Again the Magic (36 page)

Breathing heavily, McKenna reached for the hem of her gown. Swiftly Aline bent to stop him, gripping his wrist in a convulsive movement. “Wait!”

McKenna went still, the muscles of his shoulders tightly bunched.

“Burn scars are so ugly,” Aline whispered. “They’re all over my legs. The right one is especially bad, where much of the skin was destroyed. The scars tighten and shrink until it’s difficult to straighten my knee sometimes.”

He absorbed that for a moment, and then proceeded to pry her fingers from his wrist and remove her slippers, one after the other. Aline fought a wave of nausea, knowing exactly what he was about to see. She swallowed repeatedly, while salty tears burned the back of her throat. He reached beneath her skirt and slid his hands along her tense thighs, his palms skimming the fabric of her drawers until he found the tapes at her waist. Aline turned chalk-white, followed by brilliant scarlet, as she felt him tugging at the undergarment.

“Let me,” he murmured.

She obeyed clumsily, raising her hips while he pulled the drawers over her buttocks and stripped the garment from her legs. The hem of her skirt was pushed to the tops of her thighs, the cool air washing over her exposed skin. A profuse sweat of anxiety broke out on her face and neck, and she used her sleeve to blot her cheeks and upper lip.

Kneeling before her, McKenna took hold of one of her icy feet in his warm hand. He brushed his thumb over the pink tips of her toes. “You were wearing shoes when it happened,” he said, staring at the pale, smooth skin of her feet, the delicate tracing of blue veins near the arch.

Perspiration stung her eyes as she opened them to look at the top of his dark head. “Yes.” Her entire body jerked as his hands slid to her ankles.

McKenna’s fingers stilled. “Does it hurt when I touch you?”

“N-no.” Aline blotted her face again, gasping as the slow, easy exploration continued. “It’s just… Mrs. Faircloth is the only one I’ve ever allowed to touch my legs. In some places I can’t feel anything… and in others, the skin is too sensitive.” The sight of his hands sliding along her ravaged calves was almost more than she could bear. Transfixed and miserable, she watched his fingertips pass over the rough, reddened scars.

“I wish I had known,” he murmured. “I should have been with you.”

That made Aline want to weep, but she set her jaw hard to keep it from quivering. “I wanted you,” she admitted stiffly. “I kept asking for you. Sometimes I thought you were there, holding me… but Mrs. Faircloth said they were fever dreams.”

The motion of his hands stopped. The words seemed to send a tremor across his wide shoulders, as if he had taken a chill. Eventually his palms resumed their progress along her thighs, pressing them apart, his thumbs skimming the insides. “So this is what has kept us apart,” he said unsteadily. “This is why you wouldn’t let me come to your bed, and why you refused my proposal. And why I had to hear the truth from Livia about what your father did, instead of hearing it from you.”

“Yes.”

McKenna rose on his knees, gripping the chair arms on either side of her, his face just inches from her own.

Aline had been prepared for sorrow, sympathy, repulsion… but she had never anticipated rage. She had not expected the gleam of primitive fury in his eyes, and the grimace of a man who had nearly been pushed beyond the limits of sanity. “What did you think I meant when I said that I loved you? Did you think I would give a damn about your scars?”

Stunned by his reaction, Aline responded with a single nod.

“My God.” The blood rose higher in his face. “What if the situation were reversed, and I was the one who had been hurt? Would you have left me?”

“No!”

“Then why did you expect anything less of me?”

The explosive outburst caused her to shrink back in the chair. McKenna leaned forward, following her, his fury now edged with anguish. “
Damn
you, Aline!” He took her face between his shaking hands, his long fingers cradling her cheeks, his eyes liquid and glittering. “You’re the other half of me,” he said hoarsely. “How could you think that I wouldn’t want you? You’ve put us both through hell for no reason!”

Clearly he did not understand the source of her fear. Taking hold of his broad, hard wrists, Aline gripped them tightly, her throat working.

McKenna glared at her with ardent, angry concern. “What is it?” He kept one hand at the side of her face, while using the other to smooth the hair back from her forehead.

“It was one thing to make love to me when you didn’t know about my legs. But now that you know… you will find it difficult, perhaps even impossible…”

McKenna’s eyes gleamed in a way that alarmed her. “You doubt my ability to make love to you?”

