Hadrian

by Grace Burrowes

  “Now what?”

  He urged her down onto his chest and wrapped his arms around her. “Now you hold on to me, and we join.”

  She tucked her face into the crook of his neck, her body radiating a tension that hadn’t been present a moment earlier.

  “Or not.” Hadrian let his arms fall away. “Perhaps you’d better do this.” His cock was right at her door, the dampness and heat of her enveloping him, and he wanted nothing, not one thing in all creation, so much as to move.

  “What do I do?”

  “Think of it as fitting together the sections of your flute. You don’t jam them together, though the instrument must be properly assembled if you’re to make music with it. Assemble us, Avie, by moving.” He patted her hip and waited, though God knew what daft analogy he might seize on next if the flute didn’t make his point.

  A bassoon perhaps, a clarinet, an haut boy, or—

  She braced herself over him on her forearms, the scowl back, as if she were assembling her flute before a command performance at Carlton House and had misplaced her music. Her hips shifted enough to glove the head of his cock.

  Just that much, and Hadrian was teased with a hot, wet paradise fitted exactly for him.

  “Like that?” She moved again, then again, her undulations tentative—and tantalizing.

  “Just like that, easily, as a breeze rocks a boat on a calm lake.”

  “It doesn’t hurt exactly,” she decided, “but this isn’t like when you pleasured me.”

  “We’re only getting started.” He had to move or go mad—or he might go mad if he did move, gloriously mad. He flexed his hips shallowly, meeting her downward thrust.

  “Merciful days. What was that?”

  “A little resistance,” Hadrian assured her. “We fit quite snugly.” Magnificently, wonderfully, beautifully, miraculously.

  “Is that bad?’

  He wanted to thrust, and thrust and thrust, but now, especially now, he denied himself that pleasure.

  “It’s lovely.” He folded up and nuzzled her breast through the fabric of her bodice. He nosed aside the dress, undid bows, then undid more bows, until her breasts were exposed to the summer air and to his hungry gaze. “Move again for me, Avie.”

  “I like it better when you move.”

  “Contrary female.” He got his mouth on one of her nipples, and she gave up some of the tension infusing her spine. “You leave all the work to me, lazy baggage.”

  And slowly, slowly, he worked his way more deeply into her heat. “Tell me if I’m—”

  Her grip in his hair was firm. “You’re not. This is different.”

  “From?”

  “Everything.” She closed her eyes while he anchored his hands on her hips and ground his mental teeth in increasing arousal. “I like this much better, when you move, Hadrian.”

  Just like that, his frustration evaporated. She was coming alive as he penetrated her sweet heat, yielding to his invasion and catching the rhythm of it.

  “Shall I kiss you, Avie?”

  She shook her head, found his hand, and brought it to her breast. He plied her slowly, fondling, kneading, and then just when she opened her eyes to glare at him, he gave her the slight pressure on her nipple she’d been about to demand.

  All the while, he eased his cock in and out of her body, slowly, in excruciatingly small increments, until she bit his earlobe.

  “More, Hadrian. Now.”

  “This much more?” He drove deeper and with a hint of passion to his thrusts.

  “More,” she demanded. “I won’t break, unless you insist on dithering and then I shall be the one to run screaming down the hill.”

  He treasured her frustration, her wonderful, glorious, perfectly normal frustration. “How do you know I’m not doing this perfectly?”

  “Because you’re not, not quite.”

  She fell silent, both relief and increasing wonder stealing into her expression as he intensified his efforts. He didn’t have to ask if she preferred that, because she cuddled onto his chest and began to work her hips in a natural counterpoint to his.

  “Oh…dear…Hadrian.”

  “Let go,” he whispered, keeping a palm right on her backside to measure her rhythm. “Fly free, Avis. Let yourself soar.”

  “Ha-dri-an.” She shook as her pleasure overcame her, and yet she let him take her higher and higher still, until she was moaning out her satisfaction right into the clear summer air, right into his own release. He tried to hold back, but Avie was coming and coming, her body gripping hard at his, forcing a pleasure on him too long missed and undeniable in its intensity.

