She touched the tips of her fingers to his lips, cutting off his words. ‘I need you too. I know I should not. It is against all sense, all logic, everything that is right. My father, and yours, and the war…’
He saw in her eyes the same agony, the same desperation and fight as were in his soul. And he knew that Josie was as powerless in all of this as he; that desire had made slaves of them both. Her eyelids briefly closed and she shook her head, and when her eyes opened again, she reached up and touched her lips to his in a single kiss as light as a butterfly’s landing.
They were wrapped around each other, so close that Josie could feel the beat of his heart where her hand rested against his chest, strong and steady like the man himself.
She sighed.
‘Josie,’ he whispered, and one hand massaged a caress against her back where he held her, while the other tilted her face up until his mouth lowered to find hers. And he began to kiss her again, slowly, gently, filled with tenderness and love.
He kissed her and kissed her, the stubble upon his chin scratching her skin pink, until their mouths began to move harder and faster, and their lips grew moist and needful. The kiss was everything to Josie. It clouded the pain of the past and obscured the fear of the future. There was only here and now and Pierre Dammartin. Her heart was thudding, but not with fear. Desire flowed through her veins. Her breasts tingled with it. Her thighs grew warm with it. She wanted the kiss never to end.
His hands moved down to caress her breasts, his thumbs teasing across their pebbled peaks. The thin linen of her shift strained against their sensitivity as Josie arched, thrusting herself into his hands, aching for his touch, wanting more.
Then his hands were pulling at the shift’s neckline. ‘Take it off,’ he whispered.
She sat up and did as he bid, as eager to rid herself of the barrier between them as he was. But when she lay back down, he caught hold of the blankets before she could cover herself again.
‘Let me look at you. I want to see you, every inch of you.’
She lay there, naked and exposed as the dark smoulder of his gaze travelled over her. He reached to touch her breast.
‘I—I wish to see you too,’ she said, amazed at her own boldness.
He smiled at that and climbed from the bed to stand before her. The moonlight paled his skin, and revealed every detail of his tall, athletic frame.
Josie stared, amazed at how different his body was to hers. He was all hard and lean and muscular, nothing of softness, nothing of curves. Her eyes skimmed the breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his arms, the dark, flat nipples of his chest, down lower to the regimented pattern of muscles that sat in lines across his abdomen, and lower still…to the nest of dark hair and his manhood that sprang from it, so large and rigid. Her cheeks flushed hot and her gaze dropped rapidly down his strong muscular legs to his feet.
‘Do I pass muster, Mademoiselle Mallington?’ he asked with a wry grin.
She cleared the dryness from her throat, feeling her cheeks grow hotter still. ‘I have never looked upon the male form before.’
‘That I am glad to hear.’
Then he reached his hand to her and pulled her up to him.
They stood there, naked in the moonlight. And Josie no longer noticed the coldness of the room, but the contrast of his skin as it caressed hers, and how big and honed and strong he was. She traced her fingers up his arm, across the tight, hard muscle of his chest, up his neck to reach his jaw, feeling the dark shadow of stubble rasp rough beneath her fingers. Her hand crept farther up to lay gently against the scar that ravaged his left cheek.
He stood very still, his eyes glittering and dark in the moonlight.
Then, standing on her tiptoes, she reached her face up and kissed the top of the scar. One kiss and then another and another, tracing down the long line of the scar until all of it had been kissed.
From outside in the streets came the sound of men’s voices, French, drunk, the clatter of their boots against the cobbles, and of women’s laughter, deep and throaty. But neither Josie’s nor Dammartin’s gazes shifted. They stayed steady, trained on each other.
He moved his knuckles to gently stroke the outer edges of her breasts. She sucked the breath hard into her lungs.
‘You are beautiful,’ he whispered, the backs of his fingers thrumming against her taut nipples, ‘so beautiful.’
He dropped to his knees before her and she gasped, feeling the excitement shimmer within her as his lips grazed the skin of her stomach. His breath was hot, searing a path up to her ribs. Her breasts were heavy with need, ripe for his touch. Her nipples, standing to attention, hard and ready within the cool night air.
She did not look, just stood there waiting, while in her mind she was urging him to do it, begging his mouth to suckle upon her. And as his mouth closed over one breast, his tongue flicking over its most sensitive tip, she sighed her relief. He sucked her and the warmth low in her belly ignited. She looked then, saw his head so dark against the pallor of her breast, and the sight of what he was doing to her caused her thighs to burn. Her fingers threaded through his hair, pressing him closer, inviting him to feast all the more.
But he pulled back, his dark smouldering gaze flicking up to hers, as his mouth slid lower, retracing its path to where it had started. She felt him hot against her stomach, his tongue circling around her navel before travelling on down. Josie gasped as he kissed the curled fair hair of her mound, his hands moulding to her buttocks, guiding what he wanted to his mouth.
‘Pierre!’ She gasped in shock.
