He climbed back onto the bed and spread her legs so he could settle between them. “I’ll be gentle.” She wasn’t a virgin, but she was hardly experienced. He positioned himself at her opening.
“Please don’t.”
He froze, horrified that he’d made her feel forced.
“Be gentle, I mean.” She arched her hips toward him, taking the tip of him inside her, to reassure him. “I’ve waited so long for this. I don’t want you to be gentle.”
His breath was ragged, but he focused on staying calm as he inched inside her. She thrust her hips again, taking him fully into her on a gasp. She was tight but so wet, welcoming, not resisting. He grasped her hips to still her wriggling. Christ, he was so close to release, and he would not embarrass himself like a schoolboy, not with Emme.
“Give me a moment, kitten.”
“It just feels so…mmmm.” She closed her eyes and raised her arms over her head on the pillow, and he groaned at the erotic sight of her arching, naked body, him buried in her up to the hilt.
With greater control than he’d ever had to summon, he eased almost completely out of her and then back in. She took in the length of him with another gasp, followed by a delightfully familiar moan. With the next stroke, he kept his word to abandon gentleness. She met his hard thrust and moaned deeper and longer. She thrust her hips and tried to set a steady tempo, but this request he refused. He rocked against her at his own will, building her anticipation, catching her by surprise. Only when he was sure he’d brought her as close to the brink of orgasm as he was himself did he settle into a deep, steady rhythm.
She writhed and grabbed the bedsheets. Murmured and whimpered his name. Clenched around him so tightly. And he was so close, too close, sliding to the edge too fast.
She dug her fingers into his back. Her hips arched and her body tightened. And finally, blissfully, Daniel could let go. He thrust into her one, two, three more times, then gave into reckless abandon, letting her release guide his, and together they surrendered to la petite mort.
* * *
Emme lay in Daniel’s bed—Daniel’s bed—with cool sheets smoothed under her bare back and draped over her belly, her legs still tangled with his. Dawn was just over an hour away. Too soon, she would have to leave him. But sometime soon, she would be able to come back to him, now that they’d agreed upon their arrangement.
“When can I see you again?” she asked.
“Hmm.” Daniel grinned sleepily, which was only to be expected, as they’d not slept all night. “As soon as you wish. I could come calling this afternoon, if the lady will be out of bed before evening.”
“Calling?” She hadn’t thought of that, of the possibility of seeing him socially, toying with him, teasing him. “The lady just might get out of bed for that.” She turned onto her side to face him. “But I meant this. When will I be able to see you again like this?”
He turned onto his side as well, mischief glinting in his eyes. “Already missing me? Or perhaps I haven’t quite satisfied you? Is that a challenge I hear?”
She stretched her limbs, her body tired and aching but strangely full of energy. “You have satisfied me very well, sir, but I hereby do challenge you to do it again and again. As soon and as often as we can arrange.”
“How can I refuse such a demand? But I’ll need just a bit of time right now, kitten, to recover. Limitations of the male of the species.”
She grinned, knowing she’d pushed him to his limits. She turned his words over in her mind, his affectionate term for her suddenly bothersome after the night they’d just spent together. “Daniel, why do you call me kitten?”
“Why do you think?”
She thought back to the summers years ago when he’d visited as one of Edward’s bosom companions. He’d started calling her that the very first summer, any time they were out of earshot of anyone else. “Because I followed Edward and his friends like a pet, and I mewled for attention, and I was such a docile creature.”
“A pet?” Daniel laughed. “Docile creature?” He laughed harder, shaking the bed.
She wanted to laugh with him, but could hardly find the humor in being seen as so pathetic.
“Oh, Emme.” He struggled to catch his breath. “I called you kitten because you had teeth and claws and you weren’t afraid to use them. The insults you threw at all of us. And because when I approached you too fast, you ran away too quickly for me to catch you, and hid so well I couldn’t find you.”
He reached forward and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “But when I coaxed you ever so sweetly, you finally came to me. Eventually, you even crawled onto my lap and purred.”
She sucked in a breath as heat flooded her cheeks. Even after all these years and all the passion they’d shared, the thought of her seventeen-year-old self giving in so easily to his seductions, his tempting kisses and less-than-chaste ministrations, embarrassed her.
“Don’t,” he whispered, running his fingers along her jaw. “Don’t ever remember our time together with shame. I can’t bear to see it. If you want me to stop calling you that—”
“No.” She laid her hand over his where he touched her face. “Now that I know the meaning behind it, I like it. Although I’ve never met a kitten quite like you describe.”
“Ah, well, that’s because you’ve never met the half-feral cats roaming the grounds of my parents’ country estate. My country estate now.” His face clouded for just a moment, but he quickly covered it with a smile.
She’d never seen the estate and now longed to do so quite badly. She wanted to picture him there as he’d have been during the summer months, after he’d finished his visit with her family. She wanted to imagine him as a small child running over fields, chasing clawed, hissing, half-feral kittens. “I think I should like to meet such cats, being their namesake, after all.”
He twined his fingers with hers and pulled her hand to his lips. “And you shall.”
