Adam's throat went raw. "I'd exchange my life for your father's if I could. Give him back to you."
"Of course you would," Juliet retorted with a scornful wave of her hand. "That would be just one more grand and glorious gesture. But you can't bring him back to life. No one can. Even so, I discovered something here at Angel's Fall. There are other women like me. Maybe I don't have a father or mother, sisters or brothers to love me, but neither do Elise or Millicent or even Isabelle. They're my family now. You want to know why I won't leave Angel's Fall? Without them, I'd be alone."
The anguished words drove hilt-deep into Adam's chest. Alone... did any other soul that breathed understand the bleakness of that word so well? But he had chosen that barrenness of his own free will, while Juliet had had her father's love stolen from her on a desolate Irish road.
"Juliet." Just her name, torn from his throat on the jagged edges of a myriad of lost possibilities.
"Go, Adam. I'll still have this." She waved her hand toward the ivy-covered walls of Angel's Fall. "I absolve you of your vow to my father, free you of responsibility for me. Ride away and don't look back. After all, that's what you're best at."
Only one other person on God's earth had the power to wound him so deeply. Adam tried to hide the gash she'd carved in his soul. He couldn't look at her... let her see...
See what? Every vulnerability that lay beneath Adam Slade's mocking laughter, harsh cynicism? That somewhere, buried in the warrior he became, was a boy who had dreamed of being like William the Conqueror, obliterating the stain of his bastardy by deeds so glorious they would blind the world to the circumstances of his birth?
She started to walk away, and Adam knew in that instant he didn't give a damn what anyone else thought now—he only cared about this woman, this angel, who knew all the ugliness inside him, yet had laid her healing hands upon his scarred soul and told him that she loved him.
Was that the last thing Lucifer had seen as he fell from heaven? The hand of an angel reaching out to him? A second chance after so many mistakes. He only had to have the courage to take it.
"Juliet," he breathed her name, and it broke upon his lips, a sound of worship, of the first faint ribbon-hues of hope. "Juliet, don't."
"Don't what, Adam?"
"Don't be alone any longer. My hands are scarred with too many sins to count. But if you want them to touch you, I swear, they will shelter you, protect you, until the heavens fall." He held out his large hand, ashamed of its roughness, fearing just the brush of his fingertips might bruise her.
She hesitated for what seemed an eternity, her eyes wide and soft in the moonlight, shadowed with the hurts life had dealt her. Then, ever so slowly, she reached out her hand, slipping her fingers into his.
Chapter 14
The contact was electrifying, terrifying in its power. Adam's heart thundered, his mind reeling with a thousand questions. How did one make love to an angel? Panic gripped him. He'd not felt shyness around women since he'd lost his virginity, but now—lord, she was so tiny, so fragile, and he was a great hulking beast of a man with no gentleness in his nature.
"Are you certain, Juliet? Certain you want this?"
"Yes, Adam." It was as if she'd just poured every star in the heavens into his outstretched hands.
He scooped her up into his arms, agonizingly aware of the precious weight of her against his chest, the warmth of her petal-soft skin shielded by the thin weave of her nightgown. Soon, the primal part of his being whispered, soon even that barrier would be stripped gently away.
"Where do you want me to take you? Inside?" Even as he said the words, he was reluctant to follow his own suggestion. The notion of sharing such intimacy with Juliet with the rest of her fallen angels so near was unsettling. And Adam was stunned that for the first time his own fierce sensual need was tempered by the desire to protect Juliet from even the possibility of whispered suspicions.
"No. Not... there," she said. He could sense that she would feel it a kind of betrayal. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, a tiny crease forming between her brows in indecision.
No one knew better than Adam how great a chasm she'd had to cross to reach this pass, how desperately she must have fought against her feelings for him, and the natural culmination of them, the one that had awaited all mortal lovers since the creation of the first man and woman.
That seduction had taken place in a garden as well. But if Adam Slade could have whisked himself back to Eden at that moment, sheltered from harm and sickness and death, he would have scorned it, choosing instead Juliet's garden, Juliet's loving, all the more bittersweet in its beauty because they had only a finite amount of time to share it in. But where could they take shelter from the night?
