Once Upon a Tower

by Eloisa James

  Maybe he thought she’d feel rebuked by his cool tone, but she’d grown up in the boxing ring. Just because she didn’t throw her weight around like Layla didn’t mean that she was intimidated. “What does define you then? Is it your title, do you think?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then?”

  “No person is defined by a single quality.” To be fair, he controlled his temper a good deal better than her father did. “You may be a musician, but that is not the sum of you.”

  Edie rather thought it was, but he could discover her shallowness in due time. “So what qualities define you, other than your parents and your title?” she asked, straightening up.

  “This is not a proper conversation to hold in front of the servants,” he said, having a stickish moment.

  She raised an eyebrow. “Gowan, you eat every meal surrounded by servants. Will we never have an interesting conversation over food?”

  He looked truly angry now, which was interesting. Edie smiled at him, because it was quite fun to bait a tiger. She truly liked her husband. In fact, she was embarrassingly aware that if she didn’t pay close attention, she might end up in a morass of emotion that would make Layla’s misery resemble marital harmony.

  He hadn’t answered her question, so perhaps he thought she’d simply accept a reprimand. Not so. “When are we to talk?” she repeated. “When you are not working, we’re at the table. Or we are in bed.”

  His lips were pressed tightly together. Over years of living with her irascible father, she’d noticed that he often needed a day or two to arrive at acceptance of a point she’d made; likely it was the same with Gowan. She gave him a brilliant smile. “In the meantime, perhaps you could tell me more about eels.”

  The corner of Gowan’s mouth quirked. “Am I to understand that I have a choice of dispensing with footmen or discussing eels?”

  “I could discourse at length on Domenico Gabrielli’s charming preludes written to highlight the melodic possibilities of the cello.”

  His wry smile deepened and Edie thought she had probably made her point. “We can save the Gabrielli for tomorrow.” She glanced at a footman, who stepped forward to pull out her chair.

  Gowan came to his feet and walked around the table to her. “You must be exhausted.”

  In fact, she was exhausted, but she hadn’t played yesterday or today, and her fingers were beginning to twitch. “I must practice,” she explained. He put a hand under her arm and heat shot down her body. She actually felt a little dizzy with the power of it.

  “You will practice for an hour?” he asked, as they walked from the room. There was no echo on his face of the sensual warmth that was weakening her limbs.

  “Two hours,” she told him, deciding that she had to make certain that she didn’t neglect her instrument simply because she enjoyed her husband’s kisses so much.

  He nodded to Bardolph, who was hovering in the hallway. “It seems we will have time to review the plans to buy the mining concern. I will join you in the sitting room; Jelves should be there as well.”

  As they walked up the stairs, Edie realized that Bardolph had disappeared into their sitting room, and that they actually had a moment of privacy. “Will you come to my room tonight?” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  The pleasurable heat in her legs spiked at his expression. She could see the tiger behind his dark eyes. Even though she still felt a bit fearful, hope surged.

  He read her mind. “You are no longer a virgin,” Gowan said, taking her hands and bringing them to his lips. “It will all be different tonight.”

  There was a promise in his voice and she thrilled to it. He must be right, of course. She felt as if every time she met his eyes the odd, empty feeling inside her grew more acute.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he growled. “Damn it, you want to play your cello, Edie.”

  She pouted, taking a kind of blissful female pleasure in the way his eyes clung to her bottom lip. “I do want to practice, but . . .” She came a step closer, and he dropped her hands and pulled her against his body. Edie buried her nose in his coat. “I love the way you smell.” Perhaps she would get up at dawn to practice. Her cello could wait.

  Gowan tipped up her chin and brushed his lips across hers, leaving a trail of fire, like stardust. “You smell like wildflowers.”

  But he stepped back, and she didn’t have quite enough courage to take his hand and pull him into her room. Instead, she slipped through the door, picked up her cello, and sat down, pulling her skirts all the way up her thighs.

