Healing Hearts (6 page)

When she searched her heart, she was forced to admit that, when it came to
this
man, she wanted to trust. She wanted Adam as she had never wanted any man. Could she really give herself over to his safe keeping?

“Whatever you’re thinking, please stop.” His thumb massaged the inside of her wrist. “You’re wound tighter than a watch spring.”

“With reason.”

“I know, my dear.” He tucked her more securely against him. “Do you think I have not noticed the empty spaces in this room?”

He swept his hand around the parlor. His walking stick rested against the naked rosewood table. Emma realized he had not wanted to confront Farraday with the advantage of a weapon in his hands. Her heart clenched. Would a man as honorable as this have led her brother to his death?

“I’ve been holed up at Brimley for a fortnight, Emma. I have some idea of what’s been going on here. How you’ve tried to stave off disaster. I’ve sent my batman to find—”

He stopped abruptly and a grunt of frustration escaped him. “Why didn’t you come to me with this?”

Emma stiffened and moved to pull away from him again, but he kept her glued to his side.

“Why would I, Riverton? You didn’t reply to any of the letters I wrote after Michael died. Why would I suppose you’d involve yourself in my problems?”

“Back to ‘Riverton’ again, are we?” He sighed. “Yes, I know. My fault entirely.”

He frowned but let her go. He looked away from her for a moment, studying his hands. “I’d sent off hundreds of letters to dozens of families after Albuhera, you see. I was not in very good shape myself for several long months after. Barely lucid sometimes. Very often drunk. Not fit to write a lady.”

Emma absorbed his ragged statement, inwardly cursing herself. Of course, he would have had had his own difficulties. She had been so torn and broken over Michael’s death she had never once considered Riverton’s own physical and mental condition.

“Oh! I am so sorry. I should have realized—”

“Do not apologize to me.” A hard edge roughened his voice. “Do not ever apologize to me. I couldn’t stand that.” From his pocket he withdrew a tattered muslin square and gave it to her. “I should have returned this to you long before now.”

Emma gasped as she took the piece of material, monogrammed with her twin’s initials. Michael’s handkerchief. The one she’d stitched with love and pressed into his hand right before he’d left England, never to return. The edges were now dyed burnt-rust with his blood. Had he suffered? Had death come quickly? Was it Adam who had taken the scrap of fabric from her brother’s lifeless body?

“Michael,” she murmured. “Oh, Michael, how I miss you!”

It was as if Adam had ripped a scab off the gaping hole in her chest. The pain of her loss threatened to overcome her. Her eyes stung. She stared at Adam through her blinding tears.

“I did my best to protect him,” he said. “To protect them all.”

Adam’s broken voice recalled her from her own grief. His blue eyes grew steadily bleaker, losing their ever-present gleam. Emma began to fear he had traveled to some hideous place captured deep inside his memory—a prison from which he might not ever escape. She was no longer certain for whom she was weeping.

Ignoring the tears streaming down her cheeks, she reached out to cradle his face in her hands. “Come back, Adam. Please come back to me.”

His focus returned to her. He produced another handkerchief, this one embroidered with a single initial
C. C
for Caldwell, she thought.

“I bought this in the village,” he said, gently dabbing her eyes and swabbing her cheeks with it. “I thought I recognized the handiwork, the tiny, elegant stitches. I would have paid a lot more than the merchant asked for it. I envied your brother, I think. That he had someone who loved him so much and made him so wonderful a keepsake to remind him of home—and of all we were fighting for.”

His quiet words worked on her frazzled emotions, bleeding her raw. Her tears ran anew. He blotted them away.

“I will stitch you as many as you want,” she murmured. “I’ll make you scores of handkerchiefs.”

“If it pleases you to do so. As a wife sewing for her husband. I hope you will not have to go into trade, Emma. Not ever again.”

He took her hand, examining the pricked fingertips her thimble had not shielded. His lips grazed each one again. Over her hand, his eyes suddenly smoldered with unbanked passion. The naked desire she read there made her quake, and kindled a similar blaze within her.

Emma could no longer fight her attraction for this man. The idea that he had recognized her craftsmanship in a shop in town and wanted to have one of her handkerchiefs melted everything within her.

