Gabriel: Lord of Regrets (18 page)

“Empty boasts,” she rejoined. “Move over. I won’t have you hogging the middle.”

“A slave driver.” Gabriel sighed, obliging her. “And me so meek and obliging.”

“You haven’t a meek bone in your body.” Polly bounced onto the bed and saw him wince at the movement of the mattress. “Roll over.”

He accommodated her, giving her the vast, muscled expanse of his back. She went to work with her hands, knowing by the quality of his silence he was enjoying it.

“Heat helps, doesn’t it?”

“It does. You have strong hands.”

“From kneading more bread than you’d care to know.” She left off her massage and pressed herself against his back, spooning her body snugly around his, so her legs were drawn up under his thighs and buttocks, and her breasts were pressed against his back.

Gabriel’s hand settled over hers where it cradled his waist. “While I applaud the selfless generosity of your nursing, this might not be wise, Polonaise.”

“Hush.” She kissed his shoulder blade and laid her forehead on his nape. “You’re my slave, and I’m telling you to hush, Gabriel. For once, let me keep you safe.”

***

Gabriel woke some hours later, surprised he’d been able to sleep so deeply. Polly was still spooned around him, her fingers still closed over his wrist. Even in slumber, she protected what was hers.

What she wouldn’t admit was hers, the silly widgeon.

Well, he’d been silly too, trying to put distance between them in the name of keeping her safe, and here fate, or a mischievous Deity, had tossed her right back into his lap. Gabriel would keep her safe, and he wouldn’t do it by stuffing a rug under her door.

Carefully, he got up and poked some life into the fire. His back was greatly improved, and he had to wonder why that should be so. The first time the damned thing had seized up, he’d been laid flat in a rooming house in Portsmouth for a week, nerves snapping at the sound of every footstep on the stair, knife under his pillow at all times.

At Three Springs, he’d had the frequent hot soak to speed his recovery, and Polly and Sara’s fussing and scolding.

And then Beckman Haddonfield had come along and added his two pence of clucking and finger-shaking, and thank God, the man had enough brawn himself that when Gabriel had been laid low, Beck had kept up with the chores and the farming while Gabriel healed.

But hot springs, friendship, and some extra muscle were not the same thing as
protection
. Aaron and Polly between them, abetted by Marjorie, would see to Gabriel’s safety if he asked it of them.

God willing, it wouldn’t come to that, but to know they were offering…

“Gabriel, you’ll catch your death.” Polly flipped back the covers and thumped the mattress once. “Now, if you please.”

He complied, curling his body around hers.

“I can’t keep your back warm this way,” Polly protested sleepily.

“You keep my heart warm this way,” he replied, kissing her ear. “Go to sleep. We’ve a long, boring day ahead of us tomorrow, and you’ll need your strength if you’re to endure my company without being moved to violence.”

“Idle threats.” She seemed willing to subside into sleep, but then Gabriel felt her hand sliding over his hip and around to his shaft. “What’s this poking me?”

“A token of my proximity to a certain intemperate, very warm female. I suggest you desist.”

She desisted from carefully shaping him, and closed her fingers around him instead.

“Polonaise… Please.”

“Ah.” Polly’s fingers drifted over the sensitive head of his cock. “You’re on your manners. I must be truly aggravating you.”

“Aggravating my lust.” He let her play for a few more minutes, until that lust was a seething heat in his vitals, and the urge to mate was stealing a march on reason and determined intentions.

“Consider yourself warned, Miss Hunt.” He counted to five silently, but she merely detoured to his ballocks, which were threatening to draw up, even under the heat of the bedcovers.

He drew his hips back, but this only provoked the infernal woman to scoot around so she faced him and presented him with the very temptation he’d been trying to avoid.

Gabriel traced his palm up Polly’s ribs, slowly, slowly, as consideringly as he’d run his hand over a fine fabric he was thinking of purchasing. Her fingers went still on his cock as he closed his grip gently over her nipple.

“I thought you said I was safe.”

“When did your safety equate with my complete abdication of instincts of self-preservation? You started this, and I never promised not to pleasure you.”

