Now, she slowly raised her arms so Miles could divest her of the nightdress, which he did with a minimum of ceremony. It was going well enough until it snagged on her chin, necessitating a grunt and a decisive tug from him.
So this wasn’t to be a flawless seduction.
He folded the nightdress neatly in his hands and placed it aside on the bed as carefully as if it were a living thing.
She was suddenly profoundly aware that she was entirely nude; the air of the room chilled her skin. She fought the urge to cross her arms over her breasts.
But there was no need; his arms were already wrapping her bare back gently, his warm hands sliding firmly along either side of her spine, just as her hands went around his neck. She knew she would forever remember the moment they were finally folded tightly together, skin against skin.
Cradled in his arms, he tipped her back against the bed; her head seemed to sink for slow miles into the feathers of his pillow.
And there were his eyes above her, burning, his beautiful mouth a solemn line.
She was afraid, and a little frantic, and shivering with desire. Frantic because she wanted to touch him everywhere, to know and memorize every inch of him, to become him, and this seemed impossible in the time they had, because every inch of his skin seemed precious, desirable, interesting, a universe. A lifetime would be required. Her hands unlocked from their grip around his neck, slid urgently down to smooth over the hard ridge of his collarbone, the taut swell of his chest, to discover again the texture of his flat nipples.
He allowed her to explore. But she felt the impatience in him. “God help me and forgive me, Cynthia, I don’t think I can be slow.” He said it ruefully; a slight smile came with the words, but his eyes contained a warning.
She’d thought herself unable to speak. But when she opened her mouth, out the words haltingly came, like something imprisoned too long, unsure of its welcome: “I want you now.”
Well, she might as well have handed him her raw and beating heart along with a knife with which to carve off a piece.
But Miles closed his eyes, as if to protect her from the searing emotion flaring in his. He gave a short laugh, and then his lips moved in a silent hosanna.
Ah, but she’d seen his eyes before he closed them: white hot joy. And it was as though the sun lived in her chest, rose and set there.
His hands pulled her hard against him now, and rearing against the soft place between her legs was the enormous, meaningful swell of his cock. The pleasure nearly blackened her vision. Her entire body instinctively opened toward him: her arms pulled him closer; her legs wrapped his thighs, found them warm and thick and hairy; her mouth took his tongue when he bent his head for a kiss.
His hands were swift as he smoothed over the nip of her waist, the rise of her hip, to the round white swell of her arse, setting her nerve endings aflame, until she was arching and rippling for his touch. It was difficult to distinguish where his body ended and hers began; it didn’t matter, as his pleasure was hers.
And the motion seemed natural and inevitable when he pressed her flat, raising her arms above her head, and covered her body with the heavy hot length of his. She pulled her knees higher to cradle his groin with hers; he raised himself on trembling arms to fit himself to her. His desire quivered in the muscles of his body; his sweat slicked over her body.
Her thighs gripped his waist, and he dipped and dragged, just once, his cock against where she was wet and aching for him. Her body leaped up eagerly; she moaned softly.
Miles didn’t ask, Are you certain? He knew there would be no niceties, only this joining. It might very well be the first and last time he used his body for its truest purpose. For why else had the species been given this capacity to give and take pleasure unless to express the vastness of what he felt?
Her breath was hot and quick against his throat, her eyes hazy with want, with trepidation.
“Hold on to me, Cynthia,” he told her softly. Thrilled, afraid, she obeyed: her fingers gripped his shoulders. And he thrust into her hard.
She gasped, her chin tipped back, her teeth in her lips; her belly leaped up. Of a certain he’d hurt her a little.
He comforted himself that her pain would ease. And he would make certain her pleasure was incendiary.
He sank slowly, deeply into her. Withdrew and thrust again slowly. Christ. The pleasure…so sweet…it all but blinded him. It rushed over his skin with a breath robbing white heat.
