And they were suddenly whirling in heat and flames, writhing together, wrestling in sensuous abandon, striving, pressing, wanting, clinging, gasping as together they ascended the peak.
They flung themselves over the edge. He sent her winging with one last thrust; she clung, her climax dragging him with her.
Into that moment of unutterable ecstasy, of imploding sensation, of feeling so sharp it cut, so brilliant it blinded.
Of emotion that, for him unprecedently, sent warm tendrils twining about his heart.
For one defined instant they hung, caught, captured, suspended in that moment of crystal clarity.
Then they fell. The bright sensations drained as they spiraled back to earth, secure in each other’s arms, pillowed, cushioned, buoyed on the waves of golden aftermath that rolled in and swept them away.
E
m stirred—and wondered why the sheets were so scratchy.
Eyes still closed, she frowned—unable to remember why she’d gone to bed naked, without her nightgown—indeed, without a stitch on.
Then she registered the heat—and the body from which it was emanating—wrapped all around her.
It wasn’t the sheets that were lightly abrading her suddenly sensitive skin.
Awareness, then memories, flooded her. On a stifled gasp she opened her eyes—and confirmed the conclusion of her senses.
Those memories weren’t dreams.
She was lying on her back with Jonas slumped facedown beside her. She stared at the heavily muscled, hairy arm lying across her breasts, then shifted her gaze to stare at the long, large frame—decently screened beneath her coverlet—stretched alongside her, one heavy naked thigh anchoring one of hers.
Had she really…?
Yes, she had. She’d invited Jonas Tallent into her bed, into her body. He’d followed her up to her room under his own steam—arguing about something as she recalled. She couldn’t remember what—could remember very little of what had transpired before she’d thrown her cap over the proverbial windmill. She could remember all that had followed—all her explorations, all she’d learned, all the incredible sensations—in remarkable detail…
Distracting detail.
Blinking, she realized long minutes had ticked by while she wallowed in what had been—on what their
this
had encompassed.
Understandable enough, but…what now?
Having invited him in, how did she get him to leave?
She wasn’t sure of the etiquette, but assumed she should, somehow, see him out. Certainly he couldn’t still be in her room come morning.
What was the time? A small clock stood on a chest of drawers against the wall alongside the bed; she squinted at it, couldn’t quite make out the hands…
“It’s just after midnight.”
The low words rumbled past her ear, making her start. Making her nerves, her skin, sizzle with awareness. Making her turn her head toward him.
He’d turned his head on the pillow to watch her. He lay close; enough moonlight washed across the bed for her to see his features, but his eyes remained dark pools—she couldn’t read their expression.
She could see his lips, saw them curve in what appeared to be a richly self-satisfied smile. One that bordered on the smug.
She would have frowned—intended to—but he moved his arm, and his hand, his long fingers, brushed the side of her breast. A start of a different sort lanced through her, memory rendering anticipation that much sharper. Her gaze on his face, her attention—every last bit of it—locked on his hand, on his questing fingers as they found, stroked, weighed, caressed…she nearly squirmed with remembered delight, with damning, building, expectation.
She licked her lips. Saw his gaze fall to them. Forced herself to say, “Shouldn’t you…leave?”
His gaze rose to her eyes, held hers for an instant, then his lips curved more definitely. He shook his head; his gaze lowered to where, beneath the covers, his hand continued to caress—to reclaim—her breast. “I’m precisely where I want to be.”
And he had no intention of leaving, not until consideration for her reputation drove him out at dawn. Jonas couldn’t remember ever feeling so content, so satisfied.
Emily Beauregard was his. Incontrovertibly, beyond question or doubt.
He lay naked in her bed, and she lay with him, also naked—and despite her fluster, despite her weak attempt to suggest he leave, her body was responding encouragingly to his caresses, if anything with even greater fervor than before.
Heaven help him. Her fervor, her eagerness, were apparently ingrained. Once she’d made up her mind, made her decision, she’d flung herself wholeheartedly into the engagement.
Which augured well for what would occur once she made her final decision to be his wife; the events of the night were clearly her first step along that road. The realization buoyed him; he was perfectly willing to give her whatever time—whatever reinforcement—she needed to make up her mind.
“But shouldn’t you…” She waved vaguely. “Leave? Now we’ve…oh!”
That last was occasioned by him sending his hand skating, openly possessive, down her body. Her eyes widened as with one finger he found, then stroked the slick flesh between her thighs.
Smiling, he leaned closer to nudge the coverlet down with his chin and nuzzle one pert breast. “Later.”
She hesitated, then he felt her nod. “All right,” she whispered. “Later…”
He looked up and saw her eyes close, her spine arching lightly as he slid his finger deeper into her heat. He probed, and she shifted restlessly, breath hitching, her hands groping, then fastening on his upper arms, clutching.
