She watched as he shed his breeches. As she knelt there, he seemed to tower above her and she couldn’t stop admiring his lean, hard muscled body.
God, he was so damned beautiful. So masculine.
She wished their situation were different, and that she had done something rather naughty and that he would use his crop on her. That he would strike her hard enough to leave a few marks.
But he had said he never would.
And they would never, ever be together like this again.
No, stop, don’t think about anything beyond just this moment.
Watching as he walked naked, moving with such artless grace, every long line of his body a testament to power and elegance, she pushed all disquieting thoughts away with a ruthless hedonism that reminded her of her younger days.
He stopped at the tub and stepped into it. Her stare became fixated on his erection. He grasped it and stroked his fist up and down upon it several times. Unhurried indulgence.
“Come, girl, bathe me.”
She tried to keep her expression serious but she couldn’t hold back a smile and she hurried to comply, taking up the washcloth. Trying to ignore the way the soap stung her wrists, she lathered the cloth. Then she slid it over the planes and angles of his body, letting her hands linger in the luxuriant suds, trailing them over the dusting of coal-black hair on his hard-as-boards stomach. But his tightening hold on her neck warned her and she knew better than to linger in the act of washing his cock.
After she had used her discarded wineglass to sluice water over him to chase away the suds, he stepped from the tub and waited for her to dry him.
“Go lay on the bed,” he said when she had finished.
She jerked her gaze to his and frowned. “But don’t you want—”
“Go lay on the bed,” he repeated, more firmly.
She released her breath in a long sigh but obeyed.
“On your back, sweeting,” he added when she reached the bed.
She stretched out over the slightly worn medium blue and rose coloured quilt.
“Spread your yourself wide for me.”
She parted her thighs then took her hand and spread her outer lips open.
With his gaze still riveted between her legs, he approached the bed, his huge erection bobbing as he moved.
“God help me, you are so beautiful,” he said, his voice a little more hoarse than normal. “More beautiful than I dared imagine…and I did imagine quite a bit.”
She swept her lashes over her eyes and let a smile slowly stretch her lips. “Did you?”
“Oh, yes. You were my ideal, Rebecca.” He trailed his fingertips over her belly, causing a faint ticklish sensation to flirt over her skin. Her stomach muscles tightened as fluttering butterflies chased each other around her navel. “You still are.”
Pleasure warmed her from head to foot, increasing the burn of her desire, increasing the fluttering anticipation that tingled through her, making her curl her toes.
Oh, my. That was such a heady thing for a man like him to tell her.
Men like him will tell you anything they think you want to hear—
No, no! Stop it. Don’t ruin it.
She forced the warning down, ruthlessly.
He crawled on top of her, the fine hairs on his abdomen tickled her. She arched up, seeking greater contact with that long, lean, magnificent body. He cupped her face, his gaze intent. He lowered his head and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes. He kissed her eyelids, her cheeks, her jaw line. Each touch of his lips on her was gentle, reverent.
No man had ever kissed her like that. As though he were committing her whole face to memory.
For her, sexual relations had always been playful. An exciting way to seek distraction from the more unpleasant or frightening sides of life that were always encroaching in her mind. Men had treated her playfully too.
But Stephen was making love to her.
And it was so intoxicating to be touched as though she were the most precious thing in the whole world to him. To be so special to one man.
Alarm pulsed in her blood. It was too intimate, too close. He would see her too fully. He would uncover all her imperfections.
She would become dependent on his ardour.
And he would eventually know her too well and become repulsed. He would reject her just as all the others had—
He ran a trail of kisses down her neck and over her collarbone, his mouth becoming open, hungry as he kissed her breasts.
The extraordinary sensations that he created in her swept the disquieting thoughts away. Her nipples grew rigid, aching. She moaned, the sound like a gasping catch in her breathing and she arched her back.
But he did not hurry.
“Your nipples are so petite, so delicious looking, bright as cherries.”
She laughed, softly. “Are you fond of cherries, Stephen?”
“Yes, exceedingly so.” He cupped his hand over her breast.
She peeked through barely opened lashes and saw how large his hand was and how diminutive her breast appeared in comparison.
“Your breasts are a delight. A surprise.” He lifted his hand, carefully, without having once given her nipple the stimulation she craved.
She moaned.
“You used to pad your bodice, did you not?”
Heat flashed over her cheeks. She put a hand over her face and murmured.
He pulled her hand away. “What was that, my love?”
“Yes, yes, I used to pad my bodice.” The words came out like hiccups between her embarrassed giggles.
How long since she had giggled?
He brought her hand to his lips. “You are sweet perfection. You shouldn’t strive to be anything that you are not.”
He bent and slowly, carefully, put his mouth over her entire breast.
She held her breath, the muscles of her abdomen taut as she grew transfixed by the sight of that sensual mouth covering her. The contrast of his inky black hair against her porcelain skin.
He gradually lifted his mouth off of her then touched the tip of his tongue to her rigid, straining peak.
