The Lady Flees Her Lord

by Ann Lethbridge

  A golden torso of muscle and bone and sinew met her wondering gaze. A bronzed god of war. But unlike any statue, this warrior god lived and breathed and gave off palpable heat. She gazed in awe at the sculpted curves beneath a mat of hair on his chest, at the flat copper disks with their hard nub in the center. He clenched his fists and the muscles in his arms bunched. He said nothing, didn’t move.

  She pointed to the white line that arced through the hair above the rise of his breast. “What happened?”

  “A saber cut,” he said.

  “And this?” Her finger hovered over the crown-sized scar in his side.

  A deep ragged breath defined his ribs. He shrugged. “Spent shot.”

  She raised her gaze to his impassive face. “You might have been killed.”

  “Yes.” He arched a brow “Touch me—if you wish.”

  Her fingers tingled. She licked her lips and stared at the vertical line of dark curling hair dividing the rows of hard ridges on his stomach. Desire flooded moisture to the apex of her thighs. She flattened her palms on the swells and hollows of his chest, felt his nipples pearl against her sensitive skin. She scrunched her fingers among the rough hairs and he groaned low in his throat.

  She jumped back.

  “For pity’s sake, don’t stop,” he pleaded. “It feels wonderful.”

  The rough edge to his voice sent waves of pleasure rushing outward from her core. She reeled from sensations she couldn’t comprehend. The certain knowledge she had the power to move him gave her the strength to continue. She caressed the satiny skin of his shoulders.

  His hands came up to cage her waist, heavy, warm, comfortable, and steadying. He stroked her back in rhythmic circles, brushing the sides of her breasts until their peaks tingled and burned for his touch.

  Fingers trembling, she explored the contours of silken muscles, of arms tensed beneath her hands, the heat of his flat, hard stomach. He sucked in an audible breath, his gut hollowing, as she traced the line of hair to the waistband of his breeches.

  “Lie down with me, Lucinda,” he murmured against her hair.

  “Yes.” Had she spoken the word out loud?

  She must have, for he swung her up onto the great bed in a smooth, easy motion and stretched out beside her.

  He bent his head and she met his kiss halfway, spearing her fingers though his hair, pressing her thigh between his legs, and giving in to a fog of mindless desire.

  One hand cupped a breast.

  The mists parted, and she tensed.

  “Hush,” he murmured against her mouth. “I promise it will not hurt. If you tell me to stop, I will.”

  Wanting above all things to believe, she managed the smallest of nods.

  He smiled and dropped a kiss on the corner of her mouth, on her cheek, and her chin, lowering his head until all she could see were the dark waves of his hair.

  He pressed his mouth to the rise of her bosom through her chemise. Against her will, her fingers dug into his shoulders. She forced herself to lie still.

  “Ah, sweetheart,” he said on a sigh. “Don’t suffer me in silence. Tell me what you want.”

  The chill of the air against her damp skin where his lips left their hot, wet brand left her feeling bereft. “I like it,” she gasped.

  “And this?” he asked. He dipped lower, stroking one nipple with his tongue.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He repeated his attentions on her other breast. A delicious heaviness weighed down her limbs. Languid, she caressed his back, enjoying the shiver of his skin beneath her fingers.

  He covered her nipple with his hot, wet mouth. Delicious warmth ran outward. Then he suckled.

  Fire blazed along her veins. Her bones dissolved. Desire spiked to unbearable heights. “Oh, sweet heaven.”

  Her body became an instrument, his to play, to draw sweet music from its depths. Her mind filled with a wonder and awe so vast that the world disappeared.

  His hands slid up and down the scale of her body, touching, caressing, drawing forth notes of unimaginable sweetness, sliding down her ribs, drifting over her outer thighs, whispering a song at the back of her knee, gliding in the heat between her legs. She opened herself, giving him access, and his hand pressed down on her mons.

  Unutterable joy. She cried out, arched her back, and tilted her hips seeking more. Eyes closed, she drowned in the music of his touch. Nothing mattered but the magic of his wicked mouth on her breast and his hand tormenting her damp swollen flesh.

