Her arms lifted to encircle his neck, the fringe of his hair against her bare skin. His lips moved over her cheek, each eyelid, behind her ear. She threw back her head as he caressed his way down her throat, along her collarbone, before lowering into the valley between her breasts.
Her heart thundered. It pounded against her ribs as his hands skimmed her sides, folding around her to stroke the length of her spine.
She shucked him free of his jacket, her trembling fingers working at the buttons of his waistcoat as he backed her toward the bed. Struggled to free her from the restraints of too many layers of clothing. Ribbons, buttons, laces. Finally, her gown slithered to the floor. Her stays following after.
She should be embarrassed or apprehensive—at the least she should mutter a few maidenly protestations to prove her virginal innocence—but Brendan didn’t make her feel innocent. He made her feel wicked and wanton and reckless and passionate. She couldn’t breathe when he was near. And forget thinking. Her brain turned to mush as soon as he locked that hungry golden gaze on her.
He encircled her waist with his hands, grazing the lines of her ribs, the curves of her torso, taking the chemise with him as he massaged his way up.
She shivered, leaning into his embrace, loving the capable strength in his work-roughened palms. The feel of every stroke upon her sensitized skin. Off went the chemise, tossed to the floor with the rest of her clothes.
He thumbed her nipples, the dark buds hardening beneath his touch. He bent to take one in his mouth, swirling the softness of it with his tongue, sucking it taut while kneading the pliant flesh of the other. No amount of dream-spinning had prepared her for this tantalizing heart-pounding hunger. Aching between her legs, she moaned, pressing herself against him, needing him closer. Skin on skin.
And then they were on the bed, Brendan above her, leaning upon one elbow, eyes scorching a path over her body, his hand following lazily after.
She’d waited seven years for this. She would memorize it. Imprint it upon her brain where nothing that followed would erase it. The curve of his wrist. The line of his jaw. The dimple at the corner of his mouth and the slash of his brows. The flop of hair over his forehead and the slow bliss of his caress.
She closed her eyes, picturing him as he was right this instant. Knew she’d remember always.
“Forget the silks I promised you. I prefer you just like this,” he murmured.
Her eyes snapped open on a smile. “That’s right. You did promise me, didn’t you? I should have known they were so many empty words.” She lifted her head to nip his chin.
He skimmed his hand down over the flat of her stomach. “I’ve warned you more than once, I’m an unreliable, selfish bastard, but I’m beginning to think you like the bad boy.” His eyes gleamed with mischief, that devilish dimple aching to be kissed.
Words were lost as sensation took over. As Brendan rose up on his knees to pull free the ribbons of her garters. As he rolled her stockings down over her calves, his hands gliding over the exposed flesh before he retraced his way up her inner thighs. To the junction of her legs. The feather-light touch there sent lightning shooting through her like a live charge. Her hips rose off the bed in an unconscious response to his seduction. Her center hot and wet and throbbing for him, every second the pressure building low within her.
And then he was gone, rolling off the bed and into the shadows. She heard the thud of boots, the shush of discarded clothing as breeches and shirt came off. And then he was back, his weight upon the bed, the fierce heat of his naked body like an inferno.
He came over her, the lean muscles of his hard-packed body perfect against hers. His right shoulder still wrapped in a thin bandage, he held himself awkwardly, but like a coiled spring still managed to radiate strength and power. He paused above her, his body between her legs, his sun-gold eyes stabbing her straight to the heart.
So close, she felt him just there. The torment of his sudden hesitation agonizing.
His gaze dimmed. “Say the word, Lissa. Say the word, and I can still leave you.” He ground his teeth. “It’ll hurt like the devil, but I’ll do it,” he moaned.
“No words. Not tonight.” Smiling, she lifted her hips, taking him into her. He entered slowly, stretching her inch by excruciating inch. Letting her adjust to the sensation of their joined bodies, the thrill of him inside her. To this mind-bending exhilaration sweeping her along now, the river in spate.
