Like No Other Lover

by Julie Anne Long

He’d seen her vulnerable and abandoned and utterly at his mercy. He’d begun and ended every moment of their encounters. He’d always been in control.

  She suspected that he was afraid to be vulnerable. He was afraid to relinquish control. And perhaps, in particular, he was afraid to be at her mercy. Because he’d been to some extent at her mercy from the moment they’d met.

  “It’s all right to lose control,” she said softly. “You’re safe with me.”

  His eyes flared hotly in surprise. “Cynthia—”

  She met his eyes. “Stop me.”

  And before he could, she dragged her palm over the hard length of him curving toward his belly. She could feel the smooth round head of his cock even through his trousers; her fingers lingered there.

  His head went back hard; he hissed in a breath. “Sweet holy…”

  He followed these words with a stream of much more shocking, gratifying words.

  She did it again, and he shifted beneath her, his chest. Her deft fingers swiftly opened his trouser buttons.

  “So show me,” she whispered. “How do you want to be touched?”

  “Cynthia,” he whispered hoarsely. “I swear to you, it won’t require much…dear God.”

  His cock leaped free, bare, from his trousers, and her fingers instantly traced the hot length of him. He was enormous and thick; the sensation of him in her palm was powerful and strange and more than dangerous.

  She looked down. It was foreign and frightening, ugly and beautiful, for all of that.

  He swallowed hard. His hands gripped the arms of the chair.

  “How?” she whispered. “Show me.”

  She stroked him again.

  He seized her hand in his and held it fast in his for a moment, his eyes burning into hers, his mouth a taut line. His breath gusted hot against her throat. A bead of perspiration traced his temple, traveled his jaw. The tension in him thrummed through her body, and where moments earlier she had been exhausted, the excitement began to build in her again, in tandem with fear.

  The suppressed force of the man was palpable. She suddenly had no idea of his intentions. And this, too, was part of the excitement.

  Curse her for being a gambler.

  And then he moved. Deliberately, he guided her fingers to wrap around his cock.

  He held her hand there for a moment.

  And then, his warm hand over hers, he dragged it slowly and hard down around the head of it. Then up again. Hard. His eyes never leaving hers.

  He took his hand slowly away.

  “And for the love of God don’t stop,” he growled.

  Cynthia knew triumph, but fear lingered.

  She drew her hand down. Hard. And up again. He struggled for control; his chest rose and fell with swift breaths, his fingers curling whitely into the arms of the chair.

  She stroked again. And again. Feeling the enormous swell of him grow thicker, tauter, in her fist.

  His hands lifted, slowly, to languidly twist, then tangle in her hair. As if he needed her for balance. His head rocked back, the lids of his eyes lowered to slits. The cords of his neck were taut. Watching him struggle to withstand this pleasure was extraordinary; knowing she was the source of it sent a wash of awe through her.

  “Cynthia…” His voice was a choke of near disbelief. “God help me…I want you…”

  Throw you down and plow you, he’d said. In that moment, she wanted nothing more.

  And this would mean the end of everything for her—of all her hopes. Because virtue was one of the very few things she had to offer anyone who married her.

  This, surely, was why he’d warned her. Do you know what you’re asking of me?

  How reckless she’d been to take for granted his control. How foolhardy, how selfish, to impose the need for such control upon him.

  Still, she couldn’t find it in herself to regret it. Not yet. She’d never felt more powerful in her life.

  Miles pressed his back against the chair; his head tipped back; his throat moved in a swallow as she stroked him. His breath came in harsh bursts now between narrowly parted lips; he thrust his hips sharply up into her fist. Faster. She shifted her weight upon his thighs and complied with her fist, and together they found the rhythm he wanted.

  “Cynthia…” Her name was a raw gasp. “…so…good…”

  And moments later his head jerked forward as if he’d been brutally lashed, his body bucking sharply beneath her.

  Peace followed. He eased back against the chair and was still, as though some demon in him had at last been exorcised. He was still, that was, apart from the bellows of his breathing.

