She couldn’t seem to breathe. “Suddenly I am excessively nervous. Or, perhaps not suddenly, simply again. And don’t tell me I do not look excessively nervous like you did that night at Sir Henry’s, because I would know this time it was a flat-out lie.”
“You look . . .” He swallowed, his gaze dipping to her breasts again, and the movement of his throat made her insides flutter. “ . . . perfect.”
She felt like butter must when it melted. She probably smelled like it too, covered in milk. But he didn’t seem to mind it. Circling an arm about her, he pulled her close. Their bodies brushed. He bent his mouth to her neck again, then nuzzled her earlobe.
“We needn’t do this.” His hand was drawing her shift up her legs, sliding it over her behind. “We can stop now, if you wish. At any moment.”
“If you think I’ve been throwing myself at you for over a fortnight so that I will demand that we stop now, I will have to reconsider my opinion of your intelligence. And—” Her breaths hitched. “How on earth could you imagine I would want you to stop just when you are doing
that
?” His hand covered her buttock and caressed. Her joints went liquid.
“God, you are so soft.”
She went onto her tiptoes and put her lips against his cheek. “Rule Number Five: ‘Always respect a lady’s wishes.’ ” She was a wanton. She didn’t care, not now in his arms.
“I was thinking about that.”
“About what, exactly?”
“About being a gentleman.” His hands left her and he drew off his waistcoat. “It would be ungentlemanly to expect a lady to remove her clothing while everyone else remains dressed.”
She watched, mesmerized, as he unwound his cravat, revealing taut male perfection.
“E-Everyone?”
“Whoever happens to be around at the time.” His eyes sparkled as he drew the tail of his shirt from his trousers and pulled it off.
“Uh.” She stared. “I . . .”
His hands came around her face, fingers threading through her hair, and he brought their mouths together. “Now, minx,” he murmured against her lips. “As a gentleman, I must beg the lady to precede me.”
Her heart was a drumstick beating against the wall of her throat. “Pr-Precede you?” It sounded like a croak. “I cannot seem to stop stuttering. It is very embarrassing.”
“Yet, to be expected.” He kissed her again, a coaxing caress. “Precede me in touching.”
Heat enveloped her, cheeks to toes but especially in her feminine areas. She had never imagined touching his naked body. Clearly she had been tragically naïve.
“
Touching
?”
Golden sparks from the fire illuminated his eyes, and the corner of his delicious mouth tilted up. “Come now. Will Lady Intrepid be timid in this?”
“No!” He was large and beautiful and so very male, all lean muscle in his arms and wide shoulders and gorgeous chest tapering to his waist bathed in amber firelight. The line of dark hair extending from his navel beneath his trousers made her achy again. She lifted a hand and set two fingertips to the depression at the base of his throat that made her mouth water. He drew in a slow breath, his chest rising. She laid all five fingertips down and slid them across his skin.
Her eyelashes fluttered of their own accord, the place between her legs as damp as her mouth now. His skin was hot, firm, and with only her fingertips she could feel the pounding of his heart. She traced her fingers to one flat brown nipple. He closed his eyes, pulled in a hard breath and drew her closer.
“I may have overestimated my gentlemanliness again,” he said tightly.
“Overestimated?”
“Diantha, keep touching me.” He did not open his eyes. “Your hands . . .” His voice was low and rough. “I pray you.”
There was a quality about his request she recognized amidst the delicious danger of this exploration, a need that she’d heard that night when she held him. She obeyed. Flattening her palms on his chest, she felt him, the smoothness of his hot skin, the shape of muscles that made her weak with longing, the hard beat of his heart. Her hands moved as though knowing where to touch him, curving about his shoulders, along the strong line of his collarbone, across the day’s whiskers on his jaw, then into his hair. He smelled good, of fire smoke and man. She went onto her toes and followed her fingers with her lips. His hands held her to him, spread upon her back, and she felt held and wanted and protected. She knew he would protect her. She had known it from the beginning.
The fabric of her shift bunched in his grasp.
