Clara licked her dry lips. “It always helps to know the truth.” But her heart was hammering in her chest.
He did not answer but wrenched on the silk tie at his throat as though it was choking him. His expression was closed and tense. Branson flung himself down and laid flat on his back as before but he was not a figure of repose. Frustration clamped his jaw and his stiff fingers plucked at the barley stubble.
“People claim they want the truth,” he said in a low voice, choked with torment. “They rarely do. They want what they want to hear. They don’t know they are asking for a lie, but it comes down to the same thing.”
Clara held her shorn hair off her face. The air was cold and fresh though the sun beat down upon them. They were staring at the sky like little children playing a game. But this was not a game. Perhaps she already knew the truth but could not face it. Perhaps she only wanted him to trust her enough to tell her the whole story and then she would let him be.
The dull sensations of Gateshead were wearing off. Clara lay down on the cloak beside him, brought to life by his presence, and with life came terrible hope.
“I do not want the lie, Branson,” she said with quiet meaning. “I want to know what is haunting you. No more deception. I want to know you as you really are.”
“Then know this about me. I was going to leave you at Gateshead, but not for the reasons you think. I cannot have you near me. The only lie I have ever told you is that I don’t care about you.” He turned his face to Clara’s. “I care for you very much.”
Her breath caught. “And I you,” she managed to reply.
Branson pushed up on his elbow and he bent over her. “But you cannot return with me to Windemere Hall. I cannot marry you and I cannot live with you as we have done.”
“Is it Grace?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. Her mouth was dry. “She is in your heart and I cannot dislodge her.”
“She is ... not in my heart. She was for a time but that time is long past.” He touched her lips with the tip of his finger. “My God, but you are beautiful. I want to be with you more than is allowed.”
Clara’s heart lodged in her throat. “Allowed by whom?”
Silence ticked between them. Somehow, she knew. She knew all along but dreaded to hear.
“By Grace. My wife.”
“Your wife is dead,” she said hoarsely, knowing the futility of the protest. “You told me Grace Reilly died at her own hand seven years ago.”
“I told you a lie. Grace Leeds—Grace Reilly is alive. My wife is living at Windemere Hall in an apartment of rooms on the top floor,” he said in a low even voice. “I cannot divorce her. I’ve talked of leaving and she threatens to kill herself if I do. I cannot have women in the house. She flies into a jealous rage.”
“Stop.” Her eyes filled with tears. “Stop it. I do not want to hear any more. You will say anything to be rid of me. I liked you better when you were openly cruel. I cannot bear any more lies—not from you or from my father. I am sick of you both. Your sole interest in me was revenge—well, you have achieved that—I am thoroughly broken. Why are you here?” Clara cried, her voice rising. “You should have left me in Gateshead,” she said with emotion. “There is no life for me in London or anywhere else. Father is ruined and I’m ruined for marriage. It does not matter. I have no wish to marry now.”
Branson clutched her fiercely to his chest. “Do you imagine this is easy for me? It will never be easy for me for as long as I live. You are mad if you think I will be happy apart from you.”
He crushed his lips on hers and kissed her with depth and passion that felt wrenched from his soul. Clara was astonished and overcome with emotion. A groan sounded in the back of his throat and she lifted to him, unconsciously answering his need.
“I’ve wanted your lips on mine for as long as I can remember,” he said.
She tried to push up on her elbows to escape him but Branson held her down, pressing his lips against her neck and throat. His fingers tugged at the hooks on her bodice and he crushed her flesh against the earth. Clara fought her breath, her brain spinning, dizzy and half-unconscious.
“You are trying to beguile me,” she said frantically. “Trying to make me believe you have feelings for me.” It was impossible that Branson could love her and yet she wanted to be convinced that he did. She wanted to surrender to him as she had at Windemere Hall.
“I have beguiled you?” he said with angry disbelief. “It is you who have beguiled me! You told me once that I had made an enemy of you. One over whom I have no weapon. You said I had broken your heart and one day you would break mine. You have, Clara. I cannot defend myself against this feeling and I cannot escape it.”
Her mouth worked to find the words. The sky hung low and dark blue. White clouds scudded on the horizon. The moment between them was fragile like spun glass. What she felt for him and what she read in his eyes would shatter if she named it out loud. The thin wire joining them to one another, the invisible thread that tied his rib to hers would snap if she said what she thought—what she believed. Branson could snap it with his bare hands.
Her courage failed her.
“What am I to you, Branson?”
His liquid blue eyes found hers. “You are the whole of my existence,” he said without apology. “You are my greatest pleasure and my most wretched self.”
The tug of doubt and second-guessing would always be with her until the words were spoken aloud, but he would not say them. She touched his cheek. “It is the same with me. You are my whole being. You are my second self.”
He fell on her, kissing her hard with passion and mingled fury. Branson kissed her like a man in prison, demanding and possessive of something that he knew was doomed to slip away. Her heart broke for him. Clara gripped his face and returned his kiss fiercely. Their tongues met and the shock of their joining drove them wild for more.
