Darkest Dreams (28 page)

I did, and he bent down and kissed me first, gently, then more insistently. I leaned into him, breathing deeply of his scent.

“Now choose,” he whispered.

This time, my hand shook and my palm dampened as I reached and felt the dividers on the box. I slid my finger across a row and then dipped it into a square.

“Excellent choice,” he said.

I popped my eyes open. “What?”

He palmed the figurine and shook his finger at me. “You can't see yet. You're not ready.”

Good Lord! What had I picked? “What do you mean I'm not ready?”

“You've got all of your clothes on and you're not in bed. You can't see this until then.”

“That's not fair. How do I even know I'll want that?”

“Trust me. You will. Shall we?” he said, holding out his arm. After a sharp glare at him I set my hand on his arm, hoping I'd get a clue from his thoughts, but I felt nothing save the heat of his muscled arm beneath the soft fabric of his linen shirt. By all appearances he was a gentleman leading me to the ballroom, but my insides were tumbling end over end. Yesterday, I hadn't planned to be in Alex's arms, but it had happened. Now I'd made an even bigger step, for I was planning on being in his arms again, and wasn't sure if this was the move that would send me falling over the precipice I wavered on. For I wanted there to be so much more between us than the physical expression of love. I wanted all of the things that I could never have. I wanted him forever. Suddenly, walking into his arms, letting myself become more intimately entwined with him had my heart aching, and part of me knew that being with him again would only make the parting harder. And another part of me wanted to grasp every moment that I could, to savor every experience, to love him just once more.

I halted at his bedroom door, unsure what to do. “Mrs. Lynds is expecting me down for lunch shortly.”

“I had her pack a picnic and send it to the stables with Brighty. I'd planned an outing for us this afternoon, so she'll not be expecting you.”

“Oh.” I moved on into the bedroom with him. He shut and locked the door. I swallowed the lump of nervousness lodged in my throat. “Perhaps we shouldn't let the meal go to waste.”

“It'll wait. We'll picnic after and be hungrier for it.” He slid his fingers into my hair and expertly eased out the pins until my hair fell down my back and over my breasts.

“I've a concern that needs to be addressed,” I said hesitantly.

“Which is?” His fingers settled on my bodice buttons and plucked them free from their moorings, exposing my nearly sheer chemise. He flicked his thumbs over the tips of my breasts, and they pebbled to hard tips. My heart fluttered, and my intimate flesh dampened with need.

I grabbed his wrists as he palmed my breasts. “I'm sure you're more knowledgeable on these matters, but how exactly can I prevent…well—”

He slid his hand up to cup my cheeks and looked seriously into my eyes. “Having a child?”

“Exactly.” I exhaled with relief that he understood and thought my concern important.

“That's why I journeyed to Penzance last night. I have taken care of the matter. We've several options, which I will explain later. Now, if you've run out of excuses, I would very much like to kiss you again.”

“I wasn't—”

His lips settled on mine. “You were,” he mumbled against my mouth, then slid his tongue inside to gently sweep across the tip of mine before plunging deeper. I ran my hands over the hard planes of his chest up to the broad curve of his shoulders and into the silk of his dark hair, leaning closer to his heat. His scent, so exotic and heady, surrounded me, made me want to bury myself into him and revel in the sensations.

As he thoroughly kissed me, several deft moves left me only in my stockings and boots with my clothes a puddle at my feet. He started to kneel before me, and I caught his arm, urging him to stay. I focused on his shirt buttons and managed to loosen three of them before he impatiently jerked the shirt over his head. Sliding to one knee, he untied my garters and pulled down my stockings before easing off my boots. Once I stood naked before him, he ran his hands from the tips of my toes all the way to the aching points of my breasts, seemingly memorizing every dip and curve. He blew his hot breath over the curls of my sex as he cupped my breasts, making me shiver to the very center of my being with anticipation. Scooping me up into his arms, he set me on the silky counterpane of his bed, and I sat up, watching him undress, noticing for the first time that he was sun-bronzed everywhere. His arousal jutted large and thick from a mat of dark black, curly hair. If he hadn't already been inside me I would have claimed the deed impossible. He was so silky dark to my golden light.