  Once she began playing, her emotion slipped into the music and she understood Vivaldi’s seasons in a different way. There was “Spring” . . . the burgeoning of emotion. But “Summer”? All those joyous notes turned to wild fertility under her bow. She halted only when she realized that more than two hours had passed and she was utterly exhausted.

  Mary came to help her out of her clothing after she rang the bell, good-humoredly accepting her apologies. “This schedule is daft,” the maid told her. “Utterly daft! Mr. Bardolph is like a general in the army, to my mind. Thank goodness I’m your lady’s maid and will be needed to dress you, my lady. Otherwise, I’d be up at three in the morning and in the carriages at four.”

  “That’s terrible!” Edie exclaimed. “No sleep at all?”

  “Oh no, that’s not the trouble. His Grace is quite fair, by all accounts. You’re paid more for travel, and most people have the afternoon to sleep before the duke’s carriages get to the inn.”

  “Still, I would hate to be rising that early.”

  “It reminds me of when I was a chambermaid,” Mary said, pulling a nightdress over Edie’s head and handing her a toothbrush. “We used to have to rise at the crack of dawn and begin cleaning the grates. I was that grateful when I was promoted to downstairs maid; you can’t imagine.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry you’re up so late tonight,” Edie said, hopping into bed. “Tomorrow evening I shall put on my nightdress before I begin practicing, so that you can go to bed.”

  Mary turned from the door. “We’re all saying that you and duke are well matched,” she announced.

  “Really?” Edie was startled. She didn’t, personally, think that she and her husband had much in common. In fact, she was a little worried that he was all about eels and she about staves, and there wasn’t much of an overlap.

  “You’ve both beautiful manners,” Mary said. “They as have worked for His Grace for years don’t even mind the daft schedule because they say he’s always fair and he never makes a body feel like an idiot. Though he’s some sort of genius, or so they say.” She opened her eyes very wide.

  “Therein lies a huge difference between us,” Edie said. “But thank you, Mary. I hope you’re right.”

  It was rather odd, lying in bed, waiting for a man. It made the parts of her body to which she usually paid no attention prickle all over.

  The night before, Gowan had whispered in her ear that he loved her bottom. It was nice to have someone telling her how fine it was, given that she’d never thought twice about her rear. Like getting a bequest from some relative one never knew.

  Now, lying in the dark and waiting, her body started waking up all over because she couldn’t stop thinking of the way his big hands had slid over her hips and down the slope of her bottom. And the way he had sucked her breast, and then had actually nipped her. Her nipples stood out against her nightdress at the memory.

  Still he didn’t arrive, but Edie’s imagination kept presenting her with images of the previous night. Gowan had kissed her fiercely, until the only thing she could hear was the thunder of his heart, or perhaps of her own. So she could see . . . she really could see how . . .

  After another few minutes, she decided to check whether she was as sore down there as she had been.

  She wasn’t.

  That was surprising. Then, without really thinking about it, she started touching herself as he had. Her private parts felt so
ft and complicated under her fingers, her caress sending little whorls of heat down her thighs. The area she had briskly washed once a day for nineteen years felt . . . different.

  Not quite hers, yet entirely hers.

  Behind the safe darkness of her closed eyes, she relived the way Gowan had removed his clothes and slowly unwound his kilt. The sparkling, hot feeling that she had had when he cast his shirt aside and she saw all the taut muscles on his abdomen and below.

  And all the time the stroke of her finger was making heat gather in her limbs until she was practically throbbing there.

  It was as if she was in a safe cocoon in the dark room, tucked under the covers.

  Then the door opened.

  Twenty-one

  When the door swung open, Edie froze, instinctively clamping her knees together. Gowan stood in the doorway, light falling over his shoulder, talking to someone who remained out of sight.

  She sat up in the bed. “Gowan.”

  “Yes?” He turned, and for a moment the heat pulsed again, because he was so beautiful. A lock of hair fell over his brow, and his cheekbones gave him the look of a Spanish conquistador.

