Even the heat was different here, she thought. Sucking itself into grass and trees and flowers rather than bouncing off pavement and smashing back into your face.
But there was something… something just under the surface of Roarke's placid calm. She could sense the honed edge of it, like a knife wrapped in velvet.
"What's going on?"
"Summer doesn't last very long." He steered her down a stone path she wasn't entirely sure she'd seen before. "It's pleasant to enjoy it while it does. Particularly this time of day. The gardens are at their prime."
She supposed they were, though they always looked spectacular. Even in winter, there was something compelling about the shapes, the textures, the tones. But now it was all color, all scent. Dramatic here with tall, spikey things with brilliant and exotic blooms, charming there with tangled rows of simple blossoms. And all lush and somehow perfect, without giving the appearance that any hand had touched it but Mother Nature's.
"Who does all the work out here, anyway?"
"Elves, of course." He laughed and drew her into an arbored tunnel where hundreds of roses climbed and dripped onto green, shady ground.
"Imported from Ireland?"
"Naturally."
"It's cool in here." She looked up. Little flickers of sun and sky shone through the ceiling of flowers. "Nature's climate control." She sniffed. "Smells like…" Well, roses of course, she thought, but it wasn't that simple. "Smells romantic."
She turned, smiled at him. But he wasn't smiling back.
"What?" Instinctively she looked over her shoulder as if expecting some threat. A snake in the garden. "What is it?"
How could he explain what it was to see her standing there in the dappled, rose-drenched shade, looking baffled, a little confused by the beauty? Tall, lean, her disordered hair streaky from the sun. Wearing her weapon the way another woman might a string of good pearls. With careless confidence and pride.
"Eve." Then he shook his head, stepped to her. Resting his forehead on hers, he ran his hands up and down her arms.
And how could he explain what it had been to stand by and watch her walk unarmed, unprotected into a room to face a madman alone? To know he might have lost her in an instant.
He knew she'd faced death countless times. Had faced it with her. They'd had each other's blood on their hands before.
He'd held her through dreams more violent and vicious than any human soul should have to bear. He'd walked with her through the nightmare of her past.
But this had been different. She'd been shielded only by her own courage and wit. And standing back, having no choice but to stand aside and watch, and wait, having no choice but to accept it was what she'd had to do had driven an unspeakable fear into his heart like a spike.
He knew it was best for both of them if he didn't speak of it.
But she understood. There were pockets and shadows inside him she still didn't fully comprehend. But she'd come to understand love. It was she who lifted her face to his when he would have drawn back. She who lifted her mouth to his.
He wanted to be tender. It seemed right with the romance of roses, in the gratitude that she was here, whole and safe. But the flood of emotion all but drowned him. Swamped by it, he fisted a hand in the back of her shirt as if it were a line tossed into a raging sea. That storm swept through him and into the kiss.
She waited for the heat of it to drop them both, and for his hand to tear her shirt to ribbons.
But his fingers opened, stroked one hard, possessive line down her back before his hands came up to frame her face.
She could see the tempest in his eyes, swarming in the blue of them with a kind of primal violence that made the breath catch in her throat and her pulse pound in response.
"I need you." His fingers dived into her hair, dragging it back from her face, fisting again. "You can't know what kind of need is in me for you. There are times, do you understand me, I don't want it. I don't want this raging inside me. It won't stop."
His mouth crushed down on hers, and she tasted that need, the fierce and focused intensity of it. And the greed, the desperation of it.
She gave herself over to it without hesitation. Because he was wrong, as he was very rarely wrong. She understood the need, and she understood the frustration of knowing it wouldn't be controlled.
The same war waged in her.
He released her weapon harness, dragged it off, tossed it aside. She only wrapped herself more tightly around him, moaned in drugged pleasure when his mouth, his teeth, fixed onthe curve of her throat.
Somewhere a bird was singing its heart out, and the scent of roses grew heavy, hypnotizing. Air that had seemed so cool inthe green shade went thick, went hot.
He yanked the shirt over her head, and those hands with their long, clever fingers raced over flesh until she all but felt it melt. But when she tugged at his shirt, he shoved her hands away, locked them together at the wrist behind her back.
He needed control, however fleeting, however tenuous.
"I'm taking you." His voice was as thick as the air. "My way."
"I want-"
"You'll get what you want soon enough." He unfastened the hook of her trousers. "But I'll have what I want first."
And he wanted her naked.
He leaned in, nipped her bottom lip. "Do off the boots."
"Let go of my hands."
He merely slid his down into the opening of her trousers, tightening his grip on her wrists when her body jerked.
"The boots."
He laid his lips on hers, slid his hand over her. His tongue slipping in to soothe, his finger slipping in to arouse with a patient seduction opposed to that steely grip on her wrists.
Even as she murmured a protest, her arms went limp. Dazed, she began toeing off her boots, and the movement of her own body shuddered her over peak.
She was hot and wet and trembling.
He wanted to touch, to taste, to explore and exploit every inch of her. Releasing her hands, he moved down her body. And when his mouth clamped over her, she erupted.
Her hands grabbed at his hair as she choked on gasps. But he only gripped her hips and continued to destroy her.
She was his now. In this garden, in this world. She was his.
Her world was spinning, all the color and scent gone mad around her. His mouth was like a fever, burning against her with a torment so exquisite it felt like death.
She could feel the heat rolling through her again, filling her, pumping into her blood and bone until it burst like a nova and left her shattered.
And still he wouldn't stop.
"I can't. I can't."
"I can."
When the next rush buckled her knees, he pulled her down.
This time he dragged her arms over her head and once again locked her wrists together. "Do you remember the first time I had you? I can't, you said, but you did."
"Damn it." Her body bowed up. "I want you inside me."
"I will be." He closed his free hand over her breast. "I can make you come this way now. You're primed for it. Everything in you is ready for me."
His hand was like magic over her skin. Under it her breast felt impossibly full, unbearably sensitive. And her heart beat like a fist.
"It pleasures me to watch it take you over."
He watched now as the helpless pleasure raced over her face, as her breath came faster through her lips. She bowed up again, a trembling arch. Then burst. Then melted.
He shifted away, began to undress.
She lay sprawled, damp, naked, conquered on the soft green grass. She wore only a long chain from which dripped the fat tear of a diamond, and the simple St. Jude's medal. He'd given her those, symbols and shields. That she would wear them, together, moved him unbearably.
Her arms stayed flung over her head as he'd left them. Surrendered, as she surrendered to no one else.
He was rock hard and desperate to mate.