Pleasure sparked through her, all the way down to her toes, making her curl them again. She writhed and arched her back, pressing her breast to his mouth.
Oh, but he would not hurry!
He applied slow, steady torture, tracing her nipple with light strokes, circling it with soft licks. He raised his head, his gorgeous face flushed, his eyes hooded. “Lift your arms over your head.”
She complied, but not in a hurried way. Let him be teased as well.
“Put them behind your head.”
She laced her fingers behind her head, still watching him through her lashes.
“Leave them there, don’t move an inch.”
He’d said that in a tone that made her believe he would have bound her if her wrists had not been so recently burnt by the ropes.
He stared at her for several moments and then he groaned and bent down, putting his mouth over the tight peak.
The velvet-wet heat of his mouth encompassed her. She moaned, arching more desperately and clenching her laced hands to remind herself not to reach and clutch his head.
He sucked on her, the steady tugging sent darts of fierce pleasure deep, deep inside her belly, into her sex, making her nub throb. He moved from one nipple to the other, his suckling growing hungrier. Between his forefinger and thumb, he twisted the nipple left neglected by his mouth, making the peaks stiffer, increasing the frequency and intensity of those darts of pleasure streaming through her belly, into her womb, lower to where her heart’s beat seemed to centre in her nub.
Her cunny clenched and wetness began to gush between her legs.
Oh, she was on fire for him!
She twisted and writhed and arched, desperate for more.
“Please, please, please…” She chanted the words, her voice so breathless, she wondered if he could even understand her.
He nipped at her nipple.
She squealed and shuddered.
He repeated the motion. Again and again, alternating between her nipples, and twisting his thumb and forefinger more fiercely on the other peak. Her breath came in harsh, quick pants. Her hips began to move, as though of their own accord, up and down.
Stephen watched Rebecca writhe beneath him. Her eyes were shut, the golden brown lashes a lush fan against her rosy-porcelain complexion. Her mouth was slightly parted and she was making these gasping, moaning sounds that made his erection pulse and jerk. That made him leak like he never had before in his life.
He wanted her. But he wished that their situation were different. He wished they could have come to know each other a little better and not had this matter of Maria Seymour and the Earl of Barnet between them. He wished she trusted him enough to admit the truth of the past.
The situation was imperfect. Stephen hated having to accept it. He was used to planning carefully, bringing relations with others to just the right pitch and moment.
Her lower stomach brushed his straining cock. Need flared like fire in his blood. He groaned and grasped her hips and pressed himself to her. God, he was driven to take her, no matter the imperfection of their situation.
He’d wanted to draw this time out, to tease and torment her a little, for he had enjoyed that the night in the carriage. But he found himself rubbing the head of his cock against that erect button of flesh at the crest of her cunt.
She throbbed against him. He could sense her impending orgasm and suddenly he didn’t want to torment her, to make her wait. He wanted to feel her walls hugging his erection. He wanted to feel her sucking him deeply inside.
He grasped her hips, slid himself down to her entrance and thrust.
She arched her hips, meeting him, driving him deeper inside.
He stroked her hard little nub with his index finger. She moaned and trembled and again, he could feel how close to the edge she was. His cock jerked, rather frantically. God, he wanted to feel her come.
He leant close to her ear. “Come for me, sweeting.”
She moaned and her cunt began to draw on his cock.
He increased his efforts. Her thighs tightened on his sides. Her face contorted, an expression almost like pain, the muscles in her incredibly flat belly went taut and then her inner walls began to spasm upon him.
The gentle yet frenzied suction on his shaft set him gritting his teeth. It took all his self-control not to spill himself. The roar of his blood pulsing in his ears threatened to drown out her moans.
He watched the beauty of her coming undone whilst he focused on counting backwards from one hundred, anything to distract himself from propelling into her again too soon, before she’d had the chance to recover a bit.
She was such a good little wench. The whole time, she hadn’t lowered her arms from behind her head.
“Oh God.” Her lashes fluttered open. She gave him a tiny smile. “Oh, my God.”
He reached for her arms, pulled them from behind her head and put them on his shoulders. He wanted to feel her clinging to him in all ways.
As she wrapped her arms about his shoulders, he reached for her legs and pulled them higher on his body. She raised them even higher, driving his cock further inside. He thrust and thrust and thrust.
Christ, would he ever get enough of her hot, tight little cunt?
Never.
Ever.
He fastened his lips to her neck then tightened his hands on her hips and drove into her. The bed ropes creaked loudly. Were they old? They might break, he didn’t care, he just kept driving into her and the headboard banged against the wall. Very indiscreet, oh sweet Christ.
Sweat made her thighs slide on his body. He had to readjust his grip on her hips.
“Take me, oh Christ, Rebecca, take all of me, take all I can give you.”
And there was also a silent plea, one he couldn’t afford to make…
Accept me, all of me, all of my past and present, as I am. Accept me, love me.
He was pounding her more furiously, he felt he couldn’t catch his breath, that his heart beat so hard, so fast, it might explode.
He didn’t care.
