Chapter 27 - Psyche

To my great disappointment, dinner returned to the dining room and Aris was very late. Slumped face down across the bed, I'd started drifting off to sleep when I finally felt his gentle touch across my shoulders.

My heavy eyelids pulled open. "You're late."

"I had something I had to take care of." His hands massaged into my houlders and ran down my shoulder blades. "Trust me, I would've much ather been with you."

I thought for a moment of rolling over, but his touch was too potent. Moving away from it would have taken more willpower than I was willing o summon. His fingers sank again and again into my flesh, working away he knots created by this past week. And the room filled with the scent of avender and verbena, relaxing me to the point where I had to work to keep rom drooling on the pillow.

"Was it work?" I asked.

"Hmm?" His fingertips kneaded my shoulders and neck. I thought for fleeting moment that if he could make my whole body feel this good, he ould touch me wherever he wanted.

"That you had to take care of? Were you working?"

"Actually, yes. Sometimes I have a very demanding boss."

I didn't ask any more questions, but filed away his answer to think about later.

His skilled hands worked down my back, creeping lower toward my hips. Despite having been relaxed, I tensed again as he explored parts of my body no man had ever touched before. you."

"Relax, Psyche," he whispered close to my ear. "You know I won't hurt

"I know," I breathed, "but..."

A realization clicked into my foggy brain. I really did know he wouldn hurt me -- ever. With the knowledge firmly in place, my heart brimmed with something I hesitated to label love, but was no less than all-consuming infatuation.

Rolling over, I wrapped my arm around his neck and I found his lips with my own. My muscles all but melted as his warm mouth sealed over mine. His touch turned from calming to impassioned, seeking out my hips and thighs with searching hands. As he lowered himself to me, his weight melded into my body as if we were shaped for each other.

He cupped my head in his palm as I searched out his mass of curls, grabbing fistfuls and pulling him nearer. My chest bloomed with emotion, layer after layer flowering with increasing intensity. Contentment, trust, need, passion. My tongue searched him out, trying to drink in the essence of all those emotions flowing like a current between us. And he answered my longing with such desire of his own that I felt like I'd combust under the heat of it.

His hand had just slipped beneath my one-shoulder strap when he froze. His head snapped up and his eyes seemed locked on the headboard.

"Damn," he cursed under his breath.

"What's wrong?" Something had better be seriously wrong for him to snatch himself away right now.

"I've got to go." He gave me a quick kiss on the forehead. "I'm sorry. Go to sleep."

Yeah right. Like I could go to sleep now? After that? And then like it had my first night, the command to sleep enveloped me and my eyes were powerless to stay open.

Chapter end