Hearts Beguiled

by Penelope Williamson

  She realized with a start that the priest was waiting for her to repeat the vows of matrimony. It still wasn't too late.

  And then it was.

  When it came time to anoint the rings, Max surprised Gabrielle by removing a heavy gold signet ring from a chain around his neck. It was a man's ring, but it must have been cut down once, for it fit her finger perfectly.

  Then at last it was over. The priest made the sign of the cross over their heads, blessing them and pronouncing them husband and wife.

  They arose together. She looked at her husband. He seemed so serious and subdued now, almost sad. She wondered if already he was regretting this impossible marriage.

  After what felt like the longest moment in Gabrielle's life, Max bent his head and gave her a controlled but gentle kiss on the mouth. Then he turned to the priest, and his lips danced into his wicked smile. "You have my gratitude, Father. And now can you tell me—where is the nearest empty bed?"

  The two witnesses burst into loud guffaws.

  Father Benoit's jowls turned a vivid purple. "But, but, but," he sputtered around a sneeze, "you need to sign the register. And there are forms to be filled out . . ."

  "My dear Monsieur le Cure`," Max drawled in his haughtiest nobleman's voice, "you see before you a man and woman—a married man and woman—who have been tempted to the limits of their endurance." He scooped a laughing, blushing Gabrielle up into his arms. "Dammit, man, we need abed!"

  "I see," the cure` said. "That is, I don't see, being a priest, of course, but I could see if— Oh, confound it all!" He flapped his arms, and his roars sent the bats flapping in the belfry. "There's a good, clean inn on the road to Paris. Go, go, go! The register can wait."

  Max carried Gabrielle down the aisle and out the church door. He paused at the top of the steps, letting his eyes adjust to the bright sunlight.

  She hugged his neck and planted a hard kiss on his mouth. "Max, you're a terrible man. You positively scandalized that poor priest."

  "I'll be scandalizing the entire village of Chenaie-sur-Seine soon if I don't find a bed." He looked down into her face, and she saw tenderness and desire and, yes, she saw love in his eyes.

  "I want you, Gabrielle, my wife and love of my life. So damned bad I ache and, by God, I'm not waiting another minute to have you."

  "And I want you, my husband."

  Chapter 9

  The door flew open and the innkeeper, who was bent over a cookpot at the fire, looked over his shoulder, his face screwed into a scowl.

  "Here now, there's no need to barge in here like an ass with a bee up her arse!"

  "I want a bed," Max said.

  The innkeeper straightened to peer nearsightedly at a tall man with a battered face who appeared to have a swooning woman in his arms. "Is she dead? Is she contagious? I'll not let no room to a—"

  Gabrielle burst into breathless laughter as Max set her down on her feet. She felt giddy, as if she had been sipping champagne all afternoon. "We've just been married!" she announced.

  The innkeeper bowed, making a leg in the manner of the courtiers of a century ago. "My felicitations, madame . . . monsieur."

  Max pulled his purse out of his waistcoat pocket and pressed a scattering of coins into the innkeeper's hands. "My good man, I want a room. With a bed. Spare no expense."

  The room the innkeeper showed them to was in the back on the ground floor. He flung open the door with another old-fashioned bow. "Monsieur, madame. A room with a bed."

  Gabrielle, standing behind Max's broad back, heard him make a funny sputtering sound. "Praise God," he said weakly. "A bed."

  He stepped through the door, and Gabrielle followed, almost falling over the end of the biggest bed she had ever seen in her life. It had clawed feet the size of an elephant's and was draped with heavy curtains of a royal purple hue. It so filled the tiny room there was barely space to walk around it.

  The innkeeper, pride beaming on his face, bowed a final time and shut the door. Gabrielle, her eyes brimming with repressed laughter, looked at Max.

  "You," she began, and the laughter bubbled out of her. She pointed to the enormous bed. "You've been asking for it!"

  "So I have." His laughter joined with hers in husky counterpoint, dancing around the room.

  Then at once they stopped laughing and looked at each other.