“You said we’d make love.”

“And so we shall, as soon as I can properly manage.” He gave her nipple the most gentle pressure, because the time for talking was past. “For now, pleasure will have to suffice. Your pleasure.”

“Again?”

Her tone was part incredulity and part longing, and he had to smile in the darkness.

Under his hands, Polly began to smolder. Her fingers coursed over his chest, to his nipples, to his shoulders and the side of his neck, to his face, his hair.

She’s painting me by touch, learning me as she would a subject, memorizing the feel and contour of my body.

The thought was lamp oil on a bonfire of determination, and Gabriel let his hand slip lower, one rib, one sigh, at a time.

Polly’s eyes opened, her hand closed around his wrist. “Gabriel?”

“Let me,” he said softly. “I need to give you this.”

She closed her eyes and turned loose of his wrist, only to tuck herself more closely against him. He lay on his side so his touch could range over her body. Rather than immediately go a-plundering, he stilled his hand, cupped her mons, and leaned in to kiss her.

He was owed this much, and if she sighed into his mouth like she’d missed his kisses for half her life, well, he owed it to her too. He’d meant to keep their oral joining leisurely, to slow the headlong sprint toward fulfillment Polly seemed willing to accept.

She was owed more. His heart broke for her that she didn’t know enough to demand more. From him, from life, from fate.

As his tongue gently seamed her lips then stole inside, her fingers tangled in his hair.

“I want…” She could get that much out, but she sounded winded and bewildered. He let her feel the press of his hard cock against her hip, and she pressed back as her mouth opened under his and her hands tightened in his hair. “Gabriel, please…”

She arched into him, hiking a leg up over his hip as if to drag him closer, but that he would not allow. While his tongue twined delicately around hers, his fingers explored slick, soft folds with an equally careful touch.

“What are you about?” She drew back, but he followed her with his mouth.

“Kiss me, Polonaise.” He sealed his mouth over hers and gave her a hint of penetration with one thick, blunt finger. She broke off the kiss and pressed her face to his chest.

She made no sound of protest; if anything, she lifted herself to his hand then went still, her body listening to his touch on her most secret flesh. He took long, quiet minutes to learn her, tracing her sex in slow strokes, spreading heat and dampness while Polly held on to him. When he felt her breath soughing against his chest, he circled that spot at the apex of her folds and became minutely attentive to her reactions.

Tension coiled in her body; the pulse at her throat kicked up, and the leg she’d kept over his hip pulled her more closely to him, and to his hand. An altogether lovely moment of enslavement all around.

He detoured to penetrate her heat again with the same finger, a slow, shallow foray that provoked her to a soft groan and an undulation of her hips. So he plied her with that finger, slowly, until he was sinking deep and she had a rhythm.

“More, Polonaise?”

“Everything, please.”

He wasn’t going to give her everything, not tonight, at least, though it was killing him to show such restraint. He added a second finger, and she wiggled on his hand as if in pleasure and relief.

“You behave,” he whispered. “All you have to do is trust me. Trust me to give you pleasure.”

She nodded jerkily, closed her eyes, and circled his neck with her arm.

He let his thumb drift over the swollen, damp glory of her sex, though he longed to take her in his mouth, to taste her passion and feel her pleasure on his tongue. She wasn’t ready for that kind of torment—that intimacy. Not yet.

“Gabriel.” His name caught in her throat, and he stroked her again, and a third time with a hint of pressure. She clutched at him hard and began to move on his fingers in helpless pursuit of pleasure.

He gave it to her in lavish, unstintingly generous abundance. When she fisted around his fingers, he plied her with unrelenting tenderness, until she was keening against his chest and bucking on his hand in complete abandon.

“Gabriel… Gabriel…” She panted against his chest. “What have you done to me?”

Gabriel answered Polly’s bewildered question by shifting himself closer to her, pressing his hard cock to her wet sex, and gliding along it with firm pressure. He managed to wrap one of her legs over his waist, so she was opened to him and at just the right angle.

She understood and tucked into him.