Adam's eyes skimmed past shadowed benches and clumps of azaleas and rose cascades, statues, once resplendently nude, now modestly attired in togas fashioned of frayed sheets and pillow casings.
His gaze caught on a smear of gray in the deepest corner of the garden, the small outbuilding where Juliet kept her gardening supplies, and where she'd set up her own little hideaway where she could wrestle with her hurts and disappointments as well. "The garden house?" he suggested.
She nodded against his chest. Destination settled, he strode through the moonlit garden, to where the small building was set back against the lush vegetation. Juliet had fashioned it into a place for gentle reflection, infused it with a quiet beauty, a little sip of the serenity that wreathed her soul. Adam shoved open the door and stepped inside.
"A candle... I keep one on that shelf to the right," Juliet said. "Sometimes when I'm troubled at night I come here to dabble around with the plants. It makes me feel better somehow, to be nurturing something that might blossom into a thing of beauty."
So this was Juliet's own haven, the place where she came to gather up her frayed serenity. Adam didn't know what this night might bring. The only thing he was certain of was that this would alter Juliet forever, and leave its shadows, whether soft or dark, within this place she loved.
Weighed down with the enormity of what they were about to share, Adam set her down on a bench piled with soft cushions, wide enough to lie upon, then turned to fumble with candle and flint until the wick blazed. A hazy golden glow filtered through the room, illuminating rows of pots upon shelves, spades and hoes and rakes leaning tidily in a corner, a box filled with new green shoots cozied up near the bank of windows where the moon peeked in.
Everything here had the aura of being cared for tenderly by Juliet's own hands. And Adam was stunned at the depth of need he felt to have her reach out, lighten the dark places, soothe the bruised places, gentle the wild places in his spirit.
It was too deep, too raw, this sensation of vulnerability. Weakness—he'd spent his life in terror of it. Yet hadn't Gavin proved that a man could be loving and strong? Vulnerable, but brave? Yet Gavin was so many things Adam could never be.
Hell, Adam censured himself, the one thing he couldn't do was to keep standing here like a complete idiot, staring into the candle flame as if it held the answers to the mysteries of the universe. He had to turn, to face Juliet sometime.
"Adam?" His name was whispered in a breathy angel's voice. "I want you so badly, that I'm... afraid."
Blast, she had the courage to be honest, to say aloud the emotions clamoring inside him. Juliet, his valiant crusader, his guardian angel, his love. She deserved every drop of courage in his soul. He turned to her, his voice a gravelly rumble as he made an admission no torture master could ever have wrung from him before.
"I'm afraid, too. I don't want to hurt you. Don't want to sicken you when you see the scars—I've led a hard life, angel. Spent most of it on the opposite end of an enemy sword."
She reached up, touching the scar on his face. "You're beautiful to me." The words touched him, wrung his heart. She could never know how much. "I don't want you to awaken tomorrow and regret this," he told her. "At any time, if you have the slightest doubt about what we're doing, y
ou have only to ask, and I'll—" The prospect bit like a savage vise about his chest. "I'll let you go, angel, without a word of reproach. Look into my eyes, Juliet. Do you promise me?"
She caught her lip between her teeth, nodded, her eyes wide and full of wonder, her cheeks stained the hue of the roses she tended with such devotion. Then she stunned Adam by not waiting for him to make the first foray with hands and mouth. She reached between them, her fingers unfastening the ties that held the front of his shirt together.
The brush of her knuckles against the fine hairs matting his chest was enough to unman him. The only thing that kept him from humiliating the devil out of himself was the knot of dread in a lump at the back of his throat. He would know in a moment if she could bear to look at the tangle of scars that twisted across his body, the legacy of the life he'd led.
