“Some would even say traitorous,” Ewan said bitterly.
“Not I,” Isabella said firmly.
He looked at her searchingly. “Thank you for that.”
Silence reigned for a few moments and Isabella held her breath, aware that the matter was important to him and deeply personal.
“I suppose it started at Bunker Hill,” Ewan said in a
low voice. “I was just twenty, too young to question why I was there, nor to doubt that I was fighting on the right side. We won, but it was a pyrrhic victory, the casualties were severe. You can have no idea how…”
His grim expression bore testimony to the dark memories crowding his mind. Isabella took his hand.
“Anyway,” Ewan continued, “it was horrible for both sides. And that’s when I began to realise it was wrong, too. We British were the trespassers, the usurpers. I realised that, but I could not do anything about it. Soldiering was my life. Loyalty to my colonel unquestioning, even if I did question the cause. Then our old enemies the French joined the Americans, and confused the issue. It was only years later, after Washington took our surrender in Yorktown, that I had time to sort out my feelings. And only when I left the army could I speak my mind without being disloyal.”
“You certainly did speak your mind,” Isabella said, remembering that even her father had called Ewan a turncoat.
Ewan shrugged. “Much good it did. I was cut by a number of my comrades. I featured in one of Mr Gillray’s caricatures as a wild Scotsman in a kilt, and now Fox looks like he’ll be stuck in opposition to Mr Pitt for the rest of his life.”
“Have you no desire to take a more active part in politics?” she asked curiously.
Ewan shook his head. “Words and posturing are not for me.”
The ormolu clock interrupted their conversation by striking five, taking them both by surprise.
“We should take the opportunity to rest before dinner,” Ewan said with a wicked glint in his eye. “With any luck it’s going to be an eventful night.”
A frisson of pure anticipation coursed through Isabella’s veins. What would the fates have in store for her this time?
Belle dressed simply for dinner in a gown of pale green muslin worn open over a white slip, the sleeves tight to her elbows, below which the ruffles of her chemise billowed. Green ribbon formed a sash around her waist, and was also tied artfully into her hair, one long ebony curl allowed to trail over her shoulder. She studied her reflection in the long mirror with satisfaction.
Au natural,
a veritable milk-maid in the style made popular by Queen Marie-Antoinette. With a frisson of excitement she headed downstairs to the dining room. Whether she won or lost, she was determined to have Ewan in a fever of wanting.
He was different in the candlelight. Less approachable in his dark evening clothes. More self-contained. She felt a quiver of apprehension. Or was it some less admissible emotion?
They sat adjacent to each other at the oval table. Ewan dispensed with the servants and served her himself. She took claret, he burgundy. Roast woodcock met with her approval. Expertly, he carved the game bird and placed a portion on Isabella’s plate.
White teeth nibbling on the tender meat. Fingers first licked, then sucked clean, one by one. A luscious mouth dabbed delicately with the table linen. A glimpse of pink tongue. Ewan shifted uncomfortably against the high back of his chair, feeling himself stiffen against his breeches. He could not but help imagining her mouth on him. Licking. Sucking.
“What have you in mind for me if you win again
tonight,” she asked, fixing him with her gaze.
He grinned. “It does not do to depend upon winning, for that way disappointment lies.”
“So you would be disappointed if I win,” she teased.
“I would not be the only one.”
“Sir, you flatter yourself.”
A hand grasped her firmly by the chin. “At least I am honest with myself, Belle. I want you. If I win the throw I will have you, and you will be willing. But if you win, what then? ’Twill be a frustrating night, for you will spite us both.”
She pulled back, anger sparking in her eyes, not wanting to hear the uncomfortable truth. “For you perhaps. I told you earlier, you have already served your purpose for me.” She pushed back her chair impatiently. “Come, let us settle it at once then, since you are so clearly unable to wait.”
Ewan laughed softly and followed her wordlessly upstairs to the small saloon where the dice box lay waiting on the table.
Isabella looked blankly at the dice when they stopped rolling. “It seems you have won, Captain Dalgleish. Once again, I am at your disposal. What would you have me do this time?”
“Come here, Belle.” He could see her breathing through the thin muslin of her dress. A long curl, glossy black, trailed down over the white skin of her neck. So lovely.
She stepped closer. He smelled of clean linen and soap, a hint of wine on his breath. She looked up, found his lips close, felt his breath warm on her cheek,
an arm snaking round the ribbon at her waist. She could feel her nipples harden against the cotton of her chemise. Wanting flared in her, a need she had not known until yesterday and which since then had stubbornly refused to subside.