“Polonaise… you…”

She kissed him, and he was lost, swearing gutturally as his body thrust against hers. She clung to him with arms and legs and mouth, and met his rhythm so seamlessly he was soon spending against her, his seed spreading a thick heat between their bodies.

“I am undone.” He rolled to his back, separating their bodies and cursing himself for creating such untidy awkwardness. Certain intimacies should be shared only between familiars, and humping her like a university boy was one of them.

“Your back…” Polly kissed his cheek then flopped to the mattress. “I can’t move.”

“At least I got that much right,” Gabriel muttered. “You are not to budge. Just catch your breath.” He lay there, humoring his back as best he could, but really his back wasn’t suffering as much as his pride.

To come on her belly like that… he hadn’t planned it, and it had been… awful and wonderful and not well done of him, and he couldn’t wait to do it again, if that’s all she’d permit.

Though it wasn’t. He knew that with the certainty of a man in bed with the woman he was put on earth to pleasure. Polly had years and years of sexual neglect to make up for, and Gabriel would see to it personally she caught up as quickly and thoroughly as she wanted to.

For now, he contented himself with retrieving a handkerchief from the night table and passing it to his lady.

She dabbed at herself and returned his linen to him. “Your back is all right?”

“You’ve caught your breath,” Gabriel concluded, scrubbing at his belly. “If you dare to scold me for asking too much of my back, I will turn you over my knee and paddle you soundly.”

She lay naked among the tossed-back covers, firelight flickering over her curves and hollows, and damned if she didn’t look intrigued at his suggestion.

“You like to be spanked,” Gabriel lamented. “I’m told this is characteristic of prim, strong-willed women. All I ask is that you indulge only me in this regard. I’ve earned the privilege.”

“You are scandalous, Gabriel Wendover. Your back…”

“What back?” He tossed the cloth away and kissed her, mostly to keep her quiet.

“You think you can use kisses to keep me from scolding you,” she began, and while her words were tart, the way she traced his eyebrows with one finger was tender.

“You’re complaining about my kisses, Polonaise? Will you resort to begging?” He flopped down beside her, pleased all this thrashing about had not afflicted his back—yet.

She pursed her lips, her expression an adorable blend of satiety and frustration. “I do believe I might beg. This cannot be good.”

“It’s wonderful.” Gabriel reached over, felt his way down her belly, and tugged gently at her curls. “This is a lighter red than the rest of your hair.”

“I’m apparently living down to the narrow-minded implications of having red hair. I cannot believe what just happened in this bed.”

“Neither can I.” Gabriel heaved a disgusted sigh and ruffled her curls. “To spend like that, without your permission… it’s your fault, you know.”

“My fault?” He heard the uncertainty in her voice, saw it carefully hidden in her eyes. He wanted to kill someone slowly and painfully for putting it there, maybe several someones.

He scowled thunderously at the ceiling, where firelight cast dancing shadows. “If you weren’t so gloriously, beautifully passionate in your pleasures, a man might be able to hold on to a little restraint.”

Polly’s smile bloomed, sweet and smug. “You’re right. It’s all my fault. So what do we do now?”

“We rest.” Gabriel linked his fingers with hers, lest his petting escalate to more wonderful folly. “And we do
not
quiz me at length about why I was so ungallant as to spend my seed all over you, or why I have so little dignity where you’re concerned. Really, Polonaise, you should show some consideration.”

She rose up and straddled him, then cuddled down exactly where he’d wanted her but had been too cowardly to arrange her.

“When we get to the spanking part, I’ll spank you first.”

“Who could ask for more than that?” Gabriel tucked her hair over her ear, then kept up a slow, repetitive caress over her back. “Would you like to use your bare hand, a leather riding crop, or perhaps a birch cane?”

“We’ll have to try them all and see which one I like best.”

“Methodical. There is much to admire about you, Polonaise.”

“Now you try to butter me up.” She bit his collarbone, so gently. “It won’t work. You’re still my slave.”

“Go to sleep, love. You’ve worn your slave out.”

She drifted off, mouth eventually going slack, while Gabriel stayed awake for some moments longer.

