Ravished by the Rake (30 page)

‘What the devil are you doing?’ Dita’s voice, immediately overhead, almost had him losing his grip again.

‘Climbing this ivy,’ Alistair said, while his heart returned to its proper place.

‘That is such a male answer!’ He looked up and found her glaring down at him, her arms folded on the sill. ‘The question, as you very well know, Alistair Lyndon, is
why
are you climbing the ivy?’

‘To get to you. I want to talk to you—I am worried about you, Dita.’

‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’ She straightened up and the window began to swing closed.

‘I can’t get down,’ he called.

‘Nonsense.’ But she poked her head out again.

‘Let down your hair, Rapunzel,’ he wheedled.

‘This is not so much a fairy tale, more a bad dream,’ she retorted, vanishing again.

Oh well, if she was not to be teased into a good humour he would just have to climb up and hope she didn’t slam the window in his face. Alistair climbed another four feet before it opened wide again. This time a cloud of brown silk billowed out, settled, and revealed itself as Dita’s hair. His fingers clenched into the ivy as a wave of erotic heat swept through him. He had seen it down wet, sticky with sea salt, tangled into knots, and it had affected him deeply then. But now it was clean, glossy and smelled of rosemary.

Alistair fisted one hand into it and tugged gently. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said, and swept it back and over one shoulder out of his reach. ‘I always wanted to do that as a little girl, but I never realised how painful the weight of a grown man on the end of it would be.’

‘May I come in?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Dita vanished, leaving the window wide, but as he breasted the sill she held out her hands to help him climb through. ‘Of all the idiotic things to do! You might have been killed.’

‘Easier than climbing rigging.’ It was interesting that that made her blush. ‘Dita, why are you here?’

It seemed, as she turned and walked back to the big table in the centre of the room, that she would not answer him. Alistair did not push her, but looked around. They were in the library, the walls lined with curving bookshelves to fit within the circle of the tower. On the table there were piles of books, maps weighted at their curling corners and pen and paper.

‘I am not going to marry,’ Dita said, her back still
turned. ‘I realise I cannot compromise on what I need: marriage is too permanent, too important to settle for a lifetime of second best. And I don’t want to hurt someone by not being able to offer them everything that I have to give. So I came here to think about what I want to do and I decided that I will travel. I will find a congenial older woman as a companion and I will discover this country first. Then, perhaps, the war will be over and I can go abroad.

‘I enjoyed writing. I might well rewrite our novel, and I will write about my travels.’

‘You may hurt someone else, by deciding not to marry,’ Alistair said.

‘Who?’ She turned, puzzled.

‘Me.’ He said nothing more, but let her work it out for herself.

‘You? You would be hurt by my not marrying? You are saying that you care for me?’

‘You know that I care.’ His voice was rough, and he knew he was not gentle as he closed the distance between them and jerked her into his arms. ‘I am telling you that I love you.’

‘But you don’t
want
to fall in love,’ she wailed. ‘You don’t believe in it. Don’t do this to me, Alistair. Don’t pretend and say this just because you think you must marry me.’

He looked furious and more nearly out of control than she had ever seen him. ‘I will be all right, Alistair. I don’t have to marry—’

‘I. Love. You,’ he repeated. ‘Love: not like a friend, not like a neighbour—like a lover. I had no idea until I walked out of that garden knowing you were in love with someone else, and then I found I was shaking and
sick and I realised that I had lost you because I’d had no idea that what I felt for you was love.’

Dita felt as though the tower floor was shifting under her feet, but Alistair was holding her. She would not fall while he was there. Alistair, who was telling her he loved her.

‘Then Evaline said you were not betrothed to anyone, so I guessed he either does not love you or is totally ineligible. Take me, Dita,’ he urged. ‘We’ll travel and I’ll take you wherever you want. We’ll write together—you can help me reconstruct my notes and I’ll help with the novel. We’ll make love. You like me, I know that. Desire me, too. I think you trust me. One day I’ll make that enough for you. I’ll make you forget him.’

‘You don’t know, do you?’ she said, looking into his eyes and reading the truth and an utterly uncharacteristic uncertainty in them. ‘When I saw you on the ivy I thought you must have guessed.’ He shook his head, not understanding. ‘It is you. I love
you,
Alistair. I’ve loved you all the time, even when I told myself I hated you, when I told myself it was just desire, when I knew it was hopeless.’ Dita smiled at him, trying, failing, to conjure an answering smile.