  “Holy everlasting powers,” Hadrian panted. He gathered her close and rolled them, then caged her body with his before he’d even thought what being trapped beneath him might feel like for her. “Are you all right?”

  “Hush.” She patted his naked bottom, then stroked the same spot. “Give me a minute.”

  Hadrian wanted to give her the entire rest of his days. He was more sure of that than of anything else ever in his life. Bless the woman, he was close to tears, he was so proud of her, of them, of what she’d managed in the last few moments.

  And he was appalled too, for he’d not protected her at the final moment, and marriage wasn’t a possibility now, it was mandatory. Avie wouldn’t like that. He hadn’t planned it this way, but he simply hadn’t known how it would be.

  She clung to him, as if her feelings were equally riotous.

  “Tell me you enjoyed that.” Hadrian laid his cheek against hers and wanted to hold her close with all his strength. Forever.

  He didn’t look too closely at that impulse, for the cheek pressed to his was damp.

  “Avie?” He pulled back and confirmed to his horror that she was crying.

  Don’t bungle this. Don’t bungle this worse than you already have .

  “Love?” He brushed a thumb over that damp cheek. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No.” Her voice was firm despite the tears. “No, you did not. You unhurt me. I’ve never known anything as—Oh, Hadrian.” She held him to her, with her arms, and legs, even with her sex, and he waited, hoping she’d tell him anything.

  “I’m,”—she eased her grip—“overwhelmed doesn’t express it, not clearly. Touched? Pleased? I did this right, didn’t I? That’s not the best word, but you know what I mean? I’m able.”

  “You most assuredly are.” He reared back to frown at her, then realized what he’d said. “Able does not do justice to the passion and pleasure—” He fell silent a moment, for inspiration had befallen him.

  “Promise me something, Avis Portmaine.” He wrapped himself over her, threading his arms behind her neck and lowering himself so her face was cradled to his chest. “Promise me, if I tell you that was the loveliest, most tender, arousing, pleasurable experience I’ve had of its kind, you won’t conclude you’re a wanton jade, beneath contempt for your passions and undeserving of respect.”

  She nuzzled his nipple, and relief flooded Hadrian. Not sexual relief—he’d been wrung free of sexual tension only moments earlier—some other more profound relief, for her, for them both.

  “I will not make those mistakes,” she said. “Not yet.”

  He snuggled closer. “How could you be a wanton jade when you just gave me your virginity?”

  * * *

  “I did what?”

  Avis had been relieved when Hadrian had tucked her face against his chest, relieved to be held so closely, and not subject to the scrutiny of his penetrating blue eyes. Now she wanted to see him, to see what manner of unkind, awkward jest he’d made.

  “You heard me.” He ran his nose along her jaw, incongruously relaxed and pleased with himself, while Avis’s temper soared.

  “Hadrian Bothwell, that is not possible.” But then she stopped an inchoate rant, because all she knew for certain was that Collins had hurt her intimately. Nothing in her memories of that day remotely resembled the intimacy she’d just shared with Hadrian
Bothwell.

  “I know what I felt, Avie, and we shall discuss this. In detail.”

  “Not like this we aren’t.”

  He’d slipped from her body, leaving Avis oddly bereft—bereft and mortified.

  “Here you go.” He levered up and off her, and before Avis could grab for her modesty, Hadrian pressed a handkerchief between her legs. He held up the little square of linen and dangled it before her eyes like some token of surrender.

  “See?”

  The handkerchief was again pressed gently to her sex, but not before Avis had seen several faint pink streaks crossing the linen.

  Hadrian was still smiling, while Avie wanted to push him into the pond.

  “That little resistance?” He repositioned his handkerchief once more. “Your virginity, my dear.” He leaned down and kissed her mouth. “You gave it to me, Avie, not Collins.”

  “This cannot be. That,”—she waved in the general direction of the cloth and her privy parts—“must be from something of a female nature.” Her face flamed at her own bluntness, and when she found the nerve to meet his gaze, Hadrian was regarding her curiously. He used the handkerchief on himself, then balled it up and tossed it on the grass. His manner held impatience, maybe even anger.