He needed no further invitation. Withdrawing his hand, he lifted over her; spreading her thighs wide, he settled between. Glancing at her face, he saw her bite her lower lip to stifle a moan. He entered her with one long, powerful thrust, and she lost the battle.
The sound of her urgent breathing, of her breathy little moans, drove him on.
And this time the act was more blatantly a claiming. She was with him, wanton and eager, yet this time she seemed content to not just let him take the lead, but to consistently follow—watching, gauging, learning.
Not more about lovemaking per se, but about him making love to her.
If he’d been in any state to disguise things, to draw a concealing veil over the emotions that gripped him, that were revealed in all their stark power in the moonlight as she welcomed him in and he rode her to mutual pleasured oblivion, he would have done so, but the moment stripped him of all ability to hide anything—not from her, and even less from himself.
Never with any other woman had he felt as he did for her—with her, over her. Never had being inside a woman meant so much, or felt so right. So incontestably his destiny.
He pushed her further, drove more deeply, more powerfully into her, and she responded wholeheartedly, embracing him, holding him—clinging as she shattered, cradling him as he followed her into pleasured bliss.
E
m woke in the morning—alone. She lifted her head, looked around the room, but there was no sign of Jonas.
Then her gaze fell on the bed—the rumpled bed with sheets all askew, the coverlet wildly tangled…and she smiled.
With a sigh, she fell back on the pillows and beamed at the ceiling. What an exciting, enthralling, thoroughly entrancing night—the night she’d spent in his arms. He’d answered all her questions regarding lovemaking—had throughly demonstrated what
this
—the attraction that had risen between them—was, what it meant, where it led…
She frowned. She was now a fallen woman. Shouldn’t she feel more…cast down? Dismayed, guilty—at least regretful?
She consulted her inner self—and could find not a trace, not a single one, of any of those feelings. Instead…she felt on top of the world, as if waking to a sunny day with not a cloud on her horizon.
Yet the more she thought, the more her mind wrestled with the likely ramifications of their activities last night, the more she realized how very far from the truth, how divorced from reality, how misleading that feeling was.
She was in Colyton to find her family’s treasure. She was masquerading, albeit not terribly successfully, as an innkeeper in order to facilitate hunting for said treasure. It formed no part of her plans to become her employer’s—or anyone else’s—mistress.
Worse, jumbled in amid her memories of the past night was a hazy recollection that, in the moment he’d collapsed upon her a second time, spent and wondrously, gratifyingly helpless, she’d heard—or thought she’d heard—the words “You’re mine. All mine.”
The problem was…
She grimaced, then flung back her covers and—steadfastly ignoring her naked state—got up. Locating her robe, she shrugged into it, belted it, then determinedly set about getting ready for the day; she could hear Hilda and her girls already moving about in the kitchen below.
While she washed and dressed, she wrestled with her memory, trying to bring that revelatory moment back, clearer in her mind. And failed.
Putting the last touches to her hair, she pulled a face at the mirror, then rose and headed for the door.
Her problem was she couldn’t remember if she’d heard
him
growl those words—or if
she’d
been the one to think them so strongly she’d heard them ringing in her head.
The instant she stepped out of her rooms, the inn and her family claimed her. She had no time to ponder the whys and wherefores, let alone dwell on the likely outcomes, of her illicit night. She plunged into a veritable whirlpool of activities, of managing this, giving orders for that, making decisions, and—wonder of wonders—welcoming the inn’s first residential guests in, so she’d been informed, more than five years.
“Heard in Exeter that the Red Bells was back up and running properly again,” one of the travelers, a Mr. Dobson, said. “I used to stop here often, years ago. I pass by every few months. Thought it was worth a try again—especially when I heard about the food.”
Em smiled welcomingly. “We’re very glad you did. Now if you’ll just follow Mary here, she’ll show you to your room. Your bags will be brought up shortly. Do let Edgar know if you require anything else.”
The man tipped his hat and followed Mary—one of the two girls from nearby farms Em had hired to help with cleaning the rooms and maid duties—up the stairs. Under her guidance, both girls and the three laundry maids had slaved to get the chambers upstairs habitable again. She’d been rather surprised and pleased with the result. Now it remained to see how their new—and returning—patrons reacted to the freshly whitewashed walls, the crisply clean sheets, and the freshly restuffed pillows and mattresses. Curtains and upholstery had also needed to be cleaned; all in all it had taken over a week for her to be satisfied with the state of four of the rooms at the front—all they’d thus far reopened for use.
She spent the morning chatting with the locals, overseeing orders—and welcoming more guests. At eleven o’clock, after Mary had seen an older couple, traveling the country taking in the sights, up to the third of their prepared rooms, she suggested to the girl that she bring her sister with her the next day, so they could work faster on getting the rest of the inn’s bedchambers refurbished and ready; heaven forbid she had to turn a potential customer away! Given anyone who stayed overnight at the inn necessarily ate and drank there, too, the increased profits more than compensated for hiring extra staff.