How could she keep blaming him for Michael’s death? Michael had been a grown man. No one had forced him to take up forty shillings on the drum. He hadn’t purchased a commission or trained to be an officer, as Adam had. The military had not meant that much to him. He’d enlisted on a whim, running off to the Peninsula as a lark. And he’d been cannon fodder. She would always feel the pain of his loss. But could she hold the viscount responsible?

Adam was such a fine, good man. The touch of his hand on hers made her want to promise him anything. His heated look thrilled her. The memory of his potent caresses made her yearn for more. She wanted him to stroke her again, and to hear his soft groans, as if he’d never experienced anything so sweet.

She wanted to know him in every possible way.

“Kiss me, Adam. Please. Just kiss me.”

Emma’s words acted on Adam like a drug. Desire pulsed through his veins like liquid heat, spreading to every part of him, quickening his breath, hardening his cock. His whole body tightened with arousal.

Was Emma in nervous shock from the recent encounter with Farraday, or merely grateful to him for helping to extricate her from her dire circumstances? Could she really want a man so damaged?

His admiration for her had steadily increased over his weeks in Brimley. He’d known she’d watched him on the cliffs. His awareness of her gaze had driven him to push himself harder, to try to speed the healing of his leg. Ever since their meeting this morning, his sexual need for her had intensified, the fierce passions always simmering below the surface. When Emma tilted her head, shutting her eyes and parting her lips expectantly, the pot abruptly boiled over.

Adam leaned toward her, sweeping her into his arms until she was lying against his chest. Every masculine part of him roared with hunger. He knew he should proceed slowly but burned to ravish her.

His mouth closed over hers, as gently as he was able considering the ravening male beast she had loosed. With a little cry, Emma looped her arms around his neck. The fragrant scent of her hair, combined with her warm, feminine essence, intoxicated him more than the most potent brandy. Made him desperate to possess her.

He deepened the kiss, his mouth slanting against hers with such wild ardor she trembled in his arms. He cursed himself.

“Forgive me, sweetheart, I do not mean to be so clumsy. But I—”

Emma squirmed against him, cutting off his words. “Hush. I don’t want you to stop.”

Her arms tightened around him and she deposited a row of frantic kisses on his throat.

Her excitement spurred his, making him so hard and stiff he thought he might embarrass himself like a green boy. He ached with his need, and knew he could not contain his lust or control his desire much longer, despite what he’d told her. Emma did this to him. Only Emma.

He groaned as she drew him down to her. When their lips met, a bolt of hunger hit him like a cannonball. This woman made him half-crazy, as delirious as when he’d thrashed with fever after falling, bloodied and broken, to the sun-baked Spanish earth. No, not like that. Then, he’d struggled to regain his senses even though consciousness meant he’d arrive back in his world of suffering and pain. Now he basked in his delirium, wanting to wallow forever in his joy of Emma. He could drown in her and be a happy man.

The thought startled him. Happy? He barely remembered that emotion. Emma made him want to go on living. And so much more.

“I don’t think you understand,” he growled. “You’re driving me wild, Emma. I—”

“Show me.” She slipped her fingers into his hair, and he was lost. “Teach me.”

He crushed her against him, desperate to feel her soft, lush form curved into his larger frame. His mouth came down urgently over hers, his demands more insistent. He parted her lips with his own, sliding his tongue inside to strafe against hers.

“Oh.” She exhaled the soft word as a wondrous sigh, as if she were savoring something both marvelous and unexpected.

The taste of her drove Adam to the edge of his limits. He felt as if he were standing on the dangerous lip of the chalky cliff again, about to fall off the precipice and plunge toward an unknown heaven. His body ached, his groin on fire and his cock throbbing with urgent need. Nothing had ever been as bittersweet as this.

He ran his hands up and down Emma’s sides until she arched back. Her sweet breasts strained against the flimsy muslin of her dress. Her hands left his hair to grip his shoulders, her fingers digging into his taut sinews. Before he took final leave of his senses, he had to allow her a last chance to choose.

“Are you sure, poppet?”

“Chuckleheaded man. Do I appear unsure?”

“You’re trembling, sweetheart.”

“Not from fear.” She groaned and nipped him in the hollow between his shoulder and neck. “Except the fear that you will cease what you are doing and pull away from me.”

She gave him another tiny love bite. The feel of her teeth pricking his skin made him insane. He rained savage kisses on her temple, her brow. He seized her mouth, his lips so demanding against hers that she gasped.

