Authors: Lynne Connolly
Her wound hadn’t been as bad as they’d imagined and was healing already, a scab forming over the raw flesh. It had bled a lot, and from his response he felt far more for her than he was admitting. Until her injury, she’d begun to think that he was avoiding her for reasons other than he claimed. Perhaps he’d had his fill, or her reputation was deterring him. He rarely did anything without a great deal of thought.
Now he looked at her with warmth, and she longed for more. With her sister here, she could risk a little more. Livia would support her in anything she wanted to say. They had always acted together.
She was so conflicted. She wanted him, but she needed to be sure he wanted her in the same way. “Are you still determined not to marry me?” she asked.
“I can’t.”
He shifted his hand so she couldn’t reach it without leaning over, and that would disturb her wound. It was hellish sore.
“I’m still trying to cope with what I’ve learned. I’m not the son of the people who brought me up believing that I was. Did they do that to disinherit my cousins, or did they have another reason?”
“They loved you, did they not?”
The single candle they’d left burning illuminated the room so dimly she could hardly see him. Half his face was cast in shadow.
“Yes, they said they did. They should not have done this. I’ve already instigated enquiries to discover any other heirs. I will not disinherit anyone from what should be theirs.”
She braced herself for the pain and leaned forward to touch his arm. He swallowed, but he didn’t move away. Pain shot through her arm, but she was almost used to it now. “What if there are no heirs? Your parents already searched. They found nobody.”
“I must be sure.”
“Why are you so insistent on honor?” Her family and friends used it whenever they could, but this was going to extremes. Besides, as most of the premier families in the country, they had their practical side. “What good will it do to confess who you are, to tell the Crown that you are not the child of your parents? You’re still using your title, are you not?”
He sighed heavily. “Yes. It goes against the grain, but your brothers asked me to wait for a day or two, and so I will.”
“Then why so insistent on honor?”
“You ask me that?” He stared at her. “Honor is all we have. What are we without that? Animals.” He spoke softly but passion reverberated through his voice. “I have served in the army, and I have seen the worst a human being is capable of. I left home because I thought my parents were traitors. I’d long dreamed of the army, but they pleaded for me to stay and so I did. When I found a letter, I couldn’t stay. It didn’t discuss me, but a favor my parents had done the Pretender’s court. It must have been taking me off their hands.”
“You stick to your honor.” That explained a lot. He clung to the notion as his only mainstay, his anchor. Her heart ached for him. He’d hidden all this since he was little but a child, held it close to his chest. Now he was about to have a lot of it explained to him. What would he do then?
Claudia wished she’d paid more attention to her family’s recent intrigues, especially regarding the family’s newest members, her cousin Max’s wife and the new wife of another cousin, Tony. Or Maximilian and Antoninus.
“Yes, I do.”
He moved closer so that she could lean back, but she couldn’t rest her elbow on anything to help her. That would hurt like the devil. He lifted her by her waist and laid her against the pillows so tenderly she didn’t feel a twinge.
“You’re well enough to go home now.”
“Yes I am.” She bit her lip. “I don’t want to.”
“You must. I’m not the man for you.”
“I disagree.”
In that fraught moment, so close to him, she caught a new expression in his eyes. Yearning. He wanted, so much. Please let it be her he wanted. She would have to take care not to prick that shell of honor, his creed. “In this room, here and now, can we just be a man and a woman? Please? If I swear nothing will leave the room, will you allow that?”
“You don’t have to swear.” His mouth flattened. “I’m not a fool. I know your family didn’t get to its current exalted status by playing everything the way the law lays down. But there’s a difference between that and personal honor. After what I’ve seen and experienced I consider the second to be more important. I know we aren’t supposed to think that way, that we should consider the duty we owe to others first. But what good is that without personal integrity?”
She smiled and touched his cheek with her good hand. “I think we can promise you that.”
“I wish I could say the same of my family. What I learned means I’m on shifting sands. I can’t trust the word of the people I trusted most. What is left?”
Before he could answer his own question, she did it for him. “This.”
