The Mackades Collection (Books 1-4). Nora Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ I was thinking to myself, sort of projecting, I suppose. I imagined this, well, I thought I was imagining a Bible stand, with an old family Bible opened on it. And I could read the page, almost touch it. Marriage and births and death.”

      She took time to catch her breath. “You’re not saying anything.”

      “Because I’m listening to you.”

      “I know it sounds crazy.”

      “Not in this house, it doesn’t.”

      “It was so real, so sad. The way the scent of roses in this room is real, and sad. Then it was so cold, bitter, like a window had been flung open to the weather.”

      She moved her shoulders, laid her head on his chest again. “That’s all.”

      “That’s a lot for one day.” Wanting to soothe, he stroked his hand over her hair. “I can give Devin a call, have him come get you.”

      “No, I don’t want to leave. It shook me for a moment, but it’s just as I said before. You get to accept it. I can handle it.”

      “I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

      “Don’t be silly. I don’t need to be guarded against grieving ghosts.”

      But he wanted to guard her. He wished she had called for him. It surprised him just how much he wished she had needed him enough to call out for him.

      “Next time you want to go in the library, let me know. I’ll go with you.”

      “The house is already changing,” she said quietly. “You’ve done that by caring for it. I like feeling I’ve had a part in that, too.”

      “You have.” He pressed his lips to her hair.

      “When people live in it, make love in it, laugh in it, it’ll change again. The house needs people.”

      She shifted, lifted her mouth to his. “Make love with me.”

      He cupped her face in his hands, deepened the kiss. When he picked her up, carried her from the room, the scent of roses followed. She looped her arms around him, pressed her lips to his throat. Already her blood was heating, already her pulse was pounding.

      “It’s like a drug,” she murmured.

      “I know.” He stopped at the top of the stairs, found her mouth again.

      “I’ve never been like this before.” Swamped with emotions, she turned her face into his shoulder.

      Neither had he, he thought.

      As he carried her down, neither noticed that the air had remained warm and calm.

      He laid her in front of the fire. Levering himself up on his elbow, he traced the shape of her face with a fingertip. Something kindled inside her, simmered with desire and flamed around her heart.

      “Rafe.”

      “Ssh…”

      To quiet her, he brushed his lips over her brow. She didn’t know what she would have said, was grateful he’d stopped her. The wanting was more than enough. She could be relieved that neither of them needed words.

      She should have been relieved.

      Her mouth was ready for his, and it warmed beautifully under the pressure of lips and tongue. Though desire remained, poised and trembling, everything in her seemed to soften.

      Here was tenderness, so sweet, so unexpected. Her sigh whispered out like a secret.

      He felt the change, in her, in himself. Marveled at it. Why had they always been in such a hurry? he wondered. Why had he hesitated to savor, and be savored, when there was so much here?

      He loved the flavor of her, that quietly seductive taste that clung to her skin. The feel of her, soft curves, long lines. The smell of her hair, her clothes, her shoulders.

      So he savored it now, all of it, with long, slow kisses that clouded his mind and made him forget there was anything beyond this room for either of them.

      His hands were careful this time as he drew her sweater off, slipped the trousers down her hips. Rather than touch, rather than take, he kissed her again, drawing out the simple meeting of lips until her body went limp.

      “Let me.” With a dreamy murmur, she shifted until they were both kneeling. Already clouded, her eyes stayed on his while she unbuttoned his shirt. Trapped in the silky mood, she slipped it away and, with her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, swayed to him.

      They held each other, moving only for quiet, sipping tastes, soft, gentle caresses. She smiled when his lips brushed her shoulder, sighed when hers tasted his throat.

      When they were naked, he drew her down so that she lay over him, so that her hair fell to curtain them both.

      She could have floated on this whisper-thin cloud of sensations endlessly, with the winter sun slanting cold light through the windows, the fire crackling, his body strong and hard beneath hers.

      The feel of his hands on her, stroking, soothing even as they aroused, was like a gift. She felt the wonder of it in every pore, in every nerve, with every pulse.

      There was no clash and fury now, no desperation, no vicious drive to mate. Now she was aware of everything—the dust motes spinning in the sunbeam that rayed over the floor, the sedate hiss of flame on wood, the scent of roses and man.

      She could count his heartbeats, quicker, stronger, as her lips trailed over his chest. The bunching and quivering of a muscle beneath her hand, the sound of her own thickening breath.

      With a sigh that caught in her throat, she wrapped around him as he rolled her to her back.

      Time spun out, stretched, quivered. The clock on the mantel ticked the seconds away, and the minutes. But that was another world. Here there were only needs lazily satisfied, and hearts quietly lost.

      For pleasure—his as well as hers—he eased her gently to the edge and over. His name was only a murmur on her lips as she arched, tensed, softened to silk. She opened for him, drawing him close with a velvety moan as he slipped into her.

      Overwhelmed by her, by the simplicity of it, he burrowed his face in her hair. The tenderness shattered them both.

      They didn’t speak of it. When they parted in the morning, both of them were determinedly casual. But they thought of it. And they worried.

      Rafe watched her drive off as the sun struggled over the mountains to the east. When she was gone, when there was no one to see, he rubbed the heel of his hand over his heart.

      There was an ache there that he couldn’t quite will away. He had a very bad feeling that she was the cause of it, and that somehow, in a matter of hours, he’d gotten in over his head.

      God, he missed her already.

      He swore at himself for that, then swore again for reaching like a trained dog for the cigarettes that weren’t there. Both were just habits, he assured СКАЧАТЬ