by Egan, Alexa
Instead of shrinking from the cold, Bianca gulped great lungfuls of air, eyes closed, arms hugged to her chest. After a few moments she leaned her forehead against the glass.
“Bianca?” he said softly. “Speak to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Her shoulders hunched, tremors running the length of her back.
He didn’t ask what had frightened her. He didn’t have to.
Rainwater puddled on the floor at their feet. Her golden hair floated over his chest. But he didn’t touch her. Or speak. Barely breathed. Tears shone silver on her cheeks. Dull, leaden misery lay heavy in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
His rage burned white-hot. What the hell had that son-of-a-bitch husband done to elicit such terror? His imagination filled in every disgusting blank, fury torching Mac’s throat. No wonder she had walled herself away from the world like a princess in a tower. Better a tower than a dungeon. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” he said softly.
She glanced away, her arms hugging her chest. “You must think me mad.”
“No, just horribly bruised, mi am’ryath.”
Her head came up, her expression sharp and fearful and yet somehow full of hope. As tactile as a touch, her eyes roved over his shoulders, the long edge of his collarbone. Down over his ribs and the patchwork of ugly bruising crisscrossed by a map of raised pink scarring. Lower to his hips. His long legs. Back up to his member, which jumped with excitement beneath such intense scrutiny. He gritted his teeth. Willed himself to be calm despite the blood racing through his veins.
Her body remained poised to flee, but the horror of her memories had faded. Instead, there was grief and a sense of loss and the first glimmerings of something he refused to name. “What did that man do to you?” she asked, her voice breaking. “He . . . I never . . . oh, Mac . . .”
“Less than he would have liked, thanks to your courage.”
“But your body . . . so many scars . . .” She traced his chest with one tentative finger. “Who could be so cruel?”
Uncertain whether she spoke of his recent wounds or her own ancient pain, Mac remained silent, though fire chewed through his belly at the sorrow haunting her delicate features. And where before he had wanted her trust, now it rankled like a burr. She shouldn’t trust him, but he’d passed the point where he could turn his back on her. Hell, he’d left it miles behind him in his wild, predatory need to possess her.
Her gaping robe exposed the leaping pulse at her throat, the outline of her delicious curves, the shadow of her puckered nipples straining at the thin fabric of her nightgown. Mouth parched, his veins pulsing, he held his breath as she reached for him. Afraid of what her touch might mean. Afraid she’d retreat and he’d be left cold and bereft.
He need not have worried. Her palm came to rest over his drumming heart like a brand on his bare chest.
“You know me better than any living soul. I’m stripped to the bone with nowhere to hide,” she whispered.
“No need to hide. We’ve traded secret for secret, mi am’ryath.”
A slender line appeared between her knitted brows. “You called me that before. What does it mean?”
“It’s a flower that grows near my home. It blooms in the dead of winter when there’s a spell of warm sea breeze in off the ocean. When all else is cold and gray and lifeless, it’s a bit of hope for better.” He ventured to trace the delicate edge of one cheekbone, relieved when she smiled, her body slowly relaxing.
“Is it an Irish word?”
“Nay. Oi’m speakin’ the language of me grannies when oi call on the ancient tongue.” He sobered. “It’s all but dead and gone. Just a few use it now. Those schooled in it and those too stubborn to give it up.”
“Which are you?”
The agony of his exile. The death of the Imnada. His growing impossible desire for Bianca. All ricocheted like bullets round his scattered brain. “I’m both,” he admitted.
“I asked you last night . . . but you couldn’t . . . you weren’t able . . .” She shuddered, her hand curling over his shoulder, her eyes as misty as a mountain stream. “. . . Mac?”
A word. A look. Both tore at his heart. Both offered him a glimpse of heaven. There was no future here for him. Not even if he was free of the curse. Free of the suffering that went along with being emnil. Free to love where he would. Not only was she a talented actress with all of London at her feet, but she was human. An out-clan.
And what was he?
He tipped her face to his.
A damned fool, that’s what.
