He stroked his knuckles gently over her cheek.
“You can captain my ship anytime you please, lass.”
“By ship do you actually mean . . . ship?”
He laughed. “I did.” Then his hands spread over her lower back and he drew her snugly against him. “But if you would rather—”
“Wait.”
He groaned. “Have mercy on a starving man.”
“Will you truly do it?”
“Aye. I will turn over the governing o’ Kallin entirely. They can make whatever sort of constitution they please: monarchy, democracy, tyranny in the case o’ Pike—”
She laughed.
His hands tightened. “Your laughter,” he said against her hair.
“My laughter?”
“Intoxicates me.” He kissed her brow and she felt the movement of his chest as he breathed, his life and strength and vitality.
In the darkness she found his face with her hands, and went onto her toes to find his mouth with hers.
“An’ these lips,” he said. “These lips taste as sweet an’ salty an’ rich as I always imagined they would. Finer. Like ambrosia. Trite simile, I know. But we’ve already concluded that I am no poet. An’ kissing you, I feel like a god. So, there you have it: ambrosia.”
“You imagined the flavor of my lips?”
“An’ the silk o’ your skin here. The flutter o’ your heartbeat here.” He touched her neck where her pulse was reckless.
“My heartbeat does not flutter.”
“It does now.” He took her mouth with his, and then with the most natural ease he pressed her gently into the wall with his body. Thigh to thigh, hips to hips, chest to chest, she felt every bit of his muscle and his arousal.
“Flutter,” she whispered. “Yes, yes, flutter, I see now.”
“The arc o’ your neck here,” he said, following his words with his touch. “Your soft, strong shoulder. I fantasized sinking my teeth into this shoulder.”
“Your teeth?” She shuddered, wanting his teeth in her shoulder quite acutely. “And you say you are not a beast.”
“I never said that.” He kissed her jaw, tilting her head up to stroke the tender curve of her throat with his lips, then with his tongue. She was all trembling and aching.
“Where else?” she whispered, wrapping her hands around his arms that were thick with muscle.
“The beauty here,” he said, and she felt the lightest caress upon the side of her breast, barely a touch.
“Only there?”
“An’ here.” Both of his hands rounded her ribs beneath her breasts. “This strong cage that contains the least containable heart I’ve ever known.”
“I cannot breathe. Your diabolical touch is drawing out the air through my skin and clothing.”
“You’ll need to take a good full breath now, lass.”
She did so. Upon her exhale his thumbs swept up and over the curves of her breasts and across the tender peaks.
“Oh.” She gripped his arms. “Gabriel.”
“When you say my name,” he said against her throat, caressing her arousal through the layers of her clothing, “I want to have all o’ you at once.”
“Yes,” fell over her tongue.
“Yes?”
“On the hill—earlier today—if the weather had not come.” Her breaths were fast. “I want you. Now. I want you.”
In the darkness, she felt the shifting, the change in the air that surrounded his body.
“Now?”
“Now. This morning. Yesterday. Five and a half years ago. On the ramparts at Haiknayes. Always.”
“Here?” he said.
“Perhaps we could—that is—later—after the others have—oh.”
He caressed her breasts again, and need pulsed in the taut tips and between her legs. He did it again, sending perfect pleasure down her center. Then he moved his hips into hers.
She moaned, and he captured the moan with his mouth. The kiss was deep, complete, his tongue taking hers.
“Here?” Then he was tugging down the bodice of the gown she had not worn to entice him but she loved that it had because she wanted this. The fabric gave way and his hands were on her skin, his palms surrounding her breasts and fingertips closing around her nipples and stroking.
Her sighs were lost as she closed her eyes and allowed it, whispered, “Yes, yes,” until she was arching her back, strung with pleasure.
In the darkness, his mouth closed over her nipple.
She groaned, shocked and filled with pleasure. It was hot, wet, his tongue playing, caressing, and her body was responding, throbbing, readying so swiftly.