“Really? You’d take me there?” She didn’t know if it was usual for a man to take his mistress to his ancestral home, but it seemed unlikely.
“Of course. I’ll take you everywhere with me. To the country estate. To the small but lovely house in Scotland left to me through my mother’s side of the family. To a beautiful port city on the Mediterranean coast of France.”
He meant to travel with her. In Scotland and France, perhaps they wouldn’t even need to hide their relationship, safely away from the prying eyes of the ton. “That would be wonderful. Why France, though?”
“There’s someone there I’d like you to meet.”
She knew then, and her heart melted. “Your parents’ dear friend.”
He nodded. “My real father.”
She was overwhelmed that she meant so much to him that he’d introduce her to such an important yet secret person in his life. Then again, perhaps it made sense. They would both be secrets he had to keep.
“When can we go?” She wished he would say today, this very afternoon. She longed to run far away with him and proclaim her love for him openly and without reservation, and to have him do the same for her.
“Anytime, really. I’d thought to do it after the wedding, but I suppose if we arrange chaperones, we could go within a couple of weeks.”
Something about his words jarred her. Her sleep-deprived mind struggled to identify it. He’d said wedding. After the wedding. Did he intend to marry soon, after all? And did he intend to keep her as his mistress as a married man? To have her travel with him, leaving behind his new bride?
She pulled away from him and sat up in the bed, hugging the sheets to her breast. “I didn’t think that was our arrangement. I thought you would postpone marriage, at least for a year, maybe longer.”
“Postpone marriage? I’d marry you tomorrow if I could. And you can’t tell me you want to spend that much time apart, stealing moments or rare hours here and there, when we could be living as man and wife?”
We. He’d said we. Her. He meant to marry her. “Danie
l, you can’t. We can’t.”
She stumbled from the bed and searched in the low lamplight for her nightgown.
“We can’t marry? Then what was this night about?”
Her eyes met his.
“My God, Emme.” He rolled out of the other side of the bed and reached for his robe that was slung across the back of a chair. “You intend to be my mistress. How could you think such a thing, given what we mean to each other?”
“How could I think anything else?” She struggled into the nightgown that had slipped over her head so easily hours earlier. “You know I can’t marry you. I have work to do. Important work.”
“Marriage won’t impede that. At least, ours won’t. And think of what you’d be doing for me, the respectability of the Marchioness who is out saving the city.” He smiled, but she could see the strain in it.
“It’s not just the work. I have to atone for…” She thought of Eleanor. Sweet, long-gone Eleanor, whom she had disappointed so often. Some selfish, childish behavior of Emme’s had led to their argument that had made Eleanor storm out of the house and to the lake that day. “I have to atone for so much. You can’t even imagine.”
She had to tell him the rest of it, tell him how she’d lied to Sanderson, promised him marriage and her dowry, knowing all along she only wanted to be ruined for marrying other men. “There’s something else, something you well know but seem to have conveniently forgotten.”
“Your former fiancé. I haven’t forgotten, Emme. But as I’ve told you before, and as I’ll continue to tell you until my last breath, I bloody well don’t care!” He stalked toward her and stood just inches from her, close enough for her to feel his heat. “Our first time together last night was not your first time, nor mine. Just as our second time together was not the second time for either of us, nor the third.”
She blushed, more from excitement at the memory of what they’d done than from any embarrassment a true lady should feel. Because she was no true lady. “It’s not just between us, though. Others know.”
“Yes, Meriden. He’ll take it to his grave, you know that. Perhaps you mean Sanderson, now happily married to an heiress. What would he possibly have to gain by ruining your reputation?”
“There were others.” Her voice faltered just saying it. “The innkeeper. Other guests. Others knew my secret. I made sure of that.”
It had made so much sense at the time, but she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Soon after, Edward had shown her the folly of it. And now, more than a year later, it seemed the stupidest thing she’d ever done.
“I never meant to marry him,” she said. The pressure in her chest eased immediately, now that she’d resolved to tell the truth. “I wanted to be ruined and to be discovered before we could take vows. I wanted word of it to get back to my father, thinking that once he realized no respectable man would want me, he’d stop trying to force me to marry.”
“Oh, Emme, that was a dangerous game.”
She nodded. “Edward made that quite clear, assuring me Father would assign me a fate worse than marriage if he ever learned the truth. Then he spent most of his year’s allowance paying off everyone who might have suspected what I’d done, and came up with the brilliant plan of sending me to Spain with Aunt Juliana to get me out of Sanderson’s purview. In the meantime, I’d met a few of the ladies from the Spinsters’ Club, ladies who help women who had more in common with me than I could ever admit, and I knew I’d found my calling. I was heartbroken to leave before I could earn my place with the spinsters, but Edward insisted, for my own good. And I suppose he was right after all.”
“And all this time, I’ve wanted to pummel your brother for not doing enough to protect you.” He groaned. “I suppose this means I owe him not only an apology, but my thanks as well.” Daniel sat on the bed beside her and took her hand. “If you’re telling me all this to frighten me away, it’s not working. I still want to marry you and support your work with the women who need your help.”