* * *
Terror burned through her. Terror and anticipation. So tangled Bianca couldn’t separate them. She stood martyr-straight as Mac bent to brush his lips against hers. Arms clamped to her sides. Knees locked.
“Bianca?” he asked, worry furrowing his brow.
She could do this. Lawrence would not win. He would not imprison her for the rest of her life.
Mac released her, stepping an arm’s length away. The space between them charged with desire and hunger and fear and sorrow. And loneliness. Always the loneliness. It was in the weight of her limbs. The grief in his eyes.
“Should I leave?” he asked in a deep, velvety voice.
No! she wanted to scream. Don’t go.
But Lawrence was there. Like a jailer, he continued to bind her to him. His handsome, laughing face still bright with malice. His hateful words still beating against her heart.
Worthless whore.
Slut.
Adulteress.
Bitch.
She had been none of those things. But it had not mattered. Lawrence always believed the worst of her. He’d married her not out of love but to gain a possession. He’d worshipped her beauty. Her grace. Proud of other men’s envy. Then warped by his own.
Fighting the urge to escape, she squared her shoulders, her body flushed with heat despite the October chill, her hair brushing softly against the small of her back. “I want you to know I don’t normally entertain men. I know actresses have a certain reputation.”
“As do soldiers. Mostly unfounded. The majority of soldiers I know are tough and leathery as old boots with gutter vocabularies and barnyard couth. Hardly the stuff of romantic daydreams.”
“What of the officers?”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Those are the officers.” He clasped her hand, his thumb caressing her palm. The warmth and tenderness of his touch calmed her racing heart. “So why do you break your habit now, with me?”
She looked into his eyes, black with need. His jaw hard, a pulse leaping in the hollow of his throat. “Perhaps because you have never once groveled, flattered, preened, or swaggered to get into my bed.”
“Inaction wins the day,” he murmured, lowering his mouth to hers.
For a heartbeat, she froze. But this time she defied the ghost of her terror. And just like that, she broke through the hard stone walls of her prison, Mac’s kiss sweeping her along into a sea of warmth, the frozen parts of her thawing within the circle of his arms.
Lawrence’s sneering visage had been banished to the corners of her mind. He lurked still, but his power diminished, his hate washed away by Mac’s desire.
“Bianca.” His voice came ragged and broken close against her ear as he moved to nibble along her neck.
“Mmm?” she answered, her bones liquefying with every pass of his lips across her skin.
Was this what Sarah had wanted for her? Not the fortune or the title, but this bubbly champagne buzz coursing through her veins, an exhilaration equal to a thousand cheering audiences roaring in her ears?
“You’re not listening to a thing I’m saying.” Mac’s voice sounded dreamy and far away. And she realized he’d been speaking all along as his lips made their way down her throat, his hands as busy as his mouth.
“Of course I am,” she answered, the fluttering of her heart intensifying until she ached with an insatiable longing.
“Then what did I just ask?” He tippe
d her chin up with one finger, his eyes alight with amusement.
She blinked. Opened her mouth to answer. Closed it again. “I . . . uh . . .”
“That’s what I thought. So, better to beg forgiveness than permission.” As if she weighed no more than a child, he gathered her into his arms, carrying her over to set her on the bed, then stared down at her, tumbled and flushed amid a heap of quilts.
Once more her stomach clenched against a flash of memory. Lawrence above her. Lawrence, hard and ferocious. Taking what he wanted. Leaving her cold and alone and humiliated. Again she struggled back from the brink with muscle-trembling effort.
Mac paused, a knee resting on the edge of the bed. As if feeling her inner turmoil and the long arms of memory, he pushed her hair from her face with the gentlest of touches, though she felt the strength of his restraint like a shiver between them. “All it takes is a word. I’ll take no woman unwilling or even one who harbors second thoughts.”
“How about fourth and fifth ones?”
“You’ve only to speak and I’ll leave. It’ll be difficult as the storming of Badajoz, but I’ll do it.”
