The seductress who had opened the door to him disappeared instantly and she suddenly seemed self-conscious. ‘Oh... I thought you had come to kiss me?’ Her soulful eyes were distinctly wounded. ‘But of course it can wait if you don’t want to tonight.’
He watched her hands clasp in front of her awkwardly a second before they burrowed out of sight in the billowing silk. Then he realised he had unintentionally hurt her feelings because she was dubious of her own attractiveness. Damn Penhurst to hell, the blasted fool!
‘Hell’s bells, woman! Of course I want to kiss you.’ He gestured helplessly at the flimsy garment she was wearing and felt the pain between his eyebrows double. ‘I am trying to be a gentleman, damn it...trying to give you time to get used to the idea of being with another man after the fool you married knocked all the confidence out of you...something I will fail miserably at while you are looking like that.’ His greedy eyes raked her body once again and he did groan. ‘Have some mercy, Penny. I’m only human. Unless you want to be thoroughly ravished by a man rendered devoid of all sense at the sight of you, please, I beg of you, go put on something more substantial.’
Her eyes finally raised to meet his shyly. ‘And what if I do want to be thoroughly ravished?’
‘Then heaven help us both.’ Hadleigh closed the distance between them in two quick strides and hauled her into his arms. ‘Because right now I want you more than I’ve ever wanted a woman before and if I don’t have you, it will probably kill me.’
He didn’t hide the truth of those words in a gentle restrained kiss. Instead, he poured every bit of his desire and unquenched frustration into it, plundering her mouth and running his hands possessively over her body. To his delight, her ardour matched his and she stripped off his coat as her mouth slanted passionately over his. As soon as it dropped to the floor, her fingers went clumsily to the buttons of his waist coat as she backed him against the wall. As soon as she wrestled it open it joined the other garment on the floor.
‘I can’t stop thinking about last night.’ Her breath warmed his neck as her teeth nuzzled it. ‘And the feel of your hands on me. I should have asked you to stay.’ Her hands tunnelled beneath his shirt and splayed across his chest. ‘I wanted you to stay.’ Then they dropped to the waistband of his breeches and began to feel for the buttons of his falls.
It was all happening so fast. Too fast. She deserved the thorough and meticulous seduction he had promised himself he would give her for their first time, one that told her she was completely adored, not a fast and fevered coupling. Instinct told him she had suffered enough of those and he wanted this to be different. Damn it all to hell, it had to be different!
Hadleigh dragged his lips from hers and hoisted her into his arms, then carried her to the fireplace where he deposited her with precious little finesse. A mallet to crack a nut. Good grief, he needed to calm down. ‘Wait right here.’
Breathing hard, he let himself into her bedchamber and stripped the eiderdown and pillows from her bed. He wanted nothing of this experience to remind her of the last. While she stood watching, bemused, he made them a little nest on the floor of her cosy sitting room. This had been the room in which they had shared most of themselves, after all, sat here, by the glowing fire, so the location seemed fitting. Finally, he reached out his hands and took hers, bringing both to his lips and doing his level best to ignore the insistent bulge in his breeches.
‘I won’t rush this, Penny. You are too important to me and this night is too important to us. I am quite determined to make thorough and meticulous love to you. And I’m afraid I am far too stubborn to be swayed from that quest.’
Chapter Twenty
Tristan kissed her again, tenderly this time, yet Penny could feel how valiantly he fought for control. Against her chest, she could feel his heart hammering against his ribcage, felt his body tremble as she touched him, felt the long, hot, hard length of him against her stomach. Solid proof he liked what he saw.
He deepened the kiss and smoothed his palms down her arms and then back slowly to her shoulders. She felt his fingers go to the lace which edged the scandalous neckline, felt him push it slowly over her shoulders and then stilled when she realised that that single, thin layer of silk was the only thing separating her naked body from his eyes. She extricated herself from his arms, hoping she still appeared confident and alluring and went to blow out the lamp nearest.