“Do you sail naked?” I asked.

He frowned, puzzled by my question. “Your skin is darkened everywhere,” I said.

“I swim often in the cove during the summer and occasionally nap on the beach in the warm sand.”

“Outside without your clothes where just anyone could wander by?”

“Considering it's my land, just anyone isn't apt to wander by, and my servants know to give me privacy. But I daresay there are worse things than spying a naked man on the beach should someone happen to stumble my way.”

“Worse things? I was thinking that I hadn't ventured far enough this summer.”

Alex laughed, and the gleam of desire in his eyes darkened. “For this to work properly we need some pillows,” he said.

“For what to work?”

He held up the figurine and I gasped, shaking my head. “That's impossible.”

“Trust me,” he said softly.

“Trust you?” I glared at the little jade carving. “You aren't the one standing on your head. Just exactly what is the point of being intimate like that? He can't even kiss her if he wanted to.”

He laughed and gave me a quick kiss and climbed onto the bed. Then he began stacking pillows up in the center of it. I was gauging how far it was from my clothes to the bathroom, wondering if I could make a quick escape. I had to have picked the least intriguing, most impossibly uncomfortable… Great heavenly day, it wasn't supposed to be like this. He was supposed to gently seduce me, sweep me off my feet with sweet words and soft music and a laughing smile. But maybe that only happened when a man loved a woman rather than just lusted for her, and Alex had made it very clear there was no place in his life for love. Tears burned in my eyes, and I drew a deep breath. This was what I had decided as well. There was no place in my life for love, for no man could live with my secret. Knowing all of this didn't take the burn away. The burn of wanting things different, nor the burn of knowing they would never be different.

“Andrie.” Alex whispered my name as if it were the most sacred of words. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” I said, turning to him. Seven pillows made a huge wedge in the center of the large bed, but Alex wasn't kneeling or sitting beside them as I expected. He was lying across the bottom of the bed on his back with one hand cupped behind his head. The other hand he held out to me. I knew that by taking his hand, I was committing myself to experience all that I could of his passion before reality would steal everything away. I loved him. I didn't have a choice.

I set my hand in his and he drew me closer, pressing my palm to his chest. The solid thud of his heart thrummed beneath hot, rippling muscle.

“Touch me, feel me, and when you're ready to explore further we can try the pillows. Intimacy is about pleasure for you and for me, and if something doesn't fall within those guidelines then it doesn't belong here and isn't important. You're so arousing, so sensual and responsive that I forget all of this is new to you. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable with the challenge and the Kama Sutra figures. All I have been able to think about since you left yesterday is making love to you again, and I found the situation extremely arousing. I've never let myself be around anyone long enough to even play such a game.”

Though I still trembled inside as if I were on shaky ground, his words and the loneliness lying starkly beneath them wrapped around me and tugged me impossibly closer to him. I had to be honest as well. “It was arousing. It made my heart beat so hard that I almost became dizzy. I don't know what happened. If you had marched in and swept me off my feet where I didn't have to think then I might not have started feeling so strange. Does everyone talk so much when they are being intimate?”

“Hardly,” he said. “If they did maybe there wouldn't be as many mistakes made, because talking requires thought and not just feeling.”

“Are we making a mistake?” I asked, afraid for us both.

“Maybe, but not like many are made. Both of us appear to have made a choice here, am I wrong?”

“No.” I slid my finger down the thin path of hair bisecting his stomach. He sucked in air, and his arousal jerked upward. “Did I hurt you?”

“Quite the opposite.” He moved his hand over mine and brought it to the burgeoning tip of his sex. He was hot and very hard and so surprisingly soft that I circled my fingertip all the way around his sex and then slipped it down the long length of him. He groaned. “You pleasure me greatly,” he said.