Leaning forward, she kissed him. When he didn’t respond, when his mouth lay unmoving beneath hers, a despair the like of which she’d never experienced before overtook her. The sense of loss devastated her.
Then he slid his arm around her shoulders, careful to angle it down so he didn’t touch her injury. As he drew her closer, he kissed her back, and relief flooded through her in a great tide.
He caressed her lips with his, took care to touch them. When she opened for him, he slid his tongue into her mouth so softly that it felt more like a caress than an invasion. Yet passion lay in their kiss, banked down and more precious because of it.
For the first time, Claudia learned how dangerous suppressed desire could be. She wore nothing except a night-rail, and his shirt easily revealed the heat of his body, warming and caressing her. His chest was hard, firm with muscle, while her breasts were soft. She nestled against him, loving this new closeness. Wanting more. She whimpered into his mouth.
When she lifted her other hand to hold his arm, her wound screamed its protest into her mind, but she ignored it.
Still in the kiss, he bore her down on to the bed so she lay flat. But he didn’t stop kissing her, merely changed his angle so he could lie next to her. The bedclothes still lay between them. Desire turned mindlessly voracious, overcoming the pain from her arm. When she slid her hand into his thick, dark hair she hardly felt it at all.
He ate at her, and she responded with all the passion in her heart. With a vicious tug, he stripped the covers away from her, moving so he could lie over her, surrounding her with hot, hard male. Oh, yes, at last the rigid shaft pressed against her stomach, burning through her thin night-rail and his breeches.
She wanted more. Nothing he could give her would ever be enough. She slid her good hand down and cupped his buttocks. He clenched them and gasped into her mouth.
She’d released the inner part of him, the primitive, savage man he kept locked away. She’d found the key. Glorying in her power, she would go wherever this led her, and she would never regret the consequences.
He kissed her mouth, her cheek, moved to her ear and nipped the lobe. She pulled in a sharp breath and arched her body toward him. Hungrily he kissed down her throat, resting his hot lips over the pulse at the base of her neck and teasing it with his tongue. She’d had intimations of this passion before, when he’d kissed her, but never like this.
His hot breath, his tongue, and the way he stroked her body, from breast to hip, all aroused her past anything she’d known before, anything she’d considered herself capable of. He pulled her night rail up and she helped him. Wanting only to get the thing out of the way. He lifted up, straddled her.
She used her good arm to prop herself up enough to sit and tug the offending garment over her head and toss it to the floor.
Pausing in his ministrations, he looked at her. “My God, you’re lovely,” he said in a voice that throbbed with passion. “Claudia, you do—” He swallowed. “I will not dishonor you, I swear, but I need this. To prove you’re alive and here.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what this is, but I want more of it. Can you understand?”
“I want it too.” At times in the past, when she’d galloped her horse on Rotten Row, or when she’d taken on some dare from her brothers, like the time she’d climbed the highest tree on the estate and nearly fell from the topmost branch, she’d felt the same reckless abandon. This beat everything.
Smiling, she reached for him, but he shook his head.
Was he about to deny her? He’d used that word again—“dishonor.” She’d feared it would bring him back down to earth.
He unfastened the buttons on the cuffs of his shirt, tugged the ties free at the top, and dragged it off, revealing a chest so beautifully powerful her breath caught. Small scars here and there didn’t detract from the sleek perfection of honed muscles—so masculine, so desirable.
He went up on his knees and unfastened the fall on his breeches, the six buttons taking an age to undo, and then the drawstring of his underwear. All the time he watched her, waiting, she guessed, for the minutest hesitation.
She showed him none. She wanted to touch, to kiss, to know him.
He revealed his cock, hard and long, the top mouthwateringly damp and reddened with arousal. She’d seen male members before, but never in this state, and the sight enthralled her. Were all men this big, this powerful? Not that she had any intention of finding out. This was enough. More than enough.
A flicker of doubt crossed her mind. She understood what should happen in lovemaking, but was it possible? It must be possible; otherwise the human race would not endure. A maiden’s misgivings had no place in this bed.