‘Leave it.’ He caught her gently by the wrist and tugged her back. ‘I want to see you.’ One finger traced her jaw, slowly caressed down the sensitive side of her neck before lodging itself once again beneath the lace. ‘Let me look at you, Penny—all of you.’
She held her breath and nodded, dreading it, looking down rather than watch his eyes as he slowly smoothed the garment from her shoulders. As it was designed to, it slithered down with ease, puddling at her feet, and she heard Tristan’s breath hitch. Was that a good sign? Proudly, she set her shoulders before daring to look up, then found her own breath hitching at the sight of the obvious emotions swirling in his eyes. Admiration. Desire. Lust so strong and palpable she could feel it.
The backs of his fingers grazed her cheek before tangling in her hair. ‘Beautiful.’ The word was like a sigh, a benediction. ‘I knew you would be.’ He kissed her mouth. Her neck. Ran his palms gently over her skin as if she were precious. ‘Come...lie with me.’
Feeling exposed, yet oddly choked with emotion at his reaction, Penny allowed him to lead her to the eiderdown. She sat, wondering how to arrange her limbs to appear the most attractive and then gave up to hug her knees instead while he tugged off his shirt, seeing for the first time what she had only touched. Broad shoulders. The flat plain of his abdomen. The light dusting of hair, the same colour as the darkest shades of blond on his head, which covered his chest and arrowed down through his navel.
His fingers fumbled with the remaining buttons of his falls and she realised he was nervous, too, and that knowledge empowered her. ‘Allow me.’ She twisted around to come up on her knees, grateful her hair had arranged itself to cover a great deal of her modesty, and undid them for him, drinking in the sight as she pushed the fabric from his hips.
To her complete delight, naked, he looked nothing like Penhurst. Tristan’s skin glowed in the firelight, encasing taut muscle beneath. The male part of him stood stiff and proud, much bigger and thicker than the other she had seen, but where that had made her want to avert her eyes, this made her want to stare. Want to touch.
Should she?
As if reading her mind, he settled his big body beside her on top of the covers, laying propped on one elbow as she stretched out next to him. He took her hand and placed a kiss inside her palm, following it with a trail of soft, open-mouthed kisses along her arm and shoulder that felt sublime. When he reached her mouth, he tilted his body to rest against hers and she marvelled at the sheer beauty of his skin touching hers.
What came next was equally as unexpected as his hands and then his mouth explored everywhere. None of it felt intrusive, nor could she even begin to detach herself from what he was so skilfully doing, as sensation after sinful sensation shimmered through her. He had promised to make thorough and meticulous love to her and he was true to his word. Not an inch of her body was missed. Fingers. Toes. Breasts. Belly. His tongue brushed her navel. His teeth grazed her hips. While his fingers wandered a lazy path from her knee to her thigh, then gently dipped between them to the place her body shockingly screamed the most for his touch.
She felt him smile against her breast as her body shuddered at the intensely intimate contact. ‘Is that nice?’ The tip of his finger had found the unexpected place where every nerve-ending apparently merged into one.
‘Yes.’
‘How about this?’ It was such a small but deadly caress and her body involuntarily arched with the pleasure.
‘Yes...’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Please don’t stop.’ Because
it felt so good. Overwhelming. Necessary.
Penny thought nothing could feel as wonderful, until he sucked her straining nipple into his mouth and teased it simultaneously. She moaned, surprised that such a wanton, abandoned sound had come from her lips and felt her legs fall open shamelessly, not caring that he could see her most secret place as well as touch it.
She was too lost by then, desperately trying to reach a place she couldn’t see and did not recognise, to think of anything that extended beyond that tiny bud of nerve-endings and the splendid things he was to doing them.
