The Raider’s Bride

by Kimberly Cates

  Love.

  Such stark love that it savaged her heart just as fiercely as it had obviously savaged his.

  "Emily, you have to listen to me. You have to understand, in a way that—that I can never make Lucy comprehend. All my life I've battled to make certain no one would love me. I'm not worth the—"

  "Let us decide that for ourselves, Ian. Your own value is something that you can't measure."

  "Don't you see? I'm so hungry for you that if I let myself touch you, take you, I could never have enough. I would be like he was. My father. I'd be drunk on the taste of the woman I love, unable to keep from hurting her."

  "How would you hurt me, Ian?"

  "By loving you. Don't you understand?" He levered himself to his feet, pillowing the doll on the chair. Then he stalked the length of the room, restless, edgy.

  "No. I don't understand, Ian. Tell me."

  "My father was a good, decent man. Everyone said so. He was faithful to his wife—a benighted saint in some circles. I don't doubt that he loved my mother in his way, but he had this—this insatiable hunger."

  "For what, Ian?"

  "Sons." Ian gave a caustic laugh. "My mother was constantly either with child or recovering from the birth of yet another frail and sickly babe. I'd watch her grow paler and thinner, watch the life die in her eyes a little more with each tiny grave in the family crypt. She would look so agonizingly tired. And sad. So sad."

  Emily thought of Jenny's lone grave and the anguish it symbolized, and she tried to imagine that pain magnified time and again with each one of the Blackheath infants.

  "Celestia was the eldest, and beneath my father's notice because she was a girl. I was two years younger. The son. The heir. Only I was a rebellious wretch even then. Not at all the upstanding specimen that my father had his heart set on. So he continued to... press my mother into her wifely duty. And every time—every time—she gave birth to a child, I sat with him in the drawing room while her screams rang out in the bedchamber above us. And I hated him, Emily. I hated him."

  "What happened to your mother wasn't your fault, Ian. You can't blame yourself. Whatever was between your parents was their own doing, not yours. You were a child. Just a boy, as full of life as Lucy is. That didn't make you responsible for your father's sins or your mother's inability to tell him no."

  "When I was fourteen the doctor told my father that he was killing her. If she attempted one more time to bear him a child, she would die. She was so weak then that her veins seemed to course just below the surface of her skin, blue ribbons that I could touch. I used to come upstairs and read to her from the Bible. She didn't want the comforting parts. No, it was hellfire and damnation, duty in the face of any price. That was what she wanted to hear, but I... hated it."

  Emily tried to imagine Ian as a boy—with the same flash of temper, the same restless spirit—entombed with his ailing mother in a sickroom, resenting his father for putting her there, hating himself for not being good enough, strong enough, to satisfy the man who had sired him.

  "When I was fifteen," he said, his voice heavy with regret, "I saw the signs again. I knew them all by then. The sickness in the morning, that pale, wan expression. The way her hand—such a birdlike little hand—would cup her stomach. She was frightened, Emily. With all those hounds of hell upon her heels, in her mind, a hundred sins. What sins, by God, could such a gentle woman have committed to damn her to hellfire?"

  His voice tore on a ragged groan. "I demanded the truth, and she gave it to me. That I was to have a little brother come May. A little brother who would live like all the others had not. One who would wear all the tiny clothes she stitched so faithfully, as if she truly believed the babe would use them. I went to my father, half crazed. He cried. Damn his soul to hell. He cried and told me it was a woman's lot to bring forth children. It was God's will that they bear their babies in travail, for the sin they had committed in the Garden of Eden."

  Ian wheeled around, fury pulsing in his voice. "My mother never committed any sin to suffer so greatly! Why the hell didn't Adam pay the price for eating the apple as well? Why only the woman... helpless... so damned helpless?"

  He fell silent for a moment, raising a shaking hand to his face. "I told my father that if he ever touched her again that way, I would kill him. In May I sat again listening to my mother's screams. Listening to them grow weaker and weaker, until they stopped altogether. My father was at her side, sobbing piteously into her coverlets, telling her he loved her."

