by Gayle Eden
She sat up and to the side, her feet on the grass. Titling her head, Alex held his gaze and whispered, “Do you want to know something, Edmund. You are free too. When you give yourself to passion, it is the most beautiful and erotic thing in the world. When you kiss and touch, when you give pleasure, you move with grace, you breathe passion…. Like a heartbeat in a storm. The other man, the one you show the world, the one so full of guilt you are afraid if the world gets close enough, they might see it and see your flaws. He is not you Edmund, not really. You are the man Sonja loves. The friend to my father, to Adam,—and Sascha. You are the most beautiful and sensual creature I have ever seen.
“Alex—”
She shook her head and stood, gazing down at him. “I didn’t know you then, know your past, your character. I am not sure I do now. But I saw you, and I wanted you, and I have never regretted a moment we’ve spent together.”
“Alex, Christ…” He sat up and reached for her hand.
She sighed unsteadily and turned, scooping up her slippers. She took herself inside and made herself remain with the women for the rest of the day. Cards took up much of it and then listening to one of them play music until it was time to change for dinner filled in the rest.
Val and Adam were back by the time Alex finished her bath. She was pacing her room in her robe. A new gown lay on the bed, a gauzy white one with ribbon sleeves and fluttery overskirt. Her white stockings lay on a bench, with a pair of soft slippers below it. Looking around the room, Alex eyed the open windows spilling soft evening light over the cream papered walls, the mellow wood floors, and satin comforter. Sounds were drifting in with evening’s breeze—and all she wanted was to be in Edmund’s arms, and to burn, and burn, and burn.
Breath thickening, constricting, she dropped the robe and walked to the full-length mirror. Streaks of sunset bathed her head to toe. Her hair was piled atop her head with simple pins. She stared down at her bare feet on the mellow wood in reflection, up her body, with her arms lax along her sides.
Her head snapped up, a soft gasp sounded when the latch clicked on her door. Alex felt as if she were dreaming when Edmund stepped inside and leaned back against the door, his Eyes like burning yellow flames, gazing over her uncovered body.
A click of the lock, and he was across the room—grabbing her from behind, one hand splayed on her stomach, the other hand tilting her head back—for a devouring and hungry kiss.
Breathing quickly, blood afire, Alex’s hand reached up, grabbing his hair, her other with fingers biting hard into the thigh behind her. Tongue plunging, ravishing, before he released her mouth amid their harsh breaths, and scored his down the side of her neck, up to her ear.
With a nudge of his hand to position, her, his teeth grazed her nape, his other hand lowering, fitting between her thighs, and finding the liquid heat, silken, hot and flowing.
“Edmund…Oh, God. Edmund.” She trembled, her eyes partly open and seeing their images in the mirror. His half-buttoned shirt having slipped down his sinewy shoulder, the snug black trousers and boots, his feet set wide, he dragged his lips over then kissed her neck and shoulders. Then she saw the strong sun kissed hand, fingers gliding through her curls, driving her mad as he rasped over the swollen nub.
Her legs shaking, she moaned and turned in his arms, hands tearing the shirt from him and his own cupping her face, kissing her deeply, hungrily, savagely. The world became a place of short, fiery breaths, and hungry skin, sensitive nerves, sexual aches, and ravenous hunger.
He released her mouth. Alex licked and bit his throat and his shoulders, her hands touching and molding and her heart thundering in her head. Blood rushed head to toe. She scraped her teeth over his collarbone, his nipples, hearing his harsh breaths, his groan before he cupped her backside and lifted her, her legs locking around him. Their wild and unleashed hungers made his steps to the bed unsteady.
He laid her back. However, Alex raised, her hands helping him with trousers and boots, his ribs lifting with hard breaths whilst their peeling away exposed his virile frame and sculpted honey skin. Muscles on his thighs bunched. The veins of his hips were full, the black hair around his sex glistened. The full thrust of his cock was veined and it pulsed, potent and primal—the head of it smooth, flushed, and eager.
Raw, exposed, stripped; they tumbled onto the bed, womanly curves and softness rubbing and arching, nipples hard against flexing masculine muscles. They kissed, were famished. Rolling, limbs sliding, and hands cupping, smoothing, teasing—and grasping hungrily.
Alex beneath him, his thigh between her own, he cupped under her other leg and skimmed his palm down the underside to her pert backside. Black mane falling around his face, into his eyes, Edmund looked the great cat. High cheekbones taut, sexual tension and hungers darkening his sensual mouth, and bringing those sooty lashes half-mast.
