He freed himself from his trousers and pushed her skirts about her hips. With a thought he transformed the bark of the nearest oak from rough to smooth, a soft resting place for Eden’s skin. He carried her to it and held her there, hands cupping her round bottom, while he made ready to enter.
Eden gave a faint cry of shocked pleasure as he thrust deep and true. Hartley had never taken her like this, but tonight his need was almost reckless, wild, and if she had any notion to resist, she would have been helpless against him.
But she had no wish to resist. She reveled in his fierce possession, in the excitement of being held so effortlessly while he took her.
He thrust again, pinning her to the tree that was smooth as a cushion. She locked her legs about his waist and dropped her head back, lost in erotic sensation. The whole world seemed to spin around her. Deeper he moved inside her, impossibly deep, and her body drew him in and closed around him as if he could drive straight to her heart.
But he had done that long ago.
He pressed close, burying his face in the hollow of her neck. “Eden,” he whispered. “My love.”
She closed her eyes. The pain of his first declaration was so much worse than she had expected. Men said such things easily when they took their pleasure, and she did not believe that Hartley was an exception. But his movements came more rapidly, and her ecstasy built until it spilled over and carried her into oblivion.
She needed Hartley’s support when her feet came to rest again on the earth. She looked up into his eyes, clear now of the lust that had driven him. He cupped her face in one hand and brushed back her hair. His eyes seemed to repeat what he had told her in his elation.
My love.
She smiled sadly to herself and touched his lips. “Tonight was worth waiting for,” she said.
“I did not hurt you?”
“No.” She laid her hand over his. “I am not so fragile as that.”
“When I’m with you, I forget myself.” He kissed her forehead. “You must tell me if I am too rough.”
“Not rough, merely… enthusiastic.” She looked up into the boughs of the trees. “Is it not late for skylarks to be singing?”
“They sing for you,” he said. His face grew serious. “Eden…” He stopped, but the look in his eyes made Eden’s legs unsteady all over again.
Surely he was about to tell her something important. Something that would not come easily to a man like him.
What if he had meant the words murmured in the heat of passion? If he were to repeat them now, deliberately admit that he loved her…
Had she the courage to hear him say it?
He raised his other hand to frame her face. “Eden, there is something I must—”
The sentence was never completed. A strange, high whistling cut it off, followed by a whoosh of air and a low thump very near Eden’s face.
Hartley’s expression alarmed her before she understood the source of the sounds. She turned her head to follow his gaze, and found a lock of her hair pinned to the tree by the still-quivering shaft of an arrow. Instinctively she held very still, hardly daring to breathe.
Hartley seized the shaft and jerked it from the trunk. The arrow was capped by a wickedly sharp head forged of metal; he tested it carefully on the tip of one finger. With a hiss of pain, he dropped it to the ground and stepped back, searching the surrounding forest with raised head and body as taut as a bowstring.
Eden stared down at the fallen arrow. Quite apart from the fact that it had nearly killed her, she was at a loss to imagine how such an antique should have come to Hartsmere’s wood in midsummer. It was not yet the hunting season, and no one pursued game with arrows in these modern times. Such methods had been abandoned centuries ago.
She might have thought it the work of a child playing pranks, but this was no child’s toy. Such a close shot could not have been an accident.