Remember Love (Ravenswood #1)(85)

Oh, but he was.

It was just a term—making love. Being in love. Just words. She raised one arm and ran her fingers through his hair and then down over his bare chest with its hard muscles and light dusting of dark hair.

This was happening. She did not care what he called it, or what she called it for that matter. This just was, and ah, Devlin. Ah, my love. And it did not matter that he was experienced while she was not. They were here to enjoy—his word. And to love—her word. She let passion bubble through her and out of her. She reached for him with both arms, drew him down to her, kissed him open-mouthed, murmured words into his mouth, unaware that she was speaking Welsh. “Rwy’n dy garu di”—I love you.

He moved to lie fully over her and on top of her. He pushed her legs apart as he came, and she wrapped them about his. His weight robbed her of breath, but it did not matter. His hands came beneath her and held her steady and he came inside her with one firm, swift thrust and did not stop until he was deep. Pain and shock robbed her for a moment of what breath was left her, but it lasted only a moment before glory burst in to replace it. They were together. At last. Ah, at long, long last. He was Devlin. Dear God, he was Devlin.

He held inside her, rocking his hips slightly against hers, and he raised his head to gaze again into her eyes. His still looked very dark in the dimness of the curtained summerhouse. And still hard and inscrutable. Ah, he was locked so tight inside himself.

“I am sorry to have hurt you,” he murmured. Not the words of a hard man.

She shook her head. “I want it all,” she told him.

He moved then, withdrawing from her, thrusting inward again, and repeating the motions over and over until there was a rhythm to the enjoyment he gave, accompanied by the sounds of their labored breathing and the wetness of their coupling. Gwyneth was unable to move freely on the sofa beneath his weight, but she moved her hips and matched his rhythm with the clenching and unclenching of inner muscles. And there was surely nothing lovelier, more intimate, more raw, more nearly painful in this life. And nothing with which to compare it. His rhythm quickened and deepened after a long, wonderful while, and the yearning for something just beyond her grasp grew until it threatened to drive her to madness. Until suddenly he stopped moving and held hard inside her, and she reached and reached and . . .

And cried out.

And shattered into . . . Not into a million pieces as she had expected, but into that nameless something for which she had yearned. Something that was sweet and quiet and so . . . But the word would not come, and really, did it matter? Some things just simply were. She wrapped an arm about his shoulders and ran her fingers into his hair. And deep inside her she felt the hot gush of his release.



* * *



—

It had not felt like enjoyment at all. It had left him feeling closer to tears than he had been since . . . when? He could not remember a time. Though yes, he could. When he had been saying goodbye to Stephanie and Owen and Philippa. And then Gwyneth. On the last Sunday in July six years ago. When he had still been human—and a virgin.

In all the time since then he had associated sex with pleasure and relaxation and . . . comfort. Not, damn it all to hell, with tears and a soreness in his chest and a strong urge to run away. From everyone and everything until there was no farther to run. Except . . . Ah, except that he could not run from the one person he most wished to escape. He could not run from himself.

Or from Gwyneth either.

There will be no way back if we make love now. Not for either of us, he had told her earlier. They had made love. Or had sexual relations, anyway. There was no way back. Not for her. Not for him.

They dressed in silence, their backs to each other. He waited for her to retrieve enough hairpins from the floor to pin up her hair relatively neatly. He pulled back the curtains. And then they were walking side by side back along the alley. The air felt chill and welcome after the warmth of the summerhouse.

“What did you say?” he asked her, though he was not sure he wanted to know.

“Say?”

“It sounded like Welsh,” he said.

“Oh,” she said. “It was nothing.”

He looked sidelong at her. Gwyneth. He knew her now. He knew the feel of her, skin to skin, the heat of her, the taste and smell of her. And she was his, for the rest of their lives. He still could not remember why, since he needed a wife and the sooner the better, he had decided his wife would definitely not be Gwyneth Rhys. Perhaps because he would be hers for the rest of their lives, and that would be no bargain for her.

“It was rwy’n dy garu di,” she told him.

He waited.

“I love you,” she said. “That is the translation.”

There were a few clouds overhead. Were they going to lose the sunshine?

“The thing is, Devlin,” she said, “that I meant it then, though I did not know I was going to say it aloud, and I mean it now. And I am not going to pretend to stop feeling it or living it just because you cannot. I will try not to say it too often, because that will annoy you, just as it would annoy me if you were to keep on telling me that you cannot love me. You promised a partnership. Let us be partners, then, working together for the good of both of us, but separate persons, entitled to our own thoughts and feelings and inclinations.”

“That,” he said, “sounds fair enough.”

. . . but separate persons.