Like No Other Lover

by Julie Anne Long

  She slipped her hands inside his shirt and pressed them against the sticky heat of his skin, marveling; she found a thudding heartbeat beneath the silky net of hair, beneath that shockingly masculine muscle. The heartbeat proved definitively that Miles was a man beneath his scientist’s clothes.

  And as if to underscore entirely this particular point, he seized her wrist.

  He placed his hand over his cock. And then dragged her hand slowly, roughly down the length of him. “Like this.”

  The coarse demand frightened and thrilled her. She obeyed, just as he’d shown her, and he hissed in a breath that was pure pleasure.

  Good God, but he was astonishingly hard. Wonder and curiosity took over: Cynthia’s hand instinctively sought out the full and alarming contours of him, marveling.

  “Again.” His raw whisper shook with tension. “Again.”

  She did, and he shifted, his thighs falling apart to allow her hand to roam freely.

  “Mother of God.” The words were a groan. His hands slid hard down her back to her buttocks and cupped them to lift her roughly against him, and he was so rigid he hurt her, hurt the soft join of her legs. But she wanted him there, and pressed herself closer to him, and she gasped at an unfamiliar bliss. She suddenly felt the air of the room on her calves as he began to furl her dress up in his fingers. Quickly. Her body was bowstring tense, shaking with a need she didn’t understand, her limbs stiff and awkward with it. She only knew she needed him closer, closer. She widened her legs, pulled him closer.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Please,” she said, her voice shaking.

  She didn’t know why, or what she meant, or what she really wanted. It was the voice of her body, not of her mind.

  His fingers were touching the backs of her calves now, stroking up.

  “Cynthia…” His voice was low and dark. He made her name sound both like a warning and a hosanna. “Cynthia…”

  Her own breath had become a storm in her ears.

  His fingers were now on her thighs, above the tops of her stockings. Slipping beneath them to slide over the cool bare skin of her thighs. Closer, closer, to the source of her need.

  “God,” he groaned. He pulled her more tightly against him. He lifted her thigh to wrap his leg, and he pushed his groin against her.

  “Miles…” Her voice shook. “I…”

  “Christ…” he murmured. He rocked with her, his arms trembling as he propped himself over her, as he pressed against her, and she clung, whimpering. He reached for his trouser buttons, had two of them open. Stopped.

  “Cynthia…you can’t…we can’t…”

  And suddenly with an oath Miles tore himself from her.

  They were so entwined, it felt as though her own limbs were being ripped from her when he abruptly sat up and flattened his hands on his thighs. His broad back imitated bellows.

  He sat for a moment like that. Breathing in and out, raggedly. Then tipped his forehead on his hand. She watched him struggle with himself, struggle to regain sense, as she lay sprawled, bare, disheveled, bereft. She wanted to touch him. She didn’t dare touch him.

  He’d done the very right thing.

  At last he turned toward her. Stiffly; painfully, nearly. Even in the dark she could see that his expression was amazed and tense with a peculiar anger they seemed to inspire in each other.

  “There’s more, Miss Brightly.”

  His words returned sobriety to her as surely as a slap.

  He’d known how desperately she wanted; he’d known what she wanted, even as she wasn’t entirely certain. And he confirmed what she’d suspected.

  And left her wanting more. Wondering about more. When they could never, ever, ever have more from each other.

  And with sobriety came shame.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts, fumbled with awkward hands for the edges of her bodice to tug it up again, as she watched a man apparently do battle with his confusion, and lash out at her because of it.

  And she couldn’t feel as angry as she wanted to. Because she felt his suffering as surely as her own.

  She found his spectacles on the table before the fire. She leaned over, and he was still as she slid them onto his face, a gesture so instinctive, so natural, it surprised both of them.

  He made a short sound. Almost a laugh.

  They sat in silence; together and apart.

  And then suddenly he reached for a cheroot in the humidor, leaned forward and held it coaxingly out to the fire, as if offering a morsel to her kitten. The fire licked it alight.

  He held it out to her. “I thought you might need to relax.”

  She stared at the cheroot dumbly. Then she took it with shaking hands and stared at it as though she’d forgotten the English word for it.