‘But you said you grew out of it.’

‘I lied. Do you think I could bear you knowing and not feeling the same? I would have sunk with mortification.’

And then he did laugh, his whole body convulsing with it. ‘I believe you—I can imagine how that would feel.’

‘But you were prepared to risk it,’ she said, sobering
as rapidly as he relaxed. ‘You were prepared to risk your pride by coming here and telling me you loved me.’

‘Because I realise my task in life, Perdita my darling, is to cherish you and protect you and love you and if that means carving out my heart and my pride and my honour and laying them at your feet, that’s what I will do.’

‘Oh.’ Her voice broke as the tears welled in her eyes. ‘That is so lovely.’

‘Don’t cry, sweetheart, not before I tell you your duties. You are fated to give me purpose, make me smile and restore my faith in the world as a good place.’

‘I won’t stop you being an adventurer,’ she promise as she swallowed the tears. ‘I’ll never close the window and leave you to climb alone again or tell you to stay at home and be safe. But you’ll take me with you, always, won’t you?’

‘I promise,’ Alistair said. ‘Do you want to get married at the same time as Evaline?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t know I was getting married until five minutes ago! Why?’

‘Well, she is not marrying for about three months and I have every intention of taking you to bed as soon as I can find one—and I really don’t want to be careful.’

‘Careful? Oh, you mean children.’ She had tried not to think about babies, the ones she would never have because she was not going to wed. And now she would have Alistair’s children. ‘No, I don’t want to be careful either. We’ll tell everyone we want to let Evaline have her day to herself and we’ll be married as soon as we can, if you want.’

‘I want.’ Alistair swept her up off her feet. ‘Now, where’s this bed?’

‘Upstairs.’ Half-breathless, half-inclined to giggle, Dita let herself be carried. Alistair shouldered open the door and laid her on the bed. ‘This is very romantic, my lord.’

‘Something from our novel writing obviously rubbed off,’ Alistair said as he sat on the end of the bed and pulled off his boots. He turned back to her, shrugging off his waistcoat. ‘I’ll take it slowly, Dita, don’t worry. By the pond—I should have been gentler, more careful.’

‘I have been waiting a very long time for you to love me,’ she said, kneeling up to untie his neckcloth and undo the buttons of his shirt. ‘Could we be fast first and
then
slow, do you think?’

‘I won’t tease you,’ he promised, dragging his shirt over his head. Dita reached out to run her hands over his skin, raking her nails lightly through the dark hair on his chest. She saw the way he tensed as she brushed his nipples, heard the intake of breath as she hooked her fingers into the waistband of his trousers and the arrogant swell of his erection and closed her eyes for a moment to let the wave of pleasure and power sweep through her.

Alistair took her mouth, his hands swift and sure on the fastenings of her gown, and she opened her eyes on his closed lids, the sweep of his lashes sooty against his tan, and shivered in delight at the sensation of skin against skin as the simple cotton gown fell around her hips along with her petticoats.

‘Better than in the hut on the beach,’ she murmured as she pulled back to look into his face. ‘Dry and warm and not sticky.’

‘Sticky can be good,’ he said as he pressed her back on the bed, pulled off her chemise and began to lave her nipples with long, wet, lavish strokes of his tongue.

Dita surrendered to his skill and to the sensation. She made no attempt to stifle the moans of pleasure as he began to suck and tease and nibble at the hard, aching knots, his hands cupping and caressing her breasts, lifting them to his hungry mouth. They were alone at the top of her fairytale tower and nothing, now, was going to stop the full consummation of their love.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to be here, naked, with Alistair, all pretence and misunderstanding stripped away. She felt no shyness when he lifted himself on his braced arms to gaze down at her, nor alarm when he lay back beside her and began to caress her breasts again, then her belly, then the sensitive mound with its tangle of dark curls.

‘Let me look at you,’ he said. ‘We have made love and every time, it seems, there has been no time, or our emotions were getting in the way of knowing each other.’ He slid down the bed and parted her thighs. She opened to him, blushing a little as he touched her there, opening her with gentle fingers. ‘So soft and plump and wet.’

