"So you want something reckless and rash." His deep voice was asking and promising at the same time. And maybe he was pushing her, only slightly, because she'd been pushing him since the first moment they'd met at Adelaide's.
"Yes," she answered, this woman who prided herself on constraint. "Yes," she softly added, thinking surely in these brief moments she must be losing all reason.
Lifting her suddenly as though she were no more than a small weightless object, he placed her on his iron-framed chaise that had traveled the world with him. The linen cushion was bleached white from the sun and well-worn, as were so many of the furnishings in this home. Display wasn't a natural bent for the magnificent, elegant Duc de Vec. His hermitage was modest, plain.
Discarding his underwear quickly, he followed her down and she momentarily wondered as he lay above her if the chaise would hold both their weights. Was he telepathic or was the inquiry so evident in her eyes… or did he recall previous experiences on his campaign chair? How many had preceded her on this chaise in what outland corners of the world, she wondered.
"Don't ask," he said before she did. "And kiss me now."
He kissed her first but she was more than willing; she had, since her abrupt leave-taking of the Duc at Adelaide's ball been consumed with curiosity and desire. And after much internal debate she was here and he was here and the sun was deliciously warm on her skin.
She came up for breath after that first fierce, staggering, intense, immoderate, artistically imaginative kiss that seeped downward like a luscious dream and, half-breathless still, said, "You're very good."
"I should be. But then," he added, smoothly suave and vaguely discontent, "so are you."
"Up against your experience," she breathed, her heavy lashes half lowered against the brilliant sun, "I shouldn't be. But then," she went on, her smile faintly challenging, "perhaps it's not a question of quantity."
"Why do I have this constant and overwhelming urge to beat you?" he growled, resting on his elbows, gazing down at her with his re-occurring scowl.
"Because you've been spoiled by too many simpering females who agree with your masculine view of women. What I offer you is mine to give—not yours to take. And yet, whenever I trespass on your prerogatives, you scowl. Now I hope what I'm about to say won't bring on a beating"—she was tempting him with a relentlessly provocative tilt of her chin and lifted brow�"but if you don't make love to me very soon, I'm going to beat you."
He reacted as she knew he would because he was degage by nature and practiced by circumstance, but she also saw the tiniest hesitation, that minute pause when he considered leaving her.
"Offered such a charming choice," he softly said instead, "I accept."
"Which?" she asked coquettishly and heatedly.
"Both," he pleasantly said.
He made love to her gently at first, kissing and caressing her, stroking each warm sun-washed portion of her anatomy until she wondered if all the extravagant stories recently revealed to her at Adelaide's were really true and he could indeed make unremitting love for days.
But she didn't want to wait to find out just this moment so she stopped the path of his hands with hers and said, "Please, Etienne…"
"And all the rest… darling?"
Her eyes were heated with desire, her small hands hot on his, the slow rhythm of her hips beneath him imploring. "It's been so long… could we postpone all… the rest for later?" she murmured, the exquisite need inside her flame-hot.
He only smiled, thinking she wasn't perhaps as venturesome as she'd implied. Since his youth he'd never experienced a long period of sexual abstinence. He chastised himself a moment later for being so unworldly that it pleased him she was not promiscuous.
He obliged her then, entering her slowly until he rested deep inside her, and the sigh drifting up to his ear was one of bliss. He began moving cautiously, not sure any longer of the degree of her proficiency—her words and actions so opposite�carefully monitoring the extent of her need and involvement.
Her hands almost immediately closed on his shoulders and seconds later slid down his back to draw him nearer. She felt like heated velvet and he too emitted a deep low sound of pleasure, their bodies fitting together as perfectly as he'd envisioned in the ardent fantasies enlivening his thoughts since their meeting. She was slender but not fragile, tall but not too tall, voluptuous in a healthy fresh way, distinct from the florid showy abundance of his usual lovers.
"You're too perfect," he whispered, sliding in again as if to test perfection, pleasure pouring through his senses like a cavalry charge over-running a retreat.
