “When…when was the first time you—” She was forced to stop as the words stuck in her throat. It was the first time she had ever asked about his sexual pursuits—a subject that he had always taken scrupulous care to avoid.

McKenna did not reply. Glancing up at him, Aline saw that he appeared to be lost in deep contemplation of a beetle as it climbed up a long blade of grass. “I don’t think we should talk about that,” he said eventually, his voice very soft.

“I don’t blame you for sleeping with other girls. I expected it, actually…I just…” Aline shook her head slightly, pained and bemused as she forced herself to admit the truth. “I just wish that it could be me,” she managed, while the lump in her throat expanded.

McKenna’s head bent, the sunlight slipping over his dark hair. He sighed and reached out to her face, stroking back the lock of hair as it fell over her cheek once more. The tip of his thumb brushed the beauty mark near her mouth, the little black fleck that had always seemed to fascinate him so. “It can’t ever be you,” he murmured.

Aline nodded, while raw emotion made her mouth pucker and her eyes squint against the threat of tears. “McKenna—”

“Don’t,” he warned roughly, snatching his hand back, his fingers closing tightly around a pocket of empty air. “Don’t say it, Aline.”

“It doesn’t change anything, whether I say it or not. I need you. I need to be with you.”

“No—”

“Imagine how you would feel if I slept with some other man,” she said in reckless misery, “knowing he was giving me the pleasure that you can’t, that he was holding me in his arms at night and—”

McKenna made a growling sound and rolled over her swiftly, spreading her beneath him on the hard ground. His body was heavy and powerful, settling deeper as Aline’s legs opened instinctively beneath her skirts. “I would kill him,” McKenna said harshly. “I couldn’t bear it.” He glared into her tear-blotched face, and then his gaze moved to her flushed throat and the rapid movements of her uplifted br**sts. An odd mixture of triumph and alarm filled Aline as she saw the sexual heat in his gaze, and felt the aggressive male energy of his body. He was aroused—she could feel the hard, insistent prodding between her thighs. McKenna closed his eyes, struggling to control himself. “I have to let go of you,” he said tightly.

“Not yet,” Aline whispered. She wriggled a little, her h*ps lifting against his, and the movement caused a ripple of sensation deep in her abdomen.

McKenna groaned, hanging over her, while his fingers dug into the dense layer of moss that covered the ground. “Don’t.” His voice was ragged with anger and strain and…something else…something that sounded like excitement.