  His eyes were closed. His hands loosened, slipped from her.

  Cynthia glanced wonderingly into her palm, warm and damp where he’d spilled into it. Her cheeks burned.

  She watched him struggle to even his breath, head pressed back against that generous chair, perspiration gleaming on his temples. The dark brush of his eyelashes lay still against his skin. His jaw was darkening with the beginnings of the beard he or his valet would scrape off with a razor in the morning. She knew an impulse to brush her hand against his skin, to follow with her finger the uncompromisingly defined lines of his face, as if she could learn why he was put together precisely the way he was. To push that silky dark hair away from his eyes.

  He looked like a boy, free of the weight of his thoughts for the moment, free of the weight of his life, and suddenly he was new. And a stranger.

  She almost wanted to cry like a confused child.

  What were they creating here? It had no beginning or end she could trace; there was no possibility she would be able to make sense of it or control it. It had no part in her life.

  It could not end well.

  It needed to end now.

  These thoughts frightened her in the way this physical intimacy had not. She tensed. Her eyes sought the door: escape. His eyes opened then; he looked into her face. Seemed to drink her in, to sense what she was thinking.

  Then he looked down at her hands. His expression didn’t change. But he shifted in the chair and found in his trouser pocket a handkerchief.

  Wordlessly, gently, he took her hands in his, matter-of-factly rubbed them clean.

  She had no precedent for what to say under these circumstances, and the usual tools at her disposal—charm and beauty, insight and wit—were thoroughly unequal to the occasion, sitting on the lap of a man who had just made her scream silently with untold pleasure.

  And for whom she’d returned the favor.

  She did it almost unconsciously, as though it was a substitute for words: she raised her hand and rested the backs of her fingers to his cheek. She dropped her hand swiftly again along with her gaze, because the enigmatic flare in his eyes unnerved her.

  She slid from his lap, suddenly eager to leave him. And just as reluctant to go.

  She straightened her nightdress; he assembled himself behind her. She heard the rustle of it.

  He turned to her and looked at her for a long time, seemed to consider what to say. When he decided, he looked away to speak.

  “Not again,” he said finally, very softly and firmly. “This can’t happen again.”

  He’d been measuring, weighing, examining those words in the laboratory of his mind before delivering them. She almost smiled; if she had, it would have been a decidedly bittersweet smile.

  Miles Redmond didn’t say things he didn’t mean.

  He turned back to her then. He was asking for her complicity, she thought, for he didn’t trust himself. He was asking her not to test him again.

  She simply nodded.

  She was, in fact, in wholehearted, fervent agreement. Because she had assumed there was nothing she couldn’t understand, and she was afraid now in a way that felt peculiarly like the opposite of fear.

  Her impulse, in fact, was to bolt. And she had never before run from any challenge.

  She didn’t know the protocol for parting in the aftermath of…what they’d just done.
Miles didn’t, either, clearly. He bent toward her awkwardly, then straightened again just as she leaned in. She leaned back again as he leaned in again.

  And thus two people known for their social grace spent a few seconds feinting ridiculously at each other.

  But then Miles took in a breath and stood before her—planted himself before her—in a way that caused Cynthia to go very still. He’d made another decision. He leaned in very slowly, or so it seemed to her—that time grew thick and elastic—and there was first his warm breath, then the fall of a strand of his dark hair, then the graze of his lips against her cheek. And for a moment his cheek rested against hers.

  Her heart kicked once, sharply. She closed her eyes: his skin was still feverishly warm; his whiskers chafed her. She breathed; in came sweat and clean linen, tobacco and soap, the lingering faint musk of his desire. Their desire.

  Slowly, slowly, as one emerges from torpor, he lifted his head; the warmth of his cheek faded from hers. He stepped back. His fingers reached up to the bridge of his nose; his spectacles weren’t there. He dropped his fingers again.