Branson tore open his waistcoat and worked the fastenings on her bodice. Their fingers scrabbled over the hooks and eyes, wrenching on buttons and tugging on belts. The work of removing the layers of clothing did not deter Branson from stripping Clara of her plain dress and corset until she was wearing only a chemise and slip. Panting with a desire that would not be denied, Branson hopped to his feet and wrenched off his shirt. He flung it away and stood at a distance from her. His muscled chest gleamed with sweat and sun.
“Wait.” He faced her, shielding his eyes with a raised arm. “Take off your chemise and slip. I want to see you naked.”
Clara’s belly clenched and fluttered. She felt that peculiar throbbing between her thighs that drove her half-wild every since the night Branson took her virginity. She stood up, lifted her chemise off over her head and dropped it to the dark earth. Then she pushed the slip down and stepped out of it. Clara was completely exposed.
The sun was warm but her nipples puckered as Branson gazed at her breasts. She had a mad thought that this was as far as they would go, that Bran would be content to see her in the nude and Clara would be satisfied too. After all, her cousin was a married man. His wife yet lived. She allowed herself to believe they were like children playing house and there was no harm in it.
Branson had a serious look in his blue eyes that were slightly pulled down at the corners. His thick blonde hair was smoothed back off his forehead and his mouth was slightly parted. Clara’s cousin had beautiful full lips that were usually pressed in a critical line when he looked at her. But now, they were soft and vulnerable.
“Are you sure you want this, Clara?”
“I am,” she said shakily.
“Come here, then.”
Clara’s heart pounded in her throat as she came closer to him. He took her hand and drew her down to the cloak. She could not meet his eye until he reached over and stroked her face.
“You are so beautiful, cousin.”
Her teeth started chattering, though the sun was blazing hot. “I am scared to death. This is worse than the first time. Isn’t that strange? Just—oh—talk to m
e because I think I am going to die!”
His hand dropped to her breast and he cupped it in his palm. “You are not going to die.”
Clara closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun as he fondled her. Branson’s breathing was tight and hollow as a drum from seeing her in the broad daylight. He took his time feeling her up, dragging his hands from the base of her throat to her knees and then back again.
His cousin’s tits were the size of melons and capped by pale pink nipples that budded under his palm. She sighed and flinched when he rolled those delicate buds between his fingers. His hands were rough from riding without gloves and other pursuits not belonging to a gentleman.
Her legs twitched and Branson slid his hand between her silky thighs—God, her skin was soft! He stroked her up, up to her soft wet womanly core. Clara mewled and stretched her arms over her head. Her legs relaxed open.
“Do you think I’m evil for desiring sex with my married cousin?” she asked.
“If you are, then I am as well. I have fantasized about fucking you since we were betrothed.”
“You never said.”She blushed hotly with his use of the profanity. “You were always cold to me. I thought you didn’t like me.”
“I liked you too much for our own good.”
“Oh, Bran, make love to me! I want you to.”
Branson was half out of his mind with lust. Leaning on one elbow, he bent over her naked body. His cousin was young and vulnerable; he was taking advantage of her predicament and her feelings for him, but he had no conscience when it came to Clara. He wanted to be inside her, to claim her and ride her hard. Lovemaking would punish them both.
He pushed away from her long enough to tug his breeches off and free his cock that was thick and ready to impale her.
At last they were both naked, smooth perfect flesh meeting its mate in the other. Branson covered his cousin’s body with awed kisses. He felt charged and alive again now that she was back with him.
He touched her, mapping her breasts and belly, hips and thighs in his mind, imprinting her on his soul. Clara moaned in response and they were one. One soul coming together as he moved between her legs and her hips widened and lifted, welcoming his penetration.
Branson fingered his cousin, stroking the bud between her legs and palming the springy mat of hair that drove him wild. “Oh sweet hell, I want to taste you.”
Clara moaned and thrashed, chafing her pelvis against his broad hand.
“I cannot bear it, Branson. You must stop. We have to stop! Is it supposed to feel—to feel—like this?”
He flicked her satiny, pink clitoris with his thumb until it was engorged, slick with fluid and ready to burst. She was like a ripe, sweet, juicy peach.
“What does it feel like, Clara? Tell me.”
Damn, he was hard! Barely breathing, trying to control his arousal.
“It feels like ... like I am going to die if you keep touching me that way, and I am going to die if you stop. I want ... I want....”
With a roar, Branson gripped Clara’s small buttocks and lifted her cherry red slit to his mouth. Being orally pleasured by her cousin in the middle of a field in broad daylight was bold and dirty; not an experience Clara was likely to forget. He was an animal, suckling and plundering her womanhood with his lips and tongue, his head bobbing between her thighs as he lapped at her clitoris like a dog in heat.
Clara’s body stiffened and arched and she gave out a sound that was both a cry and a bellow—the sound of a woman climaxing. Fluid poured out of her pussy and Branson knew she was ready to be penetrated. He positioned himself between her legs and pressed the knob of his cock at the entrance to her vagina.
He pushed. She was tight. So tight. And hot and wet. He pushed harder, unable to hold back the tide of carnal lust. He wanted her so terribly, it was inhumane. Clara tried to squirm away at the last instant. He gripped her buttocks tighter and thrust with all his force into her vagina.