  “And it’s much more relaxing if you actually inhale, Miss Brightly.”

  She whipped her head toward him. The bloody man had known all along.

  He was smiling a little, faintly. Struggling to restore his sanity and hers with lightness.

  But did he know everything? It struck her suddenly as grossly unfair, the advantage he had over her. This perceptive, probing man.

  But then again, she wasn’t the only person at the mercy of whatever it was between them.

  She wanted to drop her head into her hands, too. To surrender to the impulse to be weak for once. But she wouldn’t allow him to see it. Instead her head did the opposite: her chin jerked up. She stared at him.

  And after a moment he stood, swiftly and deftly buttoned his shirt, shoving the miles of it down into his trousers, flattening his palms over his hair, which was in astounding disarray.

  Fine hair, so soft, and too much of it, she thought, watching him. Her thumb and forefinger slid together absently, as though she could feel it between her fingers.

  Miles waited there a moment indecisively. Opened his mouth to say something, shook his head roughly.

  And of all things, bowed.

  And left her.

  Chapter 13

  The next day four of them set out to visit the Gypsies. Goodkind shuddered at the idea of having his fortune read, Lady Windermere and Lady Middlebough had gone to visit a Sussex neighbor, and Lord Milthorpe had gone to see another neighbor about a horse he wished to buy.

  And Miles Redmond and Lady Georgina stayed behind as well.

  Jonathan wagged his eyebrows. “I b’lieve Miles will be leg-shackled ere long.”

  No one took up this comment. Violet gave a little grunt, as last night’s sherry had not been kind to her, and Argosy slid Cynthia a look full of mysterious portent.

  Cynthia was boarded into the carriage in the morning, quiet and desolate and utterly absorbed, and doing her best to disguise it, because Argosy was clearly full of admiration for her and enthusiasm for their escapade.

  Pennyroyal Green in daylight was charming: the pub named for a farm animal and a weed and the little stone church sat across from each other, as though cheerfully resigned to the fact they shared the same customers. Two enormous trees grew closely together at the very center of the village, and off in the distance, up on a hill, a stately building rose: Miss Endicott’s Academy for Young Ladies, not too secretly referred to as the “School for Recalcitrant Girls” by the townspeople. A swath of brilliant, fragile red poppies lead up to it.

  “We should have put Violet there many years ago,” Jonathan told Cynthia.

  “I should have organized a mutiny,” Violet said easily. “It would not have been sensible to put me there.”

  “Doubtless you are right,” Jonathan agreed, yawning. He’d been awake very, very late over billiards with Milthorpe and Argosy, and he’d had rather more to drink than his sister or Cynthia.

  Violet, pale from far too many glasses of sherry during last night’s drinking game, had only cast her accounts once, she’d confided proudly to Cynthia. Cynthia’s head felt a little woolly, but she was quite accustomed to fast living and had been equal to the sherry. She was subdued for an e
ntirely different reason.

  “Well, I’m certain I’ll learn from the Gypsies that I shall take a long ocean journey and meet a tall, dark stranger,” Violet said.

  Jonathan laughed. “I only wish you’d take a long ocean journey.”

  She gave him a little kick.

  “Children,” Cynthia said.

  Still, it fascinated her, and sometimes taunted her to the point of restlessness: this easiness, this playfulness, this taken-for-granted affection and history and money. She wanted it. She wanted it for her children.

  She wanted children. She wanted a family.

  Argosy smiled at her warmly. His thigh was but three inches from hers.

  She saw her own thighs in an entirely different light now, since she’d had them wide open and dangerously wrapped with Miles Redmond’s last night. Her hands curled tightly into her dress to steady herself as the memory washed through her body and made her weak with want.

  “Miles took a long ocean journey. But he returned,” Jonathan said.

  “Miles will always return,” Violet said contentedly. “No matter what he does. He’s quite reliable.”

  Cynthia had left the quite reliable Miles’s arms in a fog of banked desire, said good night to Susan the Spider and Spider the cat, and expected to lie awake in a torment of confusion and desire both banked and thwarted; to doze fitfully, be torn from sleep by her nightmare, and doze off again until the maid arrived to build the fire.