  Later, in her chambers, she couldn’t remember leaving him. She didn’t remember the feel of the cold hall marble against her feet, either; she didn’t notice the candles burnt to nubs in the rows of sconces, or the length of the shadows thrown by moonlight through the long narrow windows. Her senses were given over to reliving the feel of Miles Redmond’s cheek against hers, to the image of him slowly, slowly, stepping back from her, as if it had required every bit of strength he possessed to allow her to go.

  Chapter 18

  Cynthia awoke with a cat on her head, and knew a peculiar bright happiness. It was that moment before memory sifts entirely into place.

  Which is when she remembered that today was an ending and a beginning.

  She plucked her furry, yawning feline hat from her head and kissed it good morning. She slid from the bed. She raised her nightdress to lift it over her head, to bath her face, her torso, from the lavender scented basin water.

  She stopped abruptly, the nightdress half over her head. She could still smell him. His skin, his sweat. On her nightdress. On her own skin. She took great, dizzying breaths of him.

  And then realized it wouldn’t do for the maid to find her with the nightdress half over her head and her sniffing it.

  With a sense of ceremony, she pulled it all the way off over her head, laid it gently aside, as if she were indeed shedding him.

  And with the same sense of ceremony, she washed her face, her skin.

  This can’t happen again, he’d said. No, it most definitely could not. She would ensure that it didn’t. They needed distance from each other, and Cynthia told herself that her instinct for self-preservation would ensure it, and she would be here only one week more.

  Only one more week.

  The backs of her hands iced.

  She opened up the wardrobe and gave her slim purse a shake. In one week this house party would end. She would have three pounds. A trunk full of wilted clothing. One cat.

  And nowhere at all to go.

  She sat down hard on the bed, because suddenly her nightmare of falling and falling was a waking one. She looked in the mirror, and the girl who looked back at her wasn’t someone she wanted to know: who would want to dance with that tense, frightened girl?

  Though she was admittedly still pretty.

  This amused her. She had beauty. She had pride. She was clever. She was resourceful. She was suited for absolutely nothing.

  Apart from what she was doing now.

  This last thought made her laugh at herself, and she kissed her cat again, squared her shoulders and went down to breakfast.

  But today she couldn’t quite bring an appetite with her. Nerves made rather a whirlpool of her stomach.

  Everyone was at the sunny table but Miles, and for this she was grateful. She scooped eggs and kippers she would not be eating onto her plate and amused herself by arranging them in artful heaps, and looked up at Mr. Goodkind.

  She stared at him. Offered a tentative smile. Tried not to picture him in a bonnet, a great satin bow tied beneath his chin.

  Blue would be his color, regardless.

  He smiled. He did have a nice smile, she conceded again. And quite fine eyes, though they looked a trifle bleary this morning. He also had a good deal of forehead, but this was to be expected in a man his age.

  “Miss Brightly,” he said suddenly, “I wonder if you might like to stroll in the garden with me. I could use your unique insight into my work.”

  His voice was a bit cottony. Jonathan and Argosy must have been keeping him up nights.

  Violet, none too subtly, winked. Cynthia gave her a kick in the ankle under the table. Georgina looked encouraging, which made her want to kick Georgina, too, for an entirely different reason.

  Lady Windermere seemed puzzled. She glanced at Argosy.

  Whose fine jaw looked quite set. When would he understand that feigned casualness had its consequences? Cynthia wondered, giving him a conciliatory smile that softened his jaw.

  She had an objective. To the victor goes the spoils, she thought firmly. Rather disliking the word “spoils” at the moment, and wishing she could tell Argosy he had but a week to press his suit, before Cinderella became a char-woman again.

  She didn’t touch her breakfast at all.

  But off she resignedly went for a stroll near the roses with Mr. Goodkind, because they both agreed they enjoyed the roses.

  A gardener had just come out to see to them, and began working up the row, clipping great blown, crisped heads and dropping them into a basket. They heard the snicking of scissors behind them as they strolled. A soothing, summery sound.

  “Well, how goes your work, Mr. Goodkind? Are you finding inspiration in your surroundings?”