When he shifted his position to lay above her and that part of him pressed insistently against her body, she welcomed it, her eyes fluttering closed as he slowly edged inside and moaned again when he completely filled her. By then, none of her past so much as occurred to her because he was moving so perfectly inside her, loving her completely with his body, so wonderfully thoroughly and meticulously, that nothing else existed beyond him and her. With each deep caress, she fell further and further. Further and further. Until the hot, molten, amber stars in his eyes seemed to explode and fill her heart with such incomprehensible but all-encompassing beauty, all she could do was cling to him helplessly as they fell together.
* * *
Hadleigh woke in pitch black darkness curled around her and decided there and then that was precisely how he always wanted to wake up. In his thirty years on the planet, he had never felt this sort of connection with another person. Or allowed himself to feel this depth of emotion voluntarily. The most splendid and surprising thing about it was he didn’t feel like running or blocking it all out. Penny owned his heart. Odd really, that such a momentous thing should be so easy, yet it was. He didn’t need to weigh up the pros or cons, test the evidence or debate the reasons. Some things just were and this was one of them.
He was in love.
The realisation had hit fully some time between her opening the door in that outrageous nightgown and as he had peeled it off with reverence, although alongside that realisation came another. He’d been in love with her for a while. Probably since the night of the flour, if he were honest with himself, or perhaps that first time they had kissed. Hadleigh wasn’t entirely certain he could pinpoint the precise moment and decided it didn’t matter. All that really mattered was that he loved her. And probably should tell her. Should have told her before she fell asleep in his arms, only then he’d had no words. He’d been so moved and choked by the honesty and perfection of their love making, all he could do was feel.
He was coming to believe intense emotions weren’t all that dangerous after all. The grief he had allowed himself to experience was raw and painful—yet somehow in accepting that, the experience was cathartic. He had realised through it that this house wasn’t just a house or Pandora’s box filled with everything that was bad and painful, it was also the guardian of his most treasured memories. His mother was here. That invisible yet solid link to her was comforting and...pleasant. He was glad he had found her again. Glad he had found home.
Was the regret still there and the tragedy? Of course it was. But Penny was right. You had to experience the bad to appreciate the good. And now Penny would be intertwined with his memories of this place for ever. They had found each other here, bared their souls, shared their bodies. The most wonderful thing about all of that was this was merely the start for them. Life shouldn’t be all about work. It deserved to be enriched with love.
He happily closed his eyes again and snuggled, only to hear the whimper coming from next door.
Freddie.
With a sigh of resignation, he carefully disentangled his arm from her waist and slipped out from the tangled eiderdown. Another new aspect of his life he was only too happy to embrace. He was going to be a father and already knew he had solid foundations to build that on. After all, thanks to his own father, he already knew all the things not to do. Poor Leatham was stumbling into the experience blind. Of course, Freddie was older and his friends would soon be confronted with a newborn, but Hadleigh would try to take that in his stride as he and Penny expanded their family—and she knew what she was doing there. Together they would work it all out.
As the fire had clearly long died, he groped around in the dark for his breeches and shirt, slipped them on and padded barefoot into the boy’s room. The child was sat up, his small fists rubbing his eyes, and his expression suggested he was about to wail the place down at any moment.
‘Come on, little man.’ He hoisted him into his arms and kissed him. Warm milk was obviously required. ‘Let’s leave your poor mother to sleep, shall we?’
On stealthy yet quick feet, he swiftly manoeuvred the pair of them out into the hallway and headed to the kitchen, realising too late that he had left Freddie’s bottle on the nightstand. After a fruitless search for a spare with the child balanced on one hip and the boy already fighting him, he decided the milk was more important than the vessel which housed it and set some to warm in the pan. He would spoon it into him if he had to. How hard could it be?
While they waited, he grabbed a couple of biscuits from the pantry and handed one to Freddie and munched on the other himself. This appeared to work wonders, as the boy seemed perfectly content to grasp the thing with both hands and suck it to death.