The rebuff was plain in his voice, however soft, and it charmed her to hear his artless protest. It charmed her more to know her own intense feelings were reciprocated. Although no unenlightened virgin, her experience was not vast, perhaps because until this moment she'd never felt this glowing tempestuous passion. Had she, she would have been inclined to seek it out again and again.
He dwarfed her although she wasn't a small woman; he was, under the stroking palms of her hands, strong and muscled and he felt in the heated interior of her body as though he were giving her ravishment and delight and fragrant palatable glimpses into unalloyed sensation. When he began to glide in each time, she found herself holding her breath so the concentration of dizzying feeling wouldn't be diminished, and each time when peaking splendor seemed milliseconds away, he withdrew and kissed her while she rubbed against him and ate at his mouth and pleaded with him to give her more.
He always did but with a discretion he understood to perfection until the intensity of her desire was wild and unbridled and profligate. And when her resplendent climax overcame her at last, she collapsed in his arms, melted around him, whispered unintelligible pleasure sounds which brought a satisfied smile to his lips.
Her lashes lifted after a time and he whispered, "Hello."
"Hmmm," she murmured, stretching and content, her gaze taking in the smiling perfection of his face. "Hello back, and thank you."
"You're entirely welcome, although I should be thanking you. You're delightful company on a warm spring day."
"I think I owe you…" Her eyes were still heavy-lidded with sensuousness.
"Not for long," he softly said, moving away from her, then, lifting her into his arms, slid upward on the chaise. Half reclining against the cushioned back, he turned her so she faced him and very slowly slid her down his rigid arousal.
Her eyes shut. For a rapturous moment it seemed as though only two people existed in the world, as though they had together found the enchanted land and if she breathed in only tiny little breaths, she wouldn't shatter to bits.
This can't be happening, he thought, this ripe, perfumed, impossible ecstasy. He categorically abhorred the word as an incongruous feeling in an imperfect world. Yet he was experiencing ecstasy because an outspoken, lush woman whom he scarcely knew was impaled on his erection, clinging to him with a strength he found surprising.
He deliberately moved in her, thinking sensibly that the novel, disturbing sensation would disappear to be replaced by more familiar feelings of pleasure. But when he moved, she moved also, he up and she down and he felt his brain lift away from his head. His hands automatically clamped hard on her hips and pressed downward because any experienced devotee of gratification such as he had automatic reflexes to sustain sensation. And his eyes shut too and he felt exactly as she did. As though they were floating alone in the world.
She moved a few moments later and then he did and shortly her languorous eyes opened and much later his and they smiled at each other as though they were the last two people on earth.
When he climaxed at last, she joined him and he felt as though he were fifteen again and joyously alive.
She caught herself just in time; she almost said, "I love you," but stifled the words before she uttered the ultimate incivility to the man all of Paris understood did not believe, in love.
They made love next with her seated on the
balcony rail, tightly held so she didn't fall into the river below. But when he lifted her down from the railing some time later and pressed her back against the cool stone cottage wall, his hands beginning their practiced arousal for the third time, she said "Are you avoiding the bed?"
His gaze lifted to look at her and uncertain how to respond, he hesitated. He probably was, he thought.
No woman had ever slept in his bed.
"Just asking," Daisy casually said, reading his nonresponse, not impelled by any great need to infringe on his territory. The pleasure he was giving her was quite generous enough.
"It's only a bed," he said resolutely, his solitude repudiated more easily than he anticipated. Taking her hand, he moved toward the door.
"Are you sure? It's not necessary."
"I'm rarely sure of anything except my polo ponies' competence. That's about the only certainty I rely on."
"So cynical, Monsieur le Duc," Daisy teased, laughter in her eyes, her lush body moving beside his as though they were irrevocably mated, companions from some time long past.
"Consider yourself fortunate, Mademoiselle," he lazily drawled, "to have eluded the sensation."
