Gabriel: Lord of Regrets (24 page)

“You do it then. I might start up again myself if you permit me to linger, and I’ve tried your body and your patience enough for one night.”

“You want me to touch you?”

“Gently. I’m a little sensitive too, but yes. Untangle us, as it were.” He raised up enough to allow Polly to reach between their bodies.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Not ever, which nearly provoked fresh tears.

“Understood.”

He wasn’t going to give her any more guidance than that, so Polly took her courage in one hand and her lover in the other, and eased him from her body. “Like that?”

“Just like that.” He climbed off her, leaving the covers flipped back. “Don’t run off. Would you like cool water or warm?”

“Warm.” She didn’t mistake his meaning. She liked it, liked the intimacy of it and the consideration. He came back to the bed with a basin of hot water poured out from the kettle on the hearth swing and mixed it with a little of the cold drinking water from the nightstand.

“Spread your legs, love.”

She eased her knees apart and watched as he regarded her intimate flesh.

“I want to go at you all night,” he said, wringing out the cloth.

“I want to go at you all night, too.” Polly closed her eyes as he gently held the cloth over her swollen parts. “That feels good.”

“But if I moved just so”—he applied a touch of pressure—“you’d likely be galloping off again, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know…” She opened her eyes to visually offer him permission. He moved his fingers on her, and sure enough, her body drew up in one tight, sweet little contraction.

“Amazing,” he said, pressing a damp cloth to her very gently. “Do you know what you’ve done for my confidence, Polonaise?”

“This has to be an aberration.” Polly stared at the shadows dancing above them rather than meet his gaze. “I’m not usually like this.” Though she was usually a lowly cook, and trying to convince all and sundry she was a spinster cook at that.

“Oh, right.” Gabriel wet the cloth, wrung it out again, and tucked it against her. “Call it an aberration when you share such passions with me, will you? It’s what you’re owed, Polonaise. Every damned time.”

“I couldn’t survive such owing. Gabriel, I don’t think this was normal.”

“It isn’t,” he replied, using the cloth on himself as he sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s so far beyond normal there’s something of the transcendent about it, Polonaise.”

On that peculiar remark, he put the basin back near the hearth, leaving Polly puzzled and longing for him.

He was only halfway across the room, he’d just pleasured her witless, and she longed for him. God help her.

“Now I see what you’re about.” Gabriel put his hands on his hips, and naked as God made him, frowned down at her in the bed. “You’re on my side of this bed. You thought I wouldn’t notice your poaching. Back to your own territory and give a fellow some room to cuddle up after his exertions.”

Polly obligingly scooted at least six inches closer to the middle of the bed. “Can you cuddle on top of me?”

“Briefly,” he groused. “Only briefly.” He climbed over her, situated himself above her, and rested his cheek on her crown. “Tell me about the tears, Polonaise.”

“Must I?”

“Yes, else your precocious little mouth will get to exploring my sensitive parts, and you’ll be suing me for return of the use of your privy parts by noon tomorrow.”

“I don’t know why I cried,” she said, nuzzling his chest. “I didn’t realize I was crying. I think it was in relief.”

“Of?”

She bit her lip, trying to think of a credible dodge.

“Polonaise?” God himself couldn’t have put more imperiousness into the simple utterance of her name.

“Loneliness.”

“Ah.” That was all he gave her as he wrapped a hand around the back of her head and cradled her face to his throat. “Just so.”

She took comfort from that embrace, so close and cherishing, and felt her body give up the last of its passion-induced tensions. She was safe with him; he wouldn’t trespass or presume on the strength of their physical intimacies.

But then, he was so perceptive and she was so transparent, he wouldn’t have to.

***

Holy, ever-loving, squalling infant Jesus.

Gabriel tried to slow his whirling thoughts, taking comfort from the way Polly wrapped herself around him in sleep. No wonder she’d dropped off so easily; Gabriel had never seen such passion in another person. Her body was virtuosic in its erotic tendencies, taking pleasure from every smallest taste of sexual congress.

She’d come on his hand; she’d come at the first hint of penetration. She’d come when he’d done little more than attend her breasts. She’d come when he moved, come when she’d moved.