But he was between her legs and she found herself opening instinctively to him. She groaned as his tongue stroked her most intimate of places, and the unexpected raw pleasure of it shimmied through her. He kissed her there and the need within her spiralled. He sucked her and the need stoked hotter and hotter until she was burning with it. His tongue flicked and licked at her and the need raged, unbridled and wanton, and she was panting and her legs were trembling.
He rose then, scooped her up into his arms and laid her on the bed, climbing over her and pulling the blankets to cover them both.
She felt his manhood against her belly, probing and firm, while elsewhere their bodies barely touched.
He stroked her hair, stroked her cheek, looked deep into her eyes and there she saw such love that it took her breath away.
‘Pierre,’ she whispered his name into the stillness of the night. ‘Pierre.’ And she knew only the depth of her love for this man and the depth of her desire.
He moved, and his manhood was between her legs, touching where his mouth had been, sliding with such slow enticement against her wetness. She wanted him. She needed him. Such overwhelming love could not be wrong. Her hips moved against his instinctively, sliding herself along the length of his shaft, gasping with the pleasure it wrought.
‘Josie,’ he whispered into her ear, and there was a pause before he thrust into her, filling her with himself. There was the smallest of pains, but he was kissing her again and their breaths mingled and their bodies were unified, and the pain was forgotten. As he began to move inside her, Josie knew that this was meant to be—nothing had ever seemed so right.
They were as one, a man and his woman moving together in the most intimate of sharings—a physical expression of their love, two souls entwined. With each thrust Pierre claimed her as his own. She writhed beneath him, feeling the pleasure riotous and wanton, knowing that this bond would bind them for eternity. She looked up into his face, and it was dark and shadowed despite the brightness of the moon high in the sky outside, and the intensity in his eyes was scalding. Someone groaned, moaned, gasped and she did not know whether it was Pierre or herself from whom the sounds issued.
She loved him, loved him absolutely, overwhelmingly. She clutched at him, moving faster with him, clinging to him, crying out his name for this merging of souls until, with one last thrust, all the barriers broke, and her whole being exploded in a myriad of ecstasy. Such
bliss. Such euphoria. Such love. The joy of it pulsated through every inch of her being, every corner of her mind.
She was his, and he was hers. They were as one.
Josie could see that the strength of love transcended everything; all else was tiny in comparison with its vastness. Love was all. War and power and politics were as nothing. All that had been and all that lay ahead was, in that moment, irrelevant. She loved him; they had shared that love in a union of their bodies, and nothing else mattered.
They clung together in the darkness, even when Pierre arranged the covers over them that they might not grow cold through the night. She clung to him and there was no need for words. She did not think of the past nor of the future. There was only now, this precious moment with the man that she loved, and the glorious wonder of it. And eventually she slept.
Major La Roque sat up late. He had finished the best part of a bottle of brandy and it still did not make matters any better. It was all Josephine Mallington’s fault. How he rued the day that they had chanced upon Mallington and the girl in Telemos. Then it had seemed like a godsend. Mallington’s death should have freed him from the constant torment the past months had brought. But he had not reckoned on the girl.
What kind of madman took his daughter to war? What was she even doing there in that goddamn monastery? She should have been killed there, like her father. La Roque still did not understand how she could have walked out of the monastery alive.
Damn her, and the spell she had woven over his godson. Because of her, Pierre was asking too many questions. Because of her, Pierre doubted his own godfather’s word. Jean Dammartin was dead, and La Roque’s heart was still heavy with the grief of it, but at least there had always been Pierre. But now Pierre no longer believed Mallington’s guilt and that knowledge shook the very foundations of La Roque’s defences.
He stared at the empty brandy glass, tracing his finger slowly around its rim—such a delicate balancing act, just like life itself, he thought. He had involved Molyneux for Pierre’s own good, trusting in his own instinct that the girl might cause trouble, but not for one moment had he imagined just what her presence might lead to.
Pierre should have been repulsed by her, he should have hated her as La Roque now hated her. But Pierre had wanted her, and now it did not matter how quickly he tired of bedding her. He could cast her aside tomorrow and it would be too late; the damage had already been done, the spectres raised.
La Roque unstoppered the bottle and emptied the last of the brandy into his glass.
There was nothing else for it, nothing else he could do. What damn choice did he have if he wanted to survive? The agony that he had endured in these months seemed trivial in comparison to that which lay ahead, but La Roque would bear it; he had to. It would be the best for them all in the end. All the risk had to be destroyed. He sat alone, sipping his brandy, and made his plans for tomorrow.
Dammartin woke, and for the first time in such a long time there was a contentment about him, a calmness, a warmth. He felt the weight of Josie’s legs entwined in his and he smiled. Last night had been wonderful; this morning was wonderful; Josie Mallington was simply wonderful.
The light was still murky with the night, but there seemed to be a slightly golden quality about it, a strange brightness within the dark. He dropped a kiss to Josie’s head and, taking care not to wake her, climbed from the bed. Fetching up his discarded jacket from the chair, he draped it around his shoulders against the chill and moved to stand quietly at the window.