“God help me,” he muttered.

“You don’t need
any
help.” Her arms tightened around him.

Her neck and throat were bared by her gauzy frock. He pushed the tiny cap sleeves off her shoulders to expose still more of her, nuzzling her pink flesh with more intimacy and urgency than before, claiming her with his lips and teeth and tongue, marking her as his own.

“You’re mine, Emma,” he growled. “Say you’re mine.”

“Yes. Oh, God, yes. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours.”

Adam tugged the gathered bodice of her gown lower, pushing the material out of his way to free dusk-tipped breasts. He groaned and sucked in a breath, cupping the gently rounded fullness in his palm, as if her breast were a delicate bird. Her skin warmed, silky as rose petals. Beneath his hand, her heart leaped wildly.

“Adam!” Emma’s hand closed over his.

He paused, nearly shaking with need. If she stopped him now, he thought he might lose his mind.

“Emma.” He heard the ragged hitch in his voice. “Let me, Emma.”

Oh,” she sighed. “That feels so…delicious.” She quivered, arching upward as if to give him greater access. “Touch me. Touch me all over.”

Beneath their joined hands her flesh heated, the coral blush spreading across her chest to the graceful column of her neck until her cheeks burst with color. Her eyes met his, turning a dreamy, smoky silver Adam found mesmerizing.

Emma increased the downward pressure on his hand, guiding his strokes in lazy circles over her breast.

But touching wasn’t enough. Adam wanted to taste. He inclined his head, bending to kiss her breasts, replacing the gentle persuasion of his hand with the hungry need of his lips.

“
You
are delicious, sweetheart.”

When she cried out, he recognized her stunned wonder. Her nipples peaked and hardened as he brushed first one, then the other, with his tongue.

“Do you like that, Emma?”

“Oh, yes.” She panted a little, as if finding it difficult to draw air into her lungs. Her eyes drifted closed, her pretty lips curved in a delighted smile.

He sucked her nipple, lips closing over the stiffened bud, his tongue flicking back and forth greedily, as if she were a confection dissolving in the moist heat of his mouth.

“Oh, yes, I like that,” she repeated. “I
love
that, Adam.” She feathered more frenzied kisses into his hair.

Her hands moved from his shoulders, down his chest, and she tugged the linen from his trousers. Her hand dipped below the fabric, her delicate fingers exploring him, cool against his burning skin. Her touch sent him to a place well beyond lust. Beneath her probing hand, his muscles leaped.

“Do
you
like that?” she asked, tearing a husky groan from him.

He sat up, disposed of his shirt, and leaned back against the damask cushions of the settee with a wink. If she wished to explore, he wanted to let her.

“Have at me, poppet.”

Emma stared at the jagged pattern of scars etching his chest.

Bloody damn!

How stupid to think this woman could thaw him. How stupid to think she—or any woman—could ever accept him the way he was. His marred chest was nothing compared to his mangled leg, which she had not yet seen. His leg was nothing compared to his bruised psyche. Emma was the one woman he most wanted to shield from the wretched sight of his wounds, souvenirs of the same battle that had taken her brother.

“What is this from?” she demanded. “Albuhera?”

“Yes.” His voice emerged toneless and cold. He could not hide his bitter disappointment. Only a paid whore would shut her eyes to his disfigurement. He grabbed for his discarded shirt. Emma swept it out of his hands and onto the floor.

“How?”

“Emma, I don’t want—”

“How?” she repeated.

“Pieces of shot. Flying fragments of metal.”

“It was very bad, wasn’t it?”

His gaze slid away.

“Oh, Adam. I am so sorry. I should have known, but—”

“It’s all right,” he grated through clenched teeth. “I understand.”

He reached for his shirt again, but Emma stilled his hand. Her eyes flashed at him, like angry bolts of lightning.

“I don’t think you do.”

Adam’s bleak words tore her apart. Deliberately, Emma placed her palm against his chest, running her fingertips over the thin, white scars.

“Your wounds hurt me because they hurt you. They do not offend my sensibilities.”

“I didn’t want to remind you. I—”

“I wish I had not wasted so much time trying to hate you. I wish I could have eased your pain. I wish I could have held you in my arms long before now. Don’t you realize how much I want you, Adam? How much I’ve always wanted you?”

