"And did you like it?" he asked in a hoarse whisper.
It was no lie she told. "It got me so excited I could feel myself getting all hot and moist inside. And then well, then he took me."
"How?"
Her imagination dredged up a sensible reply, one which held all sorts of sensual possibilities she could only begin to hope for. "Not once. Many times, many different ways."
"Show me."
She quailed in the face of his torrid gaze. All they had shared thus far had been wonderful, but a rake like her husband knew things... Things she both desired, and feared to have, to discover. "Oh, Randall, I can’t bear—"
He moved her over onto her back once more, placed his hand over hers and put it on her own tender flesh for a moment. "Were you all moist like this?"
"Mmm, yes," she purred.
"And did he kiss you down there?"
"He said he wanted to, that it would be wonderful. But we had no time, that he needed me and had to have me then and there, hard and hot."
"And you were ready for him?" he asked in a harsh tone. "Ready to submit to his every whim?" He moved his head down to taunt her lightly with his clever tongue.
She spread her legs wordlessly in submission.
"Were you ready to be taken hard and hot?"
Her nipples were so erect they were almost painful. The electricity jolting through her had her welling over with opalescent dew which gushed out of her so powerfully she was trembling. She could hardly believe her own body could respond so.
"Were you ready?"
"Well, he was teasing me, so I couldn’t help myself. I wanted it. Every huge throbbing inch of him."
"How did he take you?" he asked, his hands now roving all over her boldly, but putting her hands back on her breast and between her legs if she ever moved them away.
"Oh, please," she gasped, the core of her aching for his powerful stroke.
"How?"
"Randall, please!"
"Tell me what he did to you. What you want and need. What your ultimate fantasy is."
"But Randall—"
"Tell me," he commanded.
He moved her hands again, setting up a more driving rhythm with her two fingers while he moved her other hand down to her distended whorl.
He moved his huge velvety tip enticingly toward her entrance, brushing her lightly. She jolted and shuddered, his desire a red hot brand of possession. Only he could complete her.
Isolde moved her hips downward but he held her at bay.
"Tell me what you want, darling. I’m all yours. Every throbbing, pulsating inch of me. You’re all mine and there's nothing more exciting in the world than watching you aroused. Trust me. Tell me what you want."
His hands on her breasts and stomach were inflaming her to the point where she could scarcely breathe.
"Randall, please!"
"Tell me, or I’m going to punish you for letting that other man do those naughty things to you," he said, resuming his more stern voice. "I’ll go away and—"
Isolde had reached her breaking point. When Randall removed his hands as if to leave her, she grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him on top of her with a crash.
He grew alarmed that he had pushed her so far. "Easy, love, you’re going to crack your ribs."
But she did not even feel the pain, so intent was she on guiding his shaft into her aching sheath. Her tightness was augmented by her questing inner muscles. They rippled so violently he gasped in surprise and could feel his essence being wrung from him in great shuddering bursts.
Now it was his turn to beg for release, for Isolde pushed him off her as suddenly as she had lunged at him, leaving him aching to finish. Flattening him on his back, she rammed herself down until they both gasped and sat astride him facing his feet.
After a few strokes which sent her soaring to the very brink he turned the tables on her himself, shoving her forward by the shoulder as he clung onto her waist. Both kneeling with her sitting on his thighs, he drove up into her maddeningly. One hand teased each nipple in turn, while the other stroked every moist crevice and peak as if he had memorised her most sensitive parts.
Finally Isolde ended upon her knees clutching the bed post as Randall pulsed into her fiercely, sure they had fused into a single being with only one desire, to always be whole like this. She reached around to caress his tightly gathered orbs and pressed the small indentation behind them until he roared with ecstasy and at last lay still.
When his great heaving sobs of breath began to subside they were replaced by deep and long laughter. "My Lord. I never believed such pleasure existed. I don’t know how you manage, darling. Every time we’re like this you succeed in getting the better of me. You’re the most bewitching combination of innocence and experience."
"Your friend there drives me onwards. It’s certainly is one of your best parts," she purred. "Though I adore your eyes and hands too. Well, I love all of you, really," she confessed with a happy wriggle of her bottom which set off a few more interesting sparks.
But knowing he had to be tired, she gently disengaged them and crawled around the bed until she was snuggled against him drowsily.
"That wasn’t quite what I meant, love, but thank you for the compliment. "
"Thank you for the games and the loving. For making me feel so special, treasured," she said, giving him a warm kiss which he melted into for a moment.
"You do it to me. It’s the least I can do."