“Cynthia…I don’t know if I…I can’t wait…”
He wanted to drive himself into her until the two of them were senseless, to indulge an animal need. And then again, he wanted it to last forever, to be forever. He opened his eyes to find her gazing up at him through heavy lids. Her chest rose and fell hard in tandem with his. Together they had created a storm of breathing.
She pulled him closer with her thighs, locked her legs around his taut buttocks. She drew her fingertips down his shoulders, tracing the muscle there. “Please,” she whispered. “Take me now.”
He didn’t need to be asked twice, yet at first he attempted finesse. Attempted to angle his thrusts to give pleasure to her, and when she hissed in a breath and released it as a moan, he knew he’d succeeded. Her head thrashed back; her body arced to meet his.
The rhythm of their joining remained nearly languid for a brief time, their hot skin meeting as he sank himself into her; but a wild building bliss urged him on, faster, harder. It cost him everything he had not to obey it: sweat beaded, gathered, on his chest. Cynthia’s skin was sheened in the firelight.
He would die, die, if he couldn’t just drive himself home.
“Miles…” She writhed upward, taking him more deeply still, as he drove into her yet again.
He knew triumph. But he wanted her bucking with pleasure beneath him when her release came. He dipped to take her nipple in his mouth, he bit lightly; she gasped an oath of pleasure so raw he smiled. And he sank into her clinging heat again.
Her nails dragged his skin. Delicious pain. And the pleasure mauled him.
He sank into her again and again, and she shifted her body to take him deeper still, rose up hard to meet him, arms and legs clinging to him, murmuring urging things in his ear, words he hadn’t the faintest idea she knew, spurring him on. He was dimly aware of the sounds of their bodies meeting hard, of the slide of sweat between them, their hands slipping from each other, clinging, nails dragging.
And then he was at the mercy of the drum of his own hips and the ecstasy driving him. And then Cynthia bowed hard upward, whipsawed by her own release. Her cries rang in his ear, and she pulsed around his cock as he drove mercilessly home toward a completion he’d needed since he laid eyes on this woman.
He heard his own voice, a raw scraped sound forming her name, echoing in the dark of the room, as a violent pleasure tore him out of his body, wracked him like no fever ever could. He surrendered to it. Eased himself down over her on shaking arms. Tucked his face in the crook of her throat, where her soft dark hair cradled his cheek.
He floated on peace.
Cynthia couldn’t yet open her eyes; her lids were far, far too exhausted. Every bit of her body seemed to have participated in and thoroughly enjoyed this bout of lovemaking with Miles Redmond, and she needed to marshal all of her resources to lift her eyelids. Not yet, not just yet.
She felt him gently withdraw from her body and lower himself next to her; he pulled her into his arms, and she went with a contented sigh, as though she had no muscles or bones. Warm again. His body was home. She listened to his breathing and smiled. He sounded as though he was recovering from running a mile or two. It soothed her, the life gusting through him rhythmically.
She finally got her eyes open, curious to see what Miles Redmond looked like in the aftermath of ferocious coupling.
He lifted his head to look at her. He was smiling. He looked amused at her languor and—
“Smug,” she murmured. “You look smug.”
He seeme
d to think about this. “That’s one of the things I feel,” he concurred, his murmur as languid as hers. He continued to smile.
She raised a hand and pushed his sweat-dampened hair back so she could see his eyes and those straight dark brows and his eyelashes and nostrils and…Every bit of him, every hair and scar, seemed important. Every bit of him comprised the topography of her heart.
She traced that smile with her finger, slowly. Beautiful, gifted mouth. It seemed permanent, his smile. He kissed her finger. She rested it on his sandpapery chin.
“Wonderful,” she murmured, almost to herself. She didn’t know why she’d said it, but it rather summarized everything.
And for a moment he seemed mesmerized. Gazing down at her, not blinking at all, as his smile slowly faded. “Yes,” he said. The word was faintly surprised and soft as cobwebs. And full of his heart.