“A gentleman should not compromise a lady’s modesty in order to make love to her,” he murmured. “I should allow you to remain gowned. But I want to see you, minx. I want to see all of you.”
Alarm leaped in her throat. “You do?”
“When I was fevered, the notion that if I came through it alive I might someday see your body kept me sane.”
“But . . .” He
couldn’t
. No one had ever seen her like that, not even her sisters or maid. At fourteen she had even turned her mirror toward the wall. Her mother had encouraged it; no need to distress herself daily. “Perhaps if we extinguish the candle first . . . ?”
“Diantha, do not deny me.” His eyes held such heat now.
She closed her own eyes so that she would not see his reaction as she drew off her shift and he helped her.
A moment of silence became two. “Dear God.” His voice sounded strangled.
She slapped her arms across her belly. “I know I’m not— That is to say, if I could—”
“If you could ask God to fashion a woman of pure beauty, he would deny the request. For he has already created you.”
She snapped her eyes open to see his gaze upon her, rapt. He touched her then precisely upon the ugly white stripes across her hips and belly. Nurse had told her that these and the marks flanking her breasts showed where her skin had stretched to accommodate her flesh before, and would always remember that time in scars. Now his fingertips stroked there tenderly.
“Beautiful, unique Diantha.”
Her throat choked in a sob she would not allow. This was fantasy. She must not weep now, even for joy. “Do you really mean it? Are you speaking the truth?”
“Yes, I really mean it. Why would I lie? You are already here, willing. I’ve nothing to gain from you by lying yet all to enjoy simply by looking and speaking my thoughts and waiting for those dimples to appear.”
“You are not looking at my dimples.”
“Easily distracted.” He captured her lips and his warm, strong hands drew her to him and finally they came skin-to-skin. Her breasts flattened against his chest and the throbbing apex of her thighs met with a hardness that showered her with pleasure. “Good God, Diantha.” He cupped her behind and pulled her hips tight against him. “If you wish evidence of how enticing I find you, delay another moment in getting on that bed and I will take you down to the floor right here and have you. I can wait no longer.”
She pulled out of his arms, relief and desire tumbling through her. “To the bed!”
He dragged off his boots as he went, then grabbed the bedpost as though to steady himself. She didn’t know whether to sit or lie down, ending up somehow in between the two, and he was staring.
“What are you waiting for?” Her voice quavered.
“For reality to waken me.” He said this quite seriously.
A little sob of elation escaped her after all. “This is reality.”
He unfastened his trousers and removed them, and then it was her turn to stare. Indeed she could not prevent herself, frightened and shocked and so achy between her legs she had little doubt what came next; her body was telling her.
He came to her and beneath his hungry gaze she did, for the moment, feel truly beautiful.
“You are damnably kissable,” he murmured. “Every inch of you.” He stroked her nipple with his thumb, passing over it once then again, gently, deliciously. He bent and took it into his mouth.
“Oh,
yes
,” she sighed. “I have been wanting you to do this again since Knighton.”
“I mistreated you that night.” His tongue flicked over her breast’s tender peak. Then again. “I touched you when you did not invite it—”
“I
did
invite it.” She arched beneath the stroking of his hand down her waist, lifting her hips, inviting him there. “Why didn’t you have me?”
“I could not.” His caresses stilled. “The drink had made me incapable.”
She blinked.
“Do you understand?” he whispered somewhat unsteadily against her cheek.
“I think so.” She glanced downward. “It—It isn’t always like this, is it?”
A crease formed at the corner of his mouth. “It is when you are near.” Then his smile faded. “Except that night.” His grasp tightened on her waist. “Will you withdraw your forgiveness for that offense now—now that you know it was not by my honor but by my failure that I left you a maiden that night?”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Diantha—”
“I don’t believe you would have. Not if I had refused you.” She stroked her fingertips along his chest and closed her eyes. “More to the point,” she whispered, and slipped her hand down his waist. “You haven’t been drinking tonight.”
