Falling Awake

brushed his thumb across one nipple she felt everything inside her tighten into a knot.
    She managed to fumble his shirt off and then paused when she felt the unnaturally rough texture of the skin at the back of his right shoulder. Scars, she thought. Big ones. She was horrified in spite of the fact that she had known of the injury. He had come so close to death.
    “This was where Scargill shot you, isn’t it?” she whispered.
    He hesitated. “Not real pretty, I’m afraid. The doctors said they could do some cosmetic surgery after it was healed but I never went back. I don’t want to see the inside of a hospital again if I can avoid it.”
    She touched him as gently as possible. “It doesn’t matter how it looks. I just don’t want to hurt you.”
    “You won’t.” He raised his head. “But the damn shoulderdoesn’t work as well as it once did. That means I can’t scoop you up in my arms and carry you off to the bedroom. I’d have to throw you over my good shoulder, which seems a little tacky.”
    Laughter bubbled up inside her. “Guess what? I can walk.”
    “Lucky you,” he muttered into her hair with great feeling. “I can barely stand up.”
    But he was obviously in better shape than he thought because he locked her close to his side and drew her down the hall. It took a while to get to their destination because every few steps he stopped and pinned her against the wall long enough to kiss her and remove another item of clothing. By the time they reached the shadows of her bedroom she had somehow managed to shed all of her clothes except for her panties.
    She slid beneath the covers and waited for him. Ellis got rid of his own garments with efficient, impatient movements. He turned toward her and then stopped and just stood there, looking at her as if she weren’t quite real. She realized that she was lying in a splash of moonlight.
    “You are so lovely,” he said.
    She could not speak so she smiled tremulously and raised her arms to welcome him into her bed.
    He said something low, husky and hungry-sounding when he lowered himself to her.
    And then the world went away. All that mattered was the hot, damp passion of their lovemaking.
    Ellis’s kisses singed every part of her from head to toe. Whenhe found the inside of her thigh she gasped and clutched at him. Burying her fingers in his hair, she twisted beneath him, feeling full and achy and frantic.
    Her sexual experience had been limited—nonexistent altogether for the past year. She had told herself that one of the reasons she found it easy to forgo intimacy was because she had never found any genuinely stirring pleasure in the act. Her private fantasy dreams had always been a great deal more satisfying.
    But tonight she was swamped with sensations she had never experienced except in her dreams and even in those the feelings had never been so intense.
    When she reached down to cup him in her palm, he groaned, rolled to cover her and rested his forehead on hers. She could have sworn he was shaking a little. His back was slick with perspiration.
    He reached down between their bodies, found the part of her that was clenched tight and gently pried it open with his fingers. Her hips came up off the bed in response. With his hand he urged her toward the response that her body demanded.
    When her release struck she was so overwhelmed and so undone she could not even cry out. She convulsed, sinking her nails into his back.
    He was inside her before the shimmering ripples had subsided, sinking deep. The sudden pressure created by the heavy, rigid length of him caused her body to soar along the delicate border between exquisite pleasure and exquisite pain.
    “Ellis.”

    He stopped at once, halfway inside her. When he raised his head to look down at her she could see his face etched in the moonlight. Highwayman, vampire, dashing rake; he was all of them, all of her midnight men.
    “Are you okay?” he asked hoarsely.
    “No. Yes.”
    She encircled him with her legs, tightening her thighs. He groaned and crushed her down into the bedding.
    His climax tore through him.
    She heard satisfaction, exultation and astonished pleasure in the husky, elemental, utterly male cry of release.
    h e came out of the bathroom some time later, got back into bed and wrapped her close. He put one hand behind his head and looked up at the ceiling.
    “We should probably talk,” he said.
    Panic assailed her. Talking was dangerous. Talking was where things always