His kindness was almost too much to bear, showing her all over again just what she’d lost that night she’d persuaded Sanderson to agree to her reckless plan.
“But you can’t marry me. Not when clearing your family name is finally in your reach.” She gripped his hand, knowing all too soon she would have to let go of it, and of him. “Edward and I have lived in fear of the day one of those witnesses turns up with just enough detail to be believable, or with other witnesses in tow, to ruin my reputation and the Radcliffe name and in doing so, destroy what’s left of our family. Leaving England for a year and leading a quiet life kept my secret safe. But I wouldn’t be safe—we wouldn’t be safe—if I married a soon-to-be marquess, especially one trying to restore his family’s name while hiding his own secrets.”
His eyes widened ever so slightly. He blinked fast and tried to cover it, but she’d seen it, the realization of the threat she posed to him and the shadow of doubt that had crossed his face. Maybe until that split second, some part of her had held out hope that things could be different, but now she knew—despite how very much he wanted it not to be so—that he, too, thought her indiscretion could destroy his plan to restore his own family name. And that would destroy him.
“Our lives have to take different paths.” She withdrew her hand from him. She no longer had a right to touch him so intimately. She shivered as the reality of the long, lonely years ahead settled over her.
He touched the strap of the nightgown, then withdrew his touch. “I bought this for you at the last port in France, the day I nearly lost you.”
She ran her fingers down her sides, over the silky material, then wrapped her arms around herself, knowing he could never wrap his arms around her again.
His eyes shone with tears. “What cruel irony that the night I finally see you in it is the night I lose you in an entirely different way. I don’t even know how to go on without the hope of having you in my life.”
But he would learn. As would she. They had no choice.
“I’m sorry, Daniel. If I could change everything, make other choices…” She looked out the window, at the slight change of color in the black sky. “Dawn is nearly upon us. I should wash and dress.”
He nodded. “I’ll deposit you safe and sound with the Alcotts. It will be as though last night never happened.” His voice broke on the last words. “But swear to me Emme, swear to me you’ll never look back on our night together with shame.”
She met his gaze just for a second, as long as she could bear, then turned away from him. “It happened,” she whispered. “With every fiber of your being, know that every day of my life I will remember it happened, and I will be eternally grateful it did.”
She walked away slowly, putting one unwilling foot in front of the other, over and over, until she reached the door. Every muscle in her body tensed, ready to bolt from the room. But she refused to do it. She was not a half-feral kitten, running and hiding from Daniel and the blissful night they’d spent together. She was a grown woman, walking away from her lover, releasing him to find someone who deserved to share his life.
Chapter 15
Emme stirred when an uninvited guest entered her room. She yanked her blankets over her head when the same reprobate pulled open the curtains to send sunlight spilling across her bed. It was the first time she’d been subjected to the morning sun in the week since she’d said goodbye to Daniel at dawn, and it was her sincere wish never to face the morning light again.
Now she lay in a pool of warm sunlight, silently cursing the person who’d subjected her to it. Her father would have sent servants, who would have hesitantly knocked. Her mother or aunt would have spoken to her softly from the doorway. Only one person in the household would dare be so obnoxious.
“Edward, leave me be.” She laid her arm over her eyes to block out all vestiges of morning.
“Shall I send this letter back to the Spinsters’ Club then, and tell them you’ve no interest in reading it?”
She sat bolt upright, winc
ing as her eyes adapted to the bright light, and focused on her brother, now leaning on the doorjamb between her bedchamber and sitting room. He held a cream-colored envelope between his thumb and forefinger. She reached out her hand, but he shook his head.
“When you’re presentable, I’ll be in your sitting room with your letter.” He closed the door behind him.
With a groan, Emme rolled out of her bed, slid her feet into slippers, and pulled on her wrapper. On her way to the bedroom door, she stopped to look in the mirror, horrified by the tangle of her reddish hair and the dark circles under her eyes. It was doubtful she could even come close to the presentable state Edward had requested, but she splashed her face with cool water from the basin and patted it dry with a linen towel, then ran a brush through the worst of the knots in her hair. A minute later, she entered the sitting room to find Edward, legs stretched out in front of him, looking much too large for her pink-and-white-striped divan.
She held out her hand to him. “I’ll have my letter now.”
He stared at her with wide eyes. “What passes for presentable has taken a turn for the worse this past week.” He handed her the envelope anyway.
She sat in the white upholstered chair across from him and broke the seal on the letter.
“It’s good to see you can overcome your cowardice, at least for one morning,” he said.
She glanced at him. “Cowardice? What on earth does that mean?”
“It means I expected better from you.” His face was set in his stern, older-brother look that she and Eleanor had dreaded throughout childhood. “One despicable cad plays fast and loose with your heart, and you take to your bed. Meanwhile, the rest of the world goes on, Emmeline.” He pointed to the window he’d just exposed in the next room. “The city is abuzz with life, with humanity. How many others do you suppose are out there this very day, as heartbroken as you are, but without the luxury of lying about in bed all day?”
One Kiss From Ruin: Harrow’s Finest Five Book 1 Page 17