Читать книгу A Furnace of Earth онлайн

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“Give me your hand,” he said peremptorily. They were on a pebbly spur of the descending path, and Daunt had leaped down below her. As she stretched it out to him, he drew it sharply toward him. She felt herself grasped firmly in his arms, swung off and lifted to the smooth level beneath. She could feel his uneven breaths stirring in the roots of her hair, and his wrists straining. Her head fell against his shoulder and her look met his, startled. His sunburned face was pale, and his gray eyes were hazed with a daring softness.

Then, as she lay passive in his arms, a fiery longing grew swiftly in them, and he suddenly bent his head and kissed her—again and again. She felt her unused mouth moulding to answering kisses beneath his own, and her cheeks rushing into a flame. Through her closed lids the sun hung like a rosy mist of woven sparkles.

“I love you!—you!—you!” he said, stammering and hoarsely. “I love you!”

The tumbling passion of the utterance pierced through her like a spear of desperate gladness. Every nerve reached and quivered, tendril-like. His deep breathing, toned with the dripping lap of the shingle seemed to throb through her. She lay quiet, breathless, her lashes drooped, her very skin tense under the lasting burn of his lips.