She turned her head and slowly bit his shoulder shoulder, savored the salty, musky taste of him.
He laughed. “Savage.”
“I learned it from Spider.”
She turned to laugh up at him but he surprised her with a kiss. He’d meant it to be tender and brief, she knew. But once his lips pressed hers, they lingered, as though he couldn’t bring himself to leave her unless he’d thoroughly tasted her. And minx that she was, she parted her lips, inviting him in, touched her tongue to his. He sighed deeply and happily against her mouth and surrendered.
And thus their mouths began again to blend, to tease, and of course to arouse. The kiss became purposeful, hungry and deep and greedy, and soon their hands were roaming each other in feverish objective, limbs tangling to pull each other closer and closer still, a vain attempt to all but fuse. Cynthia loved and was a little afraid of the sheer size and hard strength of him; there was great relief in surrender, great safety in those strong arms and great hard hairy thighs, and a dizzy sense of falling, pleasure and terror in allowing him to do what he would with her.
He drew her upward to her knees before him, her shoulder blades against his chest, his arms wrapping her waist. He ducked his head, whiskers chafing her chin.
“Look,” he whispered directly into her ear. “Look in the mirror.”
In the oval cheval glass across the room she could see two shadowy people, pale and clinging and abandoned. She watched in the mirror as Miles’s pale, shadowed hands traveled her moonbeam white belly, saw the flat of his hand slide over the furred triangle between his legs, saw his fingers disappearing into that shadowy valley. She saw her head loll back against his shoulder as his fingers moved over her, slipped easily inside her, sent bolts of nearly intolerable pleasure through her that made her groan and move with him. Saw herself arcing back against him, moving her body against his hand, abetting him, telling him precisely how to touch her. And watching this was incomparable; it was almost as though two men were making love to her. Her every sense now engaged, every sensation doubled.
She watched Miles’s dark head duck to gently nip the place where her neck and shoulders joined, then his mouth traveling upward again to whisper in her ear.
“God, how I want you.”
He sat back against the headboard and pulled her slowly, slowly, backward until she was in his lap, her legs nearly straddling his, and like this he eased his cock into her again.
He took in a breath, a sharp hiss of pleasure.
The surprise and pleasure at being filled by him again was extraordinary; she leaned back against him.
And for a moment they were still together, savoring the wonder of being joined, the sway of each other’s breathing. And then, mesmerized, Cynthia watched the shadowy Miles in the mirror fill his hands with her breasts, and his fingers explored them until her ribs leaped and fell with tattered breaths. His hand slid down to stroke between her legs, where he joined her.
“Oh God…”
In her own ears, her wondering moan sounded like a plea for mercy, but it was in truth a plea for more. More. The kinds of pleasure that could be had from him seemed endless. She raised her arms, latched her hands behind his head, pressed back against him, and lost herself in the play of his fingers over her.
“Like this, Cynthia,” he demanded on a whisper. He braced his hands on her hips and urged her up and then down over his cock.
She learned: she slid languidly along him at first, purposely teasing, loving her control. And then she all but unconsciously took her cues from him: from the heat of his body, the slick sweat and damp curls of his chest hair chafing her back, the tempo of his breathing, from muttered oaths and soft groans of disbelieving bliss.
And as she teased his desire into a conflagration, he did the same to her own, and they played each other as intuitively as two musicians in an orchestra, moving together.
She saw two abandoned people in the mirror out of the corner of her eye, and in the haze of her lust she thought, it looks like love and it looks like violence. It looked like a capture and surrender and bliss and torture. It was all of those things, and it was beautiful, beautiful.
And then Miles was begging her with her name, the syllables of it a ragged gasp against the crook of her neck. “Cynthia…faster…Oh, God…please.”
His body tensed, and even as he cried out his release with hers and she felt it inside her, her own came from everywhere and nowhere, white heat roaring along her skin, incinerating her with astounding bliss. Shaking her violently. His arms wrapped her tightly, and she surrendered to it, until she was limp in those arms.
