One Forbidden Evening (Zebra Historical Romance)

by Jo Goodman

  ONE FORBIDDEN EVENING

  A chill slipped under her skin and Cybelline shivered.

  “You’re cold?” asked Ferrin. He made to go the fire again, but Cybelline stopped him.

  “No, it’s nothing. The odd shiver. Do not trouble yourself.” In spite of her words, she shivered again.

  This time when Ferrin got to his feet he put himself directly in front of her. Without asking permission to do so, he placed the back of his hand against her forehead, then her cheek. His touch lingered in spite of his intention for it to be otherwise.

  “I told you it is nothing.” Cybelline’s skin tingled under his fingertips. She did not ask him to remove his hand. How was it possible that he could evoke such a response from her? The merest brush with him arrested her heart. She glanced upward and saw the dark centers of his eyes were wider than before. She suspected it was the same for her.

  “You feel it, don’t you, Cybelline?”

  She did not ask him to explain. She simply nodded.

  He took one of her hands in each of his and raised her up. “It is like completing a circuit.”

  “Electricity,” she said softly.

  His mouth was gentle on hers, the tug of his lips infinitely soft. Opposites. Attraction. His words came back to her as he nudged her lips apart. The kiss was long and slow and deep, and when he raised his head she felt herself being pulled toward him…

  Books by Jo Goodman

  The Captain’s Lady

  Crystal Passion

  Seaswept Abandon

  Velvet Night

  Violet Fire

  Scarlet Lies

  Tempting Torment

  Midnight Princess

  Passion’s Sweet Revenge

  Sweet Fire

  Wild Sweet Ecstasy

  Rogue’s Mistress

  Forever in My Heart

  Always in My Dreams

  Only in My Arms

  My Steadfast Heart

  My Reckless Heart

  With All My Heart

  More Than You Know

  More Than You Wished

  Let Me Be the One

  Everything I Ever Wanted

  All I Ever Needed

  Beyond a Wicked Kiss

  A Season to Be Sinful

  One Forbidden Evening

  Published by Zebra Books

  One Forbidden Evening

  JO GOODMAN

  ZEBRA BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  Contents

  One Forbidden Evening

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Prologue

  London, June 1817

  He was coming to bed. At last. She smiled sleepily and raised the quilt and coverlet just enough for him to slide in beside her. Her body conformed to the depression in the mattress, then again as he closed the distance between them. She could feel his warm breath on her face, the nearness of his mouth, a hint of whisky on his tongue as he kissed her.

  “You work too hard,” she whispered. “You have been gone an age.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “Mmm. Yes, you are.”

  Their kiss deepened. She felt him stirring against her, and she rocked her hips forward, cradling him. Her arms lifted, circled his shoulders. When he lifted his head she buried her face in the crook of his neck and breathed deeply. The hem of her nightgown grazed her calves and thighs as he raised it with his fingertips. His touch was light, intimate, and familiar. Her breasts swelled against his chest.

  “I’ve missed you,” she said against his mouth.

  “It is the same for me.”

  Yes, she realized, it was the same for him. Sometimes she doubted it, but not just at this moment, not when his lips moved so sweetly across hers, not when the scent of him enveloped her and the weight of his body secured her.

  “Of course it is the same for me,” he said, just as if he knew there were times when uncertainty plagued her.

  Her fingers mussed the curling ends of hair at his nape. She felt him shiver, and it made her smile. His response was most surely an invitation to do it again, so she did.

  “Ahh.”

  She raised her head. It was too dark to see him clearly. She thought she could make out the fine line of his profile against the pillow, but perhaps it was just that she knew how sharply defined his features were. Of a sudden it seemed important that she see him. She could not explain it, understanding only that the fleeting desire had become need and she should not ignore it. She began to draw back, intending to sit up.

  “No,” he said, catching her by the arms. His thumbs massaged her flesh as his grip tightened a fraction. He pulled her back, his touch insistent but still more gentle than not. “Stay here. Stay…close.”

  Resistance, such as there was, dissolved. She allowed herself to be pulled back into his embrace. It was where she wanted to be, she told herself. Still, she said, “Permit me to light a candle.”

  He chuckled softly. “Do you think I don’t know where to put my hands? That I cannot find my way around your body? I have not been gone so long as that, and my sense of direction has always been good.”

  She sucked in a breath sharply as he palmed her bottom and brought her in full intimate contact with him once again. “Yes,” she said on a thread of sound. “Oh, yes.”

