On a groan, she pressed her mouth to his throat. "I want you. I want you so much."

Her words started a drumbeat in his head, slow, rhythmic, seductive. He dragged her head back with one hand so that he could plunder her mouth. "One has nothing to do with the other."

"It could." She rocked against him as he started up the steps.

Her breath was already coming in pants as her eyes met his. "It should."

"Then so be it." He kicked open the door to the bedroom. "Let's break some rules."

Chapter 8

She had never been one to throw caution to the winds. To take risks, certainly, but always knowing the consequences. There was no way to figure the odds now, not with him. Again, it was up to instinct. Although her head told her to cut her losses and run, something else, something closer to the bone, urged her to stay.

To trust.

She was still wrapped around him, throbbing at every point a pulse could beat. It wasn't shyness that had her hesitating. She had never considered herself overly sexual or more than average in looks, so she felt she had nothing to be shy about. It was a sudden certainty that this was vital that had her taking one last long look at him.

And what she saw was exactly what she wanted.

Her lips curved slowly. When she started to slide down him, he braced her back against the bedpost so that when her feet touched the floor she was trapped between the smooth, carved wood and his body.

His eyes stayed on hers as his hands moved slowly upward, fingertips sliding over thighs, hips, the sides of her br**sts, her throat, temples. She shuddered once before his fists closed, vise-like, in her hair and his mouth crushed down on hers.

His body was pressed against her so truly that she felt every line and curve. She sensed that the power inside it was that of a wolf on a leash, ready to tear free. But it was his mouth that drove her mind to the edge of reason. Insatiable and possessive, it drew from hers every nuance of emotion. Desires and doubts, fears and longings. She felt her will being passed to him like a gift.

He felt that instant of surrender, when her body was both limp and firm against his, when her lips trembled, then sought more of what he wanted to give. The hunger sliced through him like a silver blade, cleaving the civilized from the desperate and leaving him quivering like a stallion that scents his mate.

He reared his head back, and she saw that his eyes were dark as midnight, full of reckless needs and heedless wants. And power. She trembled, first in fear, then again, in glorious delight.

It was that answer he saw. And it was that answer he took.

With one violent swipe, he tore her shirt to tatters. Her gasp was muffled against his mouth. Even as they tumbled onto the bed, his hands were everywhere, bruising and stroking, taking and tormenting.

In answer she dragged at his shirt, popping buttons, rending seams, as they rolled over the sheets. When she felt his flesh against hers, she let out a long, breathless sigh of approval.

He gave her little time to think, and none to question. He was riding her into a storm filled with thunderclaps and flashing lights and howling winds. She knew it was physical. There was nothing magical about the skill of his hands, the drugging taste of his mouth. But oh, it seemed like magic to be whisked away, beyond the ordinary, beyond even the simple beauty of a rosy dusk and the stirrings of night birds just waking.

Where he took her was all dazzling speed and unspeakable pleasure. A whisper of some language she couldn't understand. An incantation? Some lover's promise? The sound alone was enough to seduce her. A touch, rough or gentle, was accepted with delight. The taste of him, hot and salty on her lips, cool and soothing on her tongue, was enough to make her ravenous for more.

So generous, his hazy mind thought. So strong, so giving. In the lowering light her skin was gilded like a warrior goddess's prepared for battle. She was slim and straight, agile as a fantasy, responsive as a wish. He felt her strangled gasp against his ear, the sudden convulsive dig of her nails into his back as her body shuddered from the climax he gave her.

Even as her limp hand slid from his damp shoulder he was racing over her again. Wild to taste, crazed to make her blood pump hot again until he could hear her breath rasping out his name.

He braced over her, shaking his head until his vision cleared, until he could see her face, her eyes half-closed and drugged with pleasure, her lips swollen from his and trembling on each breath.

"Come with me," he told her.

As her arms encircled, he drove himself inside her. And he knew, as they raced together, that some spells require nothing more than a willing heart.

She thought she heard music. Lovely, soothing. Heart music. Mel didn't know where the phrase had come from, but she smiled at the thought of it and turned.

There was no one to turn to.

Instantly awake, she sat up in the dark. Though the night was ink black, she knew she was alone in the room. Sebastian's room. Being with him had been no dream. Nor was being alone now a dream.

She groped for the light beside the bed and shielded her eyes until they had adjusted.

She didn't call out his name. It would have made her feel foolish to speak it in an empty bed in a shadowy room. Instead she scrambled up, found his shirt crumpled on the floor. Tugging her arms through the sleeves, she followed the music.

It came from no real direction. Though soft as a whisper, it seemed to surround her. Odd, no matter how she strained to hear, she couldn't be sure if she was hearing voices raised in song, or strings, flutes, horns. It was simply sound, a lovely vibration on the air that was both eerie and beautiful.

She flowed with it, following instinct. The sound grew no louder, no softer, but it did seem to become more fluid, washing over her skin, sliding into her mind as she followed a corridor that snaked left, then climbed a short flight of stairs.

She saw the glow of candlelight, an ethereal flicker that built to a golden flood as she approached a room at the end of the hallway. There was a scent of warm wax, of sandalwood, of pungent smoke.

She wasn't aware she was holding her breath when she stopped in the doorway and looked.

The room wasn't large. She thought the word chamber would be more appropriate, but she wasn't sure why such a quaint term came to mind. The walls were a pale, warm-toned wood, burnished now with the mystical lights of dozens of slim white candles.

There were windows, three in the shape of crescent moons. She remembered seeing them from the outside and realized that the room was at the topmost part of the house, facing the cliffs and the sea.