  “Come here.” His voice was a touch peremptory as he arranged her straddling his lap, then lay back, his arms around her. “Tell me what happened the day Collins attacked you and start at the beginning. Leave nothing out, and don’t think to spare my sensibilities—or your own.”

  “This isn’t necessary.”

  Except it was necessary. She’d never told this story, not to a journal, not to her sister, not to anybody. She’d tried to forget what she knew of that day, and that had only made the memories more tenacious.

  Then too, after today, she did not expect to see much of Hadrian Bothwell. Perhaps he was the only person she could relate the story to.

  His hands started a soothing, wandering caress to her back, her scalp, her neck, all the parts of her nobody ever touched—all the other parts—and something in Avis gave up. Hadrian would hold her for as long as it took to gather her courage, and he would listen to her no matter how miserable a tale she had to tell.

  She was silent for long, long moments as those caresses sank into her bones, her heart and her mind. Hadrian wanted the story Avis had long tried to keep from herself, the one nobody wanted her to acknowledge, ever.

  And he wanted her, for his wife—that boon she could not grant.

  “The morning was beautiful as only spring can be here,” she said softly. “Bright, clear, and cold, but not winter-cold, only spring-cold. For a number of reasons my mood wasn’t sanguine. I was facing the female complaint in all its uncomfortable glory, and my mood was irritable and unsettled. In that situation, exercise can help. Alex probably picked up on my restlessness and suggested we go ridinge.”

  She fell silent again, mesmerized by the steady rhythm of Hadrian’s hands, so warm, while her mind turned to a pervasively chilling memory.

  “We wanted to race in your deer park,” Avis said, and thank heavens, Hadrian seemed to grasp the nature of the indisposition she alluded to. He had been married, after all. “The park is level and free of rabbit holes. We knew that, because Harold kept the footing in good repair. Sometimes, I’d watch you race him.”

  “You never made it to the deer park,” Hadrian pointed out, no pause in the movement of his hands.

  “We decided to see if there’d been any foals first,” Avis recalled, “so we detoured toward the mare’s paddock, even though…” She faltered, and still he maintained his slow, easy caresses. “We detoured, even though Alex protested we should have brought a groom.”

  “One groom wouldn’t have stopped a half-dozen drunken louts. So you were nearing the mare’s paddock?”

  She’d told herself the same thing. One groom against six young lordlings far gone with drink would have become another casualty of the day.

  “We found a new foal.” Avis’s voice grew smaller. “Still wet, the mare was licking her colt as he steamed in the bright morning sun. I nearly cried, it was so wonderful—spring is like that, at least for me. Alex had dismounted, the better to see the foal, and needed the fence to climb back on. She managed, but Collins and his men had emerged from the trees by then, and I recall feeling even at that first moment a sense of doom, of dread. A sense I would never be happy again.”

  An accurate premonition.

  “Alex was on her horse, and you were still mounted as well?”

  Avis knew what Hadrian was about, guiding her back to her recitation with his questions, not allowing her to wallow in the emotions when he wanted the facts. She knew it, and was grateful for it.

  Because twelve years later, the emotions still had the power to destroy her, and the facts still eluded an orderly assembly.

  “We were both in the saddle,” she said, “and like the polite fool I was, I didn’t want to depart without offering a civil greeting. Hart was our neighbor and my intended, at least for the present. I owed him manners and hoped we might be cordial.”

  “You were innocent.” Hadrian corrected her for the first time. “You and Alex were both innocent.”

  She took a slow breath. “There were six of them, though one galloped off as Collins grabbed my reins and another of his cronies took Alex’s reins. I recall smelling liquor, even from several feet away, and Alex fought them with her whip. She was smarter than I.”

  “She wasn’t engaged to anybody,” Hadrian pointed out. “She wasn’t concerned with maintaining civilities with a man she wanted to hoist from her future.”