His breaths came hard. She curved her fingers around his man part. It was as solid as it looked, and smooth and as hot as the need that throbbed inside her. “If I refused you now, at this moment, would you truly let me go?”
“You will not refuse me.” There was a rawness to his voice, the craving he had spoken of now at the surface.
“No.” Her voice shook like her body. But she ached and she needed the ache answered by him. She parted her knees and he moved between them, his body hot, his skin caressing hers so that she could not catch her breath.
“I will not hurt you,” he said quietly.
“I know.” It was barely a whisper. “You won’t?”
He kissed her brow, beside her mouth, her throat, then her lips so beautifully. “Never again.”
“But—”
He touched her with his fingers, deftly, intimately. She froze. Then he stroked again, his caress certain, and skillful. Her body seemed to remember him inside her, wanted it, and opened with a shudder. Upon that shudder he entered her.
He went still, his breaths heavy and fast. “My God.” His voice sounded strange, at once rough and tight. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I think so.” Oddly stretched, not entirely comfortable, but boggled that her body could do this with his. She let her hand slip across his shoulder, taut male strength beneath her fingertips. He was all around her, his arms holding her even as her body held him. She had never imagined this sort of thorough intimacy. For all she had dreamed of his embraces, she had never imagined
this
. “There is no pain. Not really. Shouldn’t there be pain the first time?”
He threaded his fingers through her hair. “We may have taken care of that in Knighton.”
“I thought you didn’t remember Knighton,” she whispered.
He kissed her mouth softly. “I could not forget that.”
“There is more to this.” She tilted her head back, accepting his kisses on her throat, sliding her toes along the counterpane, feeling him so solid inside her, so
attached
. “Isn’t there?”
“Considerably more.” His eyes glimmered like diamonds. “Let me show you.”
“Yes.”
He showed her. Rather—gentleman that he was—in response to her many questions, he taught her.
He was very patient. But he was a very good teacher. She learned quickly. And as he touched her and made her body hunger then fed her hunger with his, she learned most of all that her flesh could be teased, it could be tormented to the point of desperation. But it could not, after all, be divorced from her heart. Because amidst the caresses and kisses, when he whispered her name, that was when she lost all control.
Then the pleasure that she did not expect came, tightly wound, seizing her, tumbling through her so that she groaned quite uncontrollably, then whimpered, then actually shouted.
“Oh,
no
.” She dug her fingertips into his waist, pulling him tighter, harder, and wanting it to go on and on. “
Kiss me
so that I will cease making these noises.”
He kissed her. With a strong hand he pulled her knee up beside his hip, and she loved this intimacy amidst intimacy, the brush of skin against skin, her thighs cradling him, the heat of their bodies as he moved in her. His thrusts came faster, his muscles like rock beneath her hands. He delved to the very center of her it seemed and everything inside her opened again.
“Ohh!”
Eyes closed, abruptly he gripped her hard and did not move except within her. “My God,” he growled, then upon a hard breath,
“Diantha.”
She gulped in air, her lips and brow damp and his skin beneath her hands. He lowered himself to his elbows, his chest brushing the tips of her breasts, and kissed her anew. They were kisses of satisfaction and tasted different, salt clinging to her lips and the flavor of him. He passed his thumb across her lower lip, then stroked down her throat and shoulder, her entire body skimming upon the surface of unbearable sensitivity.
He drew away from her, his hand trailing across her waist. Falling onto the mattress at her side, he closed his eyes and released a long breath that sounded no steadier than her erratic heartbeats.
She turned to look at him, at the angle of his cheek and jaw, the strength in his shoulders and arms that had held her. Her lungs felt astoundingly tight. She had tried and succeeded at many remarkable endeavors of late. It was strange how in this most natural endeavor—simple breathing—she now failed.
W
yn listened to the soft, stuttered breathing of the maiden who had given him her body with generous passion, and a purely foreign sensation paralyzed him. For a minute he remained still, then another, and another, allowing the chill of the chamber to stave off sleep so that he could think, reason, understand. He opened his eyes, stared at the canopy above, seeing the details in the wood with the aid of moonlight.
