by Sophia Nash
He sucked in his gut until it ached with fatigue and then let himself loose on her, regret for his inability to hold back instantly flooding him. He plunged deep, deeper, like a rutting bull, overwhelming her beneath him. Worry warred with intense pleasure as he struggled to harness his desire.
Burning…his immense hard length bore into her, and she was powerless to stop it. He held absolute dominion over her and she finally understood the difference between quiet intimacy with her dearest husband and carnal possession by a man in his prime.
It was so very different from anything she had known; it was undeniably more than a little frightening given its primal nature. But seeing the wild hunger in his eyes, she reveled in the pure feeling of being intensely desired—without apology.
He had stopped after one powerful, endlessly long thrust, and was now shaking, his entire body as hard and immovable as a tree trunk. More than anything, she wanted to offer him all the pleasure she could after everything he had given her during the last few days. But he seemed to be waiting for a sign from her.
She eased the tension from her fingers, which clutched his shoulders, and whispered into his hair, “Yes…”
A harsh groan reverberated from his chest and like a great wave from the sea, his body undulated, surging deeper inside her.
Her hips ached from the massive body clasped between them, but still she urged him, sensing his concern for her and his desperation. “Don’t stop…please, Michael.”
He tipped back his head and roughly drew in a large lungful of air. As if controlled by another force, he seemed to unleash himself, hurtling his hips against her, filling her, stretching her until the intensity overwhelmed them both. Her breath caught the same moment he opened his eyes and stared at her, his golden eyes darkened with undistilled desire. The intensity she saw in those glittering depths was too great a promise, and she lowered her gaze.
“Look at me,” he insisted as if she would one day forget him. “Don’t look away.”
In that moment, Grace recognized the voracious passion within him and knew she returned it measure for measure without fear. She fully bloomed from the nourishment.
Wordlessly, their eyes enraptured by the sight of each other, their bodies and minds trapped and still, Grace felt a pulsing grow from her depths. And as if he read her need, he surged forward until her vision tunneled. Her body stiffened and spiraled wildly to completion, until finally, she could breathe once more.
With a harsh gasp, he withdrew and spilled himself in great pulsing shots. Arms shaking and with deliberate care, he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her tenderly, reverently.
He rolled to her side and swiped at the wetness before pulling her into his arms; his breathing still uneven.
Dazed and overwhelmed, Grace tried to regain her composure. Desperate to end the piercing, sudden stillness after the storm, she latched on to her first disordered thought. “Are you all right?”
“Shouldn’t I be asking you that?” His voice was nearly gone.
She stroked an unruly lock of hair from his face. “Are you suggesting I’m still asking the wrong questions?”
She felt his arms squeeze her closer. “No. I’m just that worried.”
Grace reveled in the warm strength of his arms, and wished she could tamp down the welling desire to never leave this illusionary bubble of happiness. How was she going to manage it? “You shouldn’t be,” she assured him.
“I crushed you, hurt you.”
“No.” She nuzzled under his iron-like jaw. “Just the opposite.”
He didn’t appear to believe her. “And you might find yourself with child, despite my efforts. God, you must promise me—promise me faithfully that you will write to me immediately if there is a child.”
“You mustn’t worry. I rarely…well, I almost never experience what other ladies complain about.”
“But you must promise me.” There was a hollow tone laced in his words. “I couldn’t bear the thought of a child of mine walking this earth without me being there to protect…” He leaned back, unable to continue.
“Of course I would tell you. I would never deny you your own child.” She rushed on, knowing she was ruining the intimacy of the moment. “You were an orphan, weren’t you? You met Mr. Bryn at a foundling home. Did you ever know either of your parents?”
His eyes searched hers. “My father,” he began, then stopped abruptly.
She reached up to stroke his head. “Will you not tell me what happened?”
“Nothing unusual. There was a fire when I was a child and, well, all was lost to me, and I was taken to Lamb’s Conduit Fields.”