  It was so quiet she could hear the steady thud of a hammer striking iron from the blacksmith's down the road. The sound was almost as loud as the hammering of her heart. A muted gold light filtered through the slats of the jalousie shutters. A warm breeze stirred the air, bringing with it the scent of freshly cut hay. So many times she had dreamed of, imagined, planned for this moment, and now that it was here she was frightened.

  Max moved and her muscles tensed.

  But the step he took was away from her. He paced the room, to the window, the door, back to the window.

  He turned his back to her, stuffed a hand in his pocket, ran his fingers through his hair. "I didn't think it would be such an ordeal to take a wife. All that eternal babbling in Latin. Why couldn't the fat fool have just pronounced us married and been done with it?"

  She looked up, surprised at the hard rush of words. He's nervous, too, she thought, and loved him all the more for it.

  "Damn!" He spun around, took a step toward her, then stood still, his hands hanging loose at his sides, his sooty gray eyes searching her face. Outside the hammering stopped; the breeze died.

  "Max, I love you."

  He swallowed, sighed. "I know," he said. "I know . . . Come here."

  She went.

  His arms encircled her. He rested his cheek against the top of her head, and for a moment they simply held each other.

  "I love you, too," he said at last.

  She drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs. She felt so strange, weightless, as if, without an anchor to hold her, she would float like an aerostat up and out of the room. She reached for the bedpost. The wood was smooth and warm beneath her hand.

  He ran his fingers along the edge of the blond lace that trimmed her sleeve. "Did you buy this dress for me?"

  "I thought of you," she said, her throat so tight the words were but a coarse whisper. His fingers moved beneath the lace, tracing the curve of her elbow. "I imagined you taking it off me ..."

  She turned around so that he could unhook her dress. She did it thoughtlessly, without words, like a woman long married. Yet at the touch of his fingers on her neck, she shuddered and a harsh groan tore from her throat.

  He gathered up her hair and brought it to his mouth in his cupped hands as if dipping into a pool of water for a drink. "Peaches," he said. "I love the smell of your hair. Like warm peaches fresh off the tree."

  She shut her eyes and saw him plucking a peach off a tree, his white teeth biting into the soft flesh, his tongue coming out to lick the sticky juice off his lips.

  He pulled her hair to one side, exposing the bare nape of her neck. He kissed her there. Her eyelids fluttered open, then closed again. She bowed her head, savoring the warm, moist touch of his mouth on her skin.

  He released the hooks that fastened-her dress. He did it slowly with single, expert twists of one finger, stopping after each one to kiss her back as it was bared to him.

  When he started to uncover her corset and chemise, he worked faster, impatient. He pushed the bodice of her dress down around her waist, freeing her arms, then guided the bunched material past her hips. It slid along her legs to land in a puddle at her feet. He stroked his thumb along her shoulder blade, just above her corset, then bent his head to kiss the place where it met her spine.

  "Oh ..." She shivered, wondering how a mouth that looked so hard could kiss so gently.

  "Do you like that?" he whispered, leaving a trail of more teasing kisses across her back.

  He deftly undid the laces to her corset, and it split open to fall forward into her hands. She pulled it over her head and, with a sharp flick of her wrist, sent it sailing across
the room.

  His hands, spread wide, clasped her waist, and he spun her around so fast she almost fell. A bar of shadow fell across the lower half of his face, but his eyes glowed as he looked at her, beckoning her like the lights of a cottage window on a storm-racked night. For interminable silent seconds he stood unmoving, then his hands left her waist. He gripped the sides of her head and covered her mouth with his. She clung to his forearms, answering his kiss, meeting the thrusting invasion of his tongue. Love for him poured through her in a flood, filling her to bursting, and she gasped aloud as if in pain.

  He slanted his mouth back and forth across hers, almost hurtfully, the pressure of his kiss so intense it left her lips feeling bruised. His mouth trailed down, along her jawline. He tangled his hand in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her neck, where he planted quick kisses, flicking her skin with his tongue.