Her eyelids drifted shut, like a child prolonging the delicious anticipation of opening a present as she smoothed the fabric back off of his broad shoulders. Adam's spine went rigid. He scarcely breathed. Always before women had reacted at the sight of his warrior's body—either with wild titillation at the legacy of the danger he'd sought, or with a hint of revulsion, refusing for the rest of the night to look upon the scars that marred his skin. But tonight was the first time he had felt ashamed himself.
Lord, it seemed almost sacrilege to imagine Juliet's flawless angel's hands skimming across such ugliness.
But he'd told her that he would free her from her wish to make love at the veriest whisper, and curse his tainted soul to hell, he'd never meant a vow more completely than the one he'd given her.
He gritted his teeth as his gaze snagged on those delicate fingers, smoothing in a blind quest across his skin, as if trying to memorize the texture, the heat. Then those fingertips encountered the first ridge of proud flesh, a sabre cut bisecting flesh mere inches below his nipple.
Her hand froze, those lake-blue eyes fluttering open. Adam braced himself for the worst. But the prospect of this woman drawing away in quiet horror was more than he could bear. He stepped back, breaking the contact himself in an effort to avoid the pain of even the most subtle of rejections. The absence of her touch was the most exquisite torture he'd ever known.
But she didn't draw away. She leaned down, her hair a silken cascade, brushing the sensitive skin of his stomach, spilling in the lightest, most excruciating caress across that part of him even now straining against the flap of his breeches. Then, her lips, moist, soft, and more than a little sorrowful, pressed a kiss against that scar.
"Juliet," he ground out, his head arching back, his teeth gritted against the potent sensation.
Then she was brushing his shirt away, until it drifted to the floor. The cool kiss of the air only fed the raging fires she'd lit inside him, and he dared to look at her, only because he couldn't bear to do otherwise. Soft as the shine of the single candle was, it still illuminated the puckered hole where a pike had jabbed, the indentation of a pistol-ball, the score of white lines that wove across his swarthy skin in a pattern of reckless abandon.
"Oh, Adam, Adam," she mourned. "What have you done to yourself?"
"Fought, angel. I just can't tell you what I was fighting for." It didn't seem valiant anymore, riding off on whatever quest presented itself. It seemed futile and somehow sad— and he realized how many times he'd seen that sorrow reflected in Gavin's face as he watched Adam ride away.
Adam flinched as Juliet closed the space between them, her lips drifting like the enchanted petals of a dew-kissed rose across all the raw places inside him, all the ridges of scarring, all the legacies of battles he wanted to forget.
Bloody hell, did she have any idea what her explorations were doing to him? Flavored as they were by Juliet's innocence and wonder.
"You're so—so hard," she breathed. "Every muscle and sinew. And yet." Her fingertips wisped over the dark mat of hair that spanned his chest. "So soft." The edge of her little finger brushed the gem-hard point of his nipple, and a raw oath tore from his throat.
She leapt back as if he'd snapped like a wolf at her hand. "Did I hurt you?"
"You're nigh killing me. No one has ever touched me like this."
Her delicate brows lowered in disbelief. "Adam, you don't have to pretend. I know that you've had other lovers."
"Lovers? No. I've had bedmates. Distractions from war and idleness and frustration. Never... this." His hand enveloped hers, pressed her palm against the thundering throb of his heart. "Hell, who would ever believe that I could feel as if—" He stopped, feeling like a bloody idiot, his cheeks afire.
"As if what, Adam? Tell me."
"No. It doesn't make any sense. Sounds ridiculous—"
"Can you trust me with it?" It was the sweetest of pleas.
He yielded to it in a manner impossible before he'd first seen her face.
"As if we were both new, innocent, trying to find our way..." The words sounded foreign to him, as if they'd sprung from another man. The man he might have been if life and battle hadn't hardened him.
"To where, Adam? Where are we trying to find our way to?"
"I don't know. I've never been there before." Never been where? In bed with a virgin? No, there was so much more to fear than that. Making love to a woman whose soul shone bright with inner goodness? He felt so damned awkward, uncertain. God above, what a jest that was. The Prince of Sin, who had seduced legions now stood before this innocent girl without any idea what he should do next, terrified that he would frighten her, hurt her, that he would reach out to her and discover she was but a phantom conjured up from the most secret recesses of his mind.