“The hospital for foundlings?” she continued when he nodded slightly. “You didn’t have any other relations?”
“None,” he said with overt finality.
“I’ve no real family left either. No brothers or sisters,” she murmured.
She sensed his keen desire to stop examining his painful past. “Michael?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
She pulled away from his arms and eased up to kiss his cheek. “For confiding in me again. And for showing me.”
His heavy arms pulled her to him and rolled her on top of him. “Showing you what, sweetheart?”
“That I’m perhaps not so very different from my friends after all. That I’m not—well, that I’m not what I overheard in London.”
“And what foolish thing was that?”
“The ‘Countess from the Isle of Ice.’”
A warm, slow smile overspread his face. “Sweetheart, everyone knows Vikings lived in the northern climes for a reason—”
She laughed and shook her head. “I am not a Viking.”
“—Their passionate blood runs too hot to live anywhere else.” He tugged her head down to rest in the comfort of his immense chest. “Idiots, all such bloody idiots, in town. Although…”
“Yes?”
“I’ll admit your wee feet are of a cold I’ve never encountered before. Come.” He sat up with a groan and lifted her in his arms. “Let me wash you and get you settled for the night. You need to rest—you made me forget how much blood you lost.”
Grace encircled his neck with her arms. The poor man. He had no idea. If he thought for a moment that she was going to waste one of the last few nights she would ever have with him by sleeping, he was about to learn differently.
She smiled to herself. Viking blood. He had said she had Viking blood coursing through her veins.
The rest of the night was filled with short intervals of unconsciousness followed by painfully intense roiling emotions and actions, instigated always by her. But they shared few words between them. It seemed that while their bodies could not stop the pull of attraction, their minds would not allow the chance of any words tearing them apart. That is, until the first pink streaks of dawn colored the walls of the simple chamber.
Michael caressed the back of her neck, sad to see the red chafe marks from his night’s growth of beard on the slender column. Her words interrupted his reflection.
“You never did tell me the end of your dream the other night,” she whispered, her eyes still closed.
“I’m not sure I can remember it now,” he said gruffly. He dipped to kiss the top of her head.
“You said you saw me under a tree with a book…waiting.”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Who was I waiting for?”
He paused, determined not to go down this path. “Well, it certainly wasn’t for Mr. Brown.”
She rose up on her forearm and looked at him. “Why do you do that?”
“What, sweetheart?”
“Turn the moment with humor.”
He stared at her. “Because the truth of it is better left unsaid.”
Her expression played havoc on his good sense, more so than any words ever would. He brushed back the lush gold hair that had tumbled over her shoulder and could not stop himself from saying wha
t should not be said.
“Why, you were waiting for me, Grace.” The first taste of her given name on his lips was unbearably intimate. And as intoxicating as the potent yearning and happiness exposed now in her vibrant blue eyes. Ah, he shouldn’t have told her. It would do nothing toward bringing her a lasting happiness that was not his to offer.
And it made everything that would occur in the next hour all the more bitter.
Chapter 7
His head heavy but his body drained, Michael knew as he was roused from slumber yet again that he had rarely experienced such profound emotion or exhaustion. Grace lay curled beside him, and he lifted his head, which weighed five stone, to reverently gaze at the astonishing woman beside him. In this twilight of wakefulness, the poignant memories of her tentative and oh-so-achingly tender invitations to take her—over and over again—during the night unraveled in his mind.
And then, with a muffled sound below, all the devils from hell attacked their lost corner of heaven.
With a vengeance.
Long after, Michael wondered which of the two sensibilities he experienced had been worse; the pure terror of discovery, or the flood of relief that a brigade of Bow Street runners hungry for blood money had not found him. Of only one thing he was certain. None of it compared to the feelings he would endure in the weeks to come.
From instinct borne of experience, Michael jumped from the bed with a curse and dragged on his buckskin leggings. “Countess,” he shook her, “wake up.” The sound of many footsteps echoed from the stairs.