  Instead, oddly, there was something protected now about her room, despite Miles. No: because of Miles. Because he’d given her a small cat, which vibrated, alternately, on her stomach, her knees, and finally—at least when she awoke—on her head.

  She’d slept the night through. Another miracle.

  There’s more, Miss Brightly. Desire at once arrowed through her, and her breathing hitched.

  Argosy smiled secretly, just for her. Why didn’t his very nearness, his fine features, make her weak? Why didn’t she picture melting against his slim body and wrapping her thighs around—

  “The Gypsies are here every year?” Cynthia said instantly, to get the word “Miles” out of the carriage and out of the conversation and out of her thoughts.

  “Oh, yes. Since I can remember,” Jonathan said. “I’ve known the Heron family for years. We were sometimes allowed to see their entertainments as children. And I like them well enough, thieves and rascals though they are. I wouldn’t call them a bad sort. But the fortune telling is pure nonsense.”

  He yawned again.

  Cynthia exchanged an indulgent glance with Argosy: we know better, it said.

  The carriage horses were pulled to a halt at the edge of a meadow that rolled softly, like a blanket carelessly tossed aside on a bed. There was a rise over which they couldn’t see, but intriguing masculine laughter, hoofbeats, and shouted Rom—the Gypsy language—floated from the other side of it.

  In the midst of it they heard the word “Samuel” sharply said. And more laughter.

  A good dozen or so tents were concentrically pitched about a central campfire that had burned low, now half ash, half glow. A cooking pot swung over it; something savory scented the air. A smooth yellow dog sleeping outside the tent lifted his head questioningly and lowered it again, deciding they were nothing to become excited over. Perhaps it had seen the gadji come and go for weeks now, hoping to be told their destinies in their palms.

  Curious about the noise, they turned in a sort of idle, tacit agreement to scale the small rise before entering the camp. They looked down.

  Cynthia froze, breathless.

  A copper-colored horse was stretched out in an easy gallop across the meadow, and this was lovely but hardly shocking. The slim man standing—standing—on the back of it was, however. Like a bird riding a current of air, his arms were outstretched and he tipped them now subtly, now deeply, like wings, in rhythm to the horses’ rippling muscles and easy gait.

  It was as disorienting as if they’d been plunged into a collective dream.

  Then they heard deep laughter, and swiveled their heads, noticing the other man: shorter and broader at the shoulder, holding by the halter a restive brown horse sporting four handsome white stockings. He called something to the balancing man in delighted Rom; they heard him say “Samuel” again. It all sounded like approbation. And that the young man’s name was Samuel.

  Then the broader man swung himself up onto the brown horse and nudged and clucked it into a gallop.

  “They’re horse acrobats,” Jonathan murmured. “They travel the country. They make most of their money at the Cambridge Horse Fair.”

  The man atop the brown horse man levered himself into a standing position, and the two horses, nudged by the feet, the muscles, the Rom commands of the men, carried their cargoes toward each other at a determined canter.

  Violet gripped Cynthia’s arm. “What are they doing? I can’t look!”

  But she was, of course, not only looking, but feasting on the spectacle. Excitement crackled from her. And Jonathan and Argosy, being men—riveted by anything that appeared dangerous or could kill them, or so it seemed to Cynthia—were motionless, too.

  The animals drew abreast, and the men leaped from the horses in unison.

  The quartet gasped, and Violet clutched Cynthia’s arm.

  There was an airborne eternity that in truth lasted only a second as the men sailed past each other. The stocky man landed neatly on the back of Samuel’s mount, strong thighs flexing to a crouch, then pushing upward to stand.

  The slim man crashed into the side of the brown horse, scrabbled futilely for a grip, then slid ignominiously to land in a heap on the ground.

  A burst of laughter escaped Violet before she could clap her hands over her mouth.

  The sleeping yellow dog leaped to life, wagging furiously and dashing to lick the prone Gypsy, as if he’d just been waiting for such an opportunity. Samuel struggled to an upright position as the brown horse trotted nonchalantly off. Riderless. Looking for all the world resigned.

