The silence grew hushed and thick.
A small shock moved through her. Why, they were married. This was her husband now.
She was married to Adrian.
A shuddering started inside her. How could it be that this nightmare followed so exactly the lines of a once-cherished dream? This man at arm’s-length . . . she had longed once to marry him. He was not some stranger. He knew her. He called up feelings within her that no one else had ever stirred.
She could not forgive him.
But she still could not fear him. And she could not cease wanting him, either. Even now, her body awoke to his presence.
Chills danced through her stomach. Her confusion felt sickening. For honor’s sake she must oppose him. Where was her strength? She remembered the one time he had lain with her. It will not hurt again, he had promised. But he had never had a chance to prove it. And it had hurt, terribly. Every time that Towe had come to her bed . . .
“The look on your face,” he said quietly, “suggests you think no happy thoughts.”
Her jagged emotions sharpened her voice to a knife’s edge. “Why should I look happy? What cause have you given me for happiness tonight?”
“None yet,” he said. “But half the night remains.”
The promise in his voice struck a thrill through her. It angered her, this rebellion in her flesh. “I have spent such nights with a husband. I found no joy in them, I assure you.”
Briefly his expression darkened. He leaned forward and caught her hand again, stroking his thumb over her knuckles.
“There is a large universe of difference between those nights and this one.”
He spoke the words calmly, no boast or bravado in them. How certain he was that he would please her. And in the meadow, she had glimpsed the cause of his certainty. Only by her last straining effort had she stopped him. The feel of his hips against hers . . .
The ragged rhythm of her own breathing startled her. Was she no better than an animal? How could she long for a man who had trammeled her will just as thoroughly as Towe had done?
I long. I long for him. It is I who do this: I, I, I.
A knot formed in her throat, and her stomach dipped as though at the start of a fall. She had never longed for Towe. And it had made no difference that she hadn’t. Her will had played no role in that union. But this one . . . she had longed for it, though others had forbidden it of her. And now Adrian’s silent invitation made obvious that there was, again, a part to play for her will. Hers. Not her father’s, nor her brother’s, but her will, her desire.
A strange panic twisted through her. She fought the revelation dawning inside her. After all, he had not given her a choice in this marriage! What did it matter if he now showed care for her consent?
“You could have made me happy,” she said rapidly. “Once you could have. Once—to be married to you would have been . . .” She shook her head, not wanting to put words to it. “But after tonight, Adrian—what you did—with no right . . .”
A flush prickled her cheeks. She felt . . . awkward with herself, increasingly flustered, for suddenly it felt as though she was arguing with herself as much as him. What is your will? This question she had longed forever to answer and live by, it was so much more dangerous that she had thought, for what if her will were not to the liking of her loftier ideals? What if she were hungrier, more greedy and less virtuous, than she had imagined? She could not shake her awareness from the spot where his hand gripped her hair . . .
“Tonight I sinned,” he said. He wrapped her braid around his palm, drawing nearer though she had not moved. “Let me now atone.”
“I do not wish it,” she managed. Oh, God, that was what she must say.
“I can do nothing against your consent,” he said. “Only, ask honestly of yourself what it is you desire—and tell me your answers frankly, from now forward. Every part of me, Lady Rivenham, now serves at your pleasure.”
He laid down her braid, and for a baffling moment she wondered if he could be done with her. But then he lifted her hand. His eyes on hers, he closed his lips around her index and middle fingers, sucking them into his mouth.
Her breath hissed from her. His tongue painted soft strokes to her middle knuckle, his teeth closing gently on her fingertips, and her mouth went dry.
She broke away from his gaze, staring blindly at the bed curtains, at the woven rush matting on the floor. Stop, she thought, but could not say. Her thudding pulse crushed the word.
He released her fingers and pressed a hot kiss against her palm. “A simple test,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Did my kiss displease you?”
The answer pealed through her mind like a clarion. She felt choked by the effort not to speak it aloud. She could not, would not consent. After what he had done, she could not.
Was muteness, was silence, to be the cost of her honor, then? Would she strangle herself to preserve her self-regard? And if that regard also required that her will and desire be crushed, this time by herself . . . what then?
“If silence is your reply, you must instruct me in how to interpret it.” The bed ropes groaned as he moved nearer.
She closed her eyes. She could not look at him. She could not oppose him as well as herself.
He said into her ear, “I never intended this night to be short. But I will gladly make it into a night and a day—and perhaps I must, for I will not proceed without your reply.”
Her face flamed. She dug her fingers into the quilt. Hidden in his everyday words was a sly and shameless promise to make her speak of things that modest folk left unsaid. But he would not be modest. He would not let her remain unmoved. He would do things to her that she had only dreamed about, during long, tossing nights . . .
A stifled sound escaped her. “David—if you will help him, if you promise—”
His lips touched her cheek and the words fell from her. God, his mouth was the sweetest drug; on her deathbed she would require nothing else to recall to her soul the possibility of heaven.
“I have said I might,” he murmured. “But is it not a curious thing, that one’s conscience so often wars with one’s desires? How can we put yours to sleep? Shall I speak my promise again?” His tongue curled over the lobe of her ear. “Only tell me what to say,” he whispered. “Shall I speak of your brother, Nora mine?”