She curled against him, petting him, increasing the pressure of her hand, her fingers meandering over his rib cage and then his pectoral muscles, making them leap. Her strokes became caresses. “I wish I could tease you back into a fever. Set you on fire like you’ve done to me.”

He met her gaze. “Do you think you haven’t?”

Emma shook her head. “Not yet, I think.” She bent her head and pressed her lips against his chest, flicking her tongue over his nipple the way he’d suckled hers, making it pebble.

Adam groaned and dragged her down to a bed of sofa pillows, his hard body pinning her, her skirts jumbled between them. He rubbed his bare chest against hers. The friction of his flesh on hers felt sublime. He set her ablaze, melting her so thoroughly that her sex tingled and throbbed, feeling full and soft and open. She’d never experienced such strangely compelling sensations.

She wanted Adam to touch her there.

The thought shocked her. But not enough to keep her from spreading her legs a little, and writhing beneath him as if to instinctively guide him where she wanted him.

“Adam.” She whimpered, nearly crying, so great was this new need.

Although Adam braced himself on his elbows and forearms, his weight, the feel of his strong, firm muscles crushing her into the cushions, made her belly contract and stoked her powerful need. Lust for him overwhelmed her. How had she lived all her years without this? Without this man? Her arms looped around his neck. His crisp juniper scent dizzied her with desire. Through his trousers, she felt the hard ridge of his bulging erection.

Suddenly, she was very glad she was a country girl, not completely ignorant of what took place between males and females. She fumbled with his buttons, but he moved her hands away.

“I want to touch
you
now, poppet.”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes. I need you to.”

He seized her hem, pushing her scattered skirts up, past her knees, past her thighs. Cool air struck the naked skin above her stockings. She closed her eyes and bathed in Adam’s warmth as he lovingly caressed her legs.

She sucked in a breath. “Oh, Adam.”

He kept up the mesmerizing massage, his hand moving higher and higher along the inside of her thigh, tearing soft sighs from her. She wanted more, so much more. She ached and throbbed. She knew he could feel how wet she was. She pushed against him in desperation.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Emma.” She heard the strain in his voice.

Her lashes parted and she gazed up at him. His eyes burned with raging need. “You cannot. Except when you stop touching me.
That
is torture. I’m on fire for you.”

She spread her legs wider and her blatant invitation wrenched another groan from him. His hand glided up her leg. He cupped her mound, easing a finger into her swollen sex.

“Merciful heavens.” Emma sucked in another shivery breath. The erotic invasion was like nothing she had ever experienced. Only this man could thaw her heart so completely. Her blood thundered in her ears, pulsed in her sex. Adam withdrew his finger slowly.

“No,” she cried, grasping at his hand, bereft at the sudden feeling of emptiness, an emptiness she desperately needed to be filled.

“Stop?”

“No!”

He slid his finger back into her.

“
Oh.
Oh, yes.” Her head fell back against the cushions and she moaned.

“Like wet silk. Tight and slick.”

The wonder in Adam’s voice made her tremble. She knew he’d done this before, but he made her feel the art of lovemaking was as new to him as it was to her. She felt their mutual desire swirl around them like a living thing, holding both of them enthralled. She clenched her feminine muscles.

“By all that’s holy,” he ground out.

The glide of his finger had her clutching his shoulders, the cushions beneath her, and yet it was not enough. She gripped him with her inner muscles again. “Adam.” She whispered his name as if it were a prayer, moaned the syllables in a voice that broke with passion.

He teased her, withdrawing his finger and then slipping it back into her. Slowly. So excruciatingly slowly. In. Out. Again. And again. Her juices poured from her. His rhythm hastened. The slippery sucking sound as his finger entered and withdrew had her writhing. The tension within her increased as the pad of his thumb stroked back and forth over her throbbing button.

“Adam. Adam,
please.
”

She dug her fingers into his shoulders as a need both exquisite and indescribable built. She was certain something had to happen, but she was not sure what. She knew only that he had brought her to a feverish pitch that rendered her speechless. She did not know how long she could remain tottering on this brink of the beautiful unknown.

She had no words to tell him what she wanted. She knew only that she wanted, needed, hungered for
him.

“Adam, you
must!
”

Emma clamped her thighs closed, impeding his movements. She spread her legs again, wider than before, thrashing and bucking, nearly crying, as she urged him on in a rush of excitement.