Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sophia James

  Huge and dark and half-dressed, the scowl across his face was fully formed and unhidden. His hair was loose and there were bruises on the knuckles of both his hands.

  ‘I am sorry—’

  She broke off even as he shook his head.

  ‘Don’t be.’

  He thought she spoke of his scars?

  ‘No, I did not mean—’

  But again he failed to let her finish.

  ‘Tom Brady is recovering. He was set on by a group of youths and almost kicked to death.’

  ‘Did the police find these people?’

  ‘No. But after the constabulary failed to find them, Tom sent for me and told me who they were. Once I knew that, it was easy to locate them.’

  ‘Because you hold ties with people like this and you know the places they would frequent?’ She could not understand quite what it was that he said.

  ‘Partly. Some people I knew back in Angel Meadow have moved down to the city and I see them sometimes, have a drink and find out how they are. They helped me track down the group that attacked Tom.’

  Adelia could not believe he would tell her these things as if it were a normal occurrence, as if anyone would do the same for a friend who had suffered as Tom Brady had.

  ‘Are the youths…still alive?’

  He laughed at that. ‘If I’d killed them, I would hardly be here.’

  ‘You’ve hurt your hands?’

  ‘A small inconvenience. Their heads were damn hard.’

  ‘And ripped your shirt?’

  She had begun to shake because it was all so horrible, so dangerous, so very foreign.

  ‘You could have been killed, Simeon!’

  He looked at her then in the way of someone who failed to fathom what she was saying. ‘They got nowhere near me, Adelia.’

  ‘How many of them were there?’

  ‘Four. Well, six if you count the scrawny couple of hangers-on, which I didn’t.’

  Her hands came across her mouth in dismay. He was no longer the businessman who had fitted into society with such ease at the Greys’ dinner party. No, this man in front of her now was far more dangerous and unknown. A man of blood and violence and retribution.

  As if finally realising the depth of her distress, he breathed out hard.

  ‘I told you I was damaged, Adelia, damaged well and truly, though God knows I have tried to make you feel safe both here and at Athelridge. But there are things you don’t know about me and if you are unable…’

  ‘I know that I don’t want you dead.’

  ‘I won’t be.’ His strangled words sounded as if he was trying to stop himself from laughing. ‘I won’t be.’ He repeated this after a few seconds and now there was a sincerity in his tone that made her happier. ‘I promise.’

  At that she undid the buttons on her thick cotton dressing gown and let it slip to the floor. It fell in a whoosh, the noise loud in a room of silence, leaving only the lace-edged nightdress beneath it.

  ‘Nothing you could do would make me want to leave you, Simeon, and it is time that you knew it.’

  ‘Well, it should.’ He sounded stunned.

  She moved then, towards him, towards his warmth and his strength and his damage until she was right next to him, an inch away.

  ‘Existing across two worlds must sometimes be…hard.’ She whispered this into his skin and saw his flesh rise into goose pimples.

  ‘It would be harder without you.’

  When his fingers threaded through her hair, she saw the bruising on his right hand was deep, the injuries substantial on each knuckle. She imagined the hatred and the danger that he must have been a part of.

  ‘Is it finished? This revenge?’

  ‘It is.’

  He tipped her chin up so that she looked straight at him.

  ‘But when I see something that is unjust or plain wrong I will act, Adelia. It is who I am.’

  ‘I know that, too.’

  She reached up and her arms knotted around his shoulders. She felt the scars on his back as her fingers opened to hold on. More violence and brutality, the cruelty written like a story.

  And then he was lifting her into his arms and across to his high four-poster bed. His other hand pulled down the covers and he sat on the mattress carefully with her on his knee.

  ‘I imagined this all the way back from Richmond in the carriage. You, here with me and undressed.’

  ‘And I thought you were busy keeping your distance.’

  ‘Only because I was afraid if I touched you I might never be able to let go.’

  * * *

  She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, every part of her, every inch he could see through the sheerness of fabric. Her skin was ivory and unmarked and so pale the blue bloodlines beneath were easily visible. Her hair lay about her in a curling mass, all the shades of blond and honey and white. Lifting a long curl, he laid it across his arm, dark against light, fragile against well worn, the scars on his forearm snaking up beneath, a further sign of who he was and all that she was not.

  ‘I read some poems today in a book from the bottom shelf in your sitting room. They were written by your mistress.’

  Lord! Theodora’s journal, the one she had given him the last time they met.

  ‘They talk of your emotional distance, Simeon. Theodora Wainwright never thought you were hers.’

  ‘A wise deduction, then, because I wasn’t.’

  ‘Are you mine, then?’

  ‘Yes.’ He wanted her to stop talking. He wanted to shut the world out, banish all those who might take up their thoughts. He did not want to think of Theodora at all.

  ‘I do not know the things she spoke of or the ways she describes the movements to make love…’

  He kissed her to stop all the words, to find the silence, but she moved away and carried on.

  ‘I don’t want us to be like those poems.’