Hurriedly Aline pulled the gown back over her legs, infinitely relieved when they were covered once more. “My legs are horrible, McKenna.”

He uttered a curse that startled her with its foulness, and gripped her head between his hands, forcing her to stare at him. His voice was savage. “For twelve years I have been in constant torment, wanting you in my arms and believing it would never be possible. I want you for a thousand reasons other than your legs, and…
no,
damn it, I want you for no reason at all, other than the fact that you’re you. I want to shove myself deep inside you and stay for hours… days… weeks. I want morning and noon and nightfall with you. I want your tears, your smiles, your kisses… the smell of your hair, the taste of your skin, the touch of your breath on my face. I want to see you in the final hour of my life… to lie in your arms as I take my last breath.” He shook his head, staring at her like a condemned man who beheld the face of his executioner. “Aline,” he whispered, “do you know what hell is?”

“Yes.” Her eyes overflowed. “Trying to exist with your heart living somewhere outside your body.”

“No. It’s knowing that you have so little faith in my love, you would have condemned me to a lifetime of agony.” His face contorted suddenly. “To something worse than death.”

“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked. “McKenna—”

“Not sorry enough.” He pressed his wet face to hers, his mouth rubbing over her cheeks and chin in feverish, rough half kisses, as if he wanted to devour her. “Not nearly enough. You say you’ve had to live without your heart… how would you like to lose your soul as well? I’ve cursed every day I’ve had to live without you, and every night that I spent with another woman, wishing that it was you in my arms—”

“No—” she moaned.

“Wishing,” he continued fiercely, “for some way to stop the memories of you from eating away at me until there was nothing left inside. I’ve found no peace anywhere, not even in sleep. Not even in dreams…” He broke off and assaulted her with hungry, shuddering kisses. The taste of his tears, his mouth, made Aline disoriented and hot, her head reeling from shocks of pleasure. McKenna seemed possessed by a passion that bordered on violence, his lungs wracked with hard breaths, his hands tightening with a force that threatened to leave bruises on her tender flesh. “By God,” he said with the vehemence of a man to whom entirely too much had happened, “In the past few days I’ve suffered the torments of the damned, and I’ve had enough!”

Suddenly Aline felt herself being plucked out of her chair and lifted against his chest as if she weighed nothing. “What are you doing?” she gasped.

“Taking you to bed.”

Aline squirmed and struggled in his arms. Wildly she wondered how to explain to him that this would require slow degrees of acclimation, rather than full and immediate submersion. “No, McKenna, I’m not ready for that yet! Please. I want to talk first—”

“I’m tired of talking.”

“I can’t,” she said desperately. “I need some time. And I’m
exhausted
… I haven’t slept properly in days, and—”

“Aline,” he interrupted tersely, “the forces of heaven and hell combined couldn’t stop me from making love to you right now.”

That hardly left room for ambiguity. Quaking, Aline felt a renewed sweat break out on her face.

McKenna pressed his mouth to her shimmering cheek. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered. “Not with me.”

She couldn’t help it. The habits of privacy and isolation had been established over twelve long years. And the knowledge that he would allow her no retreat, no refuge, made her heart thrash violently as McKenna carried her into the next room with purposeful strides. Reaching the bed, he lowered her to her feet, and leaned over to pull back the brocaded counterpane. As Aline stared at the smooth expanse of freshly laundered white linen, her stomach plummeted.

McKenna reached for the buttons of her gown, his fingers moving along the front placket to unfasten her bodice. After letting the loosened gown drop to the floor, McKenna grasped Aline’s chemise and pulled it over her head. Goose bumps rose over her skin as she stood naked and trembling before him. It took all her will to keep from trying to cover herself, to hide the disparate parts of her body.

McKenna brushed the backs of his fingers against the slope of her breast, trailing them down to the quivering tautness of her midriff. He massaged the cool skin, then slid his arms around her with extreme care, whispering something soft and indecipherable into her tumbled hair. She took hold of the lapels of his coat, resting her face against his shirtfront. He was infinitely tender as he pulled the pins from her hair, dropping them to the carpeted floor. Soon the long locks hung loose and free, tickling her back with heavy silkiness.

