What Isabella Desires (15 page)

She estimated ten moves until she would have him in checkmate. She was leaning so far forward that when his hand darted out to move a piece at her end, it brushed her breast.

Her eyes locked with his, and when the carriage hit another bump, the chessboard slid to the floor, the pieces scattering, and he was reaching for her instead of his chess queen.

He pulled her onto his lap so she was straddling him, her dress tucked between their legs and flowing to the floor behind.

He kissed her, all that latent passion hidden in his eyes pulling apart and encompassing her.

His arms pulled her tighter against him, her breasts forcibly brushing her chemise as they shifted together.

He tugged her dress up. She could feel his arousal. His hardness seeking her softness, the answering call to her passion.

She pulled back from the kiss, her lips full and parted, her hair flowing from its pins where his hands had loosened them.

His trousers pressed against her, rubbing. Producing an aching need to be filled. His eyes locked with hers, the motion of the carriage rocking them against each other over and over.

His eyes were dark gold and possessive.

She reached for the top of his trousers, wanting nothing more than to be locked together with him, complete, but he bucked up, causing her to gasp and grip his shoulders. His fingers slipped under the silk of her dress. She arched into him, and his free hand pulled her mouth to his.

The kiss was hot, his tongue hot upon hers, stroking and claiming.

His hand moved against her, one finger buried within her. Her body throbbed, the sensations so intense that she moaned against his mouth. It was not the completion she wanted, but a slight appeasement to the mounting ache. Yet when he pushed up against her again, the friction and feelings were too much, and she came apart in his arms, shivering and shaking and crying his name.

Her head dropped to his chest and she could feel his heart thudding against her cheek. The most glorious feeling. In the arms of the man she loved.

He stroked her hair, his breathing harsh, but not the harshness of postcoital bliss. Rather the harshness of a man right before the throes. Like a man punishing himself.

She stilled.

She reached for him, between them, but he stopped her hand. His arms encircled her and his forehead rested against hers.

“Why don’t you let—”

“We are almost there. Your skirts can hide things that my clothes never will.”

She accepted his words, but it muted her pleasure a bit. She had just come apart in his arms, and they were almost to his estate—somewhere they could indulge freely. She knew she should be pleased, not unsettled with actions that could be explained away.

It was dusk by the time they arrived. Near the longest day of the year, the hour was late.

The servants were lined up to welcome their master home. Isabella recognized a few who served at Marcus’s other estates and those who traveled with him. She had never been to Grand Manor, however. Marcus rarely brought anyone here.

The manor lived up to its name from the out-side, but she expected no less. In the waning light she could see the gently curving gardens and the ivy covered walls.

Two footmen held huge lanterns near the large doors. Although the servants eagerly welcomed Marcus, there was a somber undertone, a hidden sadness.

It was said that his parents were buried on this estate and had lived their last years cloistered within its walls.

She wondered what secrets lay inside.

“My lady.” Bertie touched her arm. “We can be shown to our rooms while Lord Roth speaks with his staff.”

Isabella nodded. An older maid led them forward. Marcus nodded to them. She would see him later.

The foyer was exquisite yet understated. Gentle yellows, golds, and taupes, with darker accent colors. Hints to something deeper.

They climbed the grand staircase to rooms on the first floor. Her suite was done in blues—cornflower, sky, and navy—with gold leaf. Very much suited to her.

“Supper will commence in an hour,” the maid said. “Is there anything I can have sent up in the interim? Cheese, bread, and tea, perhaps?”

“That would be lovely.”

Bertie and another maid began removing items from the cases, and a maid returned forthwith with the food. Isabella ate a few bites, then set off to explore until dinner.

She poked through the open rooms on the first floor, but stayed away from the east wing, where the family rooms were located. No need to invade his territory yet. She had been wandering for a while when she entered the portrait gallery.

The gallery was long and reasonably wide. She loved browsing through family galleries. They told one so much about the history and attitudes of a line. August Stewart. George Stewart, Charles Stewart, Benjamin Stewart. Two more Charleses, two more Augusts, another George and Benjamin.

Marcus’s ancestors had commissioned family portraits whenever the heir was around eight. The two parents were seated, and a frilly or severely dressed boy, depending on the time period, stood behind them in all the pictures.

Judging from the portraits, a single boy child was the family trait and the immediate line had gone unbroken for three hundred years—quite a feat. A male child surviving from one generation to the next, and producing the next male heir. She noted that the last three men—Marcus’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather—had died at a rather young age, in contrast to the earlier forebears, who, judging from their portraits, looked robust and considerably older.