  Emily sat in tortured silence, seeing so clearly the boy Ian had been, seeing how deeply he'd been scarred by his mother's agony and death. And always gnawing inside him was the knowledge that he was not the son his father had wanted, not the boy that Maitland Blackheath had desired so badly that he was willing to put his wife through torture, and ultimately sacrifice her to death to achieve his goal.

  "My sister, Celestia, was so horrified that she went to an Indian woman the day she turned sixteen and had the witch deaden her womb."

  "But Lucy—"

  "I don't know how Lucy came to be. Maybe the Indian woman's physicking didn't work or... I don't know. I only know that Celestia and I embarked from our childhood onto separate paths, both of which led straight to hell.

  "My father"—there was such loathing in the word—"didn't take well to his only son holding him accountable for what he'd done. He sent me away to school where I summarily determined to take the only vengeance in my power—to excel at being a rakehell, a scoundrel, a villain. A perfect villain who would shame him, leaving him with no son at all."

  "A perfect villain," she repeated, her voice choked at the thought of how desperately the boy Ian must have worked to achieve that end, how he must have pushed people away, courted their scorn, as his penance for what he saw as his own sins.

  "That is what love is to me, Emily Rose. A fever, a sickness that renders a man helpless, a hunger that makes him hurt the one he loves. When I was a boy, I vowed that I would not be like him, could never be like him. But when I look into your eyes, all soft and melting violet, and touch your mouth, I know that I am exactly as he was." Ian's voice was rough-edged with hopelessness. "I can never get enough of you, Emily," he breathed. "Never. And that is the one risk I am not willing to take."

  Slowly Emily got up and walked to where he stood, alone, so alone. "I bore the child of a man I didn't love... not in the way I love you. I lost that child. I've never wanted another babe, Ian. It would leave me too vulnerable, too open to pain. What if the child was hurt? What if she took a chill, and fever swept her away from me as it did my little Jenny? I blamed myself for Jenny's death, just as you blamed yourself for your mother's. But when I look into your face, I know that you would never hurt me as your father hurt your mother. And I know that if there was a child..."

  An anguished sound ripped from his throat.

  "If there was a child with your crystal blue eyes and your smile, Ian, sweet God, even though I'm more afraid than I've ever been in my life, I would want to reach out and touch that baby. Hold it. Love it. As much as I love you."

  "Emily, for God's sake, have mercy—"

  "I can't, Ian. This is too important. You were right about how things were between Alexander and me. I didn't love him the way a wife should. I couldn't seem to give him what he needed of me. I was his wife, but never his lover. And when he touched me I could feel my own failure and his guilt. I've spent years believing that if I had only been able to love him as a woman loves a man, he would have been able to fight through his illness and the financial adversity he was facing. That he would still be alive."

  "It's not your fault that he wasn't strong," Ian defended her. "You're the bravest, most beautiful, most generous woman I've ever known. You make me ache for you, Emily Rose. Burn for you. As a man burns for a woman."

  "Ian, please. Just this one time I want to know what it is like to be a man's lover. To be your lover. I want to know what it's like to feel a man I truly love touch me, kiss me." />
  "You don't love me, Emily. You don't even know me."

  "I know you better than you know yourself, Ian. I'm sure of it. Please. I'm not asking you to stay with me forever. I'm not even asking you to love me back. I just want one night."

  She went to where he stood, rigid as a carved stone statue, taut with pain and longing and the battle he was waging inside himself.

  "You don't know what you're asking," he rasped, his voice raw. "I've done so many things I'm not proud of. But this..." His face contorted. "Making love to you would be the most villainous of all."

  There was so much pain in him, so much yearning. His eyes were hot and aching and filled with an agonized reverence as they skimmed over her face.

  "No, Ian. What I experienced in Alexander's bed was hurtful. We were husband and wife under law, but not in our hearts." She drew in a breath that made her chest ache. "Ian, to feel what we feel, to love as we love, and never to touch, to take. That would be wicked, Ian. I know it in my heart."

  He said nothing, just looked at her in silent torment, a fallen angel reaching through the gates of heaven. If only he would allow her to let him in.