Dita closed her eyes as one finger slid between the folds, exploring intimately. She tightened around him as he eased a second finger into the aching heat, but it was not enough—she wanted him,
needed
him, there. She tried to say so, twisting, lifting her hips, and he chuckled, a wicked, affectionate sound, and did that thing with his thumb that made her gasp with pleasure.

‘Now, Dita?’

‘Yes.’ He moved up her body, covering her and she
wriggled to cradle him, relishing his weight and the sensation of leashed power in the muscles she could feel tense under her spread palms. ‘Now,’ she urged as she felt him nudge against her, large and hard and potent. ‘Oh, now, Alistair.’

‘I love you,’ he said as he moved and she gasped at the sensation, still not used to lovemaking. But the pressure, the fullness, were exciting and she arched against him, wanting more, wanting all of him. He lowered his head to take her mouth and surged and they were one again and she laughed against his lips and felt his smile curve in response.

He was right; there had been so many things wrong when they had made love before—guilt and secrets and anger. Now she could think of nothing but Alistair’s body, hot and strong and relentless, driving into her with a rhythm that was as elemental as the sea and as dangerously exciting. Her nostrils were filled with the scent of his body and the tang of their mutual arousal and her ears were filled with the sound of their breathing, the roar of her blood.

She felt him lift away, his arms braced. It pressed his pelvis tighter into hers, drove him impossibly deep within her and she opened her eyes to see he was watching her, his tiger eyes burning gold with passion. She was so tense it was painful, so tight that she felt she would die of it.
‘Now,
’ he said. ‘Let go, Dita’, and everything peaked and then untangled in an explosion of pleasure and she lost herself in it, in him—drowning, yet safe.

Dita woke and found herself hot and sticky and entangled in Alistair’s arms, pressed as tightly against
his body as she could be. ‘Mmm,’ she said, eyes closed, kissing damp, smooth skin and working out that it was his shoulder.

‘Awake?’ He lifted the hair away from her face and she wriggled round to smile up at him. ‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too. Which is,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘an extremely satisfactory coincidence.’

‘I think satisfactory may be an understatement,’ Alistair said. He rolled her gently on to her stomach and began to lick his way down her spine. ‘What a very lovely back you have,’ he mumbled, his voice indistinct as he kissed the sensitive dip right at the base. ‘Let us try something very, very slow.’ He slid one hand under her, found the place that gave such exquisite pleasure and began to tease it, his other hand holding her down.

‘Oh, peaches,’ he said, nipping the swell of one buttock with his teeth while she whimpered and writhed. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘Yes! No … Oh … no.’

‘Are you hungry?’ Dita said. She had no idea what the time was, but the shadows were lying long across the floor and the breeze from the open window was cooler now.

‘Ravenous,’ Alistair said. He was lying sprawled on his back, one arm flung across his eyes. ‘You have exhausted me, you witch.’

‘I don’t think so.’ Dita rolled over, propped herself up on one elbow and cupped her fingers around the weight of his testicles. ‘Look—you have woken up.’

‘Food, you bad woman,’ Alistair said, and sat up to
swing off the bed before she could tease any more. ‘Is there water?’

‘Cold, but I expect that’s no bad thing.’ Dita got off the bed, too, conscious of stiff muscles and a not-unpleasant awareness of her insides. ‘Here, in the dressing room.’

Half an hour later they returned to the library. ‘We’ll go down, shall we?’ Alistair said ‘It isn’t fair to ask them to haul a big dinner for two up all these stairs.’

She was feeling far too happy to mind the studious way the footmen ignored the fact that Alistair had appeared, apparently out of nowhere, and the smooth way in which Gilbert announced that a dinner for two was even now in its final stages of preparation.

Alistair’s valet came in as they were settling in the salon to wait for the meal to be served. ‘A package has arrived for you, my lord. It seem to have been delivered after your departure from London and they had it sent down, post haste, in case it was urgent.’

Alistair turned the small parcel over in his hands. ‘A London post office stamp and no seal impressed in the wax. I wasn’t expecting anything.’ He opened it, shedding several layers of brown paper and stared at what was revealed. ‘Dita, look at this.’