"Replaced today though—am I right?—with more joyous feeling. And I like your bed." It was very large, austere, plainly constructed in pale birch.
She had a frankness he found refreshing, more—renewing, as though she could disarm the black demons impoverishing his soul. And unlike most women, she knew when to discontinue her occasional tendency toward introspection. "Yes," he said, "I like my bed. Could I interest you in a closer look?" His grin was deliberately wolfish, making Daisy laugh out loud in pleasure.
"You're much too handsome for your own good," she chastised, pulling her hand from his in mock disapproval. He was physical perfection of an unparalleled degree. The kind that made other men resigned and women believe God had truly answered their prayers.
"You, Mademoiselle, are hardly in a position to remonstrate. The entire world no doubt has been at your feet from the cradle."
"Would you care to join them?" She was teasing but testing her powers too in a feminine display of vanity.
She was too perfect, he thought, as she stood provocatively nude before him, too exotic, too tempting, too assured of her extravagant beauty. "Perhaps some other time," he politely declined, his gaze having shuttered slightly, the familiar sardonic half-lidded gaze of the Duc de Vec once again regarding her.
"I see there have been too many importuning women," Daisy perceptively said. "Forgive me. I said it only in fun."
His relief was not immediately apparent. He'd been asked for much, she decided. Predictable but a shame—and perhaps been given too little. "Would you like me to genuflect to you? I'm completely without pride." A startling statement from Hazard Black's daughter, a woman the world regarded without exception as prideful.
"No."
He was uncomfortable, she could see, as if too many dissatisfying memories were recalled. "If you don't smile, I'll never fuck you again."
Her astonishing declaration brought a smile. "Never say I'm a fool," he pleasantly replied.
"I've three brothers," she said as though in explanation of her crudity.
"How nice," he casually responded. He required no explanation; he hadn't been shocked by anything in years. "And now since I've smiled, I think we're ready for your gracious offer." Playfully tumbling her onto his bed with a small nudge, he followed her down onto the quilted cotton bedcover, his body lightly pinning hers beneath his, his hands gently framing her face. The sun had moved across the sky, the lengthening shadows of late afternoon casting the room in a soft golden glow. Daisy lay against the white coverlet, her dark hair spread in silky disarray, the enchantment she was feeling evident in her large eyes, her soft mouth delicious with temptation. Her golden skin was so silken and fine he thought of sentimentally romantic phrases like "smooth as monumental alabaster, beauty unadorned" and the warmth of her body beneath his was lushly hot like the evening air at the Pyramids. Another seriously romantic analogy, he thought with mild amazement—he was treading on unfamiliar ground. Uncomfortable with the feeling, he bent to kiss her because he knew the sensations of physical lust so much better.
His mouth touching hers was all the dreams young girls dream, possessive and gently demanding, moving across the softness of her lips with enough pressure so she felt an answering heat spread like molten gold deep inside her. Daisy kissed him back like a young girl might, offering everything to him, reaching up and clinging to him, wanting him never to leave her. But she wasn't a young girl, and he was the least available man in the world, so in the next pulsebeat she consciously pushed aside the adolescent dream, opened her eyes, took in the diaphanous golden light suffusing the small white room, took in the beauty of the man she held in her arms and said, like an adult would, her lips brushing his, her breath warm against his mouth, "I think I'll keep you for a day or so."
His smile was easy, his answer so smoothly compatible she was unable to decide if he was only scrupulously polite or equally moved. "My thought exactly," he said very low so as not to disturb the magic in the room. "You'll have to let cook know what you want for supper."
"I didn't necessarily mean it literally," she explained, her words more a feeling of content. "Don't you have plans?"
"None more interesting than spending a day or so in bed with you."
"Now that I've finally inveigled my way into your bed." Her emphasis on the last word implied her knowledge of the accomplishment.
"Yes," he said, "now that you have…" He replied more softly than he intended, more slowly, as though perhaps he was unconsciously aware of the prophecy in those simple words.