He reached for his saddlebag and the pistol he always kept there, but hesitated. He couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t risk inciting an exchange of gunfire that might harm her. He would just have to go without a fight. He envisioned the entire affair in a moment: they’d place him in shackles and drag him down the stairs and she would run behind them, begging to know what he had done. Good God.
He tossed Gracie’s crumpled shift toward her and roughly pulled her from the bed when she didn’t respond. Her garment slid past her surprised expression when the chamber’s door shuddered and violently gave way to a rash of humanity, none of whom bore the telltale signs of the Bow Street bloodhounds.
Her eyes wide, Grace grabbed her gown and clutched it in front of her as Michael tugged his shirt over his head and attempted to help Grace find the arms of her garment.
“Looks like your lucky day, Ellesmere,” said the dark devil leading the troupe to the unruffled gentleman beside him. “It appears the pleasure of peeling off your sodding hide for letting Grace go will have to be deferred. We’ll draw and quarter this rotter first.”
A tiny old lady dressed in dull black from the tips of her high-heeled boots to her jaunty hat rushed through the gap and grasped Grace so tightly Michael could see the fragile bones through a misshapened hand.
“Oh my dearest, dearest…Oh Grace, I was so worried. We scoured every last dwelling in this parish. I thought you were—” The lady promptly burst into tears.
“Ata,” Grace said, leaning down to accept her into her arms, “I’m perfectly fine. I was very fortunate to be—Oh Mr. Brown, thank goodness you are safe. I—”
A balding old coot stepped forward.
“Brown?” Michael cut in, staring at Grace. “He’s Mr. Brown?”
“Why, yes I am,” the gentleman said. “Although I didn’t realize my name was said with such infamy in these parts.”
The tiny virago muttered, “Your name is now synonymous with disgrace throughout the British Isles, you old codger.”
“We all know who he is,” the infuriated dark-haired bloke said loud enough to shake the rafters. “But who in bloody hell are you?”
“Perhaps it would be even more interesting to learn, Helston, why he’s lurking about the countess’s chambers in his smallclothes.” Worry lined the brow of the more reserved gentleman.
The darker man gave the other a sour glance. “I don’t give a bloody damn about any of his answers, actually. The only question is whether we bury him alive now or flay his lecherous hide first.”
“Luc, please,” Grace said, mortification warring with relief in seeing Mr. Brown unharmed. “Stop, all of you. Mr. Ranier saved my life. I’m greatly indebted to him.”
The devil-like nob examined Michael’s form with disgust. “Ranier, is it?”
Michael nodded once.
Grace rushed forward. “Mr. Ranier, please allow me to introduce the Duke of Helston, Luc St. Aubyn. Luc, Mr. Michael Ranier.”
The man actually scowled as he tipped his head a fraction of a degree. She’d ruthlessly butchered etiquette by introducing an aristocrat to a blacksmith instead of the other way around.
“And this is my dearest friend Merceditas St. Aubyn, the Dowager Duchess of Helston, Luc’s grandmother. Ata, may I present Mr. Ranier?”
Michael grasped the elderly lady’s good hand and bent to hover his mouth above skin as thin as parchment. “Your Grace.”
The countess continued, “And may I present the Marquis of Ellesmere, Quinn Fortesque and also Mr. John Brown?”
Michael nodded briefly to Ellesmere and turned to shake the elderly man’s aged hand. “It appears I owe you an apology, sir,” Michael murmured.
“Really? I can’t imagine why,” Brown replied with a gummy smile. “And here I wanted to express my un-dying gratitude. Lady Sheffield,” he turned to Grace, “I don’t mean to burden you, lass, but I believe you took ten years off my life when I returned to that blasted carriage to find it empty.”
“And well you deserved it for leaving my dearest Grace to freeze to death,” the duchess added, her visage drawn with fatigue.