  ‘We won’t be, sweetheart,’ he returned and tried not to smile. She looked so earnest and young and the one poem of Theodora’s that he had browsed through before he had thrown the journal into the bottom of his bookcase unread was bordering on the absurdly erotic.

  ‘I have seen animals on the farm so I do know some things…’

  He turned her towards him on his lap and kept her still. He had not removed his trousers because he did not want to frighten her, but he knew she could feel him there, hard edged and ready. His whole body pulsed with need.

  ‘Stop thinking, Lia, and just feel.’

  The emerald green in her eyes was wide and fearful.

  The truth exploded around him. Despite all she had said, he finally understood that she had not done this before. She was a virgin and he was rushing her and treating her as he did every other woman he had bedded—women of experience.

  Pulling her into him, he sat there trying, in the moment, to find some sort of method to carry on and to make sense of things.

  Then he had it.

  Heaping the pillows up against the top bedstead, he brought her up to lie beside him, drawing small circles on the flesh at the top of her arm as he began to talk.

  ‘My mother made creams for the skin of fine ladies and I took it around Kensington with a pack of lies and a lot of bravado. It smelled nice, so it was not too hard to sell, but…’

  He stopped and he saw that she was listening.

  ‘But being in the vicinity of those houses and those people made me understand that there was another way of life, a life that was different from what I was used to. When I had sold out or nearly sold out of the cream I would often sit against the railings of the parks that abounded in the fancy squares and allowed myself to simply be. It was quiet and clean there and the people passing by seemed kind. I liked what they had and who they were even if to them I was probably a ragged beggar boy w
hom they would rather have had gone. But I watched them and I learnt and when I was finally rescued I became like them.’

  ‘But not entirely?’ Her query was soft.

  ‘Who you were once never quite leaves you. It crouches there, waiting.’

  At this, she reached out and took his hand in her own, turning over the palm so his swollen knuckles were on show.

  ‘You try to make a difference in the world? To help people?’

  She kissed his fingers one by one.

  ‘I never visited Theodora again after our wedding, Adelia. I swear to God that I didn’t.’

  He felt her smile.

  ‘Her poems were dreadful. I only read one. I didn’t want to take the book in the first place, but she was insistent.’

  ‘I found them…interesting.’

  He felt a charge of hope run up his body. ‘In what way?’

  ‘Sometimes I feel I am…too…scared.’ She had trouble finding her words. ‘It’s because of my father, I think. I always had to be careful and watching. I’d like to be braver.’

  He sat up a bit more. Here was the opening he had been looking for.

  ‘Close your eyes, then. Just for a moment.’

  She did as he asked though there was a slight frown on her brow as he ran his finger across her cheek and around one ear.

  ‘No, keep your eyes closed.’

  This time, he circled her breast with one hand and he felt the small gasp of response.

  ‘Don’t move. Stay still. Just feel.’

  His tongue laved her nipple through the lawn, soft at first and then with more force, the feel of it creating a rhythmical pulse that began to match the beat of her heart.

  When her body rose of its own accord, he knew that he was winning. But still he went gently, lifting his head to place a line of kisses across her shoulder and throat.

  She was smooth and lean, save for the swell of her breasts and the curve of her bottom. She looked as though the sun had not touched her anywhere. He imagined her out in her garden wreathed in fabric from head to toe and could not remember ever seeing skin like it. A siren bathed in the milk of moonlight.

  He felt her fingers threading through his hair, pulling him up, and he went willingly and found her lips, his hand on her nape now and angling the kiss. When she opened her mouth he came in, deeper, tasting the sweetness of her, knowing the intimacy.

  * * *

  This was what a kiss should be like, Adelia thought, nothing between them but desire. She felt his strength and care and excitement burned through her.

  His eyes watched her close, the gold burnished by need, nothing hidden.

  ‘Love me, Simeon,’ she barely whispered.

  ‘I will,’ he returned and a languid want made her world tip, into him, his scent, his touch, his honesty. There was so little left of only her.

  His hand cupped her jaw and then fell lower, to slide the straps of her nightdress off her shoulder. Then he sat her up and the sheer lawn fell to her waist.

  ‘God.’ His voice sounded broken. ‘You are so very beautiful, Adelia.’

  She smiled because it was not her face that his eyes fastened upon, but her breasts, and that seemed right somehow, a beauty kept only for him and no one else.

  ‘So unblemished,’ he carried on, ‘like alabaster.’

  He stood now beside the bed and she watched him remove his trousers, the dark hair on his body mirrored in that around his groin, his masculinity standing proud.

  He did not flinch as she looked and became accustomed to what she saw. His man’s body, ready for her. She’d seen statues of the male physique in books hewn of cold marble, but this one was flesh and blood and warm and living.

  ‘I won’t hurt you, sweetheart. We can stop whenever…’

  She reached out and touched him, the firm length of his sex in her hand and the magic of the sensual filling her. Just them. Just here. Just now. The secrets of their bodies in the night.