He hadn’t lied. She really had worn him out, in every sense. He hadn’t felt this good since… since… forever.

***

God and a conscientious older brother be thanked, Gabriel used several days of his fictitious indisposition to catch up on the reams of correspondence generated by the seat in the House of Lords. Aaron had cheerfully agreed that until the matter of the title was resolved, he’d abstain from voting his seat.

Abstaining from relations with his wife, however, was becoming far less palatable. Their rooms were smaller and adjoined directly now, not by virtue of dressing closets and sitting rooms. Marjorie had asked again about having his portrait done, but Aaron hadn’t found a way to put her request to Gabriel.

Mostly because Gabriel was the one whose likeness ought to be hanging in the gallery where Aaron strolled with Marjorie.

“I will ask him today,” Aaron told his wife. “What are you ladies up to?”

“It’s too cloudy for Polly to paint. She’s going to teach me how to make an apple walnut pie.”

“You enjoy cooking, Margie?”

“I find I do, and she told me it’s your favorite dessert.”

“I like a lot of sweets,” Aaron admitted. And he liked his sweet wife, which was not as irksome as it had been even a month ago. “That recipe of hers would bring tears to the Regent’s eyes.”

“I have to do something with my time.” Marjorie paced to the window, her back to him. “You haven’t heard anything else from Kettering?”

“Such correspondence would be directed to Gabriel,” he said gently, “but there hasn’t been anything in the post from him, no.” He came to stand beside her, and the banked misery he saw in his wife’s eyes gave him the resolve to broach a delicate topic. “I’ve been meaning to raise something with you, Marjorie, an idea Kettering came up with.”

She studied him in a sidelong glance, one that emphasized her classic profile. “Marjorie? This is serious. Shall we walk?”

Because she’d crossed paths with him in the frigid expanse of the long portrait gallery, and it was too miserable out to walk elsewhere, Aaron offered his arm.

“This
is
serious,” he said. “Or it’s ridiculous, depending on how you look at it.”

“I comprehend the ridiculous part,” Marjorie said, pausing before the first marquess and his lady. “My mother is entirely ridiculous.”

“He looks like my grandfather. They both looked perpetually dyspeptic.”

“Rather like my mother.”

“Margie?”

“Hmm?”

“May I kiss you?”

She gave him a puzzled glance, as if she were expecting one of his rare, perfunctory pecks to the cheek. “Of course.”

“I mean a real kiss. Humor me.”

“If you like.” She put her hands on his biceps tentatively. When he tugged her closer, his hands on her hips, her expression turned wary. “What is this about, Aaron?”

“I’ll explain in a minute.” His voice had dropped to a coaxing whisper, and as his head dipped, he closed his eyes and settled his lips over hers.

He was fairly certain he desired her, which had been variously a disgrace, an amusement, an irritation, and a growing intrigue. But Aaron was old enough to have had the experience of pursuing something madly, only to find when he’d acquired it, his desire for it—or her—had fled completely. The title had been like that, something every younger son dreams about acquiring, thinking he’d make such a prime go of it, and then the having of it had been full of resentment, weariness, and a willingness to bargain with the devil if it might spare him the prize he’d dreamed of for so long.

Aaron didn’t want his brother’s fiancée to fall into the same category, or to make the discovery too late to preserve them from folly.

He eased his tongue over Marjorie’s lips, and she opened to him generously, sighing into his mouth and arching her warmth closer to his body. She made a sound in her throat, of… longing? It certainly wasn’t protest, and as Aaron felt her sweet, generous curves pressing against him, he got an answer to his question.

Even with various stern-faced ancestors looking on, in the chilly expanse of the gallery, he
truly
desired his wife.

She parted his wit from his volition when she took one of his hands and planted it right over the lush velvet-covered abundance of her breast, then made that sound again, a yearning sound, yearning for him, or at least for what he could give her.

Still, he didn’t end the kiss. He let his hand explore the contour and weight of that gorgeous breast, then tactilely inspected its twin, even as his tongue dipped and tasted and dueled with Marjorie’s.

She was plastered against him, his arousal rising between them, but still he didn’t let her go. He broke the kiss and tried to recall what this experiment was to have been in aid of.