He could see the imperfections in the wood grain, the knothole in the third board, a dark whorl of a blemish that brought character to the plain adornment. He could focus on those details. He
thought of
focusing on them. His mind was clear. Perfectly clear. And yet he was content.
Considerably more than content. His body was satisfied as it had not been in memory. No thirst lingered close to the surface, no craving simmered in his veins, no anger that the craving could not be assuaged. He craved nothing. It had been so long since he’d felt anything stronger than the sensation of desperate need, peace was foreign to him.
“To be honest,” the sweet beauty beside him murmured, “Teresa’s stories did not entirely prepare me for that.”
He turned his head, beginning to smile, but only stared. She had shifted onto her side, her knees tucked up, rounding the curve of her hip. Her hands were folded beneath her cheek, and soft chestnut curls tumbled about. Thick lashes shaded rich, sleepy eyes.
He still craved
. Dear God, did he crave.
“Miss Finch-Freeworth seems a knowledgeable lady.”
“Not as knowledgeable as I’d thought.” She spoke as though falling asleep, but her berry lips twitched. Then her eyes shot open fully. “I only mentioned Teresa’s surname that first day, before I realized belatedly that I was not a friend for bandying it about in such a fashion. How is it that you remember it?”
He reached for a blanket and drew it over her, allowing himself to caress again her silken skin. It had been so long since he had allowed himself to touch a woman in this manner. For too long he had not believed he deserved such simple, honest pleasure.
“I’ve told you, minx.” He stroked the back of his fingers across her cheek, soft as dew and mobile as rain. “I have an uncanny memory.”
“Wyn,” she whispered, tilting her face into his touch. “Will you tell me now about rescuing girls?”
“It is not my tale to tell. It belongs to those whom I serve.”
She looked up at him. “Are you a spy?”
“No.”
She pushed up to sit, the coverlet spilling onto her lap and leaving bare her generous breasts, the tips lushly pink and soft now. “But if you were a spy you would not be permitted to tell anyone. You would simply go about doing secret deeds that if anyone else did them would be considered nefarious.” Her eyes twinkled and he tried to concentrate on them, but the cold of the bedchamber was turning the soft tips of her breasts into peaks he wanted in his mouth.
“More stories from Miss Finch-Freeworth?” he managed.
She dimpled and lifted a playful brow. “Her brothers.”
“Ah. There are brothers with whom you spent your sojourn at Brennon Manor?” The dimples held his gaze above her neck, but they only spiked his craving. He would explore each with his tongue, then elsewhere. Everywhere. He would know all of her. “Have I reason to be jealous?”
“Of Teresa’s horrid bro—” Her lips snapped shut. “Would you be?”
He snared her around the waist and looked down into her sparkling eyes. “Yes.” She deserved more than scandal and a widow’s veil. For five years he’d had one goal: the duke must die. At present he could not remember why.
He pressed his face into the curve of her shoulder and breathed in her scent. It intoxicated him, thoroughly fresh air and her. But it more than intoxicated. It made him whole. She made him whole.
“You are mine, minx,” he whispered against her skin. “Mine, for good or ill.”
Diantha had no experience in such things, but she suspected this was only lovers’ talk. Trembling upon her own tongue now, after all, were words she had absolutely no intention of saying because she believed them only insofar as the pleasure he had just brought her body was indescribably wonderful. And the “for good or ill” part seemed remarkably begrudging, despite being murmured seductively at her throat. So she said what she knew to be true.
“I liked what we just did.”
“Did you?” His mouth against her neck smiled.
“Can we do it again? Now?”
He kissed her chin, then either side of her mouth, slowly, warmly, then finally her lips, and she pressed herself to him.
“Please?” she whispered. “If I admit that I liked it
very much
, can we?”
“Not quite yet, minx. A man requires time to—”
Her graceful hand wrapped around his cock and proceeded to demonstrate to them both that he required a lot less time than he had previously believed.
W
yn awoke at dawn wanting her again.