And when he’d come… her pleasure had plowed over his gentlemanly intentions like a tidal wave wipes out all in its path. The sense of union… of meshing souls… not even in Latin could he have fashioned words to articulate such sentiments.

And while he could attribute some of her sensitivity to years of abstinence, for the most part Gabriel knew Polly had simply found a man who showed her some consideration. All over again, he wanted to take his fists to whoever had been so cavalier with Polly’s virtue, with her pleasure, and with her confidence.

But that violent satisfaction was not to be Gabriel’s.

If Polly had her way, this sexual interlude would be kept carefully discreet, superficial, and temporary. Her precious, damned painting was enough for her.

Not so, for Gabriel.

He wasn’t going to wait two years to make love with her, only to let her go merrily painting on her way. As soon as he had his own safety sorted out, he’d be down on his knees, making her blush and stammer, and God willing, come, while she accepted his ring.

She’d fight him, of course, and argue and elude, but she’d not given herself to another the way she’d given herself to him in the past hour, and even Polly had to acknowledge the significance of that. It was a small tragedy that their loving would not likely result in a child, but Gabriel would offer her every consolation time, money, and caring could afford.

Let somebody else see to the succession—Aaron, even George, or the damned Regent, for that matter. Polly was meant to be his wife, his for all time, and he was meant to be hers.

Next time, he would have to remember to tell her these things.

Provided, of course, she permitted him a next time.

***

Gabriel awoke to hear a pencil scratching over expensive paper. More than a week after he and Polly had become lovers in truth, this sound was familiar to him. She was working diligently on Aaron’s portrait by day, and Gabriel was working diligently on her resistance by night, but she, artist to her toes, was sketching him as much as she was making love with him.

“Get back in this bed, woman.”

“Hush, and don’t move.”

“Five minutes then,” he ordered. “My backside is half-exposed to the chilly night air, and I’ll catch a lung fever.”

“You like modeling for me,” Polly murmured, pencil flying.

“I like your gaze on me,” Gabriel countered, but in truth, he did like modeling for her, because it allowed him to study her even as she studied him. Her sketching him served as a kind of sexual teasing, with each too absorbed to care where the other’s eyes were fastened.

“Of course,” Gabriel went on, “I like your hands and your mouth and your body on mine too.” And her scent. He loved knowing he left her bed smelling slightly of cloves and passion.

“I said hush.”

He’d yet to do it, but Gabriel suspected that with enough practice, he could make her come with mere words. As her menses approached, her sexual fuse had lengthened, or perhaps she was simply gaining her balance with increased experience.

He
certainly wasn’t. He was gaining a nigh constant erection, and were it not for the need to tend to estate, legal, and personal business, he’d tie her to the bed and tie himself to her.

“Three minutes, beloved, and you’re waking up parts of me that need their rest.”

“Do not move.”

He waited half a minute before his next attempt at shifting her focus. “A fellow with a delicate back is taking a chill here.”

“I built up the fire,” she shot back, and the room was cozily warm accordingly. They both liked it that way, because it left them with more light to see by and allowed them to make love on top of the covers, gloriously exposed to each other’s eyes and hands and mouths.

Gabriel lay partway between his side and his chest, the covers wrapped around only one leg and hip, leaving him more exposed than not. He was curled around a pillow, facing his artist, though he knew she’d caught him in about every pose a man could occupy in bed.

“You need to keep two notebooks, love. One for leaving around the house, that includes all your subjects, studies, and the decent parts of me, and one exclusively for our bedroom.”

He used the first person plural as much as he could: our, ours, we, us. She’d stopped flinching visibly when he did it, but he still felt her resistance.

“All of you should go in one notebook,” Polly said, frowning at her work. “Your hands are as erotic as your mouth or your manly parts.”

“How is a fellow supposed to mind his manners when you offer him such naughty talk, Polonaise? One minute.”

“You mind your manners as you steal my wits. God above, you are beautiful.”

“Could you experience sexual satisfaction merely by sketching me?”

“Gabriel Felicitos Baptiste Wendover, shut up.”