She gasped at a sudden sharp sting, Brendan hovering unmoving over her in the dark. Clearly letting her make the first move. Take the first step forward. Slowly, tentatively, she rocked forward, the only feeling now one of longing as Brendan silently exhaled on a slow, ragged breath.
An inexorable headlong weight built inside her as he withdrew. Entered her deeper. She arched into him in a slow building rhythm, digging her nails into his arms, her breath coming fast, her vision dancing with fire and light and color as waves slowly built behind this tightening quickening urge.
His kisses deepened as he drove harder, faster, her breathing becoming a pant and then a moan as every thrust sent her spinning closer to that cliff edge. And then it was there. In front of her. She felt herself tumbling. Up and up, the rush of her heart drowning out her cries. Her body alight with a pleasure-pain she never knew existed.
As he shuddered, his eyes squeezed shut, his body taut as a cocked bow, she ground once more against him, and the two found release together.
They lay spooned together, their bodies cooling in the breeze from an open window. Brendan’s arm slung over her hip, his fingers tracing a lazy path up and down her side.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“You mean I did it wrong?” she asked.
“Oh no, my dear. You did everything exactly right. Too right. I shouldn’t have allowed it to go as far as it did. We’re not married yet.”
His chest pressed against her back, his breath tickling her neck. “I know you’re only marrying me because you have to,” she said.
“Is that what you know?” he teased, tickling her side until she screamed, writhing to escape him.
“Stop. No, Brendan. Don’t—” she pleaded. “I surrender. I surrender.”
“That’ll teach you”—he dropped a kiss at the nape of her neck—“to try to tell me why I’m marrying you.”
“Well, you obviously weren’t too thrilled about it the last time. And nothing’s changed. I’m still me. And you’re still you.”
“How profound we become after sex. I’ll remember that.” He squeezed her tight.
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted to hear I love you. Fool that she was.
She rolled over, his chest hard against hers. The sleek lines of his shoulders melting into the lean, corded muscles of his arms. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
He chuckled, dropping a kiss on the tip of her nose. “That’s supposed to be my line.”
She blushed. “I meant your shoulder.”
He gave a look of sudden comprehension. “Ah, the shoulder.” He flexed his bandaged arm, windmilled it up over his head, wiggled his fingers. “That dried monkey tongue Madame Arana gave me really did the trick.”
“Monkey tong—Brendan! She gave you no such thing.”
His eyes danced with laughter. “No, but I had you for a minute there.” He pulled her close. “The arm’s better. Stiff, but still attached. I’ll live to fight another day.”
Flying high, she’d been unprepared for the sudden belly-punch of fear. Brendan joked, but it was the kind of grim humor people resorted to when the truth was too awful to contemplate. She glanced away, not wanting to show him how his words frightened her.
It didn’t work. He knew.
“Lissa?” he asked gently, tipping her chin back to him, worry in his gaze. “Are you truly all right?”
She didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to have to explain her feelings when she didn’t completely understand them herself. She would revel in what she had of hi
m. Try not to yearn for what he could not give.
With a brave smile and a shrug, she quickly changed the subject. “What’s this mark?” She traced the outline of a broken arrow bisecting a crescent. It began at the junction of his neck and left shoulder before curving down over his chest. “I noticed it before.”
Brendan’s stare seemed to reach right inside her. But instead of pushing for answers, he merely reached up to cover her hand with his own, slowly drawing it away from the tattoo. “Momentary insanity.”
“Did you have it done in Greece?”
“In the back room of a Paris brothel. Father was furious. Called me—well, I’m too much of a gentleman to repeat what he called me, but he vowed I’d regret it.” He closed his eyes for a brief moment, his jaw jumping. “He was right.”
She leaned up on an elbow, searching his face for some hint of the man behind the mask he wore so deliberately. The façade he created to keep everyone out. “Why did you leave Belfoyle? What really happened to make you disappear so completely? We all thought you dead, Brendan. Your family—” She dragged in a steadying breath before meeting his gaze. “—I—mourned you.”
