Hadrian

by Grace Burrowes

  “Kiss, Avie,” he reminded her when she merely hung over him, focusing on the place where their bodies met. When his mouth found hers again, he became ravenous, and she gloried in his passion. His tongue invaded, his lips and teeth consumed, and yet she wanted to be closer. When his hand closed carefully over her breast, she pushed against his palm, beseechingly, shamelessly.

  Memories of Hart Collins’s assault slunk at the edges of her awareness, bringing with them echoes of pain, humiliation, shock, and grief. Avis beat the memories away with a cudgel of pure, keen rage. For twelve years, she’d managed, coped, and compensated in isolation. For twelve years, she’d allowed herself no intimacy with anybody, shared no confidences, indulged in no affection.

  Damn Hart Collins to the coldest circle of hell for all the ways he’d ruined her life. Avis would not allow a selfish, violent, puerile thief to steal the beauty from what Hadrian offered now.

  “Easy, love,” Hadrian whispered against her throat. “You can stop me, Avie. Any time. You say so, and I’ll stop, but I won’t want to. Ever.”

  He nuzzled her breast, and frustration had Avis growling. And then, blessedly, his hand on her thigh shifted her skirts away, so she could be closer still.

  “Hadrian, please.”

  “No begging,” he said, undoing the drawstring and bows that held her bodice together. “You may command me all you please, but no begging.”

  Hadrian’s hands were not the elegant, pale appendages of a pampered gentleman. Shearing had taken a toll, the bright sunshine of approaching summer had too. His knuckles had been scraped, and a blister was healing between his right thumb and forefinger.

  As he unlaced her bodice, then set to work on her jumps, his hands were beautiful.

  “I want to hurry,” Avis said, both because she might lose her nerve, but also because Hadrian had bestowed upon her the great gift of honest arousal.

  “I want to savor the unveiling of your treasures, my lady. We’ll hurry soon.”

  Good God, how did a woman endure such consideration? Beneath Avis’s dress and jumps lay her chemise, and that too sported a plethora of tidy bows.

  When all those bows, hundreds of them surely, had been patiently untied, Hadrian lay back and didn’t so much as push her clothing aside.

  “More kisses,” he said, his hand drifting along Avis’s thigh. “As many kisses as there are leaves on the budding rowans. Kiss me as deep as that endless, bottomless pond, as hot as the summer sun on your bare neck at mid-day, as passionately—”

  Avis kissed him, lest he prose on for the length of a Sunday sermon. Still, he teased her, with his tongue and lips, and so enthralling were his kisses that Avis took long moments to notice that his hand was stealing along her leg, frothing up her skirts.

  “Patience is not always a virtue, Hadrian Bothwell.” Avis tugged on his hair even as she settled right on his falls and tried to find relief in simple pressure.

  He might have laughed, or groaned, she didn’t care which. She took his free hand and pressed it over her bare breast.

  And that was an entire universe of fascinating sensations.

  Heat—Hadrian’s hands were warm—and tactile impressions. His calloused palm cupping the tender underside of Avis’s breast, then gentle, knowing fingers teasing at her nipple. If Hadrian’s palm was warm, his fingers were lit spills, igniting glory across the night sky inside her. Avis’s breathing deepened as Hadrian’s hand rode the rise and fall of her chest.

  “Tell me what you need, Avie.”

  He kissed the slope of her breast, a sweet, lazy tease for which she would get even, some fine day when her reasoning powers had been restored. Avis bent forward and took her weight on one hand so she could lever up enough to give him room to touch her.

  Touch…her…right…there.

  Bless him, he understood what she sought and brushed his thumb through her curls—more damnable deliberateness, but in a promising location, at least. In the last functioning quadrant of her rational mind, Avis grasped that Hadrian was being patient and considerate, giving her time to panic, to change her mind, to reconsider.

  She nearly hated him for his kindness, and then the pad of his thumb grazed over that particular spot she’d never had the nerve to explore on her own, and the intensity of the resulting sensation nearly struck her dumb.