He smiled, his best wicked, arousing smile, and knew she’d be closing that sketchbook in a minute, possibly two.

“Are you growing damp for me, beloved? Do you anticipate our pleasures as much as I do? I had to tend to myself while dressing for dinner tonight. It was all I could do not to come, thinking of you at your bath.”

“Please, Gabriel.”

He fell silent, because he’d never outright refuse her request, unless she were begging him to deny her pleasure. She rewarded him a few moments later by closing her sketch pad and setting it aside. Or perhaps it was a defensive maneuver, for he’d assisted at her bath a couple days ago and had the sense the experience had left her leery of bathtubs, bath sheets, soap, and her own body.

But not his. She remained fascinated with his body, and that offered him badly needed encouragement.

“You aren’t going to show me your work?”

“Oh, very well.” She fetched the sketchbook and leafed through it. When she brought it to the bed, he levered up to sit on the edge of the mattress, tugging her down to sit beside him.

He considered her most recent sketch. “You wanted more time?”

“Always.” Usually, Polly had no vanity about her work and no insecurity. That her likenesses would be accurate was a foregone conclusion. What she puzzled over and spent time on was the emotional content of the image, the subjective impact.

“You make me look like a weary, naked angel. A fellow who has put his wings aside at the end of a lovely day and has awakened from dreams of another lovely day.”

He sensed she saw his body, scar and all, as that perfect. Silly woman. When she touched him, the same intense regard was there in her hands, so he didn’t tease her about it, didn’t question his great good fortune.

He instead kissed her cheek. “When you marry me, you can order me to strut about all day without clothes. We’ll bankrupt ourselves keeping the fires going all winter, and expire regularly of bliss.”

“Gabriel, not tonight, please?”

“No expiring tonight?”

“None of your nonsense about marriage.” Polly put the sketch aside. “It makes me want to avoid you.”

A cold draft wedged its way into their cozy boudoir. “Avoid?”

“We can’t marry,” she said, staring at her hands where they were linked in her lap. Her talented hands held no tension, but Gabriel sensed her growing desperation anyway. “You have the title, I have my art. I am too attached to you as it is, and your talk of marriage is not… entertaining.”

“A proposal is not usually considered mere talk of marriage,” Gabriel countered, though he knew he wasn’t going to grouse and bluster his way past her resistance. “We care for each other, Polonaise, and we are famous good friends in bed. Give me a reason other than the bloody title why we shouldn’t be wed?”

There was a reason. Her silence, the despair in her eyes, confirmed it.

“Perhaps,” she said slowly, “I am too passionate to confine my amours to one man.”

“Well, all right then.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “When you’ve tired of me, you are free to have your amusements, and I shall do likewise if I can still walk and have any higher functions left to go on with.”

He’d called her bluff, and Polly dropped her forehead to his shoulder. “This isn’t a joke, Gabriel.”

“It isn’t funny,” he agreed. “Come to bed, Polonaise, and we’ll argue later.”

“No, we won’t.” She let him help her out of her nightclothes, and snuggled up to his side under the sheets. “You’ll bully and tease and make love to me, and the arguments will grow without another single word from either of us.”

“You think I can’t be married to an artist?” He settled his arms around her. “This is arrogance on your part, Polonaise. I am capable of flexibility and tolerance, and I can be happy with one pair of boots and one old horse.” All he needed to be happy was her, and the ability to provide for her.

“I know that.”

“Let me rub your back.” He rolled her over, as easily as if she were a tired puppy, and rearranged himself behind her. She was soon breathing the steady, relaxed cadence of sleep, while Gabriel was, as she’d predicted, silently growing his arguments.

They belonged together, or so he’d decided, but doubt fractured his resolve with a thousand tiny fissures.

She was suffering. As much as she delighted in his sexual attentions, as much as she allowed herself to be comforted by his affection and regard, Polonaise Hunt was also tormented by the weight of the succession, or by some burden known only to her. For this reason—because she suffered—he’d eventually lose the heart to press his suit upon her. Forcing confidences from her would break something of the trust they already had, and that he would not do.