He pushed her hair back from her forehead before pressing a kiss there. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It was a long time ago.”
But it did matter. She could see it in the shadows of his eyes. The strain of his body. Whatever had driven him away and destroyed the Douglases haunted him still.
Why wouldn’t he tell her? What could be so horrible?
Was it because she wasn’t good enough? Not smart enough? Didn’t have that invisible aura of power she felt in the presence of all those gifted with Fey blood?
Resentment licked along limbs so recently alive with passion’s fire.
“In other words, impossible for a Duinedon like me to understand,” she huffed.
He chuckled. “You may not have inherited the gifts of the Fey-born, but that doesn’t make you any less a part of our world.”
“But I’m not, don’t you see? I never have been. My father always said the Other were cursed to remain apart. To hide who they are. To stay within the shadows. And he was right. My grandmother was always seen as a madwoman by those who didn’t know.”
Brendan rolled onto his back, hands folded behind his head, his expression serious. “Yet, to those who knew her and what she was, Elisabeth, her affinity for growing things wasn’t seen as a curse but as a great gift. She chose to shower that gift upon Dun Eyre, making it a magical place.”
He was right. Dun Eyre was magical. Travelers from all over visited to see the magnificent gardens set among the rugged moors and rocky cliffs. Aunt Fitz would proudly show them round the house and grounds while Aunt Pheeney awaited them in the drawing room, where paying guests were offered refreshments and a cheerful welcome.
“I miss Dun Eyre. I miss my aunts.” She laid her head upon his chest, the steady beat of his heart calming the sudden ache in her throat. “I miss my dull, quiet life.”
He pushed her hair off her face, his smile wistful. “I miss mine too.”
It was the closest he came to a confession.
He closed his eyes, though he didn’t sleep. His body remained too taut, his breath too shallow. Gods, he was beautiful. The narrow chiseled lines of his face, the curve of sensual lips, strong patrician nose, and those sinfully long lashes. His broad chest tapering to a ridged abdomen, a narrow line of hair disappearing beneath the sheet covering his waist. Even the swirl of the arrow-and-crescent tattoo only added to his raw masculinity.
Her chest tightened, her hand reaching to caress him.
A smile hovered at the edge of his mouth. “Describe it to me,” he whispered, almost a plea.
“What do you want to know?”
“The look. The smell. Is Aidan well? Is he happy? What’s changed since I was last there? Tell me everything so I can see it.”
“You said you didn’t care. That you couldn’t look back and survive.”
“I never said I didn’t care. I said I couldn’t care. There’s a difference.”
And so she told him. Curled with him in the night, she spoke of the house upon the cliffs, the way the mists came down to curl silver gray and damp against the walls. She described the winds that never ceased, the way they held the bite of the ocean as they swept across the wide cloud-chased sky, the way the sun threw light and shadow over the moors.
She talked about Aidan—the wild young man who’d become a brooding recluse as he faced the possibility of financial ruin. Of the late nights and long days as the new Earl of Kilronan had struggled to hold the estate together. Of the grief he held tight within him for the family he’d lost. Of the shock among the neighbors that followed his impetuous marriage to a woman of unknown pedigree and scandalous rumored past.
“He’s not the Aidan you remember, but he’s happy again. He loves her. It’s clear the way he follows her with his eyes whenever they’re together. Almost as if they’re connected by some invisible cord.”
She spoke of Sabrina, gone away shortly after her parents’ deaths. Gone to Glenlorgan and a life as a bandraoi priestess. “Aunt Fitz said she’s home now, though none have seen her and none know why she’s come back. Some say there was a man involved.”
“Was? But he should—” Brendan shook his head. “Oh, Sabrina.”
“When you go home, you’ll see it for yourself. You’ll see all of them. The prodigal son returns. They’ll welcome you with open arms.”
“More likely with daggers drawn, if I know Aidan. No, your words will have to do. I can’t go home, Lissa.” His words bit sharp and deep like a knife. “Not after—” He closed his eyes. “Not ever.”
