She rose to her feet while marshaling a glib excuse having to do with preventing Marguerite from sampling too many gingerbread men. As she moved to set her glass with its dregs of eau sucre on the silver tray placed on the bedside table, Christien reached out and caught her wrist.
“Don’t go just yet,” he said, his gaze steady on her face. “Not until you tell me what is wrong.”
“Nothing. Why should it be?” Her smile felt stiff, and a shiver moved over her skin, spreading from his warm clasp to every inch of her body.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
She could tell him, could demand answers in anger and suspicion, but what would be the point? If he was involved in some nefarious scheme, he would only lie. If he was not, she would have revealed herself as an untrusting harridan. It was better to be certain of her ground before she said things that could not be taken back. “I’m tired, I suppose,” she said in prevarication. “It’s been a trying few days.”
“You’re sure you aren’t angry over Vinot calling here?”
She met his gaze for an instant. “Should I be?”
“By no means. He has few friends, poor soul, and wants only to hold on to those that are left. But he is hardly your kind. Could be you were uncomfortable in his company.”
“If I gave that impression, I’m sorry. You must have whoever you please to visit. This is your home, after all.”
“Throwing my words back in my face, are you?”
Her lips tilted in the briefest of acknowledgments. “They seemed apt.”
He watched her for a moment, his eyes searching while his thumb brushed back and forth over the pulse in her wrist in an absent caress. “We’ve become formal again of a sudden. Is it because you see in Vinot what I will one day become, a sword master who can no longer take to the piste?”
The slow caress of his thumb was driving her mad. She could far too easily imagine it elsewhere, skimming over the tips of her breasts, over her abdomen and lower, much lower. Her gaze rested on his mouth that looked parched from the fever that had only left him the day before, and her thoughts scattered in such disarray that it was an enormous effort to gather them up again.
“Why should it matter if you are unable to fence?” she asked, her voice husky in her throat. “You swore to lay down your sword when we are married.”
“I did, didn’t I? Is my pledge, by chance, the reason you’ve taken the pair of them away?”
She glanced around the room in puzzlement. “I don’t know what you mean. I’ve done nothing with them. When did you last see them?”
His attention remained on her face for a considering instant before he lowered his lashes. “Never mind. Perhaps Paul has them. But if you’re tired, why not join me here.” He patted the mattress beside him. “There’s plenty of room.”
In her newly alerted suspicion, she questioned if his invitation might be a ruse to distract her from the subject of his swords. The pair of them in their flat box had been tied to the back of his saddle as he rode to New Orleans. They had been used in the impromptu duel there, but what had become of them afterward? Their box had not been with him when she found him.
“That’s hardly a proper suggestion,” she answered almost at random.
“I thought we were past that.”
The low timbre of his voice awakened memories of a gaming table and her precarious perch upon it. It seemed possible he was right. More than that, the urge to simply abandon reserve and give in to his appeal was staggering. She would not have thought it possible a mere week ago. Now she longed for the illusion of safety she had found in his arms, for the comfort of lying down beside him and letting everything, all her duties, concerns, doubts and fears, drift away.
“What can be the harm,” he asked in soft reason. “We will be man and wife in a few days, so free to take all our evening rests together. Besides, what is the difference between sitting here with me behind closed doors for hours on end and lying next to me for a few minutes? Everyone knows by now that I’ve been injured. Vinot even heard of it in New Orleans.”
It was true enough. He must be seen as incapable of the physical exertion required for truly scandalous conduct. Added to that, she had no idea how long she might be at River’s Edge once he healed. Anything could happen if Paul was right. One day soon Christien could simply tell her he had changed his mind and she and her family must leave his property. He could declare everything a mistake and ride back to New Orleans. A few days, maybe less, and she might never see him again.
He met her eyes once more in searching intensity. What he saw there she could not imagine, but he exerted a slow, even pressure on her wrist. She gave in to it, allowing him to draw her down beside him.
Weak-minded fool.
She castigated herself with that label in despairing silence as she kicked off her slippers and lifted her feet to the mattress, easing along his long length with care so as not to jar his wound.
Depraved female.
That description floated through her mind as she lay back, accepting half his pillow as he shifted over to offer it, then turned to rest in the curve of his arm that closed around her.
Stupid, unprincipled wanton.
She railed at her weakness as she rested against him, but it was halfhearted at best. She really was tired, more so than she realized. The longer she lay at his side, the weaker she felt, the more depraved and less principled.
“Reine,” he whispered, his warm breath stirring the tendrils of hair at her temple.
She drew back to look into his face, meeting the rich sable-black of his eyes, becoming lost in glimmering passion that lay there like a gold coin at the bottom of a wishing well.
“Stay with me,” he said.
She heard but could find no answer. The choice wasn’t hers to make while he held both her and River’s Edge in his thrall like some ancient robber king. What did it matter, anyway, when this moment might be all she would ever have? To die a widow, unloved and unloving, as she had once planned, was not so great a thing, after all.
16
“Are you comfortable?” he asked, his voice like a caress.
She managed a nod. “I’m not hurting you?”