She tried to recall from her social history lessons what she knew of Marcus’s father and grandfather, but her recollections were hazy. If she remembered correctly, they had both retreated from society, dying in seclusion a few years later. If that was true in the case of the great-grandfather, she wondered why there wasn’t gossip about a family curse. There was nothing the ton liked quite so well as a family curse.

That society hadn’t discerned one was probably a good indication that there either wasn’t anything worth talking about or that it had been hushed up incredibly well.

“I see I’ve found you in the midst of the moldering family portraits,” Marcus drawled, lounging against the door.

“How did your great-grandfather August die?”

Marcus froze for a split second before walking toward her.

“He was ill.”

“Lung fever?”

“No. A wasting sickness.”

He gazed at the portrait in front of her, and she looked again. A vibrant man entering his prime. It was hard to believe he could have wasted away.

“That’s terribly sad. He looks as if he has his whole life ahead of him.”

Marcus’s eyes narrowed. “He doesn’t.”

“Well, no, he’s been dead for—” She checked the date. “—seventy years.”

He turned so he was standing in front of her, his back to the portrait wall. “Bertie was going to fetch you, but I decided to come instead. Are you hungry?”

She was, and propriety demanded she accede forthwith, but she longingly looked to the end of the gallery where the portraits of Marcus and his parents hung.

“Yes, but do you mind if I take a peep at the rest of the gallery?”

“If you wish.” His voice was stiff.

She stepped past his ancestors’ portraits and stopped before the most recent one. Her memory of his parents was vague. Though they had cut ties with her parents—and everyone else—when she was still young, she could remember a charming woman devoted to her husband and a stern man who would occasionally pass her treats when no one was looking.

“Your mother was quite lovely.”

“Yes.”

She admired the fierce lines. “It’s a strong painting.”

“Painters sometimes take liberties.”

She looked sharply at him. “I remember she was particularly devoted to your father.”

“Yes. Particularly.”

She bit her lip, but curiosity got the better of her. “How did she die?” She had always wondered.

“Wasting sickness.”

“She caught it from your father?”

He smiled mirthlessly. “In a way, I suppose. She was a delicate woman. Upstanding and kind. But not strong. My father’s death took its toll on her. She passed soon after.”

“Do you blame her for leaving you?”

“I was eighteen. Plenty old enough not to be ‘left.’ I missed them both, of course. We were quite close before my father took ill.”

Isabella didn’t think any age was old enough to lose a loved one, but she knew better than to say so to Marcus. He wouldn’t appreciate the sentiment.

She looked to the right, to his portrait. He appeared very dashing with a sword in his hand, hair slightly mussed and a serious look on his face.

Next to it was a setter at point.

“Lovely child,” she said lightly. The painting of the dog was in the spot where his own family portrait would hang someday.

“I thought him quite quiet as a newborn.”

He took her hand in his arm as they walked back down the portrait hall.

“In that case, you will most likely be sorely disappointed in your next.”

“We are allowed only one.” His smile was forced.

“It is better than being allowed none,” she quipped.

He turned and touched her cheek, his thumb rubbing across her chin. “You will marry again and have many beautiful children.”

Her lips parted but she didn’t know how to reply. She wanted to marry him. Have children, or a child, with him. It didn’t take a lot of thinking to realize that perhaps she shouldn’t broach that topic yet.

They descended the stairs to the dining room, and Isabella clasped her hopes and dreams tightly to her chest.

That didn’t mean he told her everything. She had a feeling that even James ground his teeth when Marcus became mysterious or less than forthcoming in his answers.

They retired to the music room after dinner. It was a lovely room, with windows on three sides and enormous burgundy drapes edged with gold. Candle sconces created deep golden light and gave the room a heavy, intimate feeling.

She stretched her fingers along the piano top. It was one of the largest pianos she had seen. His Viennese in London was much smaller, as were the Broadwoods he had at the other houses she’d visited.

“It’s beautiful.”

His fingers drifted over the keys as he watched her.

“Play me something,” she said teasingly.

Graceful, flowing fingers pressed into the keys, pulling the notes from the board and pushing them into the room. The notes connected with the air, bounced off the ceiling and walls and pierced her.

She sank down beside him. She loved Beethoven’s Piano Sonata 32, still new enough to intrigue but performed enough to be familiar. Marcus played Beethoven like no other she knew—both the darker, stormier pieces, and the lighter, more optimistic ones. It was fascinating to watch such a dark and virile man play light but emotionally complex pieces. Amusing, but poignant at the same time. As with the darker music, something channeled within him and through the piano. Emotions that he rarely expressed flowed through his fingers.