Chapter Seven
CLARA CRIED out. Tears stood in her eyes. He bent over her, his cock thick and hard inside her quivering, wet sex.
“There is no going back for us now,” he groaned. “I want you to know me just once as your husband. No one else’s. Just yours, Clara.”
Branson smoothed her hair out of her eyes, kissed her face and then her mouth. He parted her lips with his tongue and burrowed inside. His weight pinned her down but she fought his lovemaking until she began to feel aroused again.
And then Clara was transformed, seemingly amazed at what he was doing inside her. Her eyes fluttered open and they met Branson’s, bewildered and curious at first, and then they darkened with arousal. She was so innocent, he thought. His cousin did not even know she was aroused or how desirable she was.
He controlled his lust, waiting until her hips moved under his, responding to his thrusts, following a secret river to climax. Her firm breasts were squashed against his chest.
“I am yours now, cousin,” she breathed and dug her nails into his back.
He drove his cock deeper inside her, pumping her young womanhood as slowly as he could bear. “Damn you, Clara. You make me forget everything I’ve ever wanted,” Branson whispered in his cousin’s ear. “How am I ever going to let you go?”
He slipped his hand between their writhing bodies to finger her and she whimpered and thrust harder and faster. The orgasm built and tightened in his testicles.
“Clara—oh God—Clara.”
Branson ground his teeth against the climax. He had wanted to take his time fucking her; he wanted this hour in the field to last until eternity. A day when the air was clean, the birds sang and the sun shone on them both. The earth smelled of cut hay and dew.
“Love me, love me,” she cried. “I love you, Branson. I love you.”
Her words were like rain on his parched being, so long alone and empty. His manhood was full of sperm and near to splitting open. He roared like an animal off his leash and pounded Clara’s vagina; a wild man with his mate—unbound, unstoppable.
Clara made a high keening sound as she reached orgasm. That he could bring her such pleasure filled him with pride and possession. She was his and she always would be. The truth of their union was that she was his woman, his other self, created for him.
As he was created for her.
Branson’s body jerked spasmodically with the sweet torture of climax as her pussy tightened around his cock, joining him in ecstasy. He shouted at the crest, startling the birds in the trees. He plummeted into a pleasure that took him out of himself, howling a long haunting cry of release.
The climax shattered his consciousness—he had never experienced that before—he didn’t know it was possible for a mortal man to know such pleasure on earth.
Branson ejaculated inside her, pulling out a hair too late for safety. A stream of semen landed on her breasts and belly and streaked down her leg. His seed was mingled with her juices and he was furious with his lack of self-control. She was only nineteen—he might’ve got her pregnant and what future would she have then? Hired rooms and a monthly allowance such as Strachan would have offered? Clara would never ransom her life to such terms. With Edgar’s help, she would cope on her own.
Branson flung himself to the grass, panting and dripping sweat, reeling from the intensity of their mutual climax. He could not do anything—not even think—for a moment but lay there and try to recover. Clara was quiet beside him.
“We must go,” he said. But he could not find the will to move.
“There must be a way for us to be together,” she said piteously and drew under his arm.
“I have a wife. You know there is not.”
“And I had a father and a home and my reputation, yet here I am with you. I have lost everything for your sake.” She bit back tears of frustration and heartache. Clara knew she was being unreasonable but could not stop herself from trying to hurt him. “If you have nothing more to say to me then leave me here. I shall manage to get along without you.”
Clara broke free of his hold. “Is it my gratitude you want? You have it. I am grateful.”
“It is not your thanks I seek.”
“What then?” she demanded, sitting up and looking at him. “Why did you rescue me?”
“Your brother asked for my help. I’ve told you.”
“No, I don’t believe that is the reason. Seeing me incarcerated in an insane asylum is the revenge you desired from the beginning. It would have thrilled you to hear of my disgrace. I don’t understand you, Branson. You had every reason to tell my brother to go to hell.”
He shrugged and closed his eyes. “What your father did was not fair and I am a fair man. There is no glory in besting a mad woman. If you really were mad, I would have left you there. You are as sane as I am.”
“That remains to be seen. Much depends on what happens now. You and Edgar did not think this rescue through. I can’t go home to my father.”
Branson opened his eyes and fixed them on her face. “You cannot return to Windemere Hall. It is not safe.”
Clara seized on this. “In what way is it not safe? Come now, no more secrets! There is nothing left to destroy between us. When I was with Grace in the chapel, she said something that puzzled me. She told me she hurts you. What did she mean by that?”
“I will not discuss my wife with you,” he said coldly.
“If you are hoping to put me off with your usual incivility, Branson, it won’t work. I am too familiar your bad nature.” Clara wrapped herself in his frock coat as she had done the first night they spent together and crouched beside him. “To protect your secret you allowed me to believe I was going mad. It was Grace in the chapel choking the life out of me—not an apparition—not a hallucination. Your wife was alive yet you allowed me to believe I was going insane.”
“You asked for the truth,” he said tightly. “This is the man I am. It is too late for me to change, Clara. I’m not a man given to forgiveness or trust.”
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