  "I couldn't bear to hurt you, Emily Rose. I couldn't stand the pain of knowing what I'd done to you."

  "Done to me?" Emily echoed softly.

  "Defiling you. In ways you could never even fathom. Because you cannot even imagine how empty I am. Sweet God, Emily Rose, don't make me blacken my soul even further by tainting you."

  "Defiling? Tainting? Ian, I'm asking you to make love to me. I know there have been other women. I accept that. But they never loved you as I love you. And you..." Her voice faltered for a heartbeat. "You never loved them the way you love me."

  He closed his eyes, arched his head back as if she had twisted a knife inside him. "Emily..."

  "Ian, those women are nothing between us, because they never touched you... here"—she pressed her hand against his heart—"any more than Alexander touched me."

  She cupped her palms against his jaw and stood on tiptoe, silencing him with delicate, melting kisses that did little to soften the harsh line of his mouth. Dissatisfied, she drew away and feathered her fingertips over those full, sensual lips, parting them just a little. Then she pressed her lips again to that moist, beckoning heat, her cheeks tingling with embarrassment as she let her tongue make a hesitant foray into Ian's mouth to touch the tip of his.

  His hands were clenched at his sides, but as Emily mated her mouth with his, making love to it the way Ian had taught her, she could feel the tremors begin in those steely muscles. The knowledge that she was the one who was making this man—so strong, so cynical, so hardened and arrogant—tremble beneath her hands was the most intoxicating feeling she had ever experienced.

  "Ian," she breathed against his lips, "oh, Ian..." She let her tongue steal out to trace the corner of his lips, then taste the firm upper lip that could curl with such mocking hauteur, such savage fury, such beguiling amusement. She skimmed down to savor the sulky curve of his lower lip, the soft, wine-sweet place that had made her think of fallen angels and wild, honeyed obsessions.

  The trembling in him was fiercer now, his breath rasping like a dying man's, but in anguish, so much anguish.

  She couldn't bear it, couldn't stand seeing the agony in those beloved features, couldn't bear the knowledge that she was the one bringing him so much pain.

  She couldn't stand to see him suffer so, even for one night in his arms to remember forever.

  Without a word she kissed him, soft on the corner of his mouth. Then she turned away and drifted quietly to the door.

  Her fingertips had barely brushed the doorknob when a sudden harsh cry rang out behind her.

  "Emily!" Just her name, but so much more. It seemed to echo through every fiber of her body. She turned slowly toward him, her gaze taking in the tortured planes of his face, the almost feverish light in his eyes.

  "Emily," he whispered, "don't... leave me."

  "No, Ian. I won't leave you."

  There was no slow toppling of walls, no crumbling of resolve. The bastions inside Ian Blackheath seemed to crash in thunderous fury around them.

  A wild animal groan started at the back of Ian's chest and tore free as he lifted her off her feet and into the savage heat of his kiss.

  Emily cried out at the fire in it, blue flames that hurtled through her veins with a swiftness that terrified her, bewitched her. His mouth was devouring hers, hungry, so hungry, as if he were dying of thirst and she were some magical wellspring of life.

  She tangled her hands in the dark waves of his hair, delving into the silky mysteries there, mysteries she was already unlocking beneath the undeniable pressure of Ian's body against hers, Ian's hands, urging her tighter, tighter against him, as if he were melting the boundaries of their two bodies and melding them into something wondrously new, magical.

  Making them one.

  She had heard the wedding vows solemnized between her and Alexander, the holy man who had joined them in marriage saying just such words. But when Alexander had touched her, it had pushed their spirits farther apart, not made their souls embrace each other, as if they had been searching for their second half for all eternity.

  Ian's mouth on hers was hot, wet magic. It was desperation. It was surrender. He scooped her up into his arms, as if she were as light as the clouds that dappled the night sky beyond the open window.

  He laid her on the softness of his bed and followed her down onto the feather tick, his hands stroking her, stoking the fires he'd ignited, his eyes anguished and ecstatic.

