Page 71 of Mesmerized

Quickly he swung out of bed and pulled on the trousers he had recently taken off. Thrusting his feet into slippers, he grabbed his shirt and shrugged into it as he hurried out of the room. His heart pounded in his chest, and he did not stop to reason as he made his way to Olivia’s door.

The knob turned easily in his hand, and he breathed a sigh of relief that she had not locked her door. He eased it open and shut the door behind him. There was little light in the room, only the moon and starlight that crept in around the curtains, but it was enough for his dark-adjusted eyes to see his way to her bed.

Olivia lay sleeping, her dark hair tumbled across her pillow, the fringe of her lashes shadowing her cheek. Emotion tightened in his throat, and he stretched out a hand to caress her face.

Her eyes flew open, and she drew in a sharp gasp of fear. Then she saw who it was, and she relaxed, saying, “Oh. Stephen.”

She sat up, her sleepy mind working at half pace. “What is it? Is something the matter?”

“No, I—” He let out a gust of breath. “I dreamed again.”

“What? You mean, about—”

He nodded. “The same as the other time. I am on a staircase, fighting to the death, and you—I mean, Lady Alys is on the stairs behind me. There is a door at the top of the stairs, the last point of defense in the castle. I—or I guess it is he—wants her to go there and bar the door, even though he knows that ultimately it will not protect her.”

“Oh, no. How sad.” Olivia looked at his face, stark with remembered emotions. She turned, sitting a little farther back on the bed and curling her legs up under her. She patted the space beside her. “Come. Sit down. You look exhausted.”

He did as she suggested, running one hand back through his hair. “I felt what he felt. He knew he was going to die. But that wasn’t what scared him. It was what would happen to her when he did. All he wanted, all he cared about, was keeping her safe.”

“He loved her.”

“They were leaving the castle. Running away together.”

“What?” Olivia turned to look at him, surprised.

He nodded. “That is what was in my head in the dream. That she had packed her things, and they were going to leave the castle while Sir Raymond was away and run off together. Then the enemy attacked, and they were trapped. She was carrying a sack of some sort in her hand. I felt it bump into my legs once as she moved. I think... I don’t know, but for some reason I think the gold casket was inside it.”

“Perhaps that was what she was packing for,” Olivia said. “In the dream I had, when she stopped and went to the window. Perhaps she was getting ready to leave with her lover.”

“Instead they died.”

“It’s very sad. I feel so sorry for them.”

“The evil cannot be them. There is nothing in them but love.”

Stephen turned to Olivia. Her hair fell in a thick silken mantle around her shoulders, inviting the touch of his hand. Her wide, soft eyes glimmered with unshed tears. Her mouth trembled, soft and vulnerable. Desire slammed into his loins like a fist.

“I know how he felt,” Stephen said quietly. “He wanted her beyond reason, beyond all thought of duty and honor.” His eyes moved over her, dropping down to the soft, hidden promise of her body beneath her nightdress. “I know...”

“Stephen...” Her voice was a little breathless.

She felt the caress of his eyes as surely as if he had touched her. Olivia remembered the way his mouth had felt on hers, the teasing, arousing touch of his tongue on her breasts, his hands gliding over her body, heat sizzling in their wake. She wanted suddenly, desperately, to experience those things again. She wanted his hands on her breasts; she wanted to savor the taste and texture of him. Olivia had never known desire until she met Stephen, and now it was an urgent, writhing thing inside her, hammering for release.

He saw the desire in her eyes, felt it slither down through him, sending his own hunger spiraling. He wanted to lay her naked on the sheets before him, her hair fanning out around her. He thought of burying his face in her hair, of setting his hands free on her creamy skin, and passion made him tremble.

“You are so beautiful,” he murmured.

Looking into his eyes, their silvery depths darkened with desire, Olivia felt for the first time in her life that she was beautiful. With a boldness she would never have dreamed she possessed, she reached down and grasped the hem of her loose nightgown and pulled it up and over her head, dropping it onto the bed beside her. She faced him, naked, her chest rising and falling rapidly, the pulse in her throat pounding.

Stephen sucked in his breath sharply, time and reason falling away as the dark, heady wine of passion filled him. He said her name, the word falling from his lips like a prayer. His eyes moved over her, taking in her rounded milk-white breasts, centered by pink-brown nipples, her slender waist flowing down into the fullness of her hips. His mouth turned dry; his breath rasped harshly in his throat.

Her nipples hardened under his gaze, and his loins tightened at the sight. He reached out and placed his hands upon her, letting them slide slowly over her shoulders and across the line of her collarbone, feeling the exquisite contrast of the hard bone under velvet-soft skin. His fingertips glided over her chest and onto her breasts, cupping them, and he watched in sensual enjoyment as the nipples prickled and thrust forward, eagerly awaiting his touch.

Olivia lay back against the sheets, giving herself up to the pleasure of his hands. When she thought about it later, she was amazed that she had felt no embarrassment, no shame, only a rippling, shivery delight as his fingers caressed and explored her. She let out a shuddering sigh as his fingers curled around her breasts and drifted downward over the lines of her rib cage and onto the soft flesh of her stomach. His fingertips circled the indention of the navel and spread out over the wider plain of her abdomen, curving out to caress her hip and thigh, then slipping back up the insides of her legs, moving slowly toward the ever-increasing heat at the center of her. He did not quite reach the spot but slid over her thigh and onto her abdomen, gently circling, teasing both of them by moving ever nearer, then gliding away, then slipping back.

Olivia burned for him. She moved her legs restlessly, unable to ease the ache that grew between them. She reached out to him, her hands going to his chest and sliding beneath the open edges of his shirt. His eyes glittered and his breath sharpened as she moved her hands over his chest, tangling through the hair and seeking out the flat, hard masculine nipples. She caressed the little buds, delighting in the way they hardened beneath her fingertips. She squeezed and released them, damp heat flooding her as a small moan of pleasure escaped him.

He skimmed out of his shirt and flung it aside, giving her free access to his chest, and bent over her, laying a gentle, brushing kiss on the quivering flesh of her stomach. Making lazy circles with his tongue over her skin, he moved slowly, tantalizingly upward until he reached the undercurve of her breast. He kissed the soft orb, his mouth moving lazily, heatedly over her. Olivia waited, tightening all over with each movement of his lips, waiting in an agony of pleasure and impatience, everything within her focused on that one spot that he moved toward yet did not touch. She arched upward, her hands digging into the sheets beneath her, heat pulsing in her.