  And he moved, too, to lie beside her, his hand on her stomach, gentle, soft, and then travelling down.

  ‘Let me in, Lia. Let me know you.’

  Closing her eyes, she felt her hips rising as he dwelt lower, his finger in her wetness, and pushing, inside, finding the centre of her joy.

  Her flesh clenched around him, the truth of what he was doing dismantling any fear. All she wanted was for him to keep going as the waves began to build. His mouth was at one breast, now suckling in the same rhythm, and she moved with him, searching for the promise and then finding it as she tipped and fell headlong into the burning fire.

  She heard herself groan and she felt his finger there inside her held by things she had no knowledge of, pulling him in further, never letting go.

  Her whole body jolted time and time again, until, finally spent, she relaxed into the understanding of what had just happened.

  * * *

  He swore as if from a distance as she tried to find reality, her hand reaching for her gold cross as a touchstone.

  ‘I never knew…’ she tried to say and stopped.

  ‘Neither did I,’ he replied and rolled on top of her, opening her thighs and resting there, waiting till she looked at him, asking for permission.

  * * *

  He could not hold back. She was wet and hot and ready, her orgasm surprising him with its intensity and its suddenness. What would happen next?

  When she nodded, he began to move, starting to push in and watching her carefully, her head tipped back, her thighs closing on him.

  ‘No, sweetheart. Trust me.’

  He did not want to hurt her, so he waited, the green of her glance taking in his words and need and then changing from brittle emerald to acquiescence.

  ‘Now.’ He said the word on a breath and slid further into her, the tightness exhilarating and foreign. A virgin. Pure. Untouched. Innocent.

  His own sullied past should have stopped him, should have made him think twice, but it didn’t. He was fire and flame and energy and she was kindling ready to be burned. He pushed in deep and then deeper, felt a tear and a release, her maidenhood plundered under his sex. When she cried out he stopped, but did not withdraw. He let her accustom herself to what he offered. Let her flesh expand around him and understand what its true purpose was.

  Her eyes watched him, hooded and languid, like an unpractised siren poised on the edge of change, and then he moved. Only a little. A question. A permission. A sanction for more.

  The pain of ecstasy, thin bound between them, bloomed. He felt it in a throb and heard it in her sigh, the rush of blood and the knowledge of more, only them in the darkness joined by life.

  He came inside her fully, embedded in the final fusion. Her mouth opened, but the words did not come, her breath stilled by expectation. With intent he withdrew and came in again, harder this time and solid, the movement repeated even as she cried out and her nails seared down his back to keep him there, cleaved together, unbreakable. A shared passion, a communication of the flesh, their bodies moving in union onwards and upwards as a dance of release.

  And it came, with a sureness and a potency, a concentration of feeling diluted only by delight.

  Afterwards he lay there, fighting for his own breath, feeling the beat of his heart like a drum in his ears, echoing, calling.

  Like dying. Fluid. Formless. Hardly moving.

  He was a man who had spent all his years bedding experienced women he’d thought would fulfil his needs and here he was with his virgin wife, being driven beyond anything he had ever known before. It astounded him.

  She was like quicksilver, volatile and unpredictable, with an edge of sweet innocence that charmed and delighted him.

  When his breathing returned to normal he rolled on to his back and looked at the ceiling, the cool air of night-time welcomed.

  ‘Thank you, Adelia.’
He turned his head to see her smile. ‘You were extraordinary.’

  ‘Were?’ Her voice held humour.

  ‘Are,’ he amended and sought for her hand, entwining his fingers with her own, feeling the connection between them. He had never held hands with a woman in bed before and the simple joy of it filled him up.

  ‘I think you were better than any of those poems I looked at in the red-velvet book, Simeon,’ she teased.

  ‘I hope I didn’t hurt you?’

  ‘For a second you did and then all I could feel was the promise.’

  ‘A promise that is a slippery slope, my beautiful wife.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because with lots of practice we can only get better.’

  She laughed with him, there in the quiet of the room, with a single candle flickering and the sound of the wind against glass. And for the first time in all of his life Simeon thought, this is where I belong, right here, in this place, with this woman and at this moment.

  When he tensed at the shock of it she felt the quiver.

  ‘Are you happy?’

  ‘Finally I am,’ he said and meant it.

  * * *

  She woke to find him asleep beside her, the half-dusk of the early hours around them. The candle had burnt out and a small moon was visible through a crack in the curtains.

  She had gone to sleep as half a person and woken up as a whole one. That thought made tears well in her eyes and she kept absolutely still lest Simeon hear her and wonder.

  He was asleep on his side and turned towards her, his eyelashes absurdly long and a half-smile on his lips. Not dangerous and menacing tonight, but almost young. She wished she might reach over and touch him so that he would wake and be there again. Speaking. Loving. Being.

  A wash of wanting him came unexpectedly across her body, heating stillness, the resonance of memory bold.

  And then he was awake, his eyes catching the light, her small movements bringing him from slumber.

  ‘You sleep lightly,’ she murmured.