Leaning forward, he caged her body between his arms and kicked the rest of his clothes off and away. They were both completely naked, staring at each other, spellbound in the sight.
He smelled good, of clean male with a hint of musk and sandalwood. She breathed deep, lifting her breasts to his avid gaze. With a groan of surrender, he lowered his body down to hers and took one of her nipples into his mouth.
Shards of sensation shot from her sensitive breasts to the very heart of her, linking every point of her body together in keening want.
He licked, sucked, and then touched his tongue around the colored part of her breast until it crinkled hard, the way it did in cold weather. She was anything but cold now.
“You taste of desire,” he murmured.
He treated the other breast the same way, but caressed and pinched the one he’d kissed earlier. The heat of his body burned through to her now, the sprinkling of rough hair on his chest adding extra sensation to her building desire.
“Please,” she said, the words bursting from her, although she was not entirely sure what she was begging for. Tension arched her back, forced her to clutch him, ignoring the pain from her arm when she did so.
“Yes, sweetheart. I won’t leave you wanting.” He kissed down her body, pausing to tickle her navel with the tip of his tongue, and then kissing the inside of her left hip. She yelped and jerked, but he held her firmly and carried on. “Open your legs, Claudia.”
Accompanying his whisper with soft kisses on the tops of her thighs, he worked his way inside, his soft groan rewarding her when she tentatively opened them. Her desire overcame her natural shyness, for she had never revealed herself so completely to anyone.
“So lovely,” he said, his hot breath increasing the sensitivity of her skin. Then he did the unbelievable.
She’d imagined he’d touch her, perhaps prepare her for what came next, but he didn’t. He licked her.
“Oh my God!”
His chuckle was necessarily muffled. “You’re delicious, my sweet.”
How had he—could he…? But he did. He licked her, front to back and then up to the tip. Then took the knot of flesh at the front into his mouth and sucked.
Uncaring of who might hear, her mind scattered to the four winds, she screamed. Unbearable, and then it wasn’t, as she concentrated on the feelings radiating from that tiny spot between her legs.
She’d known it was sensitive, but she avoided it because of that, merely ensuring she cleaned that part of herself thoroughly every morning. This—this all-encompassing, violent series of waves, building until she squirmed beneath his restraining hands. Still he did not stop. Would he, if she asked him to? The sounds he was making would normally embarrass her, but now they added to the complete experience. One she would never forget.
He touched her opening, the place he would breach when he pushed into her, and sent her into complete oblivion.
Everything—the tingles, the sensations—built to a peak. Like a volcano erupting or the sea at high tide, it washed over her, bringing burning shockingly vivid heights she had never considered possible.
Gasping, crying his name, she opened her arms when he prowled up the bed to her. Despite his resistance, she dragged him down for a kiss. His cock rested against her stomach. She tasted herself on him, and when he enclosed her in his arms, she was safe. The only danger lay in the man that had brought her such blinding ecstasy.
He pushed against her skin and cried out into her mouth as hot wetness flooded her belly. He sagged, pressing his body against hers, surrounding her with himself before lifting off her and throwing back the sheets.
“Wait there,” he commanded and swung off the bed. He brought back a dampened cloth.
With great tenderness, he washed her, gently wiping the cloth over her stomach and between her legs. Then he returned to the washstand and cleaned himself.
His cock was already settling, to something more similar to the ones on the marble statues in her father’s house. It had appeared completely different when erect. Darker in color and standing up, reaching almost to his navel.
She still hadn’t felt it inside her. The realization shook her as she drifted slowly back down to earth.
To her relief, he came back to her and slid into bed by her side, taking her into his arms. He kissed her again before he spoke, and she threw herself into the kiss, passionately responding, even venturing to slip her tongue into his mouth.
Moaning, he sucked gently, caressed her softly, his arms around her before he drew back, and finished with a soft salute to her lips. “That should not have happened,” he murmured, “But it has. I cannot be sorry for it. In you, I found peace.”