They made love in the sanctified bed and he thought afterward that the altar of his isolation couldn't have been violated with more perfect pleasure. Daisy reminded him of laughter and youth and the refreshing candor of feelings he'd forgotten existed.
Much later when she fell asleep in his arms, exhausted by her singular foray into a world of sensation she'd never experi-enced, he lay awake. Etienne's days and nights were often physically demanding; he was immune to Daisy's type of exhaustion. But he was pleasantly content—more—filled with a rare and satisfying serenity. As though there were no need to fill his social schedule to allay the boredom, as though it didn't matter if he'd summarily canceled two days of commitments without concern, as though he didn't have an obligation to attend the King's pre-birthday celebration tonight. The one set aside for family alone.
When his manservant came up later, knocked lightly and opened the door to see what Etienne wished for dinner and stood stock-still in the threshold, his gaze on the lady in bed, the Duc motioned him away. He'd have to speak to François and Cook when Daisy woke. Since he'd never had a woman at Colsec, he didn't want her embarrassed by their obvious stares or goggling inspection. Unlike Parisian servants, who wouldn't turn a hair in a similar situation, those with country mores were slightly less blind.
When Daisy woke, he offered her facilities for washing, put several of his robes out for her choice and convenience and went downstairs to inform François and Cook he had a guest for the night. He also politely warned them the lady was special, she was to be treated with extreme courtesy (both of which the servants had already concluded the previous hour below-stairs in the kitchen), and left after arranging a menu he thought might appeal to Daisy.
Dinner was the stuff dreams were made of—like the Queen playing milkmaid. The small cottage dining room was candle-lit, the servants unobtrusive, Cook had outdone herself for Mademoiselle, pleased their employer had company and wasn't his usual brooding self. Both servants peeked through the door occasionally and smiled at each other. The lord and his lady, dressed only in their robes, were obviously in love; they were holding hands across the small table, smiling and laughing. He would feed her and then she him. And then they'd kiss and smile again.
The Duc and Daisy fell asleep in each other's arms and when th
ey woke to the freshness of morning, Etienne showed her the pleasure of swimming in the river. Diving off the balcony railing first, he cut the water in a clean smooth entry, surfacing some distance away, smiling, motioning her in. She hesitated only a moment before following him into the green-blue water, her own slicing dive the product of a childhood spent camped near the Yellowstone and mountain lakes. They swam and splashed and kissed, frolicking like youngsters let out of school. Then much later, breathless and light-hearted from their waterplay, they made love on the soft green riverbank beneath the lacy canopy of weeping willows.
He was beyond contentment now and disturbed. Infatuated and obsessed as well. He couldn't get enough of her.
Daisy was telling herself it was obvious why women adored him. He was incomparable.
When the time came to leave, too soon—as though happiness conspired to speed the hands on the clock, Daisy found her clothes all washed and pressed, neatly hung in the wardrobe beside Etienne's collection of country clothes. They dressed—she in her flowered frock that would forever remind him of these passion-filled hours and he in a sand-colored linen suit she wondered if his wife had selected. A new silence lay between them as they saw to their toilettes, although they both contributed as politeness required to a desultory conversation. Their ride back to Paris was even more silent, both absorbed in their thoughts, both aware they were reentering the former routine of their lives.
The Duc didn't leave the carriage at Adelaide's. He only said, "Thank you," in a hushed low voice and kissed Daisy briefly on the mouth.
With good fortune Adelaide was still out for the afternoon and Daisy could enter her suite without explanation other than the note she'd sent yesterday saying she was staying with friends on the river. She intended pleading a headache for dinner, knowing she'd be unable to join Adelaide's guests that evening. She felt beyond banal conversation; she felt melancholy, and dizzy with wanting something completely out of reach.
The Duc found a note from his wife when he arrived home. She wished to talk to him immediately. He sighed, ran his hands through his hair and stood absolutely still for a moment, holding his head. Then he rang for a servant to have his wife informed he would be available in the library in ten minutes.
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