  “Oh, Miss Brightly. I must thank you. You have helped to add a new dimension to my work.”

  Upon closer inspection, she saw that his poor hair lay splayed on his scalp, greasy and exhausted. She peered closer still: no, it wasn’t the light filtered through the trees. His skin really did have a bit of a green cast to it.

  He correctly interpreted her peering.

  “Mr. Jonathan Redmond and Lord Argosy persuaded me to billiards last night. I believe I lost a good deal of money and drank a good deal of brandy.”

  “Did you ask the housekeeper for a headache powder, Mr. Goodkind?” she asked solicitously.

  “Oh, no. I think it helps to suffer the consequences of my own forays into wickedness in order to effectively repent, and then write passionately about them.” The look he sent her held something of an innuendo. “You look no worse for wear.”

  It was part compliment, part accusation. He paused at a bench as if to say, Shall we?

  “Ah. Perhaps you are more accustomed to such evenings,” he said after they seated themselves.

  “Perhaps,” she said carefully. He suddenly glanced down at her hands. She wondered if he was admiring her gloves.

  She felt a slight crawling sensation at the back of her neck. He looked so ordinary, really.

  Apart from the green skin, that was.

  “You’ve some familiarity with various varieties of wickedness, Miss Brightly?”

  She gave a start. She wasn’t certain whether he was flirting. It certainly sounded like the beginnings of flirtation. Or perhaps…

  Perhaps he’d begun to gingerly fish about for her degree of tolerance to various kinds of wickedness? Did dressing in women’s clothes count as wickedness for a man like Mr. Goodkind?

  It had never been explicitly addressed in one of the vicar’s sermons, to her recollection.

  Perhaps Mr. Goodkind suffered a good deal over his urges.

  She looked into his pale blue eyes. Would he gravitate to blue? Bonnets with blue linings? Gloves of pale blue kid?

  “I’ve experience with a great variety of…needs and behaviors,” she began carefully.

  “Do you?” His eyes widened. Then he
winced, as the widened eyes allowed in more light than was comfortable. And apparently wincing hurt, too. “Perhaps we should discuss them, Miss Brightly.”

  This sounded like an invitation to engage in innuendo.

  “Well…for example, I’ve come to understand that certain gentlemen have…idiosyncratic needs.”

  Goodkind eyed her with some fascination. “N-needs?”

  He’d relaxed his body somewhat and his knee just shy of touching hers, in that accidental way that was entirely purposeful. She could smell him now over the tired roses: mostly he smelled clean. Shaving soap. With an infinitesimal series of glances, he took in her bosom outlined in white muslin, then her lips. And then his eyes went to her hands, gloved in white. They lingered there. His hand crept closer to hers on the bench.

  Speaking of needs, she suspected she would need to go gingerly here lest she find herself needing to fight off Mr. Goodkind in the garden.

  She reached out and touched a rose nodding over the top of the bench. He followed her hand very closely with his eyes. It is the gloves.

  She turned to him. “But then, don’t we all have particular needs? And should we not be forgiving of differences in others?”

  “Miss Brightly,” he breathed. “You have a truly revolutionary way of thinking.”

  She was encouraged. “And two people with different or unique needs can find a way to live comfortably together.”

  This confused him a little. “I suppose you are correct,” he agreed carefully.

  “For instance…I am quite a fair seamstress. Which means I could discreetly sew a very large garter.” She sent him a sidelong glance. “The kind that might even fit…a masculine thigh.”

  Goodkind froze.

  For a brief moment there was no sound apart from the snick of scissors lopping roses.

  “Are we still discussing…unique needs, Miss Brightly?” He said this gingerly.

  “Oh, yes,” she assured him gently.

  He frowned slightly. Then his mouth opened. He began to point with his finger in what appeared to be the beginnings of a fervent comment. Then he stopped, as frowning seemed to make him feel queasy.

  “And I believe very strongly in sharing,” she added, prompting him.