  “Again.” Avis anchored her free arm around Hadrian’s shoulders and held on, as that wonderful touch glided across her slick flesh again and again, the pressure minutely increasing each time.

  She remembered not to beg, but twelve years ago, Hadrian had made sure she at least knew the pleasure her body was capable of.

  A breeze stirred the green canopy overhead, and dappled shadows shook and danced on the blankets, as desire shook and danced through Avis. The sun was a perfect benevolence, the scent of new grass and wildflowers a delicate fragrance. For a moment, Avis savored the sheer perfection of the setting Hadrian had chosen, for here in a high, secluded glen, she could be free of past and future, and give herself up to the joy of his skilled loving.

  She soared, free of all save the pleasure Hadrian lavished on her with such tender determination. When she thought his touch would leave her, he merely slowed his caresses, letting sensation thicken and redouble as it reverberated through her anew.

  She had missed this transcendent affirmation of the goodness of life, missed it badly, doubted it even existed but for the one experience of it so long ago.

  Avis would have hung over her lover, panting, except he urged her down onto his chest, and she went gratefully. She even slept, though she would have sworn Hadrian had kept up slow, easy caresses on her back, neck and hair the entire time.

  “You’ve undone me, Hadrian Bothwell.” She’d desperately needed undoing and hadn’t dared admit that to herself.

  “Simply arguing my point.”

  “Your point?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  What came out of her mouth was not an argument, but a fear. “I’m a shameless wanton.” Shameless, at any rate. Two lapses in twelve years probably did not amount to wantonness.

  “I’ll take that for a yes, because I am a shameless wanton too, and wantonness is a challenge better tackled with a partner.”

  How articulate he was, and—despite his casual humor—how aroused. The arousal ought to disquiet her, but this was Hadrian.

  The best she could do was to sit up, straddling him. “I cannot marry you.”

  “Not yet,” he said, so agreeably. “You’ll consider my suit?”

  He might have offered her another tea cake in the same tone. “My judgment is not sound in these matters, Hadrian.” Particularly not when she was distracted by the evidence of his unsatisfied arousal.

  He smiled, a universe of male wickedness and even a touch of smugness in the curve of his mouth and the light in his blue eyes.

  “There’s nothing wrong with any part of you, Avie.”

  “God help me.” She looked down at his long male fingers so competently setting to rights the clothing she’d forgotten was askew, giving him a fine view of her breasts.

  “All I ask for is an engagement, Avie.” He left a few buttons undone, which was well advised, because Avie was quite warm. “One that serves several purposes and can be put aside when you please. You’ve sent me packing before, and I went then.”

  “You finished university then. You’ll be on the neighboring estate this time.” She was delighted this was so, also worried, for she knew well the path to his door.

  “You have many neighbors you do not see,” Hadrian reminded her. “I can join their number, but I won’t like it.”

  “You won’t be humiliated when I reject you?”

  “I make it a policy to be fast friends with all the ladies who reject my suit.” Hadrian petted her breast through her clothes. “I come with references in this regard. An appalling number of them.”

  “Two is not appalling.”

  “Neither is deciding we do not suit when w
e’ve hardly had a chance to know each other for twelve years, but Avie?”

  “Stop that.” She covered his hand with her own and pressed it closer to her breast.

  “I will leave the field, so to speak, when you command it, provided you are safe, but we’re friends, aren’t we?”

  “We’re something.” She climbed off him, because the discussion wanted rational thought, which was in short supply when she roosted upon her suitor. He let her get only as far as his side, where he bundled her against him with gentle insistence.

  “We’re friends,” Hadrian reiterated. “We have a past, a present, and a future, and a little thing like a failed engagement would not cost you my friendship.”

  “Until you take a wife.”

  “That wife could be you, though I’m in no hurry to remarry, and being engaged to you will keep the local predators at bay.”

  “Is this your plan? To flaunt me in church and send the hopefuls packing?” Hadrian would never be so cavalier, least of all in the churchyard.