He murmured so she felt the words vibrate against her breast, “Here, where we could be discovered?”
“Yes. You make me need as I have never—You make me an abandoned woman, Gabriel,” she said upon hopeless laughter.
“You have always been this, wild one. I’ve just opened the gate.” His hands swept down her sides and over her hips, and she felt her skirts rise.
“Really?” She was panting, her fingertips digging into his chest, her heartbeats furiously fast. “Here? Now?”
“Trust me,” he said against her lips and his hands gathered the fabric.
She nodded swiftly. “Only don’t stop.”
He went to his knees as his hands trapped her skirts upon her hip bones, and she was entirely exposed and shaking.
“What are you—”
The heat of his skin scraped her inner thighs. He licked her.
“Oh—” She gasped, felt his tongue, the caress that sent her to her toes and made her spread her knees.
“What are you doing? How are you—” Moans spilled from her one after another as she made herself accept his mouth on her, made herself accept his hands giving her no quarter. It was nothing she had imagined, nothing she had felt before, soft and firm at once, and gloriously wet and hot. He took her into his mouth as though he were tasting her, savoring her. Her legs were weak, her palms pressed the wall, the darkness swallowing her whimpers as she allowed herself to feel the pleasure. She had not known a man could do this, could be this.
With tender force he opened her, touched her, stroked her, and made her rock her hips forward seeking more, as she tightened within. The pleasure came. Hot and lush and explosive, it happened against his tongue, to her cries of astonishment that she swallowed one after another as he was consuming her. They were beautiful, the tumbling contractions that came one after another, spreading. Her flesh was ready to take his. She needed it now—needed to be taken. She did not even care that there would be pain and discomfort. She would have this memory of his tongue on her and that would be enough.
She was trembling all over, her legs shaking. Yet he did not draw away swiftly, rather, slowly, his thumbs stroking over the ridges of her pelvis, his mouth ascending to the base of her stays.
With a heavy inhalation that lifted his wide shoulders, he pressed his brow to her ribs and his hands wrapped tightly about her hips.
“Judas, woman,” he uttered low, “how you command me—my every breath an’ thought and wish.”
Loosening her hand from the wall, she threaded her fingers through his hair and stroked him.
His great, powerful body shuddered.
“Come kiss me,” she whispered. “If you have any kisses remaining.”
He rose, her skirts falling as he took her face between both of his hands and lifted her chin.
“Infinite for you,” he said. His lips were warm and tasted of both his mouth and her scent, a strange and heady mixture. “Have you had what you need?” he said.
She allowed her hands to slide down his chest. “Not entirely.” Her fingertips found the top of his trousers.
With a harsh breath, he grabbed her wrists.
“You’ll no’ have that, lass.”
She blinked but the darkness was nearly complete. Suddenly she could hear voices from the drawing room: laughing and animated conversation, the sounds of another raucous game.
“No?” she said.
“Aye, there’s a ‘no’ you canna demand that I retract.”
“I can admit surprise. You once had something of a reputation, of course. Don’t you want to? With me?”
“I have wanted little else for—well, since a stormy night in a storage cellar.” He bent and kissed her mouth so softly, so perfectly that as he drew back she went onto her toes to follow him. He lifted her hands and brought them together to his lips. “But I have changed,” he whispered against her palms. “You changed me.”
“I did?”
“Aye. Irrevocably.”
He released her and moved away.
“I don’t know that I approve of this particular change,” she said.
He barked a laugh. As he moved into the lamplight in the foyer she could see the spark in his eyes.
“Come, lass. We’ll have been missed.”
Amarantha smoothed her hands over her hair and discovered it a passionate tangle.
“I will be along in a moment,” she mumbled.
He chuckled. Then his footsteps moved into the foyer and the conversation from the drawing room got louder as he opened the door to enter. Amarantha stood in the darkness, waiting for her cheeks to cool and wondering that she felt no shame. Only happiness.