  The Gypsy called Samuel looked up, shading his eyes, and scowled in Violet’s general direction, where the peals of laughter were coming from.

  “I am glad I can amuse you, Gadji.”

  “I am glad, too,” Violet called cheerfully.

  Her brother shot her a warning look—Redmonds did not flirt with Gypsies—which she of course ignored.

  “I could have been hurt.”

  “But you are not,” Violet said pragmatically. “Or not very, anyway. Are you?”

  “No,” he conceded after a moment. He sounded good natured about it.

  Samuel rubbed the yellow dog’s ears and said something to it in Rom that made it wag all the more vigorously. He said something else that was apparently much less polite to his partner, who threw up his hands and responded with a stream of amused-sounding Rom. His partner was laughing at him, too.

  “The first part was very nice,” Violet called, in an attempt to mollify.

  Cynthia gave Violet’s arm a squeeze. She wasn’t certain whether Violet would interpret it as encouragement or warning.

  “Was it, Gadji? Perhaps you’d like to give it a try?” It was elegantly sarcastic.

  “Could I?”

  “Violet,” Jonathan warned again. This time the warning had an edge. “Miles will kill you.”

  Samuel whistled to the wandering horse, which was now docilely nipping at meadow grasses. The horse ambled over, and Samuel reached up for its halter and used it to pull himself to his feet.

  He led his mount over to the group.

  His eyes were remarkable: brilliant, alder-leaf green. An extraordinarily pure color, as though no one in his lineage had ever mated with anyone with eyes of a different color. His nose was narrow with a bit of a hook, and his lips were full, the upper one arching over the bottom to form very nearly the shape of a heart. He’d tucked copper-streaked brown hair behind his ears. His skin was the burnished shade of a copper kettle, a degree lighter than the coat of hi
s horse.

  Handsome devil, in other words. Young, slim, exotic.

  Cynthia immediately understood the appeal of the exotic. And she was not at all immune to handsome devils.

  But he seemed to have eyes only for Violet. Who, to the consternation of her brother, was not at all displeased at being the subject of Gypsy attention and was returning it measure for measure.

  “Your have almost Gypsy eyes, Gadji,” he said to Violet, as though answering a question she had posed. “Nearly as beautiful.”

  Violet’s eyes widened at the boldness. Jonathan and Argosy moved in closer, to sandwich her between them.

  The stocky Gypsy said something to Samuel in Rom. It had the distinctive tone of a warning. Samuel gave a start and seemed to take his first very close look at the men.

  “It is Mr. Jonathan Redmond!” He bowed low to Jonathan. “Forgive me. I didna recognize you. ’Twas yer ’at, ye see. ’id yer face.” He smiled, touched his hand to his forehead, to make it a jest.

  Jonathan relaxed his brotherly protective stance somewhat. “How goes it, Samuel? I have not seen you…”

  “Since two years. I have traveled with my uncle”—he gestured behind him to the stocky man—“to learn the horses.”

  Silence.

  And then all in a rush Jonathan said, “Will you show me how to ride the horses like—”

  “Good God, no, Gadji, I am not mad, and you are not a Gypsy. We do it for money, not for fun,” he said, matter-of-factly. He was amused. “Ye’ll break bones. Yer brother will kill me then.”

  “Gypsies do everything for money,” Argosy said. He was bristling with jealous fascination.

  “Your friend is correct,” Samuel said cheerfully. He turned curiously to Lord Argosy.

  “Anthony Cordell, Lord Argosy.” Jonathan provided the introduction, and Argosy provided the bow, which was a thing of majesty.

  Samuel bowed low, too, though his bow looked theatrical and almost mocking.

  “And this is my sister, Miss Violet Redmond, and our friend, Miss Cynthia Brightly.” Jonathan gave the word “sister” a bit of a warning inflection.

  Samuel the Gypsy’s eyes widened briefly, and he gave a quick nod. “I’ve not yet ’ad the pleasure of meeting yer sister.” His voice had gone formal. “And ’tis a pleasure indeed…Why ’ave you come for a visit, friends? We leave tomorrow.” He gestured at the camp, which still looked intact.