  "I want you, Emily," he moaned into her mouth as his fingers ripped at the ribbons that tied her night shift at the hollow between her breasts. "I want you."

  His hands were rough, eager. There was no tentative groping, no heat of shame, in their touch as he stripped the gossamer garment over her head and threw it aside.

  His breath caught, ragged, his lips parting in wonder as he laid her back on the rumpled sheets. Shadows clung about the bed, and Emily caught her lip between her teeth as Ian took a flickering candle from the bedside table and held it above her, bathing her naked body in golden light.

  He didn't touch her with anything but the reverence in his gaze, the worship and the wonder. "You're more beautiful than I could ever have dreamed, Emily Rose. I don't deserve you."

  Terror that he would leave her rippled through Emily. "Oh, Ian." She caught his wrist in the circle of her fingers and felt the pulse of his lifeblood throbbing there, deep and strong like the passions he had unleashed in her. "What a sad thing it would be if we got only what we think we deserve."

  He set the candle down, his wrist still in her grasp. She tugged him toward her, her mouth seeking his with feathery light kisses, her hands framing Ian's jaw, drawing him deeper against her mouth. Her fingers slid down the cords of his neck to the open collar of his shirt. Her left hand eased through the slit in the material to find the mat of silky-rough hair that webbed in delicious contrast over the steely curves and hollows of his chest.

  Hardly believing her own daring, Emily pushed his shirt open. His chest was magnificent, a glistening masterpiece of bone and muscle that caught the light and shadow and captured her gaze.

  He was beautiful.

  She told him so in a way that was foreign to her, that was so new, but felt so right.

  She trailed kisses down the flesh she had exposed and let her fingertips learn every dip, every curve gilded in rough, intriguing hair. He was scalding hot where she tasted him, the scent of recklessness mingling on his skin with the subtle musk of arousal.

  When she reached the flat, dark disk of his nipple, lost in intriguing whorls of hair, she let her tongue slip out to touch its pebble-hard tip.

  Ian swore, seeming to burst into flames beneath her touch. He pressed her down on the bed, his mouth capturing hers with a furious beauty. Wild open-mouthed kisses tore all sense of reason away from Emily as Ian ripped off his breeches.

  He
was naked against her, one long thigh flung over her restless legs, pulling her hard against the crags and valleys of his body. His palm swept up to cup her breast as if it were the most precious of treasures, and she felt the bud stiffen against his callused hand, felt a dark, bewitching need spiral from that aching crest to the hidden place between her thighs. A place already anticipating possession by the daunting length of his sex that was pressed against her belly.

  Velvet... His shaft felt like velvet-sheathed steel against her, rigid and demanding, as he pulled her tight against him, giving neither of them a chance to deny how savagely he wanted her, in that most primal way.

  Emily arched her head back, as Ian took drugging nips at the vulnerable curve of her jaw, her neck, then soothed them with the moist abrasion of his tongue. She whimpered as he coasted those kisses down the curve of her breast to play about that moon-pale mound with his mouth and the stubble-roughened satin of his cheeks, his jaw.

  He murmured words against her skin, whispers she couldn't understand with her mind. She listened to them with her heart.

  His mouth left her breast, and hovered for what seemed an eternity over her throbbing nipple. His breath washed over it, a sweet, moist heat.

  Emily couldn't breathe, waiting, waiting. She tangled her hands in that thick rosewood-colored hair and arched her back to thrust the hardened rosette against his lips. They parted, closed, sucked. A wet seduction that pushed her past endurance, a hungry caress that left her quivering.

  Never had she suspected how a man's mouth could feel there, drawing sustenance from her, giving it back again.

  He groaned her name against her fevered flesh, catching the bud in his teeth and tugging gently, so gently, before he released it.

  His hands were everywhere, on her breasts, on her hip, smoothing over the round curve of her buttocks. Hands that were shaking with wonder, hands that were building tiny fires all over her body, then returning to feed the flames.

  Hands that were treasuring her, worshiping her. Loving her, in a way that made what had happened in her marriage bed seem pale and sad and more than a little tragic.