They lolled for a time without speaking, enclosed in a peace in which they were alone with their thoughts. Until Miles brushed a finger against her arm and found it pricking up in gooseflesh, which was how they became aware of how long they’d been still, simply being together. The fire had officially ceased throwing off heat.
He reached for the blankets, slid down with her in his arms and cocooned the two of them in blankets. They burrowed into the pillow, and soon Cynthia was warm and drowsy, and growing drowsier, lulled by his soft snoring.
For he was asleep almost instantly, and in this he mimicked the proverbial log: he moved not at all, nor did she think she could budge him.
She experimented by moving just a little out of his grasp; his arms were slack, and they released her easily.
She smiled. They’d worn each other out.
She liked excitement—well, she liked it rather less now than she had a few years ago, but nevertheless—she deplored melodrama. And she feared what she was about to do would be interpreted as such. But it was nearly dawn, and she intended to leave before it was officially daylight to avoid explanations and uproar and hurt feelings and confusion. There was no telling whom she might encounter in the house in the early morning hours, and she was certain she could persuade one of the stable boys to drive her to the coaching inn, where she could pay for a stagecoach to Northumberland.
She saw no other choice. She’d known as much from the moment she made her decision to come to him tonight. Her sense of honor, such as it was, meant she couldn’t marry Argosy, both for Argosy’s sake and because she’d made the choice to give herself to Miles.
Perhaps one day she’d see this moment as a sacrifice, she thought, with all the martyred drama the word implied. But now, instead, she felt…rather pleased with herself.
It was not quite the happy ending she’d envisioned. But it was one, nevertheless. Both happy, and an ending.
She inched her way out of his arms, and felt a peace and happiness and a lightness she hadn’t known was possible. It was the peace of having done the right thing, the truest thing she’d ever done. She knew what it was like to love; he’d shown her. And she also knew love simply demanded to be given away. She’d given him all that she could of herself. But it didn’t strike her as sacrificial; it was something she’d done as much for herself as for Miles.
She knew with a bone deep certainty that she would never regret it, no matter how long those days with the woman in the bath chair should prove to be. For she’d been offered employme
nt.
He’d broken her heart open like an egg, but inside was…the whole world. And as she looked back at him, she felt the serrated edges of her heart in her chest. But also a sort of dizzying vastness: she could face anything now. Loving and being loved had given her that kind of strength, and a sort of permanent safety she could carry with her forever.
So she would not be spending her life with him. Life was not fair: that’s what made it interesting.
And she had probably been much luckier, in her day, than anyone had a right to expect.
She had three pounds to her name, one of which would pay her way to Mrs. Mundi-Dickson’s home by stagecoach, a small trunk of tired clothes, a tiny cat, and, though he’d never said it, she knew she had Miles Redmond’s love. She was the richest woman in the world.
She slipped the final way out of his arms and placed a light kiss on the hard curve of his biceps.
And after all, she was Cynthia Brightly. She squared her shoulders.
Miles stirred as she slipped out of the room; the sheets sighed. He murmured. But he didn’t wake, and she was glad.
Because despite her own grand inner talk, she didn’t quite trust her own resolve.
Chapter 22
Miles awoke to the sound of a maid building up the fire. He stirred, remembered, shot upright, alarming the maid, who had not expected to find Mr. Redmond half bare in a bed that looked as though the sheets had been frappéd.
He slid a hand over to where Cynthia had slept. The other side of the bed was cold.
So she’d been gone for some time. Sensibly, perhaps, slipped out during the night. He supposed he was relieved.
He couldn’t have said what last night meant for their futures. It occurred to him that he ought to have asked her. He dressed, a peculiar unease making him hurry. He looked in the mirror, saw the beard darkening his jaw, decided to leave it until at least after breakfast, because of his urgency to see her. He looked thoroughly rested. He grinned wickedly at his reflection.
Like No Other Lover Page 30