Her wrists were captured, tugged tight behind her back. She was pressed close to him, chest to chest, so close she could feel the buttons of his coat digging into her. His smile was cruel but she was not frightened.
“So I have served my purpose have I? You do not dispense with me so easily, Belle. I will make you ache for me.”
His words served to boost her determination to deny him. “You may try, but you will not succeed,” she said with a taunting smile. “There is nothing singular about you, Captain Dalgleish. What you can give me, I don’t doubt I could have from any other man of my acquaintance. You said as much yourself.”
“As I also pointed out, you chose to wait for me,” he reminded her. Her wrists were released abruptly. Ewan strode over to the door of the saloon. The lock clicked home.
He moved purposefully towards her. “Turn around.”
The ribbon from her waist was untied and placed around her eyes as a blindfold. “What are you doing?” Belle asked, a tremor in her voice.
“Proving a point. Since you cannot see me you are free to imagine me whichever man of your acquaintance you choose. But you will not be able to, Belle. No matter what you may say, I know you want
only me. And you will admit it.”
“I am at your command. I will say anything you would have me say.”
“No, Belle, you will say it because it is true.”
Strong hands on her. Her dress untied. Her petticoats, her stays, her chemise, all expertly removed. The pins taken from her hair. She could feel it cascading down her back. She stood, vulnerable in her stockings and slippers, unable to see, afraid to move, yet unafraid.
“I won’t say it because it isn’t true,” she said, knowing she was lying, knowing he knew it, too, knowing that the battle of wills enhanced the wild excitement of the battle of the flesh.
Nothing happened for a few agonising seconds. Time seemed to stand still, the sense of anticipation almost unbearable. Suddenly, she felt a hand touch her head, long fingers combing through her hair, fanning it out over her shoulders. He was standing behind her. She could feel the cloth of his coat. His mouth on the nape of her neck. Cool lips on hot skin, on the lobe of her ear, trailing kisses down to her shoulder. Fingers kneading her flesh. Hands reaching round to cup her breasts, trailing down to the curve of her waist, a tantalising flicker on the soft skin at the top her thighs. Belle stood motionless, her mind floating, empty of thoughts, allowing sensation to take over. Cloth on skin. Cool on heat. Dry on wet.
Ewan guided her towards a sofa and arranged her there on her stomach, running his hand along the perfect contour of her spine, curling into her waist, curving out to her bottom. Such skin, such softness. curves and flesh, all so different from his own. She
smelled of flowers and spice. As she shifted restlessly under his caress, he caught a glimpse of black curls curtaining flesh darkened by arousal. Desire twisted like a knife in his gut.
Quickly, Ewan divested himself of his clothing. To take her, possess her utterly was what he most desired. But first he needed her, more than he cared to admit, to put the evidence of her own desire into words.
The delightfully ticklish sensation of something unbearably light being trailed over her back raised goose bumps on already over-sensitised skin. Belle shifted on the sofa. Between her thighs now, whispering down, on the backs of her knees, her ankles. Back again. She arched her bottom up, pressing her knees into the sofa to give her purchase, inviting the soft caress back, down, between.
A quite different sensation now. A tongue, licking down the curve of her bottom, velvet soft, dipping into the curve of her thighs, away again. She tried to imagine another man as he had commanded, but it was impossible. She did not need to see him. Her body knew it was Ewan. Could only be Ewan.
Something else now, playing on her skin. Silken, hard, nudging against her thighs. “Ewan,” she said, arching against him.
Cold space. “Say you want me, Belle,” Ewan whispered.
Silence.
His erection was nudging against her, sliding against her. She felt the tip of him part her. Feelings almost painful in their intensity. Deprived of her sight
it was as if all her other senses were enhanced.
“Belle?”
Silence.
Cold again. She was turned over. Sprawled on the settee, one leg trailing on the ground. She wanted to touch him, reached out blindly for him, found her hands pushed away.
Her legs parted. That tantalisingly ticklish sensation again. A feather…that was it. On her thighs. Between her thighs. Brushing her heat. Tickling her curls. Now fingers doing the same. Now a gentle breath. His tongue.
Oh,, his tongue.
Licking her thighs. Closer. Flickering round the edges of desire. Then not round the edges. A gentle touch…too gentle. A sweeping movement now, hot on hot, wet on wet. Such sweet pleasure, she was melting. Belle pressed herself against his mouth. More.
Instead, his voice, insistent now. “Who is it you want, Belle?”
