Until You

Sheridan swallowed, watching him leaning up on his elbow, looking at her, then closing his eyes, and her heart sank. Feeling it was better to know about her flaws so that she could either disguise them or hide them, she said in a shaky voice, "What's wrong with me?"

"What's wrong with you?" he repeated in disbelief. He tore his gaze from the bounty before him and leaned over her to kiss her. "What's wrong with you," he whispered achingly, sliding his hand around her waist and pulling her closer, "is that you are exquisite, and I want you so damned much…"

The words were as seductive as the kiss that followed it. He opened her mouth with his, moving his lips back and forth almost roughly, and then his tongue drove between her parted lips in a fiercely erotic kiss, retreating and plunging again and again, until desire was streaking through Sheridan like lightning bolts. Leaning over her, he kissed her until she heard herself moaning softly, and then his lips were at her aching breasts again and his hand was sliding downward over her stomach, reaching lower, covering the soft mound between her legs. His fingers teased and tormented her, until Sheridan was clinging to him, parting her legs and giving him access.

She was damp and more than ready for him, and the bed shifted as he got out of it, leaving her feeling cold and alone. She opened her eyes and saw him standing beside the bed, his hands at his waistband, and then he came back to her, and the magic began again, only hotter this time, and Sheridan gave herself up to it. She turned to him in trembling need, her fingers flexing against his shoulders, her body arching against his hand.

Stephen was half demented with need. Cupping her bottom in both hands, he pulled her tightly against him. Then he wedged his knee between hers, probing with his body and then finding. He shifted his hips and slid into her, feeling her opening for him and then sheathing him while her nails dug into his shoulders. She was helping him, her knee lifted to give him deeper access, and he tried, one last time, to slow them both down. Keeping one arm around her hips, he cradled her face against his chest and rocked gently inside her, increasing the depth and tempo of each stroke imperceptibly, but when she crushed her soft mouth to his and began to move her hips with his, Stephen was lost.

Sheridan felt the thunder of his heart beneath her ear and the driving force of his powerful strokes deep within her, and she felt her body begin to soar and reach and clasp him tighter. "I love you," she cried on a sob as the universe began to come apart, and he rolled her swiftly onto her back, driving deeper, kissing her with fiery urgency. His hand found hers on the pillow near her head as his hips rammed deeper, and his fingers threaded through hers, holding tightly.

He was holding her hand like that when the universe exploded in a burst of pleasure that tore a sobbing moan from her, and she felt his life pumping into her, his body shuddering again and again with the force of the explosion, his hand tightening.

Stephen fought his way back from oblivion with an effort, leaning up on his forearms to take his weight off her, and he forced his eyes open. Her satin curls were spread all over the pillow in wild disarray, exactly as he'd imagined they would be someday, and his hand was holding hers.

His hand was holding hers…

Filled with a feeling that was part joy, part awe, and part reverence, he gazed down at the woman who had just sent him to unparalleled heights of desire and unequalled depths of satisfaction. Her eyes fluttered open, and he tried to smile, to tell her that he loved her, but his chest was constricted with emotion, and there was an unfamiliar lump in his throat as he looked at their clasped hands on the pillow.

He had never held a woman's hand at a time like this in his life.

He had never thought of it.

He had never wanted to.

Until now.

Sheridan felt his hand tighten on hers and sensed instinctively what he was looking at with that strange expression of tenderness on his handsome face. Weak from the passion they'd shared, it took an effort to move her right hand from his nape and to put it on the pillow beside her face, where he could reach it. His long fingers slid over her palm and then twined with hers, closing tightly.

Stephen bent his head and kissed her lips, their bodies joined, their hands clasped. He closed his eyes, swallowed, and tried to tell her again what he felt, to explain that he'd never known there were feelings like this, but the emotions were still too raw, and he was still out of breath. All he could manage to say was, "Until you…"

She understood. He knew she did, because her hands tightened convulsively on his and she turned her face and kissed his fingers.

Epilogue

Seated in the drawing room at Montclair amidst exquisite furnishings that had once occupied European palaces, surrounded by all the trappings of his wealth and position, Stephen Westmoreland looked up at the gilt-framed portraits of his ancestors that lined the silk-panelled walls, and he wondered if they'd had as much trouble as he was having trying to be alone with his bride of two days.

Above the fireplace mantel, the first Earl of Langford looked down at him from atop a mighty black warhorse, a visored helmet under his arm, his cloak swirling behind him. He looked like the sort of man who would have tossed his knights into the moat to get rid of them if they didn't have sense enough to leave him alone in his castle with his new bride.

On the wall across from Stephen, the second Earl of Langford reclined in front of his fire with two of his knights. His wife was seated nearby, surrounded by women working on a tapestry. The second earl had a more civilized look than his father, Stephen decided. That ancestor would have been more likely to send his knights on a trumped-up errand and then order his drawbridge pulled up.

Bored with studying his ancestors, Stephen turned his head slightly and indulged in the more pleasurable occupation of studying his wife who was seated across from him, surrounded by his mother, his brother, Whitney, and Nicholas DuVille. Mentally, he tipped her chin up and kissed her while, with his free hand, he teased the shoulder of her lemon gown off, slipping it down her arm, then cupped her full breast and deepened the kiss. He was trailing a kiss down the side of her neck, working slowly to the nipple he wanted to kiss, when he realized Nicholas DuVille was watching him with a look that was both amused and knowing. Stephen was spared the embarrassment of blushing like an errant schoolboy by the arrival of Hodgkin, whom he'd retrieved from exile yesterday, and who walked to his side. "Excuse me, my lord," Hodgkin said, "but you have guests."

"Who are they?" Stephen said irritably, swallowing the impulse to tell the old man to pitch the new arrivals into the lake-since he had no nice, deep moat with which to dispose of them-and then to bar the gates at the entrance to the estate.

Hodgkin lowered his voice and whispered. As he explained the situation, Stephen's a

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