  “I am sleeping or, rather, I was sleeping.”

  His brows flew together and she could practically see him formulating another rule. Don’t wake my wife.

  “I don’t mind if you enter my room, but I’d prefer that you concluded your conversation before doing so.”

  He nodded with his usual decisiveness. Edie slipped back down under the covers while he stepped into the hallway to finish his conversation. She had that restless, burning sensation again, worse than the previous night.

  Gowan walked back in, closing the door behind him. “I am truly sorry to have woken you up.”

  “It’s not that . . . who were you speaking to?”

  “Bardolph. He wanted to—”

  “So Bardolph knows that you have come to my room rather than to your own?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t like that,” Edie said. Gowan tossed his dressing gown onto a chair, and with that gesture, her next sentence evaporated. He was naked, those long-muscled legs glowing like dark honey.

  He loomed over her, bracing one arm on either side of her shoulders. “Yes, wife?”

  “I don’t think the servants should know what we’re doing,” she said, alarmed at how weak her voice sounded.

  “They won’t know everything.” He dropped a kiss on her brow. “They don’t know that I intend to kiss you until you are helpless.” A kiss on her nose. “They don’t know that I intend to make love to you until you haven’t any breath in your body.” A kiss on her lips, a lingering one that promised, but didn’t breach. “Bardolph thinks I was listening to him all afternoon.”

  “You were,” she said, feeling a bit breathless. “I listened as well, at least to part of it.”

  He shook his head.

  “No?”

  “I thought about you all day. I know it was painful last night, but I intend to make up for it.”

  Edie smiled up at him. “Have you had a bath?” she asked, running her hands over his shoulders. He was naked and smelled of almond soap, and she was clothed. There was something quite enticing about that.

  “Of course,” he said, lowering himself onto the bed but holding his weight off her body.

  Edie had rather like how he’d smelled earlier, like male sweat and leather. “I wouldn’t mind,” she murmured.

  “I would never come to my lady unbathed.” Well, that settled that.

  Edie discovered that Gowan was as muscled below the base of his spine as he was elsewhere. “My rump is very soft,” she told him, “but yours is not.”

  “I’m a brawny brute.” He shifted onto his side, his hand curving around one of her breasts.

  “If you’re a brute, what am I?” Edie prompted, enjoying herself.

  “Perfect.”

  Their kiss was like a whirlpool: it made Edie’s head spin until she clung to him, her breath coming in urgent little pants. Part of her felt self-conscious about the way their tongues kept touching, but another part of her relished it. He still had a hand on her breast and he was caressing her in such a way—rough and gentle at the same time—that she kept choking back little cries. Embarrassing ones.

  Then Gowan pulled back and kissed his way down her neck. He slipped lower in the bed, and his mouth was on her nipple, suckling her straight through the thin lawn. Edie’s fingers dug into his shoulders and she sobbed because it felt so good. She even tried to pull him over so that his weight was on her, so that he rubbed against that part of her, so her knees could cradle him . . .

  Her mind was an incoherent storm. As Gowan moved to the other breast, Edie had a brief moment of clarity. It was very odd to realize her nightdress was wet. She wouldn’t want to have cotton in her mouth, no matter how clean.

  “Would you like me to remove my nightdress?” she asked, looking down at his head and feeling another pulse of heat so deep that she almost moaned aloud.

  Gowan glanced up at her, his eyes dark as a crow’s feather. A moment later she was unclothed, her gown tossed by the bedside, and they were lying side by side.

  Heat rushed up into Edie’s cheeks. They had been naked the night before, so it shouldn’t feel so awkward to have his naked body next to hers. It was, though. And then he started kissing her again.

  “I really . . .” she began, loving the gleam in his eyes. But she wasn’t sure what she meant. Did she love him? Was it an insult to say that she liked him? She did like him. She was beginning to think that he never considered himself, which was a problem. But it was like saying that hot cocoa was too dark: he was good, through and through.

