Chase the Dawn by Jane Feather Page A

slid within her moist, welcoming chamber. His breath rustled against her neck on an exhalation of supreme joy when his turgid flesh, in throbbing intensity, found its home. Bryony whispered her own pleasure, moving backward against him, her bottom warm against the taut flatness of his belly as she held him within the enclosure of her body.
    “I’ve a powerful need, sweeting,” he murmured into her hair. “Bear with me.”
    She smiled, a woman’s secret smile at the knowledge of her power to arouse and of her unique ability to satisfy that arousal. Her body softened, welcoming his release, and she drew her own pleasure from this moment of giving, knowing in her newfound wisdom that the pleasures of loving came in many and varied forms and it was not necessary for two always to share the same form at the same moment. Her own moment came, as she had known it would, when the inexorable spiral of sensation coiled her body beneath his fingers, clamped the muscles in belly and thighs, and her blood sang in the joy of expectancy; then the spiral burst asunder, the coil unraveled, and utter languor flowed like butterscotch through her veins.
    Later that morning, Bryony, according to instruction, was husking ears of Indian corn. Benedict, a preoccupied frown corrugating his brow, paused in the process of untangling a fishing line that she had earlier contrived to snarl in the branches of an overhanging tree by the creek. “There is going to be a slight disturbance in the even tenor of our existence, lass.”
    Bryony looked at him curiously. The announcement had been made in that soft, determined tone that she knew meant business and certainly would not permit objections. Did it mean that he was expecting her to object to whatever he was about to say? “A pleasant disturbance?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “Not really. But tonight I have something planned—something that means I must put you in a safe place, in the care of one who will be able to look after you until you regain your memory in case I should find that I cannot.”
    “If you’re killed or taken?” Bryony demanded directly. A small nod was her answer. “What are you going to do?”
    “The less you know, the better, lass.” He frowned over a particularly recalcitrant knot in the line. “I must teach you to be a little less enthusiastic when you cast.”
    “Oh, bother the fishing line!” she said with a gesture of impatience. “Why won’t you tell me what you’re planning? I know so much already, what difference can it make?”
    “You know a great deal more than I am happy with,” he informed her in the same soft tones. “I am not about to add to the sum.”
    “Then I’ll husk no more corn.” Bryony tossed the ear to the ground and glared at him.
    “Then you’ll have no dinner,” he responded, serenely unperturbed. “After the dinner that you won’t be having if you refuse to do your share, I shall be taking you to the farm of a friend of mine. His wife will care for you until I return.”
    “He, of course, will be going with you.” Bryony resumed work on the corn. She was always far too hungrythese days to contemplate going supperless over a pointless defiance that would not achieve her object anyway.
    “That is so.” He smiled at her. “Don’t scowl, lass. If the wind changes, your face will be stuck like that, and it is not at all pretty.”
    That made her laugh, as he had known it would. “My nurse used to say that to me.”
    “What was her name?” He asked the question casually, hoping, as always, that this unexpected memory, produced so naturally, would start a chain reaction.
    But Bryony shook her head ruefully. “I do not recall. But she did say it.”
    “How can you be so sure it was a nurse and not your mother, perhaps?”
    “I don’t know.” A look of desolation crossed the mobile countenance. “How long is this going to continue, Ben? It is so frustrating to have these little, tantalizing glimpses into the abyss