  “Believe it is my plan if that soothes your nerves,” he said, a touch of coolness in his tone. “I’m offering for you because I want to marry you.”

  He meant it, the demented man.

  “Because I’m lonely.”

  “Because I am lonely. Now hush, so you might rest after your exertions, and cease arguing with someone who means you only the best.”

  She let him tuck her face against his shoulder and for once, did exactly as she was told.

  * * *

  As Avis dozed in Hadrian’s arms, her thoughts went winging back twelve years, to the first and only other time she’d found intimate pleasure with a man—with Hadrian.They’d been on that dangerous cusp of inexperience and bravado. She’d been seventeen to his eighteen and had only recently realized Alexandra didn’t want her sister hovering in the invalid’s room, a walking reminder of the worst day of both of their lives. With silent, furious determination, Alex had started getting around on crutches. Less than week after that development, Aunt Beulah had returned to the north, and arrangements had been made for the Portmaine sisters to leave Landover and return to their brothers’ care at Blessings.

  Hadrian would soon travel south for his final Michaelmas term at university. Hadrian, who had become Avis’s devoted shadow in the weeks since she’d been assaulted. He’d walked with her all over the rugged countryside, inspiring her to a physical vigor she’d not known before. He’d shown her how to defend herself from such as Hart Collins, and that more than anything had renewed a kind of confidence she’d taken for granted as a girl.

  He’d argued with her over all manner of topics worthy of debate by university scholars and shown her that her intellect was the equal of anyone’s. He’d started her reading novels for her enjoyment and found her a copy of the Scots Musical Museum, because even earthy, unpretentious songs of love, loss, nature, and rural life gave her something to focus on.

  He kissed her—playfully, true, like a cousin, or a particularly nice brother, but Avis knew exactly what he was about. He would push, pull, drag or flirt her back onto her emotional feet, and she’d been grateful.

  Not until separation had loomed had Avis found the nerve to trust Hadrian with a question that had plagued her every waking moment.

  “Why do women have relations with men?”

  On his side of their picnic blanket, Hadrian paused in his reading of The Lay of the Last Minstrel. He did not immediately look over at Avis, but she had learned him well in the long weeks of summer.

  He was no longer reading.

  “Not to have children,” Avis went on. “Having children is dangerous and occasionally fatal. Allowing a man intimate congress can’t be to entice him into marriage, because marriage will simply mean more of same. Who would want to marry a fellow who comes to the altar panting from his naughty exertions?”

  A yellow rowan leaf came twirling down, though the sunshine was at its late summer most benevolent.

  “You really want me to answer that question?” Hadrian turned a page of his poem, quite the scholar. “The entire business is something your husband will explain to you.”

  She wanted the answer to one question, not an entire business. “I won’t have a husband, Hadrian. I wouldn’t want one, and none will offer for me. We know this.”

  “We don’t know it,” Hadrian rejoined, setting his poem aside and rolling to his back. “Only you have the power to refuse all comers, Avie, and you’re barely seventeen. You’ll get offers.”

  His casual confidence both pleased and perturbed her. Must he be such a relentlessly good friend?

  “I haven’t received a single invitation all summer, Hay.” She flopped down beside him on the blanket; they were that at ease with each other. “Who wants to endure all that socializing if the result is supposed to be marriage proposals and what follows?”

  “You won’t always feel this way. The right man will earn your trust and show you what pleasure a husband can offer you.”

  The only man to earn her trust was soon to depart for points south, to resume drinking, wenching, arguing, and—coincidentally—studying with his peers.

  “The right man, a decent, proper fellow who esteems decent, proper women, won’t have me, even if I’d have him. You show me, Hay.”

  The idea had come to her weeks earlier, when she’d overheard Harold and Benjamin heartily assure each other Alexandra would someday “get back on the horse.” What was Avis to do, for heaven’s sake? Many proper ladies never graced the back of a horse, but only that pathetic creature, the spinster, avoided intimate congress with a man.

  Hadrian bolted to sitting as if the blanket were on fire. “For God’s sake. You are the victim of a crime, Avie. Would you be the victim of a seduction as well?”