“Milady.”
Something tugged at the coverlet tucked up around her chin, plucking her from dreams of Gabriel’s hands on her.
“Mm?” she groaned.
“Milady, you must come now. ’Tis urgent.”
Amarantha started up. Maggie Poultney stood beside her.
Before she had tumbled into bed, the moon had sat high behind the parting clouds. Now through the windows she could see that it kissed the mountaintop. The hour was much later.
“Swiftly now.” Maggie held forward a gown.
“What has happened?” Her bare feet hit the frigid floor and she pulled the gown over her head. “Is Mrs. Aiken—”
“I’ll take you there.” The Scotswoman buttoned Amarantha’s gown swiftly. “But we must be quiet or we’ll wake the others.”
Dragging a shawl from her traveling trunk she slid her feet into slippers and hurried after Maggie. Through a twisting labyrinth of corridors she had not yet mastered, they went in silence, and shortly Amarantha was thoroughly lost.
Through a partially opened door, golden light flooded the corridor.
“God be with you, milady,” Maggie said, and disappeared up the stairs.
Amarantha drew the door open.
It was a small chapel, lit dimly with a handful of candles. Vaulted in the medieval fashion, with great stained glass windows that were dark now, it boasted neat rows of chairs near the east end which rose two steps to the rounded chancel.
Reverend Clacher stood at the center of those steps. He wore a stole about his neck and held a book in his palms. At the base of the stair were Tabitha and Nathaniel. And in the middle of the aisle was the man of every one of her fantasies.
He strode toward her, his gaze on her intent. He did not halt a proper distance away from her but came close, as he had from the beginning when she had thought him a great hulking creature.
“For a man who does not attend services,” she said, “you do seem to enjoy spending time in church in the middle of the night.”
“Only with you, lass,” he said as his gaze slipped down to where the ribbons of her nightgown poked out from her hastily donned gown at the bodice.
She glanced again at the two by the vicar.
“Is the Reverend to do a service?” she said. “Now?”
“Aye. A special service at my request.”
“Do you know, Shark Bait,” she said, blinking away the sleep that still clung to her. “You are the most unusual nobleman—really the most unusual man that I have ever known. But if you wish to have a service in the middle of the night, I will attend.”
“You just called me Shark Bait.”
“Maggie awoke me from dreams of a young naval captain.”
“You dreamed about me.” The pleasure in his smile dashed away all remaining thoughts of sleep.
“I have always dreamed about you, even when I should not have,” she said. “Now, shall we commence this? It must be midnight and—What are you—Oh, oh.”
He was on his knee before her and taking her hand and her heartbeats were careening and she could not breathe.
“’Tis a beast o’ a man, I am. But war breeds no other sort, an’ when a thing’s got to be done, I see no cause for delay.” The rumble of rough syllables pressed through her shock. He held her gaze as he had held her body earlier, with the virile strength of the beast he admitted to being that had always awoken the thrill in her, and the longing.
“Amarantha Garland, will you be my wife?”
Chapter 27
Temptation
Perfect astonishment on her face was as taking as joy and amusement and anger and consternation and every emotion Gabriel had ever seen shape those features made of clay and faery dust. It was not the ideal emotion at present. But it was stunning.
“Will I—” she began, blinked, and the cloverleaf gaze snapped past his shoulder to the other end of the chapel. She snatched her hand from his. “You have not waked me in the middle of the night to—for this. I will not believe it. What sort of game are you playing now? More charades?”
“No game.” His heart was beating harder, faster, hotter than his ribs could contain. “Never games. Marry me, Amarantha.”
For a brittle interval of torturous silence, she only stared at him. Then understanding lit her eyes.
“Has my—has my father written to you?”
“Your father?”
“My mother told me—That is, nothing. Nothing. I—Nothing. Oh, do stand up. Please.”