The older man’s face drained of color.
Grace shook her head. “Ata, you’re entirely mistaken. Mr. Brown, I hope, in time, you will forgive me. I was chilled and I fear I wasn’t thinking clearly. And well, if not for Mr. Ranier—”
The Duke of Helston interrupted with a disgusted sound. “There is far too much fawning about to my liking, and not nearly enough thrashing. Now Grace, you are to go belowstairs with Ata for the moment while Ellesmere, Brown, and this Mr. Ranier and I converse. Then you are to gather your affairs. We’ll not presume to take up Mr. Ranier’s time any longer than necessary.”
Grace looked at him and then at the other assembled personages. Michael gave her credit. Any other lady of consequence would have been blushing and stumbling with embarrassment for having been caught in the bed of a stranger.
Instead, she calmly walked to Helston and grasped his hands. “Luc, I’m sorry to have caused you such trouble and worry.”
The hotheaded hellion pulled her into his arms and crushed her to him. A lethal desire to wrest her from that bloody aristocrat engulfed Michael.
But in that brief moment, Michael spied an intense combination of relief and something else overspread the duke’s features, before the man hid his face in her hair and whispered something to her.
Grace pulled away slightly and stared into Helston’s eyes, then shook her head.
The duke’s tiny grandmother grasped Michael’s arm. “You’re very tall.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Very large all over.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“I like tall men.”
Mr. Brown snorted.
Michael looked down into her wrinkled face. The dowager had the most remarkable dark, penetrating eyes with penciled eyebrows, and a mass of iron-colored hair that threatened to come undone and tumble down to her shoulders. Her lips were shrewd.
“It’s the short ones you can’t count on,” she shared.
Mr. Brown made an exasperated sound again and rolled his eyes.
Michael glanced at the last man, the one named Ellesmere, silently brooding at Helston’s elbow. The unmistakable air of guilt lurked in his expression. Ah, the jilting bastard in the flesh.
“Quinn,” Grace pleaded, “I must ask you, as the one who possesses the coolest head here, to exert a measure of rational t
hinking. Mr. Ranier is not to be blamed for what I know must appear, at first glance, very odd. But, you see, the fault is all mine. I was injured and near to frozen when he found me. We were forced to share…” A deeper color rose along her neckline.
“Hush,” Helston said, releasing her. “Grace, you are not guilty of a single bloody thing. Now, please allow me to escort you to—”
“No. If you think I’m going to leave you here to bash each other’s heads, you’re quite mistaken.”
“Ah, lass,” Mr. Brown said, “look at it this way, we’ll all be on our way much faster if you go belowstairs now.”
The dowager held her hands out to Grace. “Come, Grace. Neither one of us has a chance of putting a dent in their stubborn, ill-conceived notions.”
Grace sighed with exasperation.
“Just think of the pleasure we’ll take in reminding them later of their stupidity and how much they deserve every last bruise for not listening to you. Oh, and Mr. Ranier?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I think it only fair to warn you, since it’s three to one, that my grandson possesses a nasty left hook. Although, I would not underestimate Ellesmere’s right jab—it’s called an uppercut, isn’t it? Well, whatever it is, it left a rather impressive mark on Luc’s jaw last summer.”
Helston glowered darkly, while Ellesmere appeared vastly uncomfortable.
“Grace, fear not,” the dowager continued. “Remember they were similarly idiotic about that affair, but it considerably shortened the end result, don’t you agree?”
Grace was biting her lip, it appeared, to keep from laughing. “Mr. Ranier, I’m so sorry. And after everything you’ve done for me.”
Helston glared at him.
“This is impossible,” Grace continued. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Go on now, Countess. The jack-a-dandies are correct. We do need to parley,” Michael said, keeping his expression deceptively unconcerned.
Grace glanced at the sullen faces and appeared to give up by addressing the elderly duchess. “Do you like porridge? I shall prepare breakfast for all of you.”