She was screaming now, that convulsive sound she’d made before when he had first taken her. Her cunt clamped down on him, tight as a fist.
His cock quaked with the violent expulsion of his come. Intense release as he had never felt before. Stunning pleasure. He shouted.
* * * *
Stephen had paid a dear amount for fresh warm water to be brought. Then he’d ordered a late supper of roasted chicken, bread and of all things an apple pie. Rebecca had never seen him consume so much food, so quickly.
Now she listened to a clock down the hall chiming the midnight hour as she lay next to him in bed, clean and pleasantly full.
He stroked her cheek with gentle fingertips. “I adore making love to you but I want more than this. I want to live by your side and learn every single thing about you until I know you as well as I know myself.” He paused, his expression growing so oddly serious, she thought he looked rather sad. “I wonder if you can even fathom my craving for such a thing?”
Frustration welled in her, unwelcome and seeming to come from nowhere. But then, it had been there, under the surface, the whole time. “If you feel that way, then how can you deny me the chance to know about you? Why do you continue to hold onto your secrets?”
His caressing hand froze then he withdrew it and rolled onto his back. He stared at the ceiling. Her heart sank.
He would never tell her. He would never share himself.
Always a mistress! Always!
Where had that thought come from?
From somewhere deep inside her. Some place she had stifled for so long. A wave of heaviness crushed her chest and she inhaled sharply. The most important men in her life had always held her at a distance. Father used his disapproval. He would offer her praise and affection only if she behaved exactly as he demanded. If she were a good, dutiful daughter. But she hadn’t been able to be good or dutiful enough since reaching the age when her feminine charms had begun to bud. In becoming a woman, she had done something unforgivable in his eyes.
He still had not forgiven her.
Donald hadn’t been able to accept her as a true wife.
Jon had accepted her but lightly. He had viewed her only as a friend and a playmate. Yet, he had so obviously wanted and needed more.
She would never be valued deeply by a man.
Yes, Stephen had spoken of marriage the night before. Only a foolish woman would have believed him.
Burning in her throat and stinging in her eyes made her swallow, hard.
Yet, she had known all of this before. She had accepted it as her lot.
But now, oh now, her perception of her situation was different. She longed for a deep connection and could see the vast stretch of years ahead of her, full of nothing but longing.
The pressure in her throat spread to her chest and she didn’t think she could bear it. Oh God, how would she bear years and years more of this?
Would grandchildren truly fill the void? Could she find some means of occupying herself to distract from the pain?
Devoting herself to the shop had not fulfilled her.
I am not the hardened matron I tried so hard to be. I am still just as much a feeling woman as I ever was. Maybe more now that the natural certainty of youth is past and I am all too aware of my human frailty.
“Rebecca.”
His voice, so tender, so husky, was almost a whisper. Yet it startled her out of her thoughts.
“Yes, Stephen.”
“I shall go to Hell when I die.”
“What?” Her mind couldn’t grasp why he would say this. Her heart contracted with sympathy that he would even believe this. “No, you can’t mean that.”
“I will. It never mattered to me before. But it matters now because I realize that I can’t
be with you in eternity.”
She turned on her side and stared at his profile. He seemed so placid. “Why do you believe this?”
“Because I am a killer.”
His words reached her ears then fell dead. A string of meaningless sounds but without any meaning.
“Do you hear me? I am telling you that I am a hunter of men. A killer.”
“Don’t do this, Stephen, don’t make a jest of everything. I shall surely hate you if you continue to do this.” She paused and tried to think of a clearer way to say what she had just blurted. “If you continue to put your jests in between us, to block me from knowing you, I shall scorn you.”
“It is no jest. I am a trained, hired killer. I kill in cold-blood. I have had no regrets until now, because now I know I shall not be with you in heaven.”
“And Vienna?”
“Once my target was eliminated, they released me.”
“Oh God, you’re a spy.”
“Assassin is the more apt term.”
“Aren’t a spy and an assassin really just the same thing?”
He paused, his expression grim. “Not quite. My work is centred mainly around eliminating risks to the safety of the realm.”
“But wait…you said your work was done in Vienna?”
“Yes, my work was done and they allowed me to leave.”
He said that so coolly, as though his work had been to prune the bushes in the gardens or cater the meals. A chill raced down her spine. This was the real Stephen. A change in him since she had known him as an eighteen-year-old boy, yes.
But the seeds for this must have been there all along.
She eased towards the edge of the bed.
As he watched her move away, his eyes widened a fraction and his skin paled a degree. That was her only indication that he was still the Stephen she knew, human and capable of feeling.
But he didn’t try to touch her or attempt to bring her back.
She tried to manufacture an apologetic expression. “I am thirsty, Stephen. I need a drink.”
He made as though he would arise.
“No, I’ll get my own drink,” she said hastily as she bolted from the bed, as she had longed to do for moments now. She hurried over to the china tub where she’d left the bottle and glass earlier. Once she’d taken a few swallows, she became morbidly curious. She had to know. She had to understand.
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