  He raised his head. She moaned her disapproval.

  “My God,” he breathed. “You’ll be the death of me. I need to see all of you.”

  For a moment she stared blankly, and then he tugged upward on the hem of her chemise. She raised herself to help him strip it off. Exposed to his gaze, she felt a wave of heat burn her cheeks, horrible and hot. She crossed her arms over her breasts as if that would somehow make them less obvious.

  “Lovely.” The reverence in his low voice and his expression eased her awkwardness.

  Defiant, she let her hands drop away. “Hardly lovely. My nose is too big, my chin too square, and there is altogether too much of me.”

  Hugo’s gut twisted at the wry smile on her lips and the shadows in her velvet blue eyes. Shadows he had mistaken for secrecy, not pain. He brushed the hair back from her temples and kept his gaze fixed on her face. “You are gorgeous. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

  Lashes swept down, obliterating the thoughts in those dark eyes for a moment, and then she stared up at him. “There is nothing wrong with my eyesight, my lord. I can see what others see when I look in a glass.”

  Wounded, but brave. It pained him more than if she had wept. Keeping his gaze clinical, he scanned her length, from her lips full from their kisses over her bountiful breasts. His eyes traveled to the dusting of light brown curls below the lush swell of her belly. Fine and damp, they hid little from him. His gaze swept across her wonderful thighs. He drew in a shuddering breath. “Dear God,” he whispered, “so white, so strong . . .” He groaned at the image in his head of those curvaceous limbs wrapped around his hips, cradling him softly.

  “I would see all of you, too,” she said in a husky whisper.

  He grimaced. “I am not a pretty sight, I’m afraid.” He chuckled.

  Lucinda reached for his pantaloons and fumbled the buttons of his breeches. “I won’t fear what I can see.”

  “Let me get rid of the boots,” he said, turning and sitting on the edge of the bed. They hit the floor with a bump.

  Lucinda watched in fascination as he peeled the tight fabric down his firm, narrow hips over firm round buttocks and long muscled legs. She ought not to look, but could not drag her gaze away. The man was a miracle of male beauty.

  He turned to face her, his erection curving up toward his navel from a nest of dark curls, his stones hanging large and fleshy at its base. The head of his erection was dark with blood, the shaft knotted with blue veins. Rampant, huge, and terrifying.

  A breath caught in her throat. She edged back.

  He knelt on the bed, took her hand, and pressed a burning kiss to her palm. “Your passion did this to me. It won’t hurt you,” he said. “Not if I’m careful. Not if you are ready.”

  He guided her hand between her legs, pressed her fingers to her slick swollen flesh, and rubbed them lightly against her cleft. A little burst of pleasure made more moisture flow.

  “You are not cold or frigid. You are hot, wet, and ready for me,” he whispered. “Prove it to yourself. Let me inside.”

  Temptation stronger than any she’d ever felt surged through her veins. If she didn’t agree, she would never know for certain. “Yes.”

  A sigh gusted from his chest. He captured her mouth in a blazing kiss and eased her shoulders back against the pillows. “Just one more thing, sweetling.” He reached over and opened the drawer in the table beside the bed. He drew forth a clear, crystalline envelope and pulled out what looked like one rather damp fi
nger of a glove.

  She recoiled. “What is that?”

  “Protection.”

  At her blank look he smiled. “It will keep you safe.”

  Safe? From what? Dare she trust him? She nodded.

  He fitted it over his erection and tied a narrow red ribbon close to the base in a bow.

  “Pretty,” she said, her laugh strained.

  He growled something, and dove in for a kiss.

  One hard, heavy thigh pressed down on her legs, and his knee nudged until she parted her thighs. The lust that had died to a simmer flared to life in hot demand for satisfaction.

  This time, her body urged. Now.

  His hand roved the contours of her thighs, hips, and stomach, plucking the strings of tension, vibrating chords until sensations shot back and forth at dizzying speed. One hand cupped her mons while the other adored her breast. His hot mouth suckled.

