by Cindy Gerard
He swallowed hard. “Tell me.”
“You don’t want to hear.” Her voice was barely a whisper, carefully modulated to appear void of emotion. “You don’t want to know.”
“What don’t I want to hear?” he asked softly. “Why don’t I want to know?”
Her gaze darted to his then away, as if she was ashamed. “Because you will hate me.”
Her words were filled with such utter despair that he physically ached for her. “I will hate you?”
“Because I am weak.” She looked at her hands, blinking hard to combat the moisture brimming in her eyes, thickening her lashes.
He thought of the times in the hospital when he’d seen her struggle in silence during painful physical therapy, of the smiling face she’d shown the world, her solitary tears when she’d thought no one was watching. He thought of all the things that he’d learned about her this afternoon while she’d slept. The Web had proven to be a fount of information about Lady Helena Reichard that he never would have suspected.
She may have only been in his home for two days, but he’d been learning to know her for two months. “Of one thing, I can assure you,” he said gently, “I will never think of you as weak.”
Twin teardrops spilled, then stained the blue silk of her skirt. “That’s because you don’t know me.”
“And what would you have me know about you?” he asked gently.
When she didn’t answer, he tried a little baiting to see if he could elicit with ruthlessness what he hadn’t been able to accomplish with understanding.
“That you are the quintessential blue-blooded dogooder? That in every aspect of your life, you appear to be a noble earl’s daughter who happily lives in a world of events and society functions I will never understand?”
When her gaze shot to his, defensive and angry, he pressed for more. “The paparazzi have proclaimed you the Beautiful Lady of Lost Causes. It seems a fitting title,” he said thoughtfully, still hoping to provoke a stronger response. When none came, he responded for her.
“If there’s a cause, it appears you champion it. If there’s a need, you organize a drive and raise the money for it. Is it a role you enjoy—or do you do it because you were born to it?”
Emotion flared in her eyes and she bristled with an anger he much preferred to her silence. “It would appear that the cynic in you has already decided,” she said coldly.
“Ah, yes. The cynic. How does this conclusion fit then? You do all of this because it’s the cool, ‘in thing’ for titled Europeans to attach themselves to one worthy cause or another, correct?”
Her blue eyes frosted over. “Well, there, you see? You have me all figured out.” She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin. “Now please excuse me.”
“I thought I had you figured out,” he continued, ignoring her pointed desire to leave. “I had you pegged as the garden-club, museum-renovation, art-restoration type—and I’d been right. To a point. It seems you also specialize in raising money for homelessness and world hunger.”
She looked down her patrician little nose at him, then nailed him with point-blank sarcasm. “How horrible of me.”
He smiled sadly. “How horrible that you choose to keep that part of yourself in such low profile.”
“Is there a point to all of this?” she asked, seeming to draw on all of her resources to appear bored—when, in fact, he could see that she was anything but bored. She was frightened. Scared right down to her little ballerina slippers of being found out.
“A point? Yes, Helena, I’ve got a point. The point is, I want you to admit how much your injuries are going to affect your life so you can start to deal with them. I want you to admit that it’s hard to find justice in your suffering when you have done so much to alleviate the suffering of others.”
Nothing. Not so much as a flicker of the eyelashes that were still spiked with tears she refused to shed.
“Dammit, Helena, it makes me mad as hell to see you this way—you should be mad as hell, too. And you shouldn’t feel diminished to admit it.”
She sat as silent as a stone.
He drew a deep breath, let it out, thought of the numerous articles and photos featuring both her philanthropic works and her playtime—and of the surprises that kept turning up. He’d expected that a woman who looked like her would have a very active love life. Unless she’d managed to be very discreet—a tough trick the way the press hounded her—there didn’t seem to be many men in her life, at least not for any long stretch at a time. That information, too, had been interesting—and a little too satisfying. Just as intriguing was his impression that while she’d smiled openly and readily for the cameras, her eyes had always seemed very private and very proud.
Like now.
“You were an athlete and a risk taker,” he continued. “You’d skied the Alps’ most treacherous slopes, snorkeled uncharted reefs, climbed obscure mountain peaks. You love dressage and steeplechase.”
The online photos had clearly shown that the equestrian events were her passion. She’d competed with a great love of the sport if the brilliant smile she wore in all of her photographs was any indication.
“You may never do those things again, and yet you sit there, silent to the pain.”
He looked from her hand to her face. Her eyes were blank, all the emotion she refused to let break through banked up behind them again.
“So the point,” he restated carefully, “is that I want to know how you can do that.”
“It seems that you already know more than enough about me.”
“About what you do? Yes. About who you are? No. Does anyone know, Helena? Do you even know who you are?” he asked as that unexpected, but crystal-clear insight into the root of her dilemma swept over him.
The abrupt difference in her demeanor was remarkable. In the space of a shallow breath, he watched her shaky fabrication of a brave front crumble like a sand castle. He could see in her eyes that she wanted to hate him in that moment. She wanted to hate him for forcing her to confront things no one had yet forced her to face.