His words calmed her fears. She would not stop now. She had come too far.
“I want this, Mac. I want this with you,” she answered, encircling his wrist with her fingers, holding him close when he would retreat. And with her other hand pulled him down to her. “I trust you.”
She meant it as a compliment, but his face clouded for a moment. Just as quickly it cleared, and she couldn’t be certain if she’d really seen the uneasiness in his expression. And then there was no time to think of anything. Sensation took over. She forgot everything in the slow exploration by his hands and—dear Lord in heaven—his mouth as he loosened the ribbons of her robe, slowly easing her free of her nightgown until she lay naked beside him.
“You’re absolutely exquisite,” he said, his accent thick as treacle, his gaze drinking her in. Gooseflesh pebbled her skin, but within she burned as hot as an inferno, her inner thighs damp and throbbing.
Gray watery light moved across the floor and up the walls as he cradled her in the circle of his body, a thigh slung across her legs. His long and lingering kisses smoky smooth. A heady prologue to what would come next as he left her mouth to trail his deliciously slow way down her throat. Along her collarbone. South into the valley between her breasts, where he lapped lazy circles over one breast, then another until she whimpered, combing her fingers through his hair.
With every tender caress, desire became hunger, which in turn became raw, unstoppable need. He caressed the slope of her rib cage, the flat plane of her stomach, the rounded curve of her hip on their way to the source of this greedy hunger. Brushing against her. Preparing her. And then sliding easily within her.
Clamping her hands on his shoulders, she groaned her pleasure. Arching into him, wanting him closer. Her belly clenched, the torturous heat building with the enticingly slow movements of his fingers. If she could have sunk through his skin and into his blood, she would have gladly done it.
His own breathing quickened, his eyes darkening to the color of moss, irises enlarged to fathomless black pools. He drew himself farther on top of her, pinning her against the pillows, nudging her thighs apart.
“Say my name,” he whispered in a broken voice, a wild, quivering need building low across her belly. “And say you want me.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. Sarah had been so right. This was what she’d been missing and never knew. This runaway gallop of feelings as she stood poised upon a precipice. Stars whirling above her. Bliss a touch and a word away.
“Mac,” she murmured. “I want you.” Something spurred her to add, “But I won’t beg.”
He laughed. “The only one pleading is me, Bianca love.”
“I want you, Cormac Cúchulainn.”
Gathering her against him, his kisses came hot and demanding. His hands skimming her flesh, leaving shivery anticipation in their wake. Her center throbbed wet and ready for him. Lifting her hips to meet his questing fingers, she yearned to take him inside her. To feel him locked against her. His fingers retreated, and he entered her, slowly at first as she adjusted to his size and the explosion of sensations spiraling up from their joined bodies. Her inner muscles fluttered against him as he thrust, and she moaned, arching upward to answer his rhythm. The pleasure flashing like lightning through her veins as she raced toward a crescendo that seemed just out of reach.
But he refused to answer her building need. Instead, he drew the torturous hunger out in a long, exquisite dance. Every thrust spinning her closer. Every withdrawal pulling her back.
“I’ll make you forget him if you let me,” he purred, nuzzling her neck, the touch of his tongue against her ear shooting jolts of fire to her belly.
She locked her legs around him, feathering kisses over his granite-hard chest. Enjoying the strength of him. His lean, muscular beauty. His powerful soldier’s build.
He answered by taking a nipple in his mouth. He swirled it with his tongue until stars shot into her eyes and she feared she might shatter into a million pieces.
Friction built between them like water surging against a dam. Heaven wheeled overhead. He groaned, head thrown back, face grim as he thrust once more, and she tumbled up and up into the stars. Rolling. Spinning. Diving. The tilt of planets. The crash of suns. He was there to catch her when she landed, body spent and relaxed, chest heaving, hands drifting like a breeze over her skin. She nestled against him, his fiery heat better than the thickest quilt.
