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She paced back and the window stopped her. “I want everything.” Her voice faltered because he came two feet from her. The scent of him hit her nostrils. Wind, horse and man. Inebriating.
“So do I.” It came as a silky caress and in a completely different meaning than hers.
Lucinda had to bend her head back more than forty-five degrees to meet his eyes; hers, wide, dilated. “It’s better if you leave.” Her suggestion backfired by her grave inflection. She had to moisten lips as dry as the desert.
His gaze fell on her sensuous mouth, making them tingle. He followed avidly every tiny move of her tongue, captivated. “Better, much better.” He referred to her lips, naturally. And then she was in his tight embrace, his mouth plundering hers, the world vanishing in a distant derangement.
She didn’t even try to resist, didn’t stand a chance. Her hands, holding the book, trapped between them as if simple paper could defend her from the avalanche of heat that invaded her instantly. She moaned helpless.
One of his hands slid behind her nape and pressed her mouth against his. His other arm circled her waist and made her entire body lean on hard muscles. Their tongues entwined in a melting dance which turned her to jelly. He deepened the kiss, deepening her hunger, an empty sensation in her core.
He turned his head to gain more access to her, nipping her lower lip, licking her upper one, creating a criss-cross of sensation which ripped at her insides. His hand pressed her hips to his and she registered his urgent need reflected on her own.
She needed more, so much more. The deprivation she had been through taking its toll. The damn book impeded her to merge her frustrated fingers in his sleek, marvellous obsidian hair.
“Lucinda.” A whisper, more like a demand. And a promise to give, to take, to join. To relieve.
Knocks on the door.
Tariq went back to looting her mouth.
Pause at the door.
His tongue delved deeper. The window supported her because her knees would not. Her sole choice to open more for him.
He moaned.
She moaned.
More knocks.
Blast!
Tariq moved away breathing hard. He turned from her, raking his fingers in his hair.
She envied even his fingers. A sense of abandonment overtook her. “Come.” she uttered with her last forces.
Mr Burns opened the door and absorbed the scene in the room. Lucinda leaning weak on the cool glass of the window, enfolding the crushed book in her tremulous arms. Tariq, hands on his breeches’ waistline looking blindly at the fire in the fireplace, the light playing bluish on his hair.
“I came to check if you need anything, Lady Lucinda.”
She couldn’t blame him, poor man. She was alone in the manor and he had the task to make sure she remained safe.
“I am fine, Mr Burns. The gentleman in on his way.” She didn’t spare so much as a glance in his direction. Didn’t want to see him walking out, taking with him all she was, all she necessitated, leaving her in this scarcity, this endless sterile desert.
Tariq didn’t cast his heated gaze in her direction either. His arms fell along his body, as if giving up, and he marched out of the library, a sheaf of tense muscles. And now she’d become the first woman who’d invited him out of her house altogether. The first and only woman to ever cause this earthquake in him.
The library door closed silently. When it did, Lucinda’s legs gave and she deliquesced to the floor, grasping the lonesome book, as if it’d turn into the plank that would keep her above water. She remembered to breathe as her forehead fell and touched the yellowed cover.
Tariq left her haughty manor in wrenching vexation. He mounted his Arab black stallion and rode the muddy track to the property gates. Frustration, resentment and a perverse joy mingled in him. Seeing her and not being able to take her lacerating enough. That she had the power to command her staff for whatever she wished, was new to him. But part of him, or the better part of him, got smugly satisfied that he got to see her, be in the same room, kiss her. The bitter-sweet chance to kiss her and envision an unattainable paradise tore his body in contradicted emotions. It worsened his craving, though; as he saw himself in a stalemate, without knowing how to proceed from here. He needed to take careful action. The careful part presented a problem. He didn’t have the precious ability to think clearly where she was concerned. She pulled him like a magnet and he lost all rational mind. He didn’t have the faintest idea of what this represented. This pulp of sensations, feelings and scattered thoughts probably posed the strangest state he’d ever been in. It wasn’t pleasant in the least.
The village came into view and he rode to the inn.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lucinda retired early that evening. Her stomach rejected any suggestion of dinner and she’d ordered tea to her rooms. Finished with it, she opened the door and went out in the balcony. The rain had long gone, the moon shone in between wisps of clouds and a cool breeze waved the curtains and combed her waist-long free hair.
The certainty she would not get any sleep crossed her. The sight of Tariq caused an earthquake in her insides. To learn of his presence right here, in her country, in this very village was creakingly disquieting. Distractedly, she pulled the balcony doors closed and walked towards the bed. She wished he hadn’t come, after all; his nearness would delay forgetting him. No, she’d never forget him, but time would surely make it less painful.