Milk warmed, Hadleigh sloshed some in a cup which he deposited on the table, then, predicting a royal mess otherwise, he snatched a towel and, with Freddie on his knee and ignoring the soggy remnants of biscuit his grabbing small hands smeared on his face, tied it around his neck. ‘Right, young man. It’s time to practise some cup skills. Proper young gentlemen do not drink out of bottles.’
He let the boy grip the handle while he supported the bowl, and helped him guide it to his mouth, smiling as the child pursed his lips and made a complete hash of drinking from it. Milk spilled everywhere and he congratulated himself on have the good foresight to grab that towel. ‘That’s it, Freddie, you can do this.’
It was an uphill battle, but one Hadleigh appeared to be winning. Each time Freddie lost patience, they would wrestle for control of the cup. To distract him, he blew raspberries on his pudgy cheek and was rewarded with delighted childish giggles complete with an endearing milk moustache. ‘I suspect I might have a knack for this parenting lark.’ Which boded very well for the additional children he fully intended to plant in Penny’s belly as soon as humanly possible. He had been careful last night, out of respect for her and because they hadn’t yet discussed the future, but once they had and if she was agreeable, he saw no reason not to start straight away. ‘Can’t leave you a lonely, only child, can we, Freddie?’ Because both he and Penny had been and then, when their parents passed, they’d had no one until they had found each other. Siblings would have helped.
‘There you both are.’ A very rumpled, very ravished-looking Penny appeared at the door, her lips still beautifully pink and swollen from his kisses, her hair a thoroughly shocking tangle he could proudly claim full responsibility for. No doubt for proprieties’ sake she had forgone the seductive nightgown in favour of a very sensible thick one done up to the neck and an equally bulky shawl. They made no difference. His mind could see through both of them and thoroughly enjoyed what it saw.
‘We didn’t want to wake you up.’ And because he couldn’t help himself. ‘Did you miss me?’
She smiled shyly and nodded. ‘I thought you had gone back to your own room.’
‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’
‘The floor was hard?’ Then she blushed prettily, no doubt remembering just as he was exactly what they had done on that floor. ‘Here, let me take him. You have an important day tomorrow.’
She reached out her arms and he caught one of her hands, brought it to his lips. ‘I thoroughly enjoyed tonight.’
‘So did I.’ She looked down at their locked hands rather than directly at him. There were unshed tears swimming in her eyes. ‘Thank you... I had no
idea it could be like that.’
‘It’s not always like that.’ He needed to let her know how it had affected him. ‘That was particularly wonderful. If you want the honest truth, I had no idea it could be like that either.’ She gifted him with the most beautiful smile, his heart skipped a beat and the words he had been thinking happily tumbled out. ‘Marry me, Penny.’
He had expected another smile at his proposal at the very least, not her stunned and pained expression. ‘Don’t ask me that.’ She tugged her hand away, took Freddie and put some distance between them.
‘Why not?’ The look of distaste on her face wounded him. Her sudden need for detachment made him panic.
‘Because I can’t.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
Reasons not to kiss Tristan number three: I will not give another person control over me ever again.
‘This is all too sudden.’
‘Not for me it isn’t. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.’
One of those unshed tears spilled over her ridiculously long lashes. ‘Don’t say that.’
‘Don’t say that?’ What did that mean? Were his feelings one sided? But he’d seen them written with his own eyes.
I have a deep affection for him.
Was deep affection not quite love?
‘I am not ready to hear it...or even think about it... I’ve been married and hated it.’
‘That was him!’ The unfairness and the pain made him snap at her. ‘Not me!’ He saw Freddie’s little eyes widen and fought for calm. His next words came out more measured and reasoned. Imploring her to understand. ‘I am not like that and you know it. I don’t want a chattel or a subordinate, Penny. I am neither cruel nor callous. I don’t want to control you or stop you doing what you want. Rebuild Ridley’s. With my blessing and without any interference. I won’t stand in your way. I simply want to be with you.’
The Determined Lord Hadleigh Page 22