No.
His hand slid around her nape, closing there. “You must instruct me,” he said. “I cannot trust my own wishes at present.” His voice grew rougher. “You see, I have rehearsed this hour, this very moment, a thousand times and a thousand times more since last I lay with you. Trust me when I say that you do not wish me to heed my own desires, Nora: they are too impatient and too hungered to guide me wisely.”
His hand cupped her nape: that was all. And yet, his words—the raw intensity in them—brushed over her like a thousand hot mouths. They left her skin flushed and swollen with want.
A thousand times and a thousand times more.
A new heat burned over her. It felt like anger.
David. What of David? Must all others’ needs ever come before her own? Must she forever trammel her appetites? I long. I want. I.
I want this man.
What lay between her and this man was older than her brother’s troubles by far. What did David have to do with this moment? What more did she owe her family in regard to this man? What price had she not paid to them for this love?
She turned violently toward Adrian, pushing him by the shoulders, forcing him down toward the quilts. Crouched over him, she froze.
As though she had been blind until a moment ago, the sight of him beneath her struck her like a shock. God, he is beautiful. His grave eyes were green as grass, steady, unsurprised, rapt on hers. His pale hair had come unbound; it tumbled across the dark quilt, and beneath her trembling fingers, it felt soft and cool to the touch. His cheeks were rough, the line of his full lower lip smooth and hot. His long limbs sprawled across the bed, his leather trousers outlining the sculpt
ed muscles of his thighs. One upturned palm exposed his tanned, hairless inner wrist, a sight somehow jarring, vulnerable.
Her throat filled. His absolute stillness communicated an invitation: he offered this body to her; he lay beneath her and let her look on it because it was hers now to take.
A dream, she thought, this is a dream. Adrian Ferrers, beneath her on the bed . . . speaking to her of love after enduring the bite of her blade. . . .
What was he to her? A villain indeed . . . but what else?
This riddle felt painfully, impossibly large; she could not think on it. She knew what must happen now. She would put out this fire inside her as quickly as possible. Reason would play no part in it. Her doubts she would wrestle later, when the flame was quenched, when she was cold. “Do not speak,” she said, and leaned down to press her mouth to his.
He deserved a bruising kiss. His broad hands grasped her head and held her there as he took his punishment. Their tongues tangled; he tasted of whiskey and hot, restless dreams and years of longing; of the sweetness of youth, and the darker, more complex pleasures of maturity. He tasted dangerous. She could lose herself in this taste. She could forget all the ties that bound her, leaving only her hunger to guide her.
He took her by the arms and rolled her beneath him, his propped elbow sparing her his weight as he ravished her mouth. She opened her mouth wider to him, glad when his hand found her knee and parted her legs to allow him to settle between them. Quickly, let him be quick, before her doubts found her again. She rocked into him, encouraging him with her hips, sighing into his mouth when his hand found her breast and began to stroke and squeeze her through the layers that separated them. She wanted to be overcome—not with his words but with his body. His words invited thought; his body issued only instructions, which her own accepted joyously.
But when she tried to remove his coat, he caught her wrist and checked her. His kiss gentled; slowly his mouth moved over her cheek, down her throat. His hands slipped behind her back and he pulled her upright.
Her head fell into the crook of his shoulder. She breathed deeply of him, squirming to keep contact with the flat muscle of his abdomen as he pulled her onto her knees, so they knelt body to body.
His hands were moving on the lacings of her dress.
She jerked her shoulders. “Stop,” she said. “You need not undress me.” Once, she had lain nude with him—but she had been a girl then. And once, too, her husband had bared her, but her body had changed by then, and it had been . . . unpleasant in the extreme. “You needn’t,” she said. He could lift her skirts easily enough.
Adrian drew away to look into her face. She did not like the thoughtful quality of his regard. She pressed her lips together and took a hard breath through her nose. “You needn’t,” she said. “Be quick.”
He leaned down to kiss her mouth. “No,” he said against her lips, “I needn’t. But for those years, those endless nights, when I made a picture of you before me . . . I would know the reality.”
Dread coiled in her belly. “I have . . . changed,” she whispered. Towe had mocked the size of her breasts, which had grown fuller and more pendulous in her maturity.
This warning went unheeded. Adrian’s lips grew more intent yet, now on her mouth, now on her neck, brushing the top of her gown, softly biting, his tongue tracing a spell over her flesh.
A sigh slipped from her. Her eyes drifted shut beneath the hot track of his lips. She understood how sugar felt as it dissolved into water.
Her bodice parted and sagged from her shoulders.
She froze.
His hands urged her to turn. Stiffly, resentfully, she followed his direction, her skirts making her movements more awkward yet. Now would come her stays, then her shift . . .
Hot kisses on her bared shoulder blades distracted her. Strings popped audibly, and fabric ripped. Her stays went flying over the side of the bed. Her knife followed.
Adrian slid the ripped shift off her arms, then bodily lifted her so she faced him again.