  His mouth was on hers, this time engaging her tongue. She felt a fullness in her breasts, another in her heart. How careful he was with her, even when his own need was great. The kiss took on a languid, leisurely quality, and she was reminded of a kiss shared out of doors when they were but newly married. The manor was some distance behind them, the lake close enough to hear the rhythmic lap of water. On that occasion there had been sunshine and ducks preening on an outcropping of rocks. She could hear the snap of the rug as he laid it down on the uneven tufts of grass. A pleasant aroma rose from the picnic basket: warm bread and cheese and a skin of red wine.

  Perhaps she should have been shocked that he would want her in the full light of the afternoon, but she was not missish or shy and wanted exactly the same thing. She lay on the rug in just the same fashion as she lay on the bed, one arm flung over her head, the other resting on his shoulder. Her gown was bunched around her hips and he was settled between her raised knees. She felt him reach between their bodies and cup her mons. His fingers wandered with purpose.

  She was wet. He teased her with his fingertips, dipping, stroking. Her hips jerked. Her body sought him out. There was no shame in wanting this man…her husband.

  He shifted position, resting his weight on his forearms. His lips nudged hers. The kiss was no longer so sweet or soft. Hunger made it urgent, hard. This was all right as well. He could have bloodied her mouth in service of this kiss and she would have welcomed so much fierceness. He did not always have to be careful with her; she would not break under his touch. It was the lack of it that made her snappish and fragile, separation that made her less resilient. She was a woman with a woman’s needs, and there was no shame in that.

  Her tongue touched the ridge of his teeth. It swept the interior of his mouth. She sipped on
his lower lip, then the upper one. Through it all her eyes stayed open. Had there been candlelight, she thought, she would be darkly reflected in his eyes now, the wide pupils like black mirrors. She would see her own desire and not turn away from it.

  “Shh,” he said. “Shh.”

  At first she did not understand, then she heard her own whimpers. The sound was at the back of her throat, a soft mewling cry of need and satisfaction. She could not help it. Did he think she could? It was not possible to remain so quiet when his mouth was moving across the curve of her neck, then sipping the skin at the base of her throat. She would be marked there. In the morning there would be a purplish stain where his lips had been, proof that he had come to her, proof that he had been in her bed.

  She whimpered again, this time because his mouth was stamping the high curve of her breast. He did not chastise her this time. Instead he made a damp spot in the batiste covering her aureole. He drew the flimsy fabric and the rosy tip of her nipple between his lips. He flicked it with his tongue, rolled it between his teeth.

  Beneath him her body rose in a perfect arch. Even with his weight on her, the small of her back lifted from the bed. Her heels pressed hard into the mattress. She thought the bed shuddered slightly, but perhaps it was only that she did.

  He pressed his entry. The fullness of his erection was so welcome to her that she almost sobbed with relief. Her thighs clutched his hips and in all ways she was open to him. She thrummed with pleasure as he seated himself inside her. His own quiet was unnerving. Did he not feel it, or was it only that he refused to give voice to it?

  She was on the point of asking him what was wrong when she heard his soft groan. It was all right, then. They were all right. Fear of not being able to pleasure him was immediately forgotten.

  “You are my heart.”

  Had she said it aloud or only thought it? Neither, she realized. The words had come from him. So right. So perfect. She had not known how much she needed to hear those words until they were said. How had he known? How did he always know?

  “Please,” she said softly.

  “What is it?”

  But she had no words to explain what she meant, only this one word and the hope that he would understand everything. “Please,” she said again.

  “Just so.” He began to move in her, slowly, with long, sure strokes that she could match with the rise and fall of her hips. “Am I hurting you?”

  She realized that he had wrested a cry from her. “No,” she said quickly. Immediately she knew he was not convinced. His next thrust was not as forceful as his last. “No, truly you are not. It is good. All of it.”

  He stopped moving. Waited.

  She was not proof against his patience. She was impulsive, occasionally reckless. He was the essence of fortitude. In a test of wills that involved forbearance, he would always be the victor.

  “It is only that it has been so long,” she said. “I have been waiting for you ever so long.”

  “You fit me as closely as a glove.”

  Unintentionally she contracted around him. “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid I will hurt—”

  She did not let him finish. Even in the dark it was not difficult to find his mouth with hers. Against his lips, she whispered, “You cannot hurt me, not like this. It is only when you are gone from my bed, from my life, that I am hurt. Do not make me wait again.”

  “It’s as if you’re a virgin.”

  This made her laugh softly. “I’m not.”

  He sucked on her lower lip. There was a corresponding tightness within her. She squeezed him and he moaned, closing his eyes and releasing her. “God, but you will be my undoing.”

  She locked her hands around his neck. “If you mean to flatter me, then I will count that as a good thing.” Her sigh was audible as he began to move again. Her bottom lifted, fell. She knew his rhythm and his strength. They had done it just this way many times, and familiarity heightened her arousal rather than diminished it. She knew what to expect and when. Her responses were as measured as his. Her breast filled the warm cup of his hand, and her nipple scraped the center of his palm. Her breathing sharpened.