  Running her palms across his back, she pressed her breasts to his chest, irritated suddenly at the barrier of clothing that still remained between them. She wrenched at the buttons on his waistcoat, heard one clatter to the floor.

  He stilled her hands. "Would you rip the clothes right off me, woman?"

  "Yes."

  He shrugged out of the waistcoat, letting it fall to the floor.

  She tugged at the ruffled jabot around his neck until he choked and rolled his eyes piteously, and her laughter, low and soft, filled the room. She pulled his shirttail out of his breeches, but he did the rest, yanking it over his head and flinging it aside.

  She wrapped her arms around his waist, then leaned back to admire his chest. It was just as she imagined it—brown, broad, brawny. She buried her face in it, breathing deeply and stirring the light that of dark, silky hair into tickling her nose.

  "Mmm . . . you smell sweet."

  "Sweet!"

  "Well, tangy sweet. Like lemon sherbet."

  "Good Lord."

  She licked him. "You taste good, too."

  He laughed. "Stop it, you little idiot."

  Then his laughter caught in his throat. His eyes roamed her face, down her neck to her breasts. With the back of two knuckles, he stroked what he could see, the soft swelling above the lacy edge of her chemise. He curled one of the ribbons around his finger.

  She shook her head, covering his hand with her own. "I'll see you naked first, Maximilien de Saint-Just," she teased. And she smiled as she heard his breath catch.

  She looked down. Desire that was hidden in the hammering of her heart, the hot rushing of the blood through her veins, was plainly visible on him—a hard, pulsating bulge that strained against the tight chamois. She outlined the hard ridge with the tips of her fingers, using feathery strokes that made him groan, and she saw the muscles in his stomach tighten as he forced himself to stand still.

  Her strokes grew bolder, faster. Finally he could bear it no longer. He grasped her hand to stop the movement of her fingers, but held her palm hard against him. "Do you want it, Gabrielle?"

  Her hand tightened around him for a moment, then she let him go. "Off" with those breeches," she said huskily.

  His eyes slitted half closed, his lips curled into an insolent smile. His hands rose to his waist. The breeches slid to the floor.

  He took a step back, the better for her to see him. He stood before her proud in his manhood, proud in his need of her. And he let her look her fill.

  In the muted light his eyes glowed silver. A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw, but she wasn't looking at his face. "Do you want it?" he demanded again, his voice rough.

  Her eyelids drifted closed and she swayed slightly, as if she were about to swoon. She swallowed, nodded.

  "Then say it."

  "I . . . want it."

  He lifted her in his arms and,' swinging around, fell with her across the big tester bed.

  They rolled over and over, back and forth across the broad width of it, their mouths locked together in a kiss that reverberated between them like a crack of thunder. He ended up on top, straddling her. He raised his head and looked down on her with eyes hard and hot with a hunger that seared her like a flame. She saw in his face all that he wanted to do to her, all that he would do, and her body began to tremble in an anticipation that was both joyous and fearful.

  "Mine," he said. "You are mine, Gabrielle." And hooking his fingers into the top of her chemise, he ripped it off her.

  Her breasts seemed to rise up to fill his hands. He kneaded them until they felt swollen, engorged. She watched his hands move over them, dark skin against white, roughness against softness. Her breaths were pushing out of her in harsh pants. And she felt his breath, fast and hot, against her neck. He lowered his head and licked the rounded curve of her breast where it rose in a swell beneath her arm. Then his mouth curled around, stroking underneath with his tongue, lips roaming up, climbing the gentle slope to capture the peak with his teeth. He drew the taut nipple into his mouth and a familiar and sweet, exquisite pain shot through her as he suckled and sucked like a babe.

  "Max, oh, Max," she whispered, cradling his dark head as he drew on her nipple, squeezing it between his lips. She felt a love for him so tender, tears filled her eyes.

  He stroked her flank, following the contours of her body. In at her waist, out along the flare of hipbone and thigh. Spreading his fingers wide, he covered her stomach with his hand. He kept it there for a moment, flat against her womb, then slowly inched it lower until she began to quiver in anticipation of the moment when he would first touch her there—that tiny, throbbing knob of desire between her legs.