He’d needed to know if they could desire each other.

“Sit with me.” He led her the few steps to the window bench and sat, trying to ignore the cold at their backs—and the way his breeches were fitting too snugly over his parts.

“I’m sorry.” Marjorie settled nervously on the bench. “I wasn’t expecting that, and you’ve never… we’ve never…”

He hated that she was so nervous. “What are you apologizing for, Marjorie?”

“I didn’t kiss you decently.”

“Nor I, you. Let’s say it was more a married kiss. Did you enjoy it?”

“What kind of question is that, Aaron Wendover? You rob me of my wits and then ask if I enjoy it?”

“A woman’s interest in a man isn’t as obvious as his in her,” Aaron said, trying for patience, and resisting the urge to arrange himself in his clothes. He instead reached past Marjorie to free the heavy window drape from its tie, which only plunged the room into greater gloom. “I need to know if you can desire me as you have my brother.”

“Your… what?” She looked thoroughly distraught now, confused, angry, aroused, and not at all in charity with him. “You want to know if I can desire your brother?”

“No,” Aaron said, his voice cool in the face of her rising ire. “I want to know if you can desire me, as you’ve desired him, at least on occasion.”

“I have never
desired
Gabriel Wendover. I respected him and felt a proper affection for him as the man my parents chose for me to wed. Aaron, are you trying to be cruel? Gabriel and I are agreed we will not marry, regardless of what my mother tries to do legally.”

“I’m not exploring your desire to marry him,” Aaron said. “I’m wondering if perhaps you might want to have a baby with me, because he’s no longer able to oblige.”

She scooted to the edge of the bench, as if she’d leave him alone with the scowling ancestors in the frosty gloom. “You’re accusing me of something, Aaron, though I can’t think straight enough to fathom what it is. You’re making an accusation, and I think, an… an offer.”

“I am making an offer.” How had the discussion gone from their first real kiss to
this
, and in less than two minutes? “I’m offering to try to get a child with you, something Kettering suggested.”

“A child?” She looked at him with glittering, heartbroken eyes. “Now, two years from our wedding, you’re willing to offer me intimacies? Why, Aaron? You’ve kept yourself at arm’s length until now, and I cannot say it has made sense to me. We’ve a duty to the title, or we did.”

“Duty.” Aaron spat the word. “Not you too, Marjorie.”

“What is this about then, if not duty?”

As usual, Marjorie asked a pertinent, difficult question, and also as usual, Aaron’s answer was not precisely on point.

“It’s about producing a child, so if your mother succeeds in her suit, she’ll make her own grandchild illegitimate. It’s a tactic, Marjorie, one I felt I should inform you of.”

Marjorie looked puzzled as she worked out the legalities. Her expression became sad, then sadder. “You don’t want to be a father, do you?”

“A father?” What was she asking, and why couldn’t she ask it in plain English? “I generally assumed at some point I would be, because children happen along in the normal course, but a burning desire to reproduce isn’t where the topic sprang from in this instance.”

God help him, he sounded like his pompous, dyspeptic grandfather.

“I’ll take that as a no.” Marjorie’s smile might have been described as tragic. “Well, I do want to be a mother, Aaron. A mother to your children, and I comprehend what conception entails. I am unwilling to conceive a child, one possibly destined for bastardy, simply to hedge a legal bet. It wouldn’t… Mother would think I was bluffing, and God help the child born under such a star. I don’t think you want that for your firstborn.”

He did not want that for his
wife
, now. He reached for her hand, and she let him have it.

“I honestly hadn’t thought beyond the idea of it,” Aaron said, “and it might work, whereas I’m not sure what else we’ve got to throw at her.”

“It might not work,” Marjorie countered. “And if Gabriel isn’t blessed with sons when he marries, there I’d be, your former mistress, raising your child in the dower house, while you what? Married a woman who could produce the legal heir?”

“I’d marry you. I know my duty, Marjorie.”

“But you haven’t done it, have you? Not with me, not for the past two years, when your brother was presumed dead and you have no heir of your body?”