Sliding his hand beneath her jaw, McKenna turned her face upward and fitted his lips to hers in a long, incendiary kiss that made her knees buckle. She was caught firmly against his body, the tips of her breasts softly abraded by the broadcloth of his coat. Her lips parted helplessly beneath his, and McKenna demanded more, creating a seal of moisture and heat and erotic suction as he drove his tongue into the warm depths of her mouth.

His hand ran possessively down her back and over the swell of her buttocks. Finding the vulnerable spot just below her spine, he brought her closer against his front until she felt the thick shape of his arousal mounded tightly behind his trousers. He nudged against her deliberately, as if to demonstrate the scalding eagerness of his flesh to join with hers. She gave a little sob against his mouth. Allowing her no time to think, McKenna reached over her buttocks and between her thighs, while one of his legs expertly nudged hers apart. He kept her locked securely against his body, while his fingers parted her intimate flesh, stroking, spreading the secret softness to leave her open and vulnerable.

Poised on his hand, Aline arched her back slightly as he slid two fingers inside her.
More,
her body demanded, undulating to take him deeper. She wanted McKenna all over her, against her, inside her, filling every empty space. More of him, and more, leaving no cruel modicum of distance between them.

McKenna adjusted her body until his shaft fit snugly against the notch between her thighs, providing a delectable friction that corresponded perfectly with the slow wriggle of his fingers. He urged her against himself, dragging her repeatedly over the rock-hard swell of his loins, caressing her outside and inside in a lazy but unfaltering rhythm. He smoothed his cheek over her hair, and rubbed his lips into the dark filaments until he had reached the sweat-dampened roots. Aline felt her body tightening, throbbing, the pleasure intensifying until she had almost reached the bright flashpoint of release. His mouth took hers again, his tongue penetrating her gently, a soul kiss that flooded her with aching bliss. Oh, yes…
oh yes
…

To her frustration, McKenna lifted his mouth from hers and withdrew his fingers just as the rocketing sensation began to crest. “Not yet,” he whispered, while she shuddered wildly.

“I need you,” she said, barely able to speak.

His damp fingers traced the taut line of her throat. “Yes, I know. And when I finally let you leave this bed, you’re going to understand exactly how much I need
you
. You’re going to know all the ways that I want you… and how completely you belong to me.” McKenna picked her up and laid her on the bed, setting her on the pressed linen sheets. Still fully clothed, he leaned over her naked body. His dark head lowered, and she felt his lips touch her knee.

It was the last place she wanted to feel his mouth, against the ugliest of her scars. Turning cold, Aline protested and tried to roll away from him. McKenna caught her easily, grasping her hips in his hands. He pinned her to the mattress, while his mouth wandered back to her knee. “You don’t have to do that,” Aline said, cringing. “I would rather you didn’t…
really,
there’s no need to prove—”

“Shut up,” McKenna said tenderly, continuing to kiss her legs, accepting her scars as she had never been able to do for herself. He touched her everywhere, his hands stroking and caressing her shrinking flesh. “It’s all right,” he murmured, reaching up to rub her taut stomach in soothing circles. “I love you. All of you.” His thumb traced the small circle of her navel, and he nibbled at the delicate skin high inside her thigh. “Open for me,” he whispered, and she colored violently. “Open,” he urged, the velvety kisses venturing higher.

Moaning, she parted her legs, feeling the desire rise again. McKenna’s mouth delved into the exposed cleft, his tongue tracing the swelling bud of her sex, then slipping lower to probe the salt-scented entrance of her body. Aline felt her body turning heavy, her senses unlocking, all awareness focused on the delicate, excruciatingly light stroking between her legs. McKenna drew back to blow lightly on her wet flesh, then worried the peak of her sex with the tip of his tongue. She clenched her fists and dug her head back, pressing herself upward, making pleading sounds in her throat. Just as she thought she could take no more of the artful torture, he slid three fingers inside her, the hard knobs of his knuckles plunging into the slick channel. She couldn’t think, couldn’t move, her body immersed with pleasure. His mouth tugged at her, while his entwined fingers twisted and thrust until she cried out sharply, convulsing in ecstasy.