  “I failed in that, failed to evict him from my future. Hart Collins has occupied some part of nearly every waking hour of my life since.” She closed her eyes and focused on the sensations evoked by Hadrian’s slow hands, by the warmth of his body beneath hers, by the powerful, steady beat of his heart next to her own.

  “Alex fought with her whip.” Hadrian repeated Avis’s words. “And then?”

  “Then they hauled us over to the cottage at the far end of the paddock,” Avis said. “The daffodils were blooming, and Alex was still cursing the men. Collins pulled me off my horse and carried me bodily to the cottage, while his cronies called encouragement and one of them sang a bridal march.”

  “Where was Alex?”

  Avis pressed her face to Hadrian’s chest. “When she wouldn’t stop yelling, one of them slapped her, and she yelled all the louder.” Quiet ladylike, bookish Alex, bellowing her rage and fear.

  “And then?”

  “Collins set me on my feet long enough to backhand me. That blow woke me up, so to speak—confirmed that he was not intent on a simple prank—but Alex fell silent, as Collins directed that she be tossed into the cottage with us.”

  “What did she do next?”

  “She was quiet,” Avis said, her voice barely above a whisper, “but she looked at me, Hadrian, right in the eye, and she’s my sister. I could tell she was planning something heroic, something dangerous. I tried to convey to her not to attempt anything rash, because drunk and rapacious men would not quibble at much.”

  “A sound assessment. Then what happened?”

  “The cottage was musty, and like Collins’s hand across my face, the unpleasant smell galvanized me, and I began to struggle. He laughed, and when Alex heard that laugh, I saw her courage falter. Collins enjoyed the pain and fear and debauchery. He told her to watch and be still as he tied my hands, or it would go worse for her when her turn came.”

  Avis drew in a breath, clearing her mind of that closed-in, stuffy cottage and replacing it with the fresh summer air and Hadrian’s clean, spicy scent.

  “Where were you when he tied your hands? Inside the cottage?”

  “Inside, yes. He’d brought strong twine with him. I recalled seeing it tied to his saddle and wondering at it. With my hands tied before me, he dumped me on the edge of a table, like a sack of grain. There was no other furniture, not even a ch
air, which struck me as odd.”

  She’d forgotten that stray thought—why have a table without a chair?

  “When I struggled to sit up, he got his hands around my throat and told Alex to watch that too. I tried to kick at him, tried to keep my legs together, but he wedged his body between my knees and pushed at my habit. He was prodigiously strong, and I could not get my breath.”

  In a sense, she still hadn’t.

  “Where was Alex?”

  “By the door,” Avis said. “I could see her, and she, God help her, could see me. The place was dim, but had a window, a single, small window, and I wanted to look at the window, at the way out, but I couldn’t look away from my sister’s face.”

  And still the rhythm of Hadrian’s voice, his breathing, and his infernal questions remained calm and steady. “What was Collins doing?”

  “He’d got his falls undone, ripped the buttons, I think, and outside, his friends all sang some jaunty college boy’s song, in harmony.”

  “What did you see as you lay on that table, Avie?”

  She’d seen the end of every good thing in her life, the end of a desire to live, even.

  “I saw the horror in Alex’s expression, and I knew she was being brutalized vicariously, and Collins was enjoying that too. When he put his hand around my throat, Alex started screaming, but he merely told her if she tried to interfere, he’d ensure I suffered the consequences.”

  And though Collins’s brutality had been momentary, the retelling was aging Avis years and years, shriveling her to a string of ugly, miserable words.

  True words, though.

  “What happened then? What did Collins do?”

  “He tore my habit and drawers, or cut them,” Avis said. “Alex fell silent, and I recall hearing the sound of tearing fabric, even as my ears roared.”

  “Why were your ears roaring?”

  “I couldn’t breathe. He was choking me with one hand as he threatened my sister. He was touching me between my legs with his other hand, shoving his body against me.”

  He’d been everywhere at once, a foul, ranting miasma of inebriated male malevolence that still clouded her heart.

  “And then?”