Embolden, I repeated my motions, exploring further. The hard length of his thighs and legs felt so much more powerful than the softness of mine that it was difficult to believe I could make him tremble, but I did. I made him tremble and sweat and grow almost frantically needy when I spread my touch to all of him, then kissed him everywhere too.

He rolled as he ended the kiss, angling himself above me. “My turn now,” he said, his green eyes gleaming dark with desire. The power I had over him awed me, for I realized that he was just as vulnerable and just as needy as I had been yesterday. Between his kisses and his questing tongue plundering my every curve and secret, my breasts soon ached, and my sex burned with a fire only he could assuage. I arched my hips against him. “Fill me,” I said, writhing with my desire to have him inside me.

He kissed me long and hard. “Gladly.”

Scooping me into his arms, he set me on top of the pillows on my back so that my bottom was high and my head low. Blood rushed dizzyingly to my head. I might have protested, but he slid between my legs, leaned down, and kissed my sex thoroughly. My fists gripped the covers, and I cried out from the erotic waves sweeping over me.

He rose up, sliding my legs along his body until my heels rested on his shoulders. Then he grabbed my hips and drove himself deep inside of me, going farther than before, going so deep that for a moment I thought I would split apart. But he rubbed his thumb directly on my most sensitive spot, pulling my hips higher into the air as he rocked deeper and deeper into me. My shuddering release was so forceful, so intensely pleasurable that my entire body shook. My lungs spasmed for air, and my mind filled with an unbelievable euphoria, obliterating any thoughts but that of the pleasure washing over me in wave after wave.

Then Alex slid my legs from his shoulders so that my knees hugged his hips. He leaned down and over me, pressing himself slowly deeper until he could kiss me by bracing his hands on the bed beside my head. He made one last thrust of his hips as his tongue mated with mine and his release shuddered through us both. I couldn't read any of his thoughts. His mind was filled with the feel of his blood rushing to his head and the pleasure claiming him.

I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close, wondering what other heavens the figurines in the box would lead to. I knew I was closer to Alex at that moment than I would ever be to another ever again, and I knew our time together wasn't meant to last.

Chapter Eighteen

“I'll race you back to the picnic,” I called as I spurred Delilah past Alex, who was astride Samson. Sand flew and the sea waves lapped at the horses' legs as we rushed along the shore with the salty wind and the hot sun beating upon our faces.

“On what wager?” he shouted.

“I'm still recovering from your last challenge,” I said. “And you've yet to pay up from the duel I won the day before.”

He laughed and reached my side. “Yes, I did. You asked for me and got me. I've been meaning to ask where in the devil you learned that trick.”

I slowed my pace to lead him into a false sense of security. There was no way Delilah could actually beat Samson all the way back down the beach, but if I timed things just right I could spurt ahead and beat Alex at the last minute. “Your brother,” I told him, deciding to give him the truth whether he wanted to hear it or not. “Sean caught me pilfering fencing books from the library, and I had to confess that you were teaching me. He decided to give Cassie and me lessons the next morning and thought I needed an ace up my sleeve if I was going to match swords with you. You know, he is almost as good as you are, and probably more deadly. The cane he uses to balance on has a secret dagger on the tip.”

“Stop,” Alex shouted as if in pain, his expression dark. “I don't want to know or hear any more.” He leaped ahead and went thundering down the beach, going faster than I'd ever seen a person race on a horse.

“Wait, Alex,” I yelled. “You have to at least listen to me.” I sent Delilah after Samson, realizing too late that I didn't quite have the skill to properly hold on while galloping that fast through the surf. Frightened, I jerked back on the reins. Delilah squealed in fear and reared up. I went flying into the sea, landing on my back, slightly stunned by the cool water. Before I could catch my breath or stand a huge wave slammed into me, rolling me over and sucking me deeper as it washed back into the sea. Water went up my nose, my eyes stung, and my lungs burned with the need to breathe. I fought for a footing, but my skirts weighed me down, making it almost impossible for me to move. Panic that I could die rushed through me, and I floundered wildly.