She drew a deep breath, looked at the ceiling. “Why are you being so cruel? You and Justin. You think I need to talk about my—my injuries as if that will make everything go away.”
“And you think ignoring them will?”
“Yes. Yes!” she shouted and shot wildly out of the chair.
He rose, too, reaching out to steady her when she lost her balance. She fought against his hold. In her eyes shone the fact that she was mortified by her outburst even as she was ruled by it. The tears that welled up finally spilled over, breaking her pride, crumbling her defenses.
“Leave me alone. Please, just let…me…go,” she cried, not realizing that she was sobbing uncontrollably now.
And then she just gave it up. She gave in. She no longer seemed to care that she was beating futilely against his broad shoulders, that she was crying without shame.
He took each blow without flinching, then, afraid she would hurt herself, pinned her hard against him. He cradled her to his chest, wanting to shelter her from the pain, to hold her together so she wouldn’t shatter into a million splintering pieces.
“Shh,” he murmured against her hair. “Shush now. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
He’d expected tears. He’d thought he’d been prepared for them. Jena had used tears as weapons against him. She’d turned them on and off like a light switch. He’d soon become immune to her tantrums. But this…this he wasn’t equipped to handle.
These tears poured from Helena’s soul. They bled from a heart that was slowly breaking.
And it tore him apart as she finally let go, helpless to stop the emotions that poured out and spilled in salty tears to dampen his shirt.
His hands moved to her hair, to gentle and soothe, to caress and care. He whispered her name, tipped her face to his, pressed his lips to her tear-streaked cheeks, a tender intimacy, a healing balm. Her breath fanned his face, warm and wine-scented, and when she press
ed her sweet body against his as if she wanted to crawl inside him, something in him shifted. Something profound, something soul-deep and totally encompassing.
He was able to catch the breath that had stalled and filled his chest to bursting—but his mind—his mind, he lost completely.
With a whispered apology and a groan of utter defeat, he sought her mouth with his, covered it. And then he was as lost as she was to anything but the moment and the wonder of her lips opening beneath his.
Seven
Helena caught her breath on a sob and melted into him. Into his touch that was healing, into his heat that was inflaming. She clung to him, opened for him when his tongue coaxed her lips apart.
A groan rumbled from low in his throat. She shivered as he deepened the kiss, opening his mouth wider as if he would devour her, as if he fed on her as a starving man would draw sustenance from sun-ripened fruit. But she knew that she was feeding from him and the comfort he offered. She let herself drown in him and the dark, demanding need his kisses fostered. And what they fostered was complete and healing oblivion.
She’d known his kisses would be like this. She’d dreamed they would be like this. And yet her dreams could not compare to the reality that was Matthew Walker’s mouth.
Consuming, commanding, demanding yet giving, he took her under. She sank willingly with him into the depths.
She’d known his body would be heat and energy and his muscled back hard and lean beneath her hands. She’d known she wanted him. She hadn’t known, hadn’t dared to dream that he wanted her. But from the moment he’d pulled her into his arms and his big body had shuddered with desire, she’d known that no man had ever made her feel so needed or so alive.
Too few sensual moments had passed when he ended the kiss. He pressed his forehead to hers, closed his eyes, and dragged in a labored breath. “I’m sorry,” he murmured even as he wrapped her tighter in his arms. Then he laughed and swore under his breath. “The hell I am. I’m sorry if I hurt you, but I’m not sorry that I kissed you. I don’t know what that makes me. I only know that I’ve wanted to do that since the moment I saw you.”
She pulled back, blinked up at him.
He groaned again, lowered his head to press his cheek against the crown of her head. “Please don’t look at me like that—not unless you want to finish what we just started.”
Her heart slammed hard against her breast. This was too much to believe. Too much to hope for.
She pressed her nose against the hollow at his throat, steeped her confidence in the intimate scent of him, the heat of him. “What were we starting, Matthew?” she whispered into a silence charged with a desperate anticipation that begged him to make her believe.
The sound he made was part laugh, part groan. “My dear lady, if you don’t know, then I’ve got to do some serious reevaluation of my technique.”
“Do not joke with me, Matthew,” she demanded, pulling back to look into his eyes as hers stung with the insistent, niggling fear that it was compassion, not passion that had prompted his kiss.
He tipped back his head, drew a bracing breath. When he met her eyes again, his were slumberous and dark. “Does this feel like a joke?” He lowered his hands to her hips and pulled her hard against him. His erection pressed full and heavy against the hollow of her hip.
“Matthew,” she murmured as he swept her off her feet and into his arms.
“Don’t think for a minute that you’re off the hook,” he warned her gruffly. “You will talk to me. Later,” he assured her, just before he lowered his mouth for a kiss that would have buckled her knees had he not been holding her.
She couldn’t think for the sweet reassuring certainty that he wanted her. Couldn’t breathe for her need of him as he carried her up the broad, sweeping stairway then strode straight past her room.
“Tell me now, Helena,” he demanded with an urgency that hurried her heart when he stopped outside the door to his bedroom. “Tell me now if you don’t want this.”