“No’ until you give me an answer.”
She shook her head once.
He climbed to his feet. Then he took her hand and led her toward the door to the corridor.
“Your Grace?” Reverend Clacher called.
“A minute, vicar,” he said, pushed the door open and drew Amarantha into the corridor. Her eyes were chased with sleep, her hair escaping its thick braid, and a line ran across one cheek where the bed linen had impressed its edge into her skin. “You wear no cap when you sleep.”
“What an interesting observation, Urisk. No, I do not wear a cap when summoned abruptly from sleep in the middle of the night to go I know not where. But the moment you adopt an ear trumpet, I promise to start wearing a cap twenty-four hours a day. Will that suit you, old man?”
“Judas, you’re a delight.”
“You do not want to marry me.”
“I do.” Desire pressed at him powerfully: the ache he had felt for her since he had first seen her, first heard her, first witnessed her courage. Knowing her now, that ache had become actual pain, in his chest and in his damn breeches. He lifted his hand and allowed his fingertips to rest upon the delicate bone of her jaw.
“Amarantha, I willna take you to bed unless you are my wife.”
Distress rippled over her throat.
“I appreciate the respect you are showing me,” she said. “But, even were I to hold myself to that standard, given your many assets I imagine it would not be difficult to find another woman—multiple other women—to relieve that particular need without resorting to marrying any of them. Or me.”
He smiled.
“Which of those words amuses you?” she said.
“You are the only woman that can satisfy the need.”
The pleasure left her eyes.
“No lies,” she whispered. “Please.”
“Amarantha, I want you in my bed. I need you there.”
“I am sorry, truly. But that does not suffice to alter my conviction on this matter.”
Conviction.
The alabaster statue had returned.
“Hm.” He made as though he were studying the floor in thought. “Well, you will have this estate, though o’ course
I promised just tonight to give it over entirely to the maidens in the dungeons. It would be a shabby thing to recant so soon.”
“Or ever, really,” she said thinly.
“There is Haiknayes. Impressive castle, that one. The cellar leaks, but the ramparts are especially fine on a starry night, they say.”
“They do?”
“Aye. So there’s an advantage: the run o’ Haiknayes. In fact, you will have everything o’ mine, my title, my name, my gold—”
“All of that excess gold you have lying about.”
“—an’ my lands. All in return for a few quick words spoken before that altar in there. ’Tis a bargain, really.”
“Your lands are handsome.” Her eyes seemed to soften, and her gaze dipped to his lips, then lower. Lifting one hand, she laid her palm upon his chest and trailed her fingertips downward. “Exceedingly appealing, really.”
He snatched her hand from where it was creating havoc in at least two separate regions of his body.
“None o’ that, lass, till you promise your troth to me.”
“Pity.” Her breasts were rising on quick little breaths, swelling against her gown.
Good God. Could a man take a woman against a wall outside of a church? Yes. Yes, he could.
“Did I mention, you will be a duchess?”
“I have never wished for a title.”
“O’ course you havena. Neither did I at one time. But I discovered it comes with all sorts o’ privileges. They let you walk into dining rooms before everybody else, an’ theaters an’ the like. An’ there’s a coronet. ’Tis a wee bit elaborate for my taste: a horde o’ gold strawberry leaves. But your beauty will improve it. Come now. Do this.”
“Do this?” she repeated blankly. “Between the two of us, truly you take the prize for madness.”
He wrapped both of his hands around her face and the lust in him felt fierce and especially urgent. He captured her open mouth beneath his. She tasted of warmth and surprise, and then desire. Her hands grabbed his arms and she did not push him off. She gripped hard, so tight that each fingertip was a nail driven into his flesh.
She drew away slowly. Her lips were red, her eyes fevered.
“I will make love to you,” she said. “I should like that very much. Very . . . much. But I cannot marry you.” Touching her fingertips to his lips, she whispered, “But thank you for asking.”
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