“Not my side, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You…you mean to say you’re in pain elsewhere?”
“Reine, Reine,” he said with laughter threading his voice. “What did I tell you about the danger of saying such things?” Taking her hand, which lay on her waist, he uncurled her fingers and spread them over the firmness at the juncture of his thighs.
Her eyes widened as she felt the heat and steel-like hardness of him. Inhaling sharply, she snatched her hand away.
He made no move to stop her, but lifted a brow as he smiled into her eyes. And abruptly she was light-headed with the onrush of purest, unbridled desire. Under its assault, she could not move. Warmth suffused her and she could feel a pulse begin to flutter in her bottom lip. Through her mind drifted his promise to show her just how Theodore had been a fool when it came to making love.
“Don’t look like that,” he whispered, his eyes growing darker as their centers expanded.
She could not answer. Her hand came to rest on his chest of its own accord. Beneath her fingers now she could feel the thick edge of his bandaging and, above it, the throb of his heart. Slowly, she spread her fingers, flattening her palm against that strong and steady beat.
“I did warn you,” he said, the words almost inaudible before he reached to close his free arm around her, drawing her against him from breasts to ankles. His long, hard swordsman’s fingers splayed across her back, a hold from which it might be impossible to break free.
She didn’t want to be free, had no will to move away from the entrancing strength and firmness of him, the incredible rightness of being there with him at that moment. She reveled in the rich sensation flooding through her, tingling from every point where they touched, gathering in vibrant, near-painful pressure at the center
of her being.
His lips were warm against her temple, her forehead, her eyelids. Perfect, perfect, the sense of being cherished that it brought, in spite of everything. Amazing, the heat of it that melted her very bones. It seemed she had been moving toward this place, this time, since the night they met, waiting for this moment. The glory of its arrival and his acceptance of it brought an ache to her throat and pressure behind her eyelids with the sting of salt tears. Mutely, she lifted her mouth, and sighed with a small moan as he took what she offered.
He tasted her, absorbed her, the touch of his lips a little dry from fever yet infinitely tender. He smoothed the surface of her mouth with his, collected the sweetness at the corners of her lips with the warm edge of his tongue, traced the line of their joining. She didn’t mean to part her lips so soon, so eagerly; didn’t know she had until it was done.
His hold tightened and a tremor ran along his arm. He rolled above her while deliciously invading her mouth. He swirled his tongue around hers, seeking her flavor, inviting imitation, inciting honeyed joy.
It rose inside Reine so fiercely that she strained against him, sliding her hand over the ridged muscles of his shoulders, curling her fingers around the taut column of his neck and pushing them into the crisp waves of his hair. She could feel the tight buds of her nipples pressing against the hard wall of his chest, her breasts molding to its muscle-sheathed planes. Rapture danced along her nerves to leave her pulsating in its wake, so exquisitely sensitive that she could identify the linen weave of the nightshirt he wore, sense the breath he held trapped in his lungs, recognize without effort the rigorous restraint he exerted over his needs, his impulses.
His taste, a mixture of wine and his own sweetness, intoxicated her. She twined her tongue with his, softly abrading it, following his withdrawal to skim the silken inner surface of his mouth. Drowning in languor and repletion, she let go of time and place. There was only wonder and the man who cradled her in magic and his sure strength.
He glided his hand from her back to the slender turn of her waist and over her hip. For an instant, he spread his hand there, drawing her tighter against him. Before she could absorb more than an instant of his heated hardness against her, he skimmed lower, gathering the fullness of her skirt in his fingers, sliding underneath to caress the bend of her knee. Even through the batiste of her pantaloons, she could feel the callused hardness and the heat of his palm as he brushed upward to her thigh.
He slackened his grasp, released her and eased away a short distance. Distress touched her. Then she saw that he was tugging at his nightshirt, gathering its fullness with one hand, trying to drag it off over his head. She aided him, freeing the yards of cloth, whipping the shirt away and letting it fall over the side of the bed.
Even as she stretched out her arm for that move, his hand was at her bodice, tugging the blouson summer shirtwaist she wore from her skirt and pushing it upward. Her arm became entangled. While she attempted to free it, he bent his head and nuzzled the soft valley between her breasts that he had exposed. A shiver moved over her skin, though whether from trepidation or anticipation she could not tell. In its wake, she was consumed by the need to strip away the layers of fabric that encased her, and with them to be rid of conventions and prohibitions, doubts and fears.
She pushed away a little and sat up to throw off the shirtwaist, unfasten the side hooks of the wide black band that held her skirt and the tapes of her petticoats. With his eyes hooded, Christien tugged at the bow that tied her corset laces and loosened its tight pinch with a few quick jerks. He sent it flying then, along with its cover. While she kicked free of her skirts, he soothed the small red channels pressed into her skin by her whalebone corset stays, making gentle circles with his fingertips, following them with his lips.
She was enraptured by the concentration in his face as he performed that service, and by the concern. Yet all thought fled as he shifted his ministrations to the gentle mounds of her breasts, circling one peak until, in a sudden assault on the summit, he took the nipple into the heat of his mouth. It grew tighter, aching as he laved it, drew carefully upon it.