  Pleasure flowed over her. The sensations built to unbearable heights. At any moment, she would fly off the edge of some dreadful precipice. His finger slipped inside her, moved, and pressed against soft yielding flesh. It felt good, but not enough. She clenched around him. He groaned and shifted to lie between her legs, the head of his erection nudging her inner thigh.

  This was the part she hated the worst, the sharp intrusion and the grinding pain. He had promised not to hurt her. Dare she trust him? Lord knew, she wanted to.

  One finger still inside, he pressed against her pulsing flesh with the heel of his hand and circled. More sweet agony of pleasure. But still not enough. She lifted her hips, demanding more.

  He inserted another finger and she gasped at the increased tension, winding her hips to encourage him deeper. Instead, he withdrew. No. She clenched muscles she never knew she had to hold him fast.

  “Dear God, you are killing me,” he whispered, withdrawing his hand.

  She cried out a protest.

  His face hung above her, the cords in his neck standing out, his expression taut. “Take me inside you,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I can’t hold off much longer.”

  Trust, her heart said. “Yes,” she said. “Please.” Hurry. Before I change my mind.

  Hugo saw hope shining from her eyes amid desperation. Humbled, his vision blurred even as his mind shrank from the weight of responsibility.

  Lust pooled blood in his loins, emptied his mind, and urged him to bury his cock to the hilt in her slick hot channel. Reason struggled with the demand of need and won by a whisker. He must make things right for this woman. His woman.

  He dipped his head to drink the sweetness of her mouth. The heat of her response scorched his lips. The magnificent breasts grazed his chest, begging for his touch, his mouth. He buried his face in their warm valley, filling his palms with firm full flesh. He licked and nibbled and teased, suckling gently, her mewls of longing a choir of angels to his ears.

  Gently he eased his engorged shaft against the opening of her passage. Slippery with her moisture, it slid inside her welcoming heat. Home, his body demanded, his hips pressing forward. Slowly, his mind reminded. He clenched his jaw, held still, and gazed into her face.

  Her eyes widened and then cleared, like a midnight sky in the Spanish mountains. She lifted her legs, wrapped them around his hips, and pulled him deeper into heaven, her soft, yielding flesh beneath his body better than anything he had imagined.

  In slow, steady strokes he drove into her, each time a little deeper. Her hands roamed over his shoulders, her nails digging into his back as she lifted her hips to welcome him in. Never had a woman urged him on so sweetly or driven him so high. His arms shook with the effort of holding his weight, and his heart thundered in his ears, but the sweetest sound of all were her cries of pleasure.

  His cock jerked, and his balls tightened rock-hard at the scent of her arousal. He could not hold back. Her muscles clenched and quivered around his shaft, milking him and draining him. Control gone, he drove deep and hard. Her moans of release mingled with his shout of triumph.

  Only by willpower did he prevent himself from collapsing on top of her. He tried to breathe around the pounding of his heart, tried to still the tremble in his arms. He gazed down in wonder at her rosy lips and her closed eyes, her lashes a dark crescent against her pale skin, her breath coming in gasps. Silky brown hair spread across the pillow like the halo around a full moon. Bliss blurred her features.

  He eased out of her. She stirred and looked up with a weary smile.

  “Sleep,” he said and rolled on his side. He pulled her close, content to hold her until the real world intruded.

  His woman. So fragile. So hurt. He had plumbed the bottom of her wary silence and discovered a treasure beyond compare. Suddenly the future did not look so lonely . . . if she would accept the little he had to offer.

  Chapter Eleven

  The bone-melting heat of bliss slowly receded from Lucinda’s limbs. Steady breaths against her cheek. Another body’s warmth. Hugo. Wonderful, strong, gentle, compassionate Hugo. The man had given her a gift as precious as life, her womanhood.

  She opened her eyes. Surrounded by royal blue bed hangings and secure in his arms, she desired nothing more than to snuggle closer and sleep away the day. Safe.

  How safe would she be if he knew she was another man’s wife? If he discovered that the man he despised could snatch her back on a word? Lies for her protection felt like a millstone around her neck, dragging her into the depths of deceit against a man who had brought her such joy. A flood of shame chilled her to the bone.