Rumpled and glowing with gentle vulnerability in sleep, Diantha breathed evenly, her slumber deep. He could not rouse her, not even to sheer the edge off the scratching thirst that again attended him.
He dressed and went to the stable where Galahad and Lady Priscilla greeted him with soft whickers. Perched on the stool beside the cow, Owen tugged his cap.
“Morning, sir.”
“We depart today. If you prefer to remain here, I will leave the filly in your charge and instruct Mr. Guyther to allow you authority with her.”
The boy gaped. “I’d like that, sir.”
“She is a valuable animal.” Owen was a natural with horses. Wyn’s absence would not be long, and Guyther would oversee. “Are you certain you wish the responsibility?”
“Yes, sir!”
He threw the blanket and saddle over Galahad’s back. “When you have finished milking, go to the village and ask Mrs. Cerwydn for a repetition of the herbs she recently prepared for me. Wait for them, then return here.”
Wyn rode to Guyther’s house. The land steward met him with an improved air from their encounter in the village. The Welsh were a wary, wise folk, and the people of Abbaty Fran Ddu did not understand why he had not returned when his great aunt fell ill that final time, then for her funeral. They’d known he was in London. They hadn’t known, of course, that between the time they had seen him last and his aunt’s swift decline he’d killed a girl—a girl he was trying to help—killed her because he had acted hastily, too proud of his abilities, too confident, and drunk. They hadn’t known that he could not bear to tell this to the woman who had taught him everything about being a good man.
They also did not understand why it had taken him five years to return. But in ten days they had become accustomed to his presence, curious at the circumstances of it and of the lady accompanying him. Guyther made that clear.
He spoke with the steward about the estate then rode back to the house through the mists lifting into the silvery morning. Owen had gone, and Wyn saw to Galahad’s needs then went along the stable to the far end. A stack of new hay beckoned, the sunlight warm. As though he were a boy again he removed his coat, lay down on his back, crooked his arms behind his head and listened to the sounds of the animals and the stream in the distance, the birds in the hedges, the day rising.
He heard her approach before he saw her, her footsteps light on the floor.
“I saw you return with Galahad. No—don’t get up!” She plopped down onto her knees beside him, sunlight spilling through her hair. “I was surprised you went riding when we are to travel today.”
“I imagined you still asleep.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips. She set her other palm on his chest and pressed him back onto the hay.
“I couldn’t sleep.” The bright blue showed pure intention, the dimples full blown. She crawled over him. “My dreams were all about what we did last night and they simply woke me up.”
He laughed. “Have you breakfasted yet, minx?”
She straddled his hips, her skirts a froth about her thighs. “I don’t want to eat.”
“This is unprecedented.”
“I want you to make love to me again. Now. In a stable, the first place I was ever kissed.” Her smile dazzled.
“Your companion—”
“Mrs. Polley is not awake and I haven’t yet seen Owen.” She found his cock through his breeches with the soft core of her femininity. He settled his hands on her hips and groaned as her hand sought him. Then placing her palms on his shoulders, she tilted forward and rocked against him. Her eyelids fluttered. “You make this feel so good,” she whispered almost shyly now, her lashes low.
He slipped his hand up to the back of her head and drew her down. Her lips were no less sweet this morning than the night before. More so.
“It is designed to feel good, minx,” he murmured, twining his fingers through her curls.
Her lapis eyes opened wide. “Do you never claim the credit for anything good?”
“Claiming the credit for the pleasure in sex would be an act of hubris of which even I am not capable.”
“You are not an overly proud man, though I think you imagine you are. And if sex is naturally pleasurable, why are there so many married ladies who go about with their faces pinched in dissatisfaction?”
He laughed and kissed her, and for some time there was no haste, only the warmth of her lips and her body in his hands, her fingers pressing into his shoulders. When she began to make soft sounds of want in the back of her throat, her thighs clasping his hips as she moved herself against him, seeking pleasure, he saw no need to delay further what they both wanted. He slipped his tongue into her mouth to taste her. Her fingers plucked at his shirt and waistcoat impatiently.
