Past and Present - A Modern Day Romance of North & South

CHAPTER TWELVE - PAST AND PRESENT

His arms slipped around her, pulling her tighter against him, his hands clamping with possessive rapture against her lower back as the attraction they had both striven to suppress finally ignited. Completely and helplessly lost in the hedonistic sensations he inflamed within her, Margaret’s arms slithered compulsively about his neck, her questing fingers drifting into the ebony layers of his hair with absent-minded abandon, every part of her responding to him, every feeling centred on his mouth that returned again and again to hers with growing hunger. The strength of feeling pulsating through her was a revelation, an incredible milestone along this journey she had chosen to take – a point frozen in time that made the world around them shift like the altering patterns of a kaleidoscope. His fingertips were like firebrands as they began to roam across her back, finding and locating the path of her spine, causing her to instinctively arch towards him in a haze of dizziness and delight. She was falling, weightlessly falling, her mind spinning like a top…and he was falling too, holding her so close, cherishing and protecting her from the inevitable collision with the ground.

At length they drew apart and she was no longer falling, her feet on the ground, the stunned realisation of what had just passed between them entangled in their eyes. Their shallow breath blurred into a hot, invisible cloud. She didn’t dare speak. Talking would only break the amazing communication between them and she wasn’t ready to relinquish that. Not so soon, not when they could say so much to each other in silence, with the touch of their hands, with the softest brush of their lips. The sparks of unconcealed emotion seemed to glisten all around them, as resplendent as the stars strewn like silver glitter across the eternal sweep of sky.

As if he understood her thoughts, he wordlessly pulled her head gently against him so that it came to nestle just below his shoulder where she could feel the tumultuous vibrations of his heart. Her palms lay flat against his shirt, tentatively stroking, her eyes closing as she nuzzled further, wanting to cleave herself to him, to remain that way forever. He dropped a kiss on top of her hair, his fingers moving freely over the thin material of her jacket, creating crazy patterns across her back, restless and unceasing as though compelled to touch her. She remained as she was for as long as she could stand the assault of his fingers before lifting her head to his once more…

“What are you thinking of, Miss Hale?” he murmured in his deepest, most amusedly mocking tones as he finally pulled back from her softly enticing kiss. “Out here in the middle of the street, in front of anyone who happens to wander by.”

She smiled up at him, not insensitive to the seductive timbre that swept like molten fire through his voice. The abandonment of the moment, the final triumph of her heart over the ever-restrained preaching of her head, was overwhelming. When she had kissed him it had been like lifting the floodgates, making it impossible to renounce the tender fusion of their lips.

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks,” she replied, her voice so sure and resolute, her index finger fluttering up to trace the outline of his lips, only to find it captured by his hand as he placed the most vehement kiss upon its very sensitised tip. Her whole body shivered with pleasure.

“That sounds like something I would say,” he said with a soft, throaty laugh. As he tipped his head slightly to one side, his piercing gaze riveted upon her, he shook his head as if in complete wonder. “You’re so beautiful. You take my breath away.”

Modesty lowered her eyes from his, only to find his hands framing her face as he raised it again, his eyes searching earnestly for hers.

“You don’t even realise it, do you?” he murmured incredulously, lowering his mouth to hers as though to seal his point, the pressure increasing, the sounds of the street fading into oblivion as he wove his magic around her. When he pulled away her lips felt bee-stung, still craving the incredible touch of his. “We can’t stand here all night,” he said softly.