"But you’re so busy and—"
His gaze upon her lovely face burned with the most frightening intensity. "Never too busy for my wife, do you understand? I appreciate everything you’ve done to help me, to build a new family, but nothing is more important than you except possibly for Mother." His lapis eyes glowed.
When Randall looked at her like that Isolde could almost believe him.
Almost, but not quite…
Chapter Nine
The newlyweds had enough problems finding time for one another during their busy and progressively longer days. Isolde discovered the other problem with a growing family was how fast they actually did grow.
"This is the third time I’ve been to Bath in a week," Isolde complained to Arabella Sanderson a couple of days later as they descended from their coach in Cheap Street.
The gorgeous brunette rolled her eyes in sympathy. "You don’t need to tell me. Like weeds, they are. Let's go. I have heaps to buy." She tugged at her arm in a most surprising manner.
Arabella was all smiles, but Isolde could again see that odd wariness that occasionally crept in to her relations with the Rakehells and their wives. She took her arm and led her into the dressmakers’ and immediately began to exclaim over some rather indifferent fabrics.
Suddenly suspicious, Isolde peered out the window of the shop just in time to see a tall, dark man in a dark frock coat leading on his arm the most exquisite raven-haired beauty she had ever seen. From the way the woman held his arm and smiled up at him, it was evident they were intimate. Very intimate indeed, as she lifted her lips for a kiss, and received what could only be described as a most loving one from her handsome companion.
Isolde’s breath wheezed out of her, and she could feel her heart hammering in her chest. Dear God. All this time when he had said he was painting.... "I’ve decided this fabric is not quite the thing. Appearances can be deceiving, after all," Arabella said with a long look at the frozen Isolde.
When Isolde finally tried to meet her gaze, the moment was already gone. She took a deep steadying breath, and went into motion now like an automaton, buying shirting and some good strong wool flannel for the boys’ trousers, while all the time she just wanted to howl at her sense of betrayal.
What was she to do? Only a few months married, trapped in Randall's house with his family, everyone relying and counting on her...
And there he was out swiving that black-haired trollop. Their posture and mannerisms indicated a long acquaintance. Was it someone he had brought down from Lo
ndon? Someone he had chanced to meet again after many years?
Her head swam, and even a cup of tea which Arabella insisted she take before they returned home was not enough to restore her equanimity.
But she had sworn she was not going to be a jealous fishwife, never have the children see a scene of domestic riot and resentment such as some of them had witnessed.
And the truth was, she admitted to herself as they headed back to Barkston House in the carriage, she was just too much of a coward. To challenge her husband, bring his affair all out in the open, was to leave herself vulnerable to the possibility that Randall would tell her he loved the other woman. That he was leaving her.
And that would never do. No, as painful as this betrayal was, it was better to just let the affair run its course than to lose him completely. If he was not always as demonstrative as he had once been, they still enjoyed each other regularly and thrillingly. He was still in her bed every night. If she had to give him up for two hours during the day to keep him for the other twenty-two, then so be it.
"My dear, you look ever so pale. All is not what you imagine," Arabella said gently.
"I imagine nothing. Everything is fine," she said with a tight smile.
Arabella patted her hands. "Yes dear, it will be. You just have to trust in the gods that it shall be so."
"Gods?"
"I’ve been studying the history of the area we live in. There are many sites around here sacred to the ancient Celtic pagan religion. There were many altars in this part of the world, and sacred groves and forests. Have you ever seen the old monastery over by us, in Millcote Forest? It was once the seat of some very powerful druids."
"Druids?" she asked with a frown, interested despite herself. Anything to take her mind off her sham of a marriage.
"Aye, pagan priests. Like many things from the old religion, the site was taken over, Christianised. They built with some of the stones, incorporated others, took over the sacred site for their own house of worship. It is what they would have said is part of a great chain of being. A continuity of life and energy, power. The Celts uses the spiral and the labyrinth to symbolise this, and the mystery of life. The journey through it. You should go see it some time. Perhaps Randall would like to paint it and the forest."
Isolde looked at her friend in surprise. "I’ve heard the forest is an evil, nasty place."
Arabella nodded and sighed. "It was for a time. A group of highwaymen operated nearby, acted most barbarously. You’ve met Martin, Blake’s cousin, of course. He was nearly killed there, his wife raped and murdered. He was almost destroyed by the experience. But he's happily married to Eswara now. She would say that he had been trapped in the forest, couldn't move on from his past. That he was there for a long time, doomed to revisit it over and over until at last he broke the cycle."
Isolde started, thinking of the vision of Randall and the stables she had had when she’d first met him. Perhaps that was why he had gone back to his raking?
"And could you, forgive the odd question, could you see it? Sense it?"