Elisabeth slept, a tangle of red-gold hair above the covers, a soft whisper of even breathing.
Brendan leaned over, brushing a kiss upon her forehead, inhaling the enticing lemony floral scent of her creamy skin. He closed his eyes, imagining a life with her. Waking by her side. Finding her at day’s end when they could sit together and laugh and talk and enjoy each other’s company. Taking her in his arms at night with no fear clouding her gaze.
He opened his eyes on a sigh. A beautiful dream, but daylight would bring reality. He ran a hand over the broken arrow and crescent needled into his chest. A permanent reminder that his past made that life impossible.
Rising from the bed, Brendan padded across the room to the fire, his naked body chilled by the cool night air.
Lissa had given him a great gift tonight. Not just her body, which had been perfection in his arms, but her reminiscences. He’d not been able to help himself. He’d needed to know. Suffered with a homesickness that left him dry mouthed and shaking. And in those brief moments when she had spoken, Belfoyle had come alive for him. He’d seen once more the barren rocky cliffs, walked through the waist-high grass down to the thin stretch of beach, galloped along the orchard road chased by the salty wind, and talked and laughed late into the night with Aidan, trading stories and boasts and secrets like brothers who’ve nothing to hide.
Shoulders hunched in defeat, he braced himself against the mantel. Closed his eyes, seeing once more the vision of Aidan lying dead among the scores of battlefield corpses. The copper sheen of his hair. The blue-white pallor of his face. The splash of crimson across his chest.
He will come for you.
Arthur’s denunciation to the man bowed and broken as he crushed his brother’s mutilated body to his chest.
A vibrant single image burning through the gray, mist-shrouded wraiths he’d lived with for the past seven years. The heartrending cry to the heavens drowning out the poisonous whispers echoing in his ears since Freddie Atwood’s failed last stand.
fifteen
Mr. McKelway didn’t look old enough to shave, much less perform a wedding ceremony, though by the leering glances he kept stealing at Elisabeth’s breasts throughout, he was plenty old enough to have his ears boxed.
It was one thing to marry in such a helter-skelter way. Another to have the p
riest ogling her as if she were a side of beef at Fleet market. She speared the cleric with a ferocious stare that had him tugging at his collar as if he were in sudden need of air and hastening through the rest of the service in double time.
Not the wedding of her dreams. Madame Arana and Miss Roseingrave were the only witnesses to her honor’s restoration, Rogan pleading an aversion to churches in general and marriage in particular. And in place of Miss Havisham’s expensive confection of cream-colored silk and yards of silver lace, Elisabeth wore a modest gown of white muslin. One of the few outfits in Helena’s wardrobe that needn’t be let out or taken in.
Brendan stood beside her, pressed and polished and looking as mouthwatering as she’d ever seen him.
The Douglases possessed looks to draw every eye. Aidan bore an austere elegance and a confident swagger that left no one in doubt of his noble bloodlines. Sabrina’s winsome flashing smile and sparkling blue eyes more than made up for her inherent shyness. But Brendan outshone both of them with his sun-bronzed, square-jawed face, the dagger gleam of his gold eyes, and the taut balance of his swordsman’s body.
Until now he’d been a million miles away, his expression unreadable in the dim interior of the church, but when the priest asked, “Do you take this woman?” he finally looked at her, his eyes a darkened bronze like ancient coins, face uncharacteristically solemn.
“I do,” he said, his fingers tightening on hers in a gesture she chose to interpret as encouragement rather than dread.
It didn’t take nearly as long as she’d expected to change the course of her life forever. A few words spoken over them. An exchange of chaste kisses for the spectators, and a marriage seven years in the making was finally accomplished.
There should have been bells. A parade. Perhaps a few fireworks. Instead, Madame Arana blew a great honk into her handkerchief and Helena’s bark of brittle laughter echoed along the rows of empty pews. “Hunted by armies only to be caught in a wee parson’s mousetrap.”
Elisabeth heaved a sigh. So much for celebration.
Heir of Danger Page 17