Edgy, he sounded edgy. Passion, but it could be anger. She could not tell. She bit back the urge to plead with him.
Tongue and mouth again. Sucking and licking. Twisting and clenching. Throbbing. She was so close. He stopped. “Ewan.” Her voice was husky with passion and need. Her fingernails dug cruelly into his shoulders. “Ewan, for heavens’ sake, I want you. Now.” Co-operation, not defeat. There was a limited pleasure in resistance and she had expended it.
For what seemed like eons nothing happened. Belle waited impatiently in the enforced darkness. Then suddenly he was kissing her—a hard, insistent kiss. She could feel tension in his shoulders but it was not
anger. He was as desperate as she was. All of a sudden, she wanted to give him what he needed. “I chose you. I wanted you last night. I did not care about the bet. I want you now.”
The blindfold was torn from her, and she saw amber eyes gazing at her, dark with passion. A mouth sculpted into a victorious smile. She cared not, secure in the knowledge that she possessed him as much as he did her. Her nails dug harder into his flesh.
Ewan knelt between her legs. No teasing now, he licked her roughly, unerringly, tugging and sucking with just enough friction to drive her into a frenzy, pulling her hard against his mouth as she climaxed, pulsing into him, onto him. Waves turned to ripples and he licked again, turning the tide back from ebb to flow, pulling her to her feet, bending her over the sofa. She could feel him behind her, the hard length of him nudging against her.
Ewan rubbed himself against the perfect white cheeks of her bottom, his hand cupping her, feeling her rippling, so achingly arousing on his palm. He could see her, dark pink and wet as he entered, slowly, pushing in between layers of heat and damp, her muscles pulling him in, feeling her parting, gripping, holding him as he pushed in and in and in, all the while watching himself as he thrust into her, feeling as if every fibre of his body was being set ablaze.
Belle clung to the back of the sofa. Her knees were pressed against its edge. Ewan’s legs pressed into the backs of hers. Rough hair. His breathing heavy. His hands clutching. Higher than before he was going,
more and more until there was no more and he paused tantalisingly. She pushed back against him, gripped him, experimentally rocked back and forth, loving the way even such a tiny movement rippled inside her. He felt thick and hard and high.
Ewan withdrew then plunged in again with that same deliberate, excruciatingly exciting slowness. It became another battle; the need to keep him inside her, to stop him withdrawing, to hold him. And she was winning. He was thrusting harder now, faster. She could feel the delightful slap of him against her bottom as he bucked. She could tell from the way he seemed to expand inside her that he was close. She felt her own muscles contract in response. An echo of her climax or a continuation or something new, she didn’t care, except it whirled her away unexpectedly, and immediately she felt him shuddering in response, a thrusting becoming a pounding becoming a release, and she felt him spilling into her and she moaned his name without realising, holding him vicelike to feel and feel and feel as he spent himself.
Afterwards, he was tender, sitting her down beside him on the sofa, holding her close, stroking her hair as she nestled into the hollow of his shoulder. They sat thus for a long time, neither willing to break the spell. Later still he took her by the hand and led her to the bed chamber. They lay in the dark together under soft cotton sheets gazing without seeing.
“Is Belle your real name,” Ewan asked unexpectedly.
“Why do you ask?”
“A feeling. At times—these times—you seem to be
Belle. But in the day when I speak your name, you look at me as if I am talking of a stranger.”
“You’re right in a way.” She felt as if their love-making had reshaped her. “Belle is a shocking creature. She has dark thoughts and dark needs. Isabella, my real name, the real me, knows nothing of them.”
“Isabella. I like it—it suits you. We all have a dark side,” Ewan said softly. “It’s just that most people do not have a name for it.”
“Some abuse it,” Belle said with a shiver.
Ewan pulled her close. “Yes, some do. I have seen it in the aftermath of battle many times. But that is not what I meant.”
“No, you meant what we have together,” she replied with growing understanding. “We clash because it enhances the defeat as well as the victory. Like tonight, there is as much pleasure in submission as there is in domination. Provided we both stick to the rules, of course.”
Ewan ran a possessive hand down her spine. “That is it exactly. I knew when I saw you that you would understand me, though, I could not have articulated it so. And you knew, too, you will admit that now?”
Belle smiled into the dark. “Why not? You won after all,” she teased.
“Yes, I did. And I am not finished with you yet,” he said with a growl, pushing her onto her back.
Afterwards, she slept deeply and dreamt she had been shipwrecked, drifting at sea alone. In the distance, at last, she could see safe harbour.