How they’d almost made love. Heat stormed his veins. She’d felt magnificent beneath him, her seductive taste still potent in his mind. Thomas glanced toward the closed door, the earlier needed privacy shifting onto dangerous, intimate ground.
His father’s advice for Thomas to tell Alesone how he felt about her echoed in his mind. If he admitted that he cared, things between them would change. He silently swore. As if their intimacy to this point hadna done that? In the end he decided for a mixture of the two.
“When I sailed from France,” Thomas said, choosing his words with caution, “never did I believe that I would find a woman who would intrigue me, or make me care. Then I met you. Between my loyalty to the Templars, my fealty to King Robert, and the complications of my family, I was torn if ’twas fair to allow you into my life.” He exhaled. “Yet with you, ’twould seem that I had nay choice.”
Hope flickered on her face, and he damned that he couldna give her the words she wanted to hear. “I lead men into combat without hesitation, remain calm in the midst of battle. That I am unsure how to proceed with how deeply I care for you leaves me baffled.” Tenderness filled Alesone as Thomas struggled to explain, the strain in his voice betraying the difficulty of his admission. As a Templar, a fierce warrior who defied the odds in many a battle, to flounder with his growing feelings for her, or how she fit into his life, left him frustrated.
At himself.
Never her.
The need for him she’d smothered beneath her upset seeped through, erasing the anger she’d clung to, leaving only warmth. With her mind clear, she stared at the man who from the start had challenged her, dared push her as no man before, and broken down her every barrier.
Heart pounding she stilled, the realization of the moment leaving her stunned, and explained why when he’d pushed her away earlier, it’d hurt, horribly so.
God in heaven, she loved him!
The euphoria of the moment faded beneath reality. Though he admitted that he cared for her, ’twas a far cry from wanting her in his life.
After being treated as an outcast by her father and the men in the surrounding village during her youth, she’d vowed to never allow a man such power over her. Except against her every barrier, he’d claimed her heart.
A fact he didna know.
“Now what?” she asked.
Desire darkened his gaze, and he skimmed his thumb along the curve of her cheek and then across her lower lip. “Though I have nay right to ask, I would be wanting to kiss you.”
Tingles ignited over her skin. Her body tensed, aching to hear his words of love.
For now naught but a wish.
His admission of moments before exposed the difficulty of his transition from a knight serving God to a warrior free to a life beyond the strict rule of a Templar.
Would he ever come to love her? Was she foolish to nurture such a dream? Dare she give him the intimacy she desperately wanted?
And if she walked away, never would she know what they could have had. However terrifying to yield to her desire, Alesone found ’twas more frightening to walk away and never know.
Chapter Sixteen
“Aye, ’twould be your kiss that I am wanting,” Alesone said as she leaned her body against Thomas’s muscled length, aware if he choose he could haul her against him and take what he wanted, but this close, she didna feel fear, but desire. “And more.”
His mouth hovered over hers, his breath skimming across her lips, soft, teasing as if a dare. On a groan, he kissed the edge of her mouth, along the curve of her jaw, and then returned to skim his lips over hers.
“I thought,” she rasped as heat burned inside, “you were going to kiss me.”
“I,” he whispered as his tongue worked miracles against her skin, “am working my way toward that.”
“I…” she moaned as his mouth pressed intimately over hers. With mind-teasing slowness he deepened the kiss until her thoughts blurred and her every breath tasted of him. Unsure at which moment they’d moved, she found her back against the door and their bodies flush. Heat pouring through her, she skimmed her hands along his back, over his arms, desperate to feel every inch the man who against her every caution had stolen her heart.
On a rough breath, he lifted his head. Green eyes churning with hunger burned into hers. “I want you.”
Alesone pressed her body brazenly against his hardness. “I want you as well.”
On a rough hiss, he released the ties of her garb. Whisper soft, her gown tumbled to the bed of straw. Air crisp with the morning caressed her nakedness, and her body tingled beneath his sensual appraisal.
His heated gaze holding hers, he stroked his thumb across her nipple, then cupped her breast.
“Thomas,” she gasped as his hands slid lower, touching, teasing her until beneath the onslaught, her knees threated to buckled. Without warning he took the kiss deeper.
