Again the Magic Read Online Free PDF

redder, harder. Aline concentrated on the deep slide of his finger, the coiling, clenching pleasure that went through her loins and spine, until she lost awareness of everything but his hands, his mouth, his heavy body poised over hers. She imagined his sex plunging into her, rending and stretching and filling her… and suddenly she couldn’t move as voluptuous spasms began to roll through her… waves of relief so intense that she wailed from it, while his mouth hastily covered hers to muffle all sound. Shuddering and sobbing, she rode the pleasure to its dizzying summit, then drifted downward while his slick fingers eased her into tranquillity.
    Murmuring quietly, McKenna held and stroked her until she went limp beneath him, her limbs turning heavy and warm. His hand began to withdraw from her drenched sex, but she reached down and covered his fingers with her own. “Come inside me,” she whispered. “I want you so, McKenna. Come in me, come—”
    “No,” he said through clenched teeth. He rolled away with a groan, his fingers biting into the damp earth and dislodging great fistfuls of moss. “Cover yourself. I can’t touch you anymore, or I won’t be able to stop myself from—” He broke off with a shuddering sound that betrayed how very close he was to taking her. “Pull down your skirts. Please.”
    “I want you,” she said breathlessly.
    “Now.
I mean it, Aline.”
    She didn’t dare disobey, not when she could hear that biting note in his voice. Heaving a sigh, she struggled to restore her clothing. After a while McKenna rested on his side to watch her. He seemed to have regained control over himself, though his eyes were still bright with unspent passion.
    Aline shook her head with a wistful smile. “No one will ever look at me the way you do. As if you love me with every part of yourself.”
    Slowly he reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “That’s how you look at me too.”
    She caught at his hand and kissed the rough surface of his knuckles. “Promise me that we’ll be together always.”
    But he remained silent, for they both knew it was a promise that he couldn’t make.
     
     
    Aline knew that the safest thing would be to pretend those passion-filled minutes by the river had never existed. It was impossible, however. Whenever McKenna was nearby, she felt her entire body thrilling to his presence. Emotions seemed to spill from her, charging the atmosphere until she was certain that anyone could sense them. She didn’t dare meet McKenna’s gaze in front of others, afraid that her expression might give her away. McKenna did far better than she in maintaining an impassive facade, but some of the servants, including Mrs. Faircloth, remarked on how unusually quiet he had been for the past week. It was clear to those who knew him well that something was troubling him.
    “It’s his age, I suppose,” Mrs. Faircloth told Salter, the butler. “Young men are all high spirits and mischief one day, all gloom and rebellion the next.”
    “No matter what his temperament, McKenna had better do his work well,” Salter said dourly. “Or it’s back to the stables for good, and he’ll be a lower servant for the rest of his days.”
    When Aline repeated the comment to McKenna one afternoon, he pulled a face and laughed. He was busy polishing the lacquered panels of a carriage, while Aline sat on an overturned bucket and watched him. The covered carriage room was empty and silent, save for the whickering and shifting of the horses in the stalls beyond the court.
    McKenna’s exertions had caused him to sweat until his white shirt clung limply to the muscular surface of his back. His shoulders bunched and flexed as he applied a film of wax to the black lacquer, and rubbed it until it shone like glass. Aline had offered to help him, but he had adamantly refused and taken the cloth from her. “It’s my job,” he had told her brusquely. “You sit over there and watch.”
    Aline had