  Even expecting it, wanting it, craving it, still she shuddered and gasped when at last, at last his fingers touched her. He rubbed and stroked her gently, slipping a finger inside her, then out, in, then out, and she writhed, arching up to press against his hand. There was a yawning emptiness inside of her that cried out for filling.

  The yearning to feel him, to take him inside her, became a physical pain so that she began to whimper, "Please, please, please," and she grasped his hardness with her hands.

  The breath left him in a keening moan. "Oh, dear God, Gabrielle ..."

  He pushed her legs apart roughly with his knees, and she spread them wider still, lifting her hips as he thrust into her. Her back arched rigidly as an explosion of desire tore through her, blotting out the universe, and the breath emptied from her lungs in a guttural cry.

  ❧

  She opened her eyes on his frightened face. "Gabrielle? Christ, did I hurt you?"

  "No, no, no. Love me." She pulled him down against her, pressing on his buttocks to push him even deeper inside of her, relishing the exquisite feel of his thick, hard length filling her. "Love me."

  Sealing her lips with his, he began to move inside her with hard, rhythmic thrusts, and her body joined with his, rising, falling, and rising again, each crest reaching higher and then higher than the last. The big bed began to shake, and the purple curtains quivered as the beat grew in tempo. Her fingers clutched at the velvet counterpane, twisting it into knots; her teeth clenched tightly together and her breath pushed out of her in harsh, rapid moans as she rocked with his driving thrusts. Harder, faster, higher he went, pulling her up after him, and when they reached the highest peak of all, they arrived there together.

  With a muffled groan he fell across her, burying his face in her hair. She turned her head to see his profile. His eyes were still tightly clenched, his mouth partly open as his breath came out in short, harsh pants. Beneath her bare flesh she felt the velvet counterpane, sticky now with her sweat. Her heart raced and her limbs quivered with exhaustion. The weight of him pressing into her breasts made it difficult to breathe. But when he started to withdraw from her, she wrapped her legs around his hips to hold him in.

  "Don't leave me," she said.

  He braced himself up on his elbows to look at her. He lay his palms against her cheeks and kissed her slowly, gently. "I knew," he said, love in his voice, love in his eyes. "I knew it would be like that with you."


  Gabrielle hadn't known it could be like that at all. But she couldn't find the words to tell him so.

  Sighing happily, he rolled onto his back. They lay side by side, legs still entwined, for a long time in a companionable, satisfied silence, drifting in a sated state between sleep and awareness.

  "Gabrielle," he murmured, nothing more. And he took her hand and placed it on his chest.

  His flesh was warm, hard. It rose and fell with his breathing, and his heart beat against her palm. He seemed so strong, so alive, yet she knew how tenuous was anyone's hold on life. Max . . . His name filled her mind. If I lose you, too . . . But the thought was too terrible to finish.

  She rose up to lay on her side facing him, her head braced on her fist. His male member, spent now, lay limp against his thigh. She remembered how he had felt inside her. His length, his thickness, his difference, had surprised her. She wanted to fondle it, to tease it back into hardness again, but shyness stopped her.

  He saw what she was looking at and a smile curved his lips. "So you liked that, did you?"

  She blushed and glanced away. Her hair fell forward and hit the side of his face.

  He cupped her chin, forcing her head around. "Admit it, Gabrielle."

  "I liked it."

  "That's good, ma mie, because you're going to be getting a lot of it from now on."

  Her blush deepened and she couldn't possibly meet his eyes. It seemed scandalous to talk about it so openly. Scandalous and exciting, and she wanted him again. Already.

  "I know you want me, Gabrielle, and it isn't conceit that makes me say it. I want you just as much.'' He curled a hank of her hair around his fist. "I've wanted you like that, ma mie, from the first. I opened my door and there you were. Your hair was on fire and your eyes were snapping in anger-why were you angry?"