She made a mental note to mention the increase in staff to Jonas—her employer; determined not to let thoughts of him and the previous night claim her, she thereafter resolutely banished him from her mind. Pausing in the little hall outside her office, she looked around the common room. It was gratifyingly busy with those lured inside by the smell of Hilda’s cinnamon buns.
She was about to retreat to her office when a newcomer walked into the inn. Bag in hand, he paused just inside the door and slowly looked around; his casual survey seemed to take in everything.
The inn’s patrons weren’t backward in taking in everything about him. He was an arresting sight, an attractive one to a good portion of the inn’s customers, namely those sitting on the other side of the common room.
Given the locals’ scrutiny, Em felt confident in labeling him a stranger. He was tallish, well set up, with black hair long enough to be wind-tousled, and a well-shaped but craggy, tanned face. Em glanced at the hand wrapped around the handle of the bag he was carrying; it was also deeply tanned. A sailor at one time was her guess.
He was no ancient salty tar, but somewhere in his late thirties. His clothes marked him as a man not engaged in menial trades. His dark blue coat was of decent cut, with a plain waistcoat beneath and an unremarkable cravat. His trousers were of the same dark blue as the coat, but of thicker weave. Em recognized the work of a provincial tailor; the man—there was something about him that made her shy from labeling him a gentleman—no doubt hailed from one of the shires.
His survey complete, the stranger bent and hefted another, odd-shaped, flattish, angular parcel he’d left resting against the door frame. With that under his arm, his bag in the other, he walked to the bar. He nodded to Edgar. “Good morning. I heard you have rooms. I’d like to hire one, if possible.”
Engaged in pulling a pint, Edgar nodded back. “Aye—we should be able to put you up.” He glanced at Em, a questioning quirk to his brows.
Lifting her head, she walked out from the shadows and along behind the bar. Seeing her, the stranger straightened. She smiled. Passing Edgar, she picked up the register from under the counter, halted before the newcomer, and set the book on the counter between them. “Good morning, sir. You’re in luck—we have only one room left.”
She looked up and discovered the stranger had slate gray eyes. They were fixed on her, then he returned her smile.
He was really quite handsome; she wondered why her senses only yawned. Presumably Jonas had worn them out.
Keeping her pleasant, welcoming smile in place, she opened the register, then turned it to the newcomer. “Your name, sir?” She indicated the column in which he should write the information.
“Hadley. William Hadley.” He picked up the pencil tied to the register and duly filled out his name, then signed alongside.
Em took back the book and filled in the day’s date. “Are you planning on staying long, Mr. Hadley?”
She glanced up, expecting him to say a day or two.
“I’d like to take the room for a week, to begin with.” His eyes met hers as she blinked. “Will that be a problem?”
“No, no.” She hurried to reassure him. “We’re happy to accommodate long-term guests.” Just as long as they paid. She calculated rapidly. “In the circumstances, we’ll need four night’s lodgings, if you please.” She named the sum.
Without hesitation, Hadley pulled out a leather purse and counted out the amount.
Taking it—reassured Hadley was no trickster—her smile grew more natural. “I take it you have business in the district?”
Hadley, too, seemed to relax. “After a fashion.” He gestured to the strange-shaped parcel. “I’m an artist. I travel around the country sketching old monuments. I heard that the church here is well worth a visit—I’m told it has some of the finest monuments in the country.”
“Indeed?” Em recalled that the statues inside the church were well wrought, many quite intricate. She smiled more brightly. “In that case, I hope your stay is a pleasant and productive one. Mary”—she indicated the little maid who’d come hurrying up to bob a curtsy—“will show you to your room. If you require anything further, please let one of our staff know.”
“Thank you. I will.” Hadley nodded politely, hefted his bag and parcel—Em now recognized the outline of a folded easel—and turned to follow Mary, her cheeks pink as she led the way to the stairs.
Striding in her wake, Hadley noticed the various women gathered on that side of the common room, all openly studying him. His lips curved; he inclined his head politely. “Ladies.”
The deep rumble elicited a few careful nods; others ducked their heads, while yet others simply continued to stare.
Hadley turned and climbed the stairs, following Mary. His audience continued to watch in silence; only once he’d disappeared from sight along the upstairs corridor did a fascinated titter flit about the room.
Em noted it, but distantly, her mind weighing the more pertinent tidbit Hadley had let fall. If their church really was such a drawcard for artists—especially for sketching, a pastime many ladies indulged in—perhaps she—and her employer—should consider ways to attract the attention of the artists’ societies. Indoor monuments could be sketched in any season; considering the benefits of a steady stream of patrons whose attraction to the neighborhood wasn’t dependent on the weather, she drifted back to her office.