As he pulled the opening threads, delicate and gossamer, and pushed into a crescendo, she closed her eyes and recalled the first moment she had spied him in a practice room at his parents’ Devon estate. She had wandered off and had seen the dark-haired boy furiously playing, the top of his head moving back and forth, up and down the keyboard, until he held the last note. She had been mesmerized, then he had looked up and pierced her with that unforgettable gaze.

She opened her eyes to see him regarding her. The playful middle section of the piece playing beneath his fingers, the hints of darkness covered, uncovered, and overlaid by more optimistic chords and runs. It was technically demanding, but there was also something so ambivalent, so tearing, about the piece. Was the darkness encroaching? Or was it being overcome?

The sweet, tapered coda sounded as the final notes played on her heartbeats. Three…two…one.

The last note echoed in the stillness of the air.

Even when he rose and took her hand, the spell wasn’t broken. It increased in strength, and then she felt herself escorted up the stairs, standing in front of her door, Marcus before her, the door at her back. She smiled, opened the door, and walked inside.

Knowing he would follow.

Marcus’s strong, capable hands pulled her from her dress, slowly unwrapping her stays. One artistic finger and thumb pulled the lacings through one hole and then another. Unthreading, unhurried.

Just like the last notes of the sonata.

It had been so long since she had felt the touch of a man’s fingers on her clothes. And Marcus’s…

His hands moved from her half undone stays to her hair and worked at the pins within. One pin, then another, joined each other on the tabletop. He was methodical. And the heat in her belly extended outward as he liberated one more lock, one more stay from its bindings.

Her hair tumbled down in waves as it was freed, and she closed her eyes and sighed. It always felt so good to have her hair free. The released pressure from her scalp felt wonderful.

His fingers combed through and lightly pushed her head forward so her hair curtained her face and his hands pressed against the back of her neck, massaging upward and into the locks.

She grew unsteady on her feet and rocked into him. He stilled, then his hands trailed down her back, across her soft, thin chemise and back to her stays, attending to them again, the thread getting longer and longer as he progressed, the tingles spreading from her stomach downward, pooling below.

The heat pounded in that pool, as if it had a drumming heartbeat of its own.

She needed something to soothe the heat.

He unthreaded the final lace and the ribbon fluttered to the ground, coiling there. Her shift slid down and followed it to the floor.

He pulled her back against him. The hard planes of his body pressed to the soft curves of hers.

His arms reached around and traveled up the front of her thin chemise, the silk bunching beneath his fingertips. They moved from her hips, past her navel, around the peaks of her breasts and down her arms.

His head bent down to hers, his lips next to her ear. “This is your last chance, Bella.”

“I know,” she whispered, arching back into him.

It didn’t matter that she was interpreting his statement differently than he had intended. It wasn’t her last chance to get away, it was her last chance to get him.

“And what is your answer?”

“Yes. Of course, yes.”

She turned in his arms and pulled his head down, bringing his lips to hers. It was a sweet feeling. The taste, the passion, the knowledge that she was finally going to have the man she’d loved for so long.

The kiss was gentle. His mouth moved softly across hers, with little coaxing needed to open and explore. She deepened the kiss, swiping her tongue across his, and he leisurely followed. The urgency of the carriage, or of the hallway in his London house, was gone. They had all night. But there was urgency of a different kind. Urgency to get closer, to complete a bond.

The shoulder muscles beneath her hands worked as he pulled back the coverlet and sheets on her bed.

He broke the kiss and moved down her body, gripping the edge of her chemise, his smile devilish. He spun her around so she faced the four poster. He lifted the silk slowly, pulling the hem from her ankles up her calves. She could just see the tips of his fingers and the bunching material of the silk as it rose.

She could feel every movement on her skin. Every touch sent spikes of pleasure through her body.

He placed a kiss behind her right knee, then her left, causing her knees to buckle. She eeped.

He chuckled, the warm tones sending just as many pleasant shivers through her as his roaming hands.

She placed both hands on the bedpost to remain upright, gripping the smooth, faceted wood, while his hands reached ever higher.

The silk pulled over her thighs, under and against her curls, as his hand slipped around. She gripped the wood harder. The silk flowed over her hips, freeing her, a cool breeze wrapping between her legs. She felt him rise behind her, one hand reaching up to move her hair to the side, his lips pressing against her nape, dropping her head forward so she was fully splayed out—arms in front, head down.

His hands continued their ascent, pulling the silk over her breasts, pausing for a moment to circle them gently before pulling the chemise up past her neck and along her arms, so conveniently straightened in front of her.

She breathed heavily as he draped himself over her back, pushing the garment forward. She felt him, firm against her bare rear, pushing lightly against her, and heat flared everywhere.