  She pushed back the sheet and rose on one elbow.

  Hugo raised his head, his hand warm on her back. “Awake already, sweetheart?”

  Dark hair tousled, his eyes half open, he looked sensual and handsome and good enough to eat. The urge to stay shocked her. “I must go home.”

  A smug smile curved his lips. He looked younger, less careworn, almost boyish in his wickedness. “Move into the Grange. Then you won’t have to dash off.”

  “Move in?”

  “It would be more convenient.”

  By allowing him to make love to her, she must have made him think she’d agreed to be his mistress. The thought of lying beside him night after night, free to kiss him, to bring him pleasure, sharing his bed and his life, was madly tempting. And completely out of the question.

  In the throes of passion, she had not thought ahead. “No.”

  His smile faded. Eyes wistful, he stroked her arm. “Was it something I did?” His teeth flashed white, and he leaned forward and nibbled her ear. “Or something I didn’t do . . . yet.”

  Pure unadulterated lust shot straight to her core. She steeled against the urge to bury her face against his wall of chest, to let him fire those wonderful feelings banked within her all over again, to forget her responsibilities to Sophia, to her family, to herself.

  “It has nothing to do with you.” She leaned over and pressed a swift kiss on his mouth. His arm encircled her shoulders. He deepened the kiss, and for one brief, ecstatic moment she melted into him, letting heat and the rising tide of passion claim her very soul.

  The power he exerted over her body left her terrified. She shoved his shoulder and his hand fell away, just as he’d promised. “I do not think it is a good idea.”

  A pang twisted in her heart at the hurt in his eyes.

  He lifted her hand, bent his head, and kissed the inside of her wrist sweetly, gently. It felt like a promise. “Don’t decide now. Give it some time.”

  Why could she not have met this man first? How could she deny him out of hand? The knowledge that she would never know this bliss of flesh and heart and mind again tore at her will. “I will give you my answer next Wednesday.”

  “Wednesday? That is almost a week.” The words came out a disgruntled growl.

  The sullen curve to his mouth brought a smile to her lips and a wicked thought to her mind. “Why not give the servants Wednesday evening off to help prepare for Saturday’s fête? It will give us a chance to talk w
ithout interruption.”

  He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and cast her a thoughtful glance. “I gather it is not only talking you have in mind.”

  The man had a quick wit. She repressed a sudden giggle. In heart-stopping appreciation of his magnificent physique, her gaze drifted down his torso and landed on his thigh. She gasped. A painful-looking red rash spread like a spiderweb around an ugly, oozing scar below his hip. “Dear sweet Lord. What is that?”

  He scowled and covered it with the counterpane. “It is nothing.”

  “It looks dreadful. You need to see the doctor.” She tugged at the cover.

  He held it fast. “A surgeon assured me it would heal in time.”

  She opened her mouth to protest. The words died at the darkness in his expression. Suddenly, she didn’t feel quite so safe. Sheet wrapped around her, she stumbled off the bed and snatched up her chemise.

  A hand lashed out and caught her.

  In fury, she stared at tanned fingers grasping her wrist as if it was no more than a twig, then raised her gaze to his face.

  He dropped her arm as if it was hot. “I’m sorry I snarled at you.”

  She blinked. An apology? But hadn’t Denbigh apologized each time he caused her pain. Her gaze fell to her wrist. Not a mark marred the skin, no red fingerprints, no bruising, no pain. Hugo was not Denbigh. He had proved that. “I’m sorry also. I overreacted.” She touched his shoulder. He turned his head and dropped a gentle kiss on her fingers. Desire bloomed. Tension mounted. She laughed, shaky and breathless and full of longing. “I really must go home, or Sophia will feel abandoned.”

  His smile returned, more wicked than ever. “What if I were to say you are abandoning me?”

  An unruly chuckle bubbled in her chest. She shook her head. “I promise to give you an answer on Wednesday, when we will discuss what you are going to do about that.” She pointed to his leg.

  He gave a soft groan but said nothing more, seemingly content to sit back against the pillows, watch her dress, and help find her hairpins among the bedclothes.

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