As rain pattered softly on the window and Mac’s heart beat steadily beneath her ear, she tried to feel regret for what she’d done, work up a good cleansing bout of shame to temper the deeper passions still blazing through her sated body. Perhaps even ponder the possible dire consequences of her headlong actions.
Yet, as Mac pulled her against him, his arm curving around her shoulder, his lips brushing the nape of her neck, she merely smiled into the darkness, eyes closed, for no ghosts invaded her thoughts. For the first time in years, she felt truly free.
* * *
Alonzo had come. Ignoring her husband’s black scowl, Renata excused herself from the knot of men and women gathered around Monsieur Gaillart, newly arrived from Paris with all the latest gossip and intrigue from the French capital.
Despite her relief and her fury, she smiled serenely as she passed through the crush of guests. Sympathized with Madame d’Humières about her gout. Commiserated with Madame Plouvier over her husband’s new mistress. Reassured Monsieur Binchois that his bald spot did not show.
Crossing the foyer, she dropped her pose of gracious hostess. She was quite alone. There were none to see her flay Alonzo alive for keeping her waiting and, worse, for causing her worry.
Throwing open the doors to her morning room, she swept in like a bitter wind. “You’d better have a very good reason for pulling me away.”
He remained seated in her presence. That was her first indication something was wrong. Then she smelled him, a caustic blend of urine, filth, and vomit clinging to his clothes. And finally he met her gaze, pain written in the slump of his shoulders and the gray pallor of his handsome features. “Gods deliver us, what happened to you?”
He pulled himself to his feet. “I wasn’t certain you’d come.”
“This had better be important. If you haven’t noticed, my house is awash with guests, and Froissart does not like to be left alone to play host to this gaggle of French chickens. He’s already suspicious of you and only my magical influence is keeping him subdued. But if my control ever unravels, he’ll send you back to France—in pieces.”
“Flannery escaped. I’ve sought him everywhere without success.”
“You fool!” Alonzo’s head snapped back at the force of her slap. Renata lifted her hand to strike again before catching hold of her anger. Curling her fingers into a hard fist before dropping her arm back to her side with a muttered oath followed once more by “Stupid, stupid fool.”
>
Blood welled from the corner of Alonzo’s mouth where her ring had cut him, but he made no move to wipe it away. Instead, he stood before her, no hint of his thoughts passing over his face, though even that brief physical contact between them had been enough to offer her a glimpse behind his impassive gaze. His shame flitted across her mind like a wraith.
She sank onto a chair, fingers drumming restlessly. Letting the fraught, chilly silence spin out between them as she regained her composure. “Didn’t the silver work?” she asked finally. “The ancient sources are very specific about the metal’s effect on the loathsome creatures. It had to work.”
“The silver did just as you said it would. He was at my mercy.”
“Then what went wrong?”
Alonzo bowed his head, a flush of angry heat crawling over his face. “The Parrino bitch. She struck me from behind. By the time I came to, they’d long fled. I’ve searched throughout London for them but picked up no trace.”
A tight-lipped smile escaped her iron control. “Like most men, Alonzo, you underestimate a woman’s strength and her cunning.”
His gaze cut to the fire before settling once back upon her face. “All’s not lost.”
“Tell me you at least learned the names of the others who murdered my father.”
He winced but did not back down. “Flannery wouldn’t betray his friends, though I did everything but slice him from crotch to gullet. He’s strong, I’ll give him that,” he said with grudging approval.
She dug her nails into her palms in frustration, rage burning in her chest. “So you risked coming here simply to tell me you’ve no news and no prisoner?”
“No. I came to bring you this.” A notched glass disk lay in the palm of Alonzo’s hand.
13
Mac knelt by the fence, a nail between his lips as he fumbled for the hammer. Sweat stuck his hair to his head, and his back and shoulders ached, but between yesterday’s recuperation and the pleasurable activities of this morning, he felt less like a walking corpse and more like a man on a mission. Though right now, his mission was to make repairs to the cattle shed while Jory spread a final layer of chalk and peat over the ground before the cows were brought in for the winter.