Heated pleasure surged through her. She arched her back, allowing greater access, offering unimpeded permission. Her pulse made feathery thunder in her ears. Heaviness gathered below her waist, throbbing between her thighs.
Even as he continued the delicate ravishment, he flattened his palm over her abdomen, smoothing in circles as if enthralled by the soft yet resilient surface. He eased lower in slow increments and questing intent.
He was no bungler, all inept arrogance and certainty that her pleasure was the same as his own. He knew the sites that stoked bliss, spreading it in engorging waves. Careful, unhurried yet certain, he closed his hand upon her, capturing her soft, moist folds, gently holding, pressing with the heel of his hand, separating with his long fingers.
Reine caught her breath, her stomach muscles shuddering in spasms at his slow incursion. Internal muscles fluttered, holding, opening again in invitation. She sighed as he pressed deep, stroking with such sureness that she was consumed by the most fervid of needs, the wildest of impulses.
She clasped his arm in her extremity, feeling the supple glide of the ropelike muscles as he moved. She needed, yearned for something more, something deeper. Her lips felt swollen, her brain on fire. She wanted him, wanted all of him, had to know what it was to make love to this man, to feel his strength against her, around her, within her.
He was so very strong, a latent force in the iron musculature of his body held subject by his iron will. His aura of power, in abeyance these few days spent in invalid’s guise, surrounded them both, an effortless emanation that refused to regard his injury. It drew her strength from her, leaving her defenseless against him, also against her own urge toward surrender.
She didn’t care. It might never come again, this perilous blending of bodies and intentions. Whatever happened, she would have this to remember. Whispering his name, she gave herself to the moment and to him, a gift he might not keep, might not value, but was his all the same.
He took instant advantage, exploring firm curves and soft hollows with a touch so thorough it could never be erased. Where his hands went, his mouth traced, as well, and the insistent lap of his tongue. Slow, painstaking, with no constraint upon will or imagination, he loved her while her breath sobbed in her throat and she writhed in his arms. And in her throes, she followed his example as best she might, learning his taste and texture while avoiding the bandage that wrapped his rib cage, listening for the catch in his breathing that marked his pleasure.
No access was denied her, no impediment given. She was free to take him as he would. And so she did until flesh and mind could stand no more. Lying beneath his perspiration-slick body, she captured his hard, silken length between her thighs, holding it poised against her softness while her very soul pulsated with rhythmic contractions and hot longing.
“Now?” he asked, the single word husky and not quite even.
“If you will, if you can. I do so need—” Her voice caught as he nudged against her and heat inundated her in rolling waves.
“No more than I. As for my will, it’s as yours. For my ability, shall we see?”
She should not have doubted. Hard on his words, he gave a slow twist of his hips that opened moist, hot flesh, allowed him to surge inside in a single, swift plunge.
She caught her breath, holding it while the inner core of her expanded, throbbing in fierce welcome. Brushing lightly over his injury, clasping his hips, she pulled him deeper, wanting to be filled, needing all of him, aching to have him touch the wellspring of her existence before the meshing was too soon over.
Christien whispered wordless praise and promises against her hair, then raised himself above her. She almost cried out in protest at that small withdrawal, might have except for his steel-like slide against her inner walls. The muscles of his thighs bunched and gathered before he came down upon her again, plunging to greater depths.
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It was an endless tumult then, rising and falling, blending without surcease or pause. He rocked her, gathered her, carried her with him into a physical realm where she had never before ventured, never dreamed existed. The gratification was beyond expectation or belief, an incredible upheaval of mind, body and senses. She reveled in it, met his fast and rhythmic pace, yes, and matched it while her chest heaved with gasping breaths and silent sobs.
With her eyes tightly closed, she exulted in the shuddering impact of his warm flesh upon hers that was warmer still, shivered with the inexorable mounting of sensual joy. No fastness inside her was left untouched or unclaimed. Thorough, tireless, as absorbed as a miner in avid search of gold, he moved with her, against her, letting her feel his strength, absorb his power, until she felt as if her utmost self was dissolving, molding to fit his.
Lost in infinite sensation, the spiraling apex of fulfillment caught her unawares. She cried out, tensing in every muscle while its spreading grandeur took her. He grasped her close, filling her so she pulsed against his hard heat, prolonging the pleasure to near insanity.
He began again then.
Gasping, swallowing tears, Reine soared with him, locked to him hot skin to hot skin, heart to heart. She opened her eyes and stared into his face, though it blurred above her. His gaze burned black and hot, almost primitive in its possessiveness. His teeth were clamped together so the muscles stood out in his jaws; his hair was damp with perspiration. And yet his restraint would not, did not, give way.
Exaltation sang in Reine’s blood. She felt elemental, splendidly naked and glorified with it. They were, could well be, the only man and woman in the entire world to find this ultimate beatitude.
The sweet splendor took her again. The tears came, tracking into her hair, a salute to beauty and grandeur and the purpose of life, a backward look toward what had been glaringly absent in her marriage, an ecstasy beyond mortal dreams.
Triumph in Arms Page 17