Should he merely lay her down on the cushions and ease up her nightgown, taking her as gently as he was able? The thought filled him with fierce dissatisfaction. The one thing he did know was that a woman rarely felt pleasure in her first mating with a man. That was why he'd bloody well avoided being the son of a bitch who put her through the breaching of the maidenhead. Nothing more appalling than a weeping woman.
Yet how would Juliet react if he gave free rein to the earthy fantasies that had consumed his nights since the moment he laid eyes on her? Her body, naked except for the gilding of candlelight, his mouth seeking the sensitive hollow of her throat, the sweet swell of her breast. The peak of her nipple, fragrant and silky beneath his lips as he suckled her. The tips of his fingers questing down the soft skin of her belly to find ethereal gold curls, slick satin nestled within.
The mere image was enough to make sweat bead his brow. How the hell would he be able to go slowly if his imagination was already racing leagues ahead?
"Is something wrong, Adam?" she asked, her own cheeks blushed. "I mean, I... am I supposed to be doing something I don't know about? It seems so awkward, just standing here, with you staring at me like—like..."
"Like what?"
A nervous giggle bubbled from her lips. "Like you're a wolf contemplating the best way to gobble me up."
Her stab at humor drew a surprised laugh from him, and he cupped her cheek with his hard palm. "That's what I feel like. A wolf. Hungry to touch you, to taste you, to make love with you. But I want it to be perfect, Juliet. You deserve that. I'm just not sure I know how to give that to you."
"I know less than you do about all this. I can see in your eyes that you know what you want. If you could do anything right now, what would it be?"
"I'd get rid of that infernal nightgown so that I could see all the places I've been imagining while I couldn't sleep at night."
She stunned him by grasping the hem of her nightshirt and whisking it over her head. Her hair tumbled down in a luminescent halo, the strands like rivers of gold charting the alabaster slopes of her breasts as she cast the garment aside. What had he expected? The cool distance of a marble saint, untouchable by human hands? If so, he'd been mistaken. Every inch of Juliet was bursting with the warmth that was so much a part of her, a glow of anticipation, a heart-wrenching accessibility, though she was far more lovely than he could ever have
imagined.
His throat was raw with the depth of the trust she'd given him with her selfless gesture.
"Now is it my turn? To tell you what—what I want?"
"Anything, Juliet."
"For you to kiss me. Like you did at Ranelagh."
Kiss her? What sweet torture. He threaded his hands back through the fall of her hair, drew her close enough that the points of her nipples stirred the dark hair of his chest. He felt the intimate contact sizzle to his toes. But if it was kissing she wanted, by damn, it was kissing the woman would get.
Adam tried to rein in the savage hunger clamoring inside him, the wild primal need to claim this woman as his own. Bind her to him in the most physical way possible. His lips covered hers, and he captured the breathy gasp of her satisfaction in his mouth.
Hungry, he traced the sweet bow of her upper lip with his tongue, feathered teasing strokes across her full lower lip, probed with exquisite gentleness at the crease between.
She opened for him, allowing him to sample the inner sweetness he'd been dreaming of for so many endless nights. She tasted of generosity and sunlight and new beginnings. She was warm with possibilities he'd never dared consider, and tinted with dreams he'd lost along the rugged road he'd chosen.
And for the first time in his life, Adam understood his father's obsession with the woman he'd made his mistress. For the devil himself could not have forced Adam to surrender Juliet, not for all the world.
He slipped his tongue into Juliet's mouth, felt her moist welcome close around him, the way the feminine core of her soon would, and he stroked, gently, wooing her, calming the wildfire raging in his veins. He couldn't trust himself to go further, didn't dare, when, with a moan, Juliet melted against him.
Agony, ecstasy, it speared through him as her breasts were crushed against his chest, the hot satin of her inner arms draping around his waist, pulling him closer, tighter to her. The soft swell of her belly nestled against the bulge of his erection, taunting him with the promise of a release more powerful than any he'd ever know.