Arabella nodded. "It’s an odd gift. I suppose some would call it the second sight. It comes and goes. I’ve had it on and off ever since I met Blake, when he saved my life after a coaching accident on the road to London. He would say he isn’t the least bit superstitious. But let’s just say we’ve witnessed enough miracles, both great and small, to convince us both that there is more to life than the rational mind can grasp."
"Miracles?" she echoed.
"Mm. For example, one of my friend’s wives came from that monastery. She was living there, hiding from her abusive family. Once she came into the light, her life was radiant and she filled the man she loved with her joy. Just as you fill your husband’s life with joy. Her husband was wounded in both mind and body after the war, but she and her children were all able to heal through the gift of love."
At Isolde's dubious look, Arabella nodded. "Love does heal, push back the darkness. You just need to have faith, in yourself above all. Your love has healed those children, and you’ve done wonders for Randall’s mother. Everyone says so."
Isolde sighed. "It’s very kind of you to try to make me feel better but I know Randall—"
Arabella took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "There is no stronger bond than husband and wife, parent and child, brother to brother. You and Randall will both find what you’re looking for. You just have to keep your mind open, trust each other, and trust to fate."
Isolde bit her lip uncertainly. "I was raised a good Christian. I don’t think your druid ways will—"
"You are Irish, are you not? You have a gift as well. If not sent by the Christian god, then who? And are not all gods a manifestation of the divine, whatever label you wish to put on them? Father, Son, Holy Spirit? The Celtic manifestations of the goddess, virgin, mother, crone? If you speak to Eswara, she will tell you Shiva, Vishnu and Brahma."
Isolde stared at her for a moment. "And do you believe in Heaven and Hell?"
Arabella nodded. "The Christian part of me does, but the pagan part of me believes we create our own Hell, and that there is no physical place as an afterlife. Instead, we believe in reincarnation."
"Reincarnation?" Isolde said blankly.
"Reliving our lives over and over again. That the spirit never dies. In our beliefs, the rainbow is a symbol of perfect love. It's also a bridge between this world and the heavens, with the heavens defined as a sort of mystical oneness of the spirit with all living beings. And that state is a state of bliss. Complete joy and love."
Isolde considered her words for a moment. "I suppose no matter what religion we adhere to, we’re all just searching for perfect peace and bliss. I would like to think I can have it in the afterlife, but it’s not so bad trying to achieve it here on earth, is it?"
"It is as good a goal as any," she agreed quietly.
"Thank you, Arabella."
"If you have any other doubts, please come speak with me."
"You know what I doubt, " Isolde said quietly.
"Every woman does if she doubts herself. If she trusts in herself, her love, there are no doubts, only joy," she said, stroking the back of her arm.
"I doubted Blake for one instant, and it nearly cost me everything. I’ll never do it again. Randall loves you. Things are not always what they appear."
"Then who was that—"
Arabella shook her head. "No one you need ever fear."
"How can you be so sure!"
"I can’t tell you any more than that."
"Can’t, or won’t," Isolde said angrily.
"Both," Arabella admitted. "But not because I’ve promised Randall, if that’s what you’re thinking. You are of course free to seek your own answers, but before you go accusing your husband, try to be a bit more sure of your facts."
Isolde folded her arms across her chest and steamed. "I know what I saw."
"Eswara would say that all of this world is illusion. I would say sometimes we see what we expect to see. Or want to see."
"Want? " Isolde gasped. "I never want—"
"Expect then. But Philip Marshall was also a rake, and look what a good husband he is to Jasmine. He has never said or done anything to make you mistrust him as a man, has he?"
"No, never!" Isolde said stoutly.
"Yet Randall has to trust you with him."
Isolde bristled indignantly. "Yes, but Randall knows he never has any reason to doubt—"
"Neither do you," Arabella said with a shake of her head. "Not unless you are one hundred percent sure of what you think you saw. And even then, you have to tell yourself that to confront him might be the height of folly. You might lose more than you ever gain by confronting him."
Isolde sighed raggedly and leaned her head back on the seat. She must have nodded off from the emotional strain, for when she next opened her eyes they were pulling up the drive to Barkston House.
"We’re here. Go in and see Randall, tell him how much you adore him. Few men
can ever resist that."
Isolde waved as she watched the Sandersons' carriage pull away, and then went into the house to face her husband.
Randall greeted her warmly and she stared up at him, tracing his sensual lips with her finger.
"What is it, what’s the matter?" he asked when she continued to stare.
"Nothing, really. I’m just so glad to see you're home."
The Rakehell Regency Romance Collection #4 Page 36