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"Three … hours…" Another violent shudder, and he began moving reflexively against her palm, fighting the urge to relinquish his self-control and plunge deep inside her.
The war was lost the instant she raised her hips, teased him with the irresistible allure of her lower body.
"You make me insane," he growled, dragging her hand away, kneeing her thighs apart with his own. "You're too damned sore for this. I should wait. Hell, I should have waited altogether—for our wedding night." He entered her slowly, stretching her sensitive passage one glorious inch at a time. "But, God, Noelle, I lose all reason, all control, all ability to think around you." He threw back his head, gritting his teeth as she closed around him, hot, wet, still quivering with the tiny aftershocks of her climax.
Noelle cried out, in ecstasy not pain, and lifted her knees to take him deeper. "Ashford…" Unbelievably, her body jolted back to life, her entire being converging around him, her lingering spasms clasping his full length, tantalizing him beyond endurance.
"Damn." His control shattered, and he hooked his arms beneath her knees, opened her totally to his possession, and buried himself inside her. "Sweetheart, forgive me…" he rasped, pounding into her with the full force of his need. "God, Noelle." He was lost in sensation, his handsome features contorted as he drove helplessly for fulfillment.
Wrapping her arms about him, Noelle met his every thrust, her heart touched as deeply as her body, her soul sharing his unfathomable, bottomless need, the overwhelming emotion that inspired it.
They reached the peak together, Noelle gasping out Ashford's name, contracting fiercely all around him as he erupted, drove—inconceivably—farther into her, flooded the mouth of her womb with his seed.
They dropped onto the cushions, drenched and spent, their hearts hammering as one.
The dark haze of sensation hovered languidly around them, wrapping them in a timeless and enveloping aftermath.
This time, it was Noelle who stirred first.
She turned her face into Ashford's neck, feeling tears of emotion well up in her eyes, trickle down her cheeks. Ashford tensed, his head coming up the instant he felt the moisture against his skin. "I hurt you."
"No." Noelle shook her head, adamantly refuting his claim. "Oh, no."
"Then why are you crying?"
She gazed up at him, her heart in her eyes. "Because I love you," she whispered. "So very, very much."
Ashford went still. His gaze darkened, delved deep into hers. "I want to spend the rest of my life with you," he said hoarsely, capturing her tears with his thumbs. "To have children with you. To grow old with you." He framed her face between his palms, brushed her lips with his. "I love you, tempête. Never forget that. Tonight is only the beginning."
* * *
Tonight is only the beginning.
Those words replayed themselves in Noelle's mind, over and over—as did everything else that had accompanied them—throughout the next morning, until the new day was well under way.
Curled next to Tempest on the ledge of the sitting-room window, Noelle sipped at her tea, watching the sun climb higher into the sky, yet seeing nothing but last night. The sensual discovery, the baring of secrets, the incomparable feeling of oneness. It was all part of an extraordinary dream that Noelle would treasure forever, relive again and again.
She shifted her weight—and winced a bit. Despite the long bath she'd taken before breakfast, her body ached in places she hadn't known existed, and her muscles felt weak and watery. Not to mention her head, which throbbed from a scant two hours' sleep, and her eyes, which burned with fatigue.
Nonetheless, she'd never felt better in all her life.
She smiled, taking another sip of the warm liquid, leaning her head against the wood frame defining the windowsill. A month. That was all the time Ashford intended to wait. He'd made that quite clear, regardless of how much there was to do.
And how much there was yet to resolve.
Noelle's smiled faded and, realistically, she contemplated the complications that remained to be faced. First and foremost, Ashford had to officially ask her father for her hand. Somehow she didn't anticipate that to be either a problem or a surprise. Both her parents knew how deeply in love with Ashford she was. And, plans or not, they wanted her happiness above all else. So she suspected—and hoped—that her father would grant them his permission and his blessing, and that by midday her betrothal to Ashford would be a fait accompli.
Then there were the remaining details of his past Ashford had yet to relate to her—details that needed to be divulged and understood before she and Ashford could store away his secret forever. That conversation would take time—as usual, she had a wealth of unanswered questions—but it was nothing the two of them couldn't surmount.
Baricci.
He was the biggest obstacle impeding their future. Until they found a way to implicate him, ensure he was convicted for the felon he was, neither she nor Ashford could truly be free of their pasts. The truth was that both of them, each in his or her own way, had a score to settle with Franco Baricci. And until that score was settled, there could be no sense of completion, no true severing of the ghosts that once were.
So implicate him they would.
Noelle's smile reappeared, curved her lips in private recall. Nothing, not even thoughts of Baricci, could mar the glorious aftermath of last night. No obstacles, no loose ends, could alter the unequivocal facts, the essential truth.
She belonged to Ashford now. And he belonged to her.