At one side the sky was lit with a warm, golden hue, while across the way still lay the mid-inky blue of night. And as he watched the glow intensified and spread, warm and ethereal. Across the city the rooftops were covered with a glittering white frost, and from a few chimneys smoke curled wispy into the air. Dawn moved across the sky, lightening its blue, opening up a new day. A bird was singing, while others chirped, and it seemed to Dammartin the most glorious of mornings to be alive.
His mind slipped once more to the woman sleeping in the bed behind him, and his heart seemed to fill with joy and he found that he was smiling. If this was lust, it was like no lust Dammartin had ever known. La Roque might say what he would, but Dammartin had no intention of giving up Josie. He wanted to hold her in his arms for ever, to keep her safe from all harm, to make her happy. He smiled again at the thought of it.
‘Pierre?’ Her voice sounded sleepy and unsure.
He turned from the window and went back to bed, snuggling into her, ignoring her protestations that he was cold.
‘I will soon make you warm again, ma chérie,’ he whispered against her ear. And he kissed her, and, with such gentle tenderness, loved her all over again.
The streets were busy with voices and footsteps by the time that Dammartin finally left the bed to hurriedly wash, shave and dress.
Josie was sitting up in the bed, the covers pulled high, hugging her knees. Part of her feared to ask the question, not wishing to destroy what last night and this morning had brought, but the other part knew that she must.
‘Pierre…’ She hesitated, before continuing, ‘What did Major La Roque say last night that was so very bad?’
The blade within Dammartin’s hand nicked the edge of his chin. ‘Merde,’ he muttered beneath his breath, and pressed the towel to stem the blood.
‘I am sorry,’ she said, ‘I should not have asked.’
Dammartin sighed. ‘You have every right to ask, Josie, but I do not think that you will like the answer.’ He finished scraping the beard growth from his face before splashing the water up to cleanse away the stubble-peppered soap lather. Only when he had finished and was drying his face did he turn to her.
‘La Roque was only twenty yards from the man that shot my father. He is adamant that the man was Lieutenant Colonel Mallington and no other.’
‘But you know that is impossible. You have read my father’s journal. You know about the injury to his hand.’
‘I am afraid that neither are conclusive proof of his innocence, Josie.’
‘But you believed me before.’ She threw aside the covers and climbed out of the bed to stand there naked beside it. ‘Are you saying that you no longer do so?’
Dammartin’s gaze swept briefly down over her body. ‘I think that your father did not murder mine, but—’ his eyes came back up to meet hers ‘—the truth is, I can never be absolutely certain of it.’
The hurt welled up in her, gushing and disbelieving. ‘Then you do not truly believe me at all,’ she said, and all of the magic of the night and the morning shrivelled and died.
‘That is not what I am saying, Josie.’ He pulled the shirt on over his head, and lifted his breeches from where they lay on the floor.
‘It sounds like that to me,’ she retorted.
‘I do not have time to argue with you over this, this morning. We will speak of it later, I promise.’ He fastened the fall on his breeches and fetched his cravat and waistcoat from the chair.
‘What of La Roque stealing my father’s journals? What of his giving me to Molyneux that he might find the missing journal? Do you believe the truth of that?’ She watched him, holding her breath, waiting for his answer.
‘Josie,’ he chided.
‘Tell me,’ she said from between gritted teeth.
She heard his sigh. He finished tying the cravat in place and looked round from the mirror. ‘If La Roque had the journals, I would know of it. What need has he to lie? Your portmanteau was probably stolen and dumped without the journals ever having been recovered.’
‘And Molyneux?’ she demanded.
‘You are a beautiful woman, Josie, and Molyneux can hardly keep his breeches up at the best of times.’
‘That is not true; he is married with two small sons.’
He gathered his boots and sat upon the chair to pull them hard upon his feet. ‘Molyneux is not married, and as to children, who knows what he has left behind. He was spinning you a story, Josie, that he might crawl beneath
your skirts.’
She flinched at his baseness. ‘He was acting on La Roque’s orders.’
Dammartin eased himself into his jacket, fastening each button with speed. ‘La Roque may well have encouraged Molyneux’s interest as he so disapproves of mine. He loved my father and sees…our friendship, as a betrayal.’
Josie looked down at her nakedness, to her breasts peaked hard with the cold, and the bloodsmears that stained the pale skin of her inner thighs. She had given herself to him, body and heart, and still he did not believe her. And she could have laughed bitterly at the irony of his talk of betrayal.
‘You do not believe anything that I have told you,’ she said, and could not hide the anger and hurt from her words.
‘Chérie.’ He came to her, pulling a blanket from the bed to wrap around her, rubbing his hands over her to chase away the chill. ‘You misinterpreted what you overheard of La Roque’s and Molyneux’s conversation.’ His hand stroked against her hair. ‘Now get dressed before you are frozen completely.’ He pressed a brief kiss to her lips. ‘I am already late, I have to go, but we will talk of this later, yes?’
‘No,’ she said firmly, ‘I do not wish to talk of it later.’
‘I have not the time for this now, Josie.’
‘No, for you have had what you wanted—my father’s journal and my body in your bed,’ she said bitterly.
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