“Oh, please remove these,” she said upon a hard exhale, pressing to him. “I want to touch you.”
“There is a bedchamber not twenty yards distant.”
“I am rewriting Rule Number One.” She unbuttoned his waistcoat and pushed it over his shoulders. “ ‘Deny her nothing, even if she is not particularly virtuous.’ ”
“I am obliged to submit, for kind of heart and generous you are in spades, Diantha Lucas.” She slipped from his lap and he drew off his waistcoat, but the twinkle in his gray eyes stole her attention from even the sight of him undressing. “And, of course, I am complicit in your loss of virtue,” he added.
“Only because I forced you.” She touched him and the thrill of it shivered through her. Touching him was
not
a dream. It was beyond sublime.
“No one forces me to do anything I do not wish to do.” He took up his shirttail.
“Allow that I badgered, at least.” She helped him with the linen, wanting the excuse to run her hands over his back, to feel the strength beneath his skin and revel in the eagerness of her own body. “It’s true that if others don’t initially accede to my wishes, I usually convince them in one manner or—” Her fingertips arrested on his spine. “What—”
“Don’t”
—he whipped around and clamped her wrist in a brutal grip—“touch.”
Circular scars ascended in a line from the base of his spine, each the size of a man’s thumbprint, their texture hard and rough.
“Why not?” Her voice was a rasp.
Wyn’s iron grasp loosened. “Diantha, I beg your pardon.” He took a deep breath.
“They are very old. Do they still pain you?”
“No.”
“They look like burns.” Vicious marks. “Intentionally inflicted.”
“Indeed.”
“Was it a fireplace iron?”
“Nothing so dramatic. Merely cigars, my father and eldest brother’s fondest tools of chastisement.”
“Why did they do that to you?”
He stared at the ground. “Because I read books that they did not.” He released a rough laugh. “Because I read books, full stop.”
“Because you
read
books
? Why, that is
evil
.”
“Diantha.” His voice was quiet. “It is ancient history. Twenty years.”
“If it is truly ancient history, then why can’t I touch you there?”
His silvery gaze swung to her, searching her face. He reached forward, wrapped an arm around her and pulled her to him. He kissed her, and it was not a kiss intended to distract, but something else, something more. After a moment he simply held her, their hearts beating against each other’s, and she vowed to herself that she would ask for no more than this in life.
“Let me touch,” she whispered.
He set his lips to her brow and remained still while she slipped her hand around his back and beneath his shirt.
“One. Two. Three.” Her fingertips explored the damaged skin over bone, where the pain must have been agony. “Four. Five. Six.”
“Seven.” He brushed his cheek to hers. “The first time, I was reading a book about the seven wonders of the ancient world. After that, it amused them to try to confine their efforts to trodden paths. Proving their marksmanship despite the whiskey they’d consumed, you see.”
“What are the seven wonders of the ancient world?”
“Were, mostly. Magnificent structures wrought by man. I told my father and brother that I aimed to visit the great pyramid at Giza someday.” He was silent a moment. “I believe I was six at the time.”
“You were precocious.” She slid her hand up his broad back beneath the shirt fabric. “Too clever for them.”
“Too clever for my own good.” His thumbs skirted the undersides of her unbound breasts.
“I like you clever, Mr. Yale.”
“And I like you sitting in my lap, minx.”
She kissed his shoulder, pulling the linen back to place her lips against his skin. “Will you make love to me now?”
“Will you allow me to do so in a bed rather than on a pile of musty hay?”
“I like musty hay.” She nibbled his unshaven jaw. To touch him and see him like this, less than perfectly groomed, made her heart do deliciously uncomfortable tumbles. “Though I suppose I should acquiesce to the superior experience of the elegant London gentleman.”
“The elegant London gentleman napping on a haystack.” His thumb passed over her nipple. She shivered and tilted her head back. The sun shone brilliantly through the stable’s half door. Somewhere not far away a dog’s bark mingled with birdsong.