youth had been a mostly wasted one, his years at Cambridge a tangle of drink and women and brawls, until one particularly vivid fight had caught his uncle’s attention and he’d been forced to find a new direction in his life. Forced to take the chance to redeem himself by serving the Queen. He’d been sent to the country to ferret out the participants in a rumuored Catholic plot to unseat Elizabeth and put Queen Mary on the throne—the sort of plot that came up like weeds every year and had to be chopped down. It had seemed a simple enough task. An easy way to get back in his family’s good graces and make a name for himself with Elizabeth.
But then he’d seen Celia standing across the room at a banquet, dressed in a simple white gown and with her hair loose over her shoulders in midnight-coloured waves. It had seemed as if all the light in the chamber gathered only on her, on her shy smile, the pale, serene cast of her face. Everything had gone so still in that moment.
Everything had changed, and he had never forgotten it. He had always liked women—their voices, their laughter, their soft, perfumed bodies. He’d liked them too much to think of settling with only one, but Celia was different. She’d made him imagine a new life, new ways of thinking and being. Until it all had exploded—as he’d known it would from that first moment.
Yet he still couldn’t stay away from her. It seemed he never could.
Celia sighed again, and a frown drifted over her brow as if she saw something in her dreams that disturbed her.
“Shh,” John whispered, and she settled in his arms. In her sleep she trusted him.
And in that moment, in the silent, cold darkness of the night, enveloped in their own small world of firelight and snow, they were together. He held her safe. He only wanted to make that moment last.
When Celia woke again, she could tell it was day by the pale grey light beyond her closed eyes. Yet she didn’t quite want to relinquish her dreams. Not yet. She wanted to hold onto that fantasy world, and to those fleeting moments when she and John were not enemies.
She slowly stretched against the rumpled sheets and realised most of the ache was gone. She only felt a new, fresh energy flowing through her, the brush of warm air over her bare arms.
She turned her head on the pillow and opened her eyes to find herself alone on the bed. No snow fell outside the window; there was just that hard grey light.
She pushed herself up against the pillows and saw that John sat by the fire, frowning down at some papers in his hand. A basin and a length of towelling lay on the table beside him, and he looked as if he had just washed. He wore no shirt, and the damp ends of his hair slowly trailed crystal drops of water over his naked shoulders and chest. That light golden skin glowed with the water and the firelight, as if he was an idol in some pagan temple.
She watched avidly as one drop traced a path through the light scattering of brown hair on his chest, arrowing down to the fastening of his leather breeches. For a moment she indulged in the fantasy that it was her hand touching him there, teasing him until that ridged abdomen tightened and …
He glanced up and caught her staring. A roguish grin curved his lips, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. She felt her cheeks turn hot, and she sank back down to the bed so he couldn’t see that she blushed like a silly, innocent girl. She remembered so well that old feeling with him.
“So you’re awake at last,” he said. “Did you sleep well?”
“Aye, thank you,” Celia managed to answer. “I feel much recovered.”
She heard the papers he held flutter to the table, and the tread of his bare feet on the wood floor as he walked purposefully towards the bed.
She felt his knee press into the mattress and tried to draw the sheet over her head. His fingers curled over the edge of the fabric and pulled it away as he knelt over her. She found herself staring up into his glowing blue eyes as he smiled down at her. He seemed in a strangely good mood.
“I’m glad to hear you’re feeling better, Celia,” he said, still smiling. “Perhaps you’re wanting your breakfast now? You looked hungry enough just then.”
“I …”
Before she could say anything else, his mouth swooped down over hers. Open, hot, hungry, as if he wanted to devour her. It awakened something deep inside of her, that seed of longing and need that only John had ever created. He had caused such pain and anger in her life, but such wondrous things too. Emotions and sensations she had never dreamed could exist.
He still did. And when he kissed her he swept her away on a river of fire.
She opened her lips and drew his tongue in over hers. His taste filled her mouth and she moaned. Oh, yes—she did remember this, so very well. And it made her feel just as it once had.
John’s arms came hard around her and dragged her closer to his naked chest. As they kissed, deeper, hungrier, their tongues entwining, thrusting, she laid her hands flat on his shoulders and felt the damp heat of him against her palms. John groaned deep in his throat, his hands fisting in the cloth of her chemise as if he would rip it from her.
Emboldened, Celia slid her caress lower, slowly, savouring the way he felt against her. He was just as she remembered—just as he was in her fevered dreams of the past—only even better. Stronger, harder, hotter. This was what she needed. This was what would close her past with him, let her put it all aside. To have him as he was now, as she was now, and know that was all there was. Free of the past, with only the feelings of this one moment to think of.
She traced her fingertips over his flat nipples and felt them pebble under her touch. She scraped the edge of her thumbnail over one and he growled. She pressed slightly harder, hard enough to give just the slightest edge of pain, but he didn’t shove her away or slap her as her husband would have. His skin rippled, but he went on kissing her.
She slid her touch lower, feeling every inch of his torso, every bit of his skin. He felt like hot satin stretched taut over hard muscle, and the light whorls of hair tickled her palms. She dipped the tip of her smallest finger into his navel before she moved even lower to the band of his breeches.
Suddenly her boldness fled. She could feel his erection, rock-hard against her wrist.
“Curse it, Celia, don’t stop now,” he whispered as his mouth left hers. He pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses to her jaw, the soft curve of her throat. He nibbled at her there, drawing the skin between his teeth to nip lightly at her.
Celia gasped and let her head fall back as her hand convulsed against his waist. Her heart was pounding as if it would burst, and she could feel that his was too as his body pressed closer to hers.
His mouth opened on the pulse that beat at the base of her neck, that vulnerable hollow so sensitive to sensation. He licked at it, swirling the tip of his tongue there before he closed his teeth on it.
“John!” she cried, her head arching back even more until the braid of her hair lashed at his arm. She felt him tug the binding free and her hair fell loose over her shoulders. He didn’t raise his head. His open mouth swept over her collarbone, the little hollows just at her shoulders, until he could nip at the soft upper swell of her breast.