She let go of the post, and the garment dripped to the floor in a haze of silk. He ran his hands down her sides, her back clasped against his front.

“If you could see yourself like this, Bella.” She arched back into him as his hand caressed her breast.

He straightened, turned her around and laid her on the bed; a buffet, naked and ripe for devouring. She had never felt more beautiful then she did at that moment as his darkening eyes caressed her. His hands moved roughly at his shirt and she couldn’t contain a satisfied smile. She traced the brocade of the partially turned down coverlet while he disrobed, her eyes feasting on every new bit of skin uncovered.

When his fingers hooked into his trousers, she held her breath. And then those too were gone.

The bed depressed as he straddled her torso, kneeling above her. His fingers traced a path up her leg.

“What is it you want, Bella?”

His fingers curled into her, playing with the curls between her legs.

She arched into his fingers and they slipped between the curls, rubbing in gentle strokes. She gripped the edge of the counterpane and the sheets bunched in her hands.

“You. I want you,” she groaned, arching back as one finger, then two, slipped inside.

He crawled forward, like a large cat, his chest brushing against hers, his fingers playing a magical tune. “Do you want me to make love to you, Bella?”

She panted as one finger crooked upward and rubbed a spot deep within her.

“Yes.” She couldn’t catch her breath.

He skimmed downward, his chest brushing across hers again, his breath caressing the tip of her right breast. “To sink deep within you?”

He took the tip of her breast in his warm mouth.

“Yessss.” The sound was dragged from her.

“To claim you?”

His finger crooked again and his thumb rubbed a spot outside and she saw stars for a moment.

“Oh, God, yes,” she moaned. She felt as if she had imbibed too much wine. The canopy of the four poster wobbled in her vision, golden lights dancing behind her eyes.

“Please.” She was on fire. She would beg until he relented, would promise him anything.

His fingers withdrew and he scooted her up so her head lay against a pillow and his hands buried into her hair, tilting her head back for a kiss, hot and heavy, but still with that underlying care, that tenderness he had shown throughout.

He moved between her legs and she parted them, letting them fall to the side before wrapping around him. Bringing him closer, nudging him forward.

He brushed against her and she felt the tip of him nudge and then slide along her, wet and slick.

She kissed him more fiercely, so high on the edge that she wanted him inside her now. The edge of completion beating at her for release.

She pulled back and looked in his eyes. “Make love to me, Marcus. Now.”

With a deep thrust he slid smoothly inside her, and the bed knocked against the wall behind. Her heart shifted up into her throat and her eyes rolled back.

It felt so wonderful. Nothing else could feel this good. He was stretching her, the length of him moving inside her. And she had never felt the like. Never been privy to the heavy sensual experience of lovemaking, only that of care and friendship.

He shuddered as he moved deeper, more firmly within her, so far up that tingles seemed to radiate from the center out.

He stopped and they lay there for a moment, breathing heavily and looking into each other’s eyes. He pulled back, and when he pushed forward once more, she took back everything she had said about the first stroke, because the second was even better.

He pushed in fully again and the bed ricocheted against the wall, her body writhing beneath his.

A fine mist gathered across her skin and she forgot how to breathe properly. But breathing properly was the least of her concerns as the heat spread, to her toes, to her ears. He withdrew and thrust again and she felt a tightness begging for release.

She slipped her hands up to his shoulders and into the hair at his nape, the thick edges curling around her fingers.

He kissed her, his tongue hot against hers, his lips devouring hers. Then he leaned back to watch her as he thrust again. In and out, in and out. She threw her head back and clutched onto him.

The sensations spread everywhere, and then all of a sudden coalesced where they were joined together.

She arched wantonly against him, calling his name over and over as the sensations tightened, peaked, and a thousand lights exploded in the back of her eyes.

He moved faster and faster within her, jaggedly; as if he were a dying man seeking his last breath of air. As if he could do nothing else except finish what they had started. And then he said something she couldn’t hear, pulled out of her abruptly, shuddered violently, and emptied himself into the bedding beneath.

She froze, her panting cut abruptly. The exquisite sensations overlaid with confusion.

Instead of the completion, the ultimate joining, he was next to her, apart, shuddering alone, not locked together with her in a supremely satisfied embrace.

A hollowness crept upon her.

She wiped a hand across the hair plastered to her forehead and tried to get her breathing back under control. “Marcus?”

He turned to her and smiled. A smile that lit parts of his eyes usually shadowed.

“Yes, Bella?”

She tentatively smiled back and swallowed her question, unwilling to dim that light for even a second. “Nothing.”

He kissed her, softly and tenderly.

She loved him. They had just shared an earth shattering experience.

And she could have cried.