  And just when she thought he could not—or would not—surprise her, he withdrew suddenly and turned her on her stomach. He lifted her hips and positioned himself behind her. She rested her cheek against the pillow sham and reached for the bedhead, bracing herself. He came into her with a short thrust, then a deeper one. His hands kept her tightly joined to him while hers sought purchase.

  “Yes?” he asked, his voice husky.

  She nodded, then realized that in the dark it was no answer. Desire made her voice thick, the consonants sibilant. “Yes. Please, yes.”

  Between her thighs, he stroked her. Heat and wetness made her receptive. Just when his touch was so insistent as to make pleasure teeter on the edge of pain, he eased back, rubbing the hood of her clitoris and not the uncovered nub. She felt him gauge her breathing and her movement, marking when she was controlled and when she was on the cusp of having none.

  How well he knew her body, but no better than she knew his. She was aware of even the small changes that had occurred in his absence. The weight of him was perhaps a stone heavier. The breadth of his shoulders was wider by a fraction, the muscles of his upper arms more taut. He did indeed work too hard. His labors had reshaped his frame, roughened the pads of his fingers and the heels of his hands. He still fit her exactly as she remembered, or mayhap it was that she fit him.

  She had come to learn her own body in contrast to the planes and angles of his. She was not so curvaceous except when his palms were cupping her breasts or bottom, or when his hands were resting lightly on her hips. When he embraced her it seemed that her shoulders were no more broad than they should be, nor her waist too narrow. Her head fit snugly under his chin.

  Elsewhere, it was he that was fit snugly. A faint smile touched her lips. She was rocked forward, then she did the rocking, this time backward, pressing into him with the full roundness of her bottom.

  She felt changes in her body, a tightness under her skin, a ripple across her belly. Her eyelids fluttered closed, though she fought to keep them open. Her lips remained slightly parted. There was fierce heat where there had been only warmth and the first crests of pleasure where there had been only unhurried, rolling waves.

  She cried out, though she wished she had not. He liked her to be silent, and she did not wish to be indifferent to what pleased him. She sucked in her lower lip and bit down hard enough to taste blood.

  “No,” he said. His mouth was against her ear, and he was spilling his seed into her. His hard frame spasmed, and his neck arched. “No,” he said again.

  She did not know what he said no to. Was he cautioning her not to cry or not to stop her cries? Or did he mean it as a warning to himself, a last effort not to have this pleasure end?

  “No!”

  This last shout shook her. It echoed painfully in her ears, each repetition louder, not softer, than the last. She clapped her hands over her ears and felt the weight of him leave her. The blankets were torn from her, and she understood that she was once again alone in the bed.

  The shouting in her head stopped abruptly. The silence startled her. What frightened her was that she could no longer bring the sound of his voice to mind. How could that be? How could she have forgotten the sound of her husband’s voice as if she’d never known it?

  Her eyelids fluttered open in the same manner they had closed just a short time ago. The candle in the dish on her bedside table still flickered.

  She had never been in the dark, only in her dreams.

  The bedcovers were in disarray around her. Her night-shift was crumpled about her hips. One of her hands lay cupped under her breast, the other was tucked between her thighs. She removed it slowly, conscious of the dampness of her fingertips. The small friction of withdrawal was enough to prompt a contraction and a residual ripple of pleasure. Her hips moved once in helpless response. She jer
ked her other hand from under her naked breast and turned away from the candlelight, pressing her face into the pillow.

  Tears welled in her eyes. She bit her lip and tasted blood quickly. So that part of her dream had been real, too.

  Only he was not real. Her husband. She had betrayed him, she knew that now, for it was not her husband who had come to her bed. She had been alone, yet not. She had wanted it to be Nicholas who was with her, but how could he be? Nicholas was dead, and she had betrayed him with a stranger. She understood that it had happened only in her mind, that what pleasure she’d felt had been by her own hand, yet it still seemed like the worst sort of betrayal for even her dreams to have turned on her.

  Five years ago today she had exchanged vows with Nicholas Caldwell. So it was on the anniversary of her marriage, not on the anniversary of his death, that she had allowed herself to entertain another lover.

  At her sides her fists bunched and she wept in earnest. At last.

  Chapter One

  London, November 1817

  If it was possible to die of boredom, Ferrin was of the opinion he was not long for this earth. Only minutes ago he had been contemplating murder. Not seriously, of course. Perhaps if he had been contemplating the murder of someone other than his own mother, he reasoned, he might have been able to think the deed through to completion. But murder his mother? No, it was just not done. Not even in his own mind, no matter the provocation.