The intensity of his desire chased away the last of her fears, banished into nonexistence her doubt.
“Talk to me, Helena. Tell me now, Helena.” The teasing huskiness in her voice translated to her newfound confidence as she cupped the back of his head in her right hand and pulled his mouth down to hers. “Is that all you Texans know how to do? Talk?”
His wonderful mouth curved into a slow, utterly male smile against hers. “Oh, we talk all right. But we also deliver. The question is—does that titled little mouth of yours know anything about begging? No?” He kicked open the door and strode toward the bed. “Then it’s past time you learned.”
Her senses were completely immersed in him, in this man whose heart beat like thunder against the curve of her left breast. This man whose strong arms held her against his chest, whose belt buckle bit into her hip like a brand of possession.
Despite her dazed and shimmering excitement, she registered vague impressions of a spacious, masculine room. A towering pine armoire stood against a far wall. The same gleaming floors as in her bedroom were scattered with boldly patterned rugs. Tall, arching windows captured the moon and summoned the night.
His bed stood in a pool of moonlight like an invitation that filled her with an edgy thrill and an aching expectancy.
The intimacy was astounding, as was the sudden realization that what no one but her doctors and her therapists had seen, this man would soon see—this magnificent, perfectly formed man who even now, seemed to read her mind and recognize the reticence she did not want to succumb to.
He set her carefully on the floor, kissed her long and deep with a devastating assault of lips and tongue and teeth. Dizzy with desire, she held on to him for balance as, with a flick of his hand, he tossed back the coverlet then reached for the bedside light.
Instantly tense, she touched her right hand to his, wrapped her fingers around his wrist. “Please. Leave it off.”
He studied her face with hooded eyes. “This is where the trust between us ends then?”
She looked away as want and apprehension filled her chest, brought another damnable threat of tears to her eyes.
“I want you, Helena.” He lifted her left hand, cloaked in the protective mesh glove, to his lips. “It’s that simple.”
A single, hot tear spilled down her cheek. “I don’t want to be like this. I don’t want to be a coward.”
He molded her open palm to his cheek, covered it with his hand then turned his face and pressed the most tender of kisses there. “You are the furthest from a coward of anyone I know. You’re just a little afraid. A million miles of difference lies between the two.”
The look in his eyes touched her deeply. He believed in her. He believed when she could not, and that knowledge both shamed and empowered her.
She drew in a breath. Let it out. She could be brave. For him. She could be strong. For him.
She reached down and with a trembling hand, turned on the light.
“So,” she said, with barely a tremor in her voice, “let’s get down to the begging part, shall we?”
He smiled then. One of those slow, unfurling smiles that did incredible, wonderful things to her tummy and helped her forget what she no longer was.
When he reached for the hem of her sweater and lifted it over her head, she shivered, as much in anticipation as with apprehension. And when she stood before him in the soft, watery blue silk of her camisole and French-cut panties, she blocked the scars and imperfections from her mind and became what he wanted her to be. A woman who desperately wanted this man.
A sigh slipped through her parted lips as he covered her breasts with his hands and lifted.
“I should have known.” He bent to her and caressed her with the heat of his breath, the brush of his lips, the stroking wetness of his tongue. “More silk beneath all that silk.”
He slowly slid the straps of her camisole down her arms. Blue lace caught on the fullness of her breasts, just above her nipples. Beneath the translucent silk, they p
earled in wanton invitation as the night air and his warm breath stroked her skin. She caught her breath on a jerky little sigh when he went down on one knee before her.
Sweet, sharp sensations tangled inside her chest as she watched him bury his face between her breasts and gently nuzzle then nudge the lace lower, until he’d bared her to the night and to his mouth.
“Oh.” She clutched at his shoulders as he nipped with his lips, rimmed the areola with a circular sweep of his tongue, then caught hold with his teeth and gently tugged. Delicious, curling heat pooled low in her belly. “Oh…my.”
She felt his smile against her skin, then the heat of his hands as he tunneled under the camisole to caress her naked flesh.
“Oh,” his murmuring echo stroked her skin as he squeezed gently, thumbed her erect nipples still wet from his mouth until she arched into his hands. “Oh…my.”
Despite the intense sensuality of the moment, a throaty laugh bubbled out. She smiled down into devil-green eyes. “How do you know how to make me laugh?”
“The same way I know how to make you moan.” It was a promise cloaked in a husky growl as his work-roughened hands skimmed down the length of her ribs, his fingers tracking as if he were memorizing every inch of her.
His mouth followed their slow descent in an agonizingly wonderful exploration. He pressed his face into the hollow of her navel, breathing warmth, trailing fire. Hooking his thumbs in the lace of her panties, he slid them carefully down her legs.
She did moan then and unaware, tangled a hand in his dark curls when his mouth moved lower still, licking and nipping a sizzling path to that part of her that pulsed with need, ached with want.
She sucked in a sharp breath when he touched her there. With his lips, with his tongue he made love to her, as his hands palmed her cheeks and drew her against his mouth.
“Matthew.” She cried his name on a whimper, the hand in his hair curling into a fist.