  “Better a seduction than ignorance,” she shot back. “You kiss me, Hadrian, and I like that. I never thought I would, but I do.”

  “On the cheek!” He ran a hand through his hair, which he’d kept long in some young male bid for individuality. “On the hand, on the temple. I don’t kiss your mouth, much as I might want to.”

  He sounded nearly angry, but not necessarily with her. “Why don’t you?”

  “Because it would be wrong. Because I would not want to stop there, and that would be beyond wrong.”

  “You’ve seen me,” she said slowly. “Half-naked, bruised, beaten, stupid with shock, and crying, and yet you want me?”

  Hadrian rose in one lithe movement and paced off the blanket. “That day, that day was one very bad moment, Avie, a nightmare moment in your life, and mine, but the fault for it lies exclusively at Hart Collins’s feet. That was one awful day, which does not define you, nor does it limit my admiration for you.”

  She watched his restless movement, liking the way muscle moved beneath his doeskin breeches, not liking at all that he’d left their blanket.

  “At best, I’m a victim. More likely, I’m stupid, shallow, conniving, and got exactly what I deserved.”

  Sunday mornings came around regularly, and the churchyard gossips made sure she did penance every week.

  “You are not, and you did not.” He dropped back down to the blanket and took her by the shoulders. He’d knelt in the same posture when he’d found her sitting on the steps outside that wretched little cottage.

  She met his gaze, willing him to see her acquiescence. No, not acquiescence, not capitulation, her hope. She wanted his kiss, wanted his hands on her, wanted things from him she couldn’t even name.

  Did he but know it, those very wantings had been responsible for her decision to end her engagement with Hart Collins.

  “Damn us both for this,” Hadrian whispered, then pressed his mouth to hers.

  Even in Avis’s ignorance, wonder, and rejoicing, she grasped that Hadrian Bothwell was a skilled, even talented kisser. She’d endured her share of furtive, slobbery attempts from the local fellows, but this was lush, lovely, tender beyond imagining.

  With only his mouth on hers
, Hadrian brought Avis to life in a way she’d known he could, and the change felt wonderful. If her soul was a house, Hadrian’s kisses were light pouring in the windows, fresh air wafting through her hallways, and music ringing from the rafters.

  She pulled him over her, so she was on her back and he was the sun above her, and still they kissed. Avis kissed him with weeks of frustrated curiosity and passion, weeks of avoiding this moment, and weeks of trying to imagine it into being.

  Hadrian took his mouth from hers, and she wanted to weep.

  “Avie, we have to stop.” His hair had come loose from its queue, and she speared her fingers through it and brought his face back to hers.

  “Don’t you dare stop. I want you to show me.”

  He dropped his forehead to her shoulder. “I will not despoil you, not even if you hate me for my refusal.”

  “Then just kiss me.” And so it went, with him kissing her within an inch of her sanity, while she’d demanded, pleaded, and begged him to make love to her, and he refused, and kissed her some more. She went so far as to put his hand on her breast, knowing that if it was forbidden, it must have something to do with what she craved.

  And, ah, God, his touch was beyond description. Careful, reverent, and both pleasure and torment. She only begged harder, until Hadrian hung over her, lungs heaving.

  Another yellow leaf came spinning down through the sunshine to land on his shoulder. “Stop your infernal wheedling, Avis. Please.”

  She brushed the leaf away and cupped his cheek against her palm. He shaved now, something else he’d learned among the scholars far to the south.

  “I will miss you to the bottom of my soul, Hadrian, and there’s nobody else I can ask. If you deny me, I’ll never know.”

  Hadrian trapped her hand in his own and kissed her knuckles, then shifted to brace on his forearms, so his weight pressed Avis into the blanket. “I will regret this all my days. Even if you don’t hate me for it, I’ll hate myself.”

  Capitulation. Had he not pinned her to the earth, Avie might have floated with a combination of trepidation and glee.

  “Shall we undress?” For she wanted Hadrian to assure her that no trace of her ordeal was visible on her person.