  “I want you,” she breathed.

  Gowan’s eyes lit like a flame, and then he rolled her onto her back, running his hands down her body, studying her so intently that she couldn’t see past his thick lashes.

  “Do I look all right?” she whispered.

  “I was thinking that you look like that cello you love so much. You see the curves here, and here?” His hands shaped the slopes of her breast, the inward tuck of her waist, the generous swell of her hips.

  “I never thought of that,” Edie said, feeling more pleased about her body than she usually did.

  “You make love to that cello,” he said, “but I make love to you.”

  She was still smiling at that when his fingers dipped between her legs and she realized that she’d grown wetter and more swollen since she’d touched herself there. It felt different when he touched her. Her fingers had been soft and tentative and coaxing. But there was nothing tentative about the way he rubbed her. His touch was a demand, on the very edge of painful, as if she was about to be scalded.

  Edie twisted up against his hand, her body turning into a flame. “That feels so good,” she gasped, and then arched again, chasing the twirling sensation that turned her limbs liquid.

  “This will feel even better,” Gowan said, his voice thick. He lowered himself on top of her.

  It didn’t.

  By the time Gowan had pushed all the way inside, Edie was rigid with shock. It hurt like the devil. Maybe worse than yesterday, because she felt raw inside, as if . . .

  She didn’t know what. She buried her face in his shoulder and sucked in a great breath as he drew back out and then a moan when he thrust back in . . .

  “That’s it, Edie,” he said, low and fierce. “Let it come.”

  By the time she realized that he had taken her gasp for pleasure, it was too late. He was braced over her, thrusting into her over and over.

  “You can do it, Edie,” he whispered. “I can go all night if it will make the difference.”

  Edie hadn’t realized this was a competition, though that wasn’t the right word because there was no one to compete with. Still, she was clearly supposed to have an explosion of pleasure, the petit mort. And that was about as likely to happen as the inn falling down around their ears.

  Still, Ed
ie gave it a try. She hated the idea of disappointing Gowan. She tried bending her knees. She tried arching her back. She figured out that if she slid down a little it took off some of the pressure, but the truth of the matter was that her husband didn’t fit inside her.

  Her body had lost every pulse of that sweet heat she’d felt before. In fact, she was on the edge of tears, which wasn’t good. Gowan’s breath was growing harsher. A drop of sweat fell on her arm, and she flinched.

  He was caressing her breast, and every once in a while he would kiss her again, but all she felt was a frantic need to buck him off. Anything to stop the pain and the awful sense of being suffocated. When he moved faster, a cry actually escaped her lips. “That’s it,” Gowan breathed, giving her a kiss that made her feel as if he was congratulating a dunce who had just sounded out her first word.

  She could not do this much longer. In fact, not another minute.

  If this was a competition, she was willing to lose. Gowan could be the winner. She had to get him off, out of her, now. There was a ferocity in his eyes that promised he would go on all night until he pleasured her.

  Edie would rather die.

  Layla said their joining would be noisy and loud, which it certainly wasn’t on her part, unless she planned to start screaming.

  “Oh!” she cried, but the word didn’t come out right. She sounded dismayed, like a matron finding a vase of flowers broken on the floor.

  She hadn’t hit the right tone. “Ohhh,” she said, a little louder. She had never felt so ridiculous in her life. Gowan had lowered his face and was kissing her neck, so she couldn’t tell whether he believed her. His hand was still curved around her breast. His thumb rubbed across her nipple, which should have felt good, except that nothing felt good.

  His heart was hammering in a way that proved he was experiencing pleasure, even if she wasn’t. That made her feel a little better. She arched up against him, because that did seem to take the pressure off and made it hurt less. Then she threw back her neck, exactly as Layla had, and let go.

  She would have said that she had absolutely no acting ability. But apparently she was good enough.