She could not bring herself to look into his face. She focused instead on the vicinity of his chest. That he remained fully clothed made this moment all the more mortifying.
A finger at her chin tipped up her face, but her eyes remained fixed on his body.
“This,” he said roughly, and his knuckles trailed lightly down her throat, making a path along one collarbone before passing along the outer swell of her breast. She felt her nipples pucker, and now his finger moved to touch one of them, resting there, striking a sharp throb between her legs.
He had not finished his sentence. Was she so much more ungainly than he’d supposed? Time had been kind to him where it had thickened and loosened her. She took a shuddering breath and forced her eyes upward.
His lips were parted. He was watching his own finger as it circled her nipple. He looked . . . younger, almost as if he saw something . . . wondrous . . .
His eyes lifted to hers, and her breath caught. Some hot, fierce emotion burned in his face, and she could not mistake it for aught but triumph.
His palm closed over her breast. He bent to kiss her, giving her the fullness of his tongue. “No dream,” he said, very low, “no memory, could suffice.”
A queer feeling came over her, sweet and amazed. His head lowered; he took the tip of her breast between his lips.
The heat of his mouth swam through her. She clutched his soft hair and his palm pressed on the small of her back, holding her steady as he suckled her. When he bowed her back again, she curved as pliantly as the stem of a flower. His hands moved beneath her buttocks, lifting her; a tearing noise as her skirts ripped, and then he was baring her below as well.
She spread her arms across the span of the mattress, lifting herself, inviting him to do as he would.
He kept utter silence as his mouth moved down her body, but the ferocity of his kisses, the feverish sweep of his hands over her calves and thighs, lent the hush a charged, intent quality. Her thighs fell apart at his urging.
He put his mouth between her legs.
A rasping noise escaped her. She bit down on her knuckles as his tongue penetrated her, then retreated. He found the small, aching spot where her desire pulsed and licked her there, again and again. She looked down her body, saw him crouched between her legs, holding her thighs apart, and the pleasure that rolled through her seemed to lift away the top of her skull.
It frightened her. She twisted beneath him. “Enough—” she managed, but when she would have closed her thighs, he sent a hot, intent look up her body that made her freeze. His face looked deadly serious.
He gripped her thighs and opened them wider.
Gasping, she lay back, bucking beneath him now, sensation darting through her and building in jolts, concentrating into an aching throb. She was too empty; she found the smooth curve of his muscled shoulders and squeezed, demanding, urging him up her body.
“Please,” she gasped, pulling at this cloth that kept him from her, wanting the hot press of his skin along hers. She yanked harder, and now he heeded her; he sat up and threw off his clothing, divesting himself in quick order, his eyes moving along her again and again, as though she might vanish from him; and then he was back above her, and she hissed out a breath at the branding heat of his flesh against hers. She wriggled beneath him, adjusting herself, wanting his weight to crush her harder; there was nothing, no satisfaction, to be had like his solidity, the tension in his corded neck, the biting kiss he gave her as he adjusted his hips and his cock came up against her.
She lifted her hips and felt the blunt, nudging pressure of his penetration. As he pressed into her, the discomfort grew sharper, and then, suddenly, eased into a burning almost pleasurable—and then entirely so as he began to move.
Her hands slipped to his buttocks, urging him as he pushed into her; she turned her throat to his mouth, and used her nails to encourage the pressure of his teeth. He sucked on her neck, and then took her mouth again. Hunger gained on her and took dire
ction of her hips, so she rose and fell with him, filled, conquered, wilder yet than he; in a mad moment she tried to turn him so she could mount him and take this slow, steady rhythm into a faster, harsher pace. But his hands caught her wrists and brought her arms over her head, pinning her in place as he took her.
She opened her eyes and found his fixed on her, his face a harsh mask. He leaned down to take her mouth and she bit his lip. The kiss turned savage and his restraint finally broke. He thrust into her faster and faster, and finally the delicious tension in her belly coalesced; she seized around him, crying out into his shoulder. His hips rolled once more against her, and then again, and then he, too, shuddered and fell still, his hand slipping from her wrists to cup her face as he exhaled into her throat.
He rolled to one side, taking her with him, his arms wrapped around her, his mouth on her ear, and now on her shoulder, lazy, now interested, charting the course of her collarbone.
She felt herself trembling. His hand stroked her back now as though to calm her, then closed on her nape, clasping her firmly. His heavy thigh lay over hers.
“Sleep,” he said. “You are weary.”
She was the last thing from weary. Even now something low in her belly stretched and yawned. The breadth of his muscled thigh, the feel of the sparse hair there beneath her wandering hand, the density of his chest, were enough to renew the echoes of her climax.
The flame within her had not been quenched. In giving it full license to burn, she had also fed it fresh fuel.
My God, she thought. What have I done?
15
It was Adrian’s wont to rise before dawn, and rarely had he such good cause for it as now: he had ordered his men to save for him the pleasure of expelling Cosmo Colville from the house.
But though his eyes opened before the light had begun to edge through the window, the prospect of Cosmo Colville’s reaction could not entice him to bestir himself. Not when he had, next to him on the bed, her hand laid lightly over his chest, a wonder.