Half rose, on his elbow, he rasped amid dark breaths, taking in her glittering eyes and mess of curls, “I can smell your sexual heat. I would swear to God I was standing one moment in the hall, and I could taste the honey flowing on my tongue. I could breathe the sweet creamy flow from your sex.”
“Edmund…” She arched her spine, aching for him.
He kissed her and put himself over her, rose, while his fingers found her, going from gliding deep into the heat, to rubbing the swollen nerves. He watched her face, and listened to her pants, and moans.
Alex was on the edge, that sharp and intense verge of climax. Sucking in air, she felt his skin burning and smelled the heat of his aroused flesh. Gazing into those eyes, she began to splinter, to soar, and to shudder with inner fire.
Edmund moved his hand away. The round head of his sex found her glistening entry and glided in. An inch, another. His rapid breaths, his groans, were burning bliss. The contractions of her climax were squeezing the crown, nearly pushing him out as he went in. Skin dewed, he felt her lift her knees to his hips, felt the sting of her nails in his hard buttocks. He half gasped, “Higher love, lift your hips.”
She lifted, using her calves, locked behind his thighs.
Edmund groaned as if dying. The tight sleek walls relaxed enough for him to sink five inches more. Somewhere in the cloud of his dizzy head, and the delicious feel surrounding his cock, he heard Alex cry out. However, he was all the way to the hilt on sheer instinct before he realized what it was. His heart battering his ribs, his muscle and sinew so saturated with lust and pleasure, that he was a moment getting his throat muscles to work before he husked, “You’re a virgin.”
“I was,” she choked.
He trembled. His legs were quaking. Because of his height, he had to reach down and hold her hips still whilst he sat back enough to see her. She looked flushed, ravished, to his mind.
His sex half in, half out of her; it took steel balls not to thrust and thrust. Edmund asked, “Are you well, loved?”
“Yes. It…stings…” She swallowed and scraped her teeth over her lip.
“It won’t the next time.”
She nodded.
Edmund carefully stretched over her, eyes tightly closed, his teeth grit. He shallowly thrust in and out. He was quick, because he knew pain could steal her desire. He let his last three thrust go deep and then pulled out, his seed pumping on her stomach while he buried his face in the coverlet—and groaned somewhere between pleasure and torture.
* * * *
They had cleaned up in a washbowl before Edmund left the room. Alex washed and hurried down to dinner, her thighs smarting and a little chaffed inside. Since there were so many guests, half of them finished dining; she did not have to do more than give off handed answers as to her lateness.
She ate just enough and left, saying she was going to turn in early and read. Edmund came down and took something in the study via a tray. She knew that her father planned billiards for later. She soaked a long time in a hot bath. Alex lay in her robe afterwards, letting the night breeze soothe her. She replayed the wild encounter repeatedly in her head. Her body responded
no matter how sore, though the bath helped much. She could hear guests coming and going, hear Megan and Jo at one point in the hall, and then it would grow distant again.
It was deep in the night when her lashes lifted; the hazy moonlit image of Edmund met her vision.
He parted the robe, after kissing her mouth softly, kissed, and laved her nipples, feather light until they glistened and firmed.
Murmuring in sleepy pleasure, she watched him lie at the foot of the bed and pull her down to him. He spread her legs and softly kissed her inner thighs. His tongue supple and silken thrust inside her, summoning warmth and glistening pleasure. He eased it higher and rolled the tip around the swollen nerves, slowly building the climax.
His hands caressed the tender inside of her thighs, his warm breath soothing even as he reached deeper with his tongue, both gathering nectar for his pleasure and stroking for hers. When she was panting soft and whispering her need, he suckled the nub, his finger barely inside her, just enough to tease her until she was shuddering, contracting against it.
Her body flooding with warm pleasure, Alex was still floating when he arose and kissed her, tucking her into bed, before quietly leaving the room.
Chapter Nine
The Campbell has departed the following day. Alex, having made more effort to spend time with them, in spite of the fact she wanted to live back in those stolen moments with Edmund. With the others gone, she and Adam were partnered more often in cards, or simply for walks. Alex tried to find the moment to talk to him—although exactly what she would say, she was not sure.
Her father and Edmund, Van Wyc and Sascha seemed to always be together. She could only catch Edmund’s eye in passing, and they, the both of them, needed to talk.
It was evening when Alex heard men in the study. She had sworn she saw her father go out with them to ride. She had not seen Jo and Val in a bit and figured they had gone their own way, finding some quiet time likely.
Yet she stopped by the study door seeing Van Wyc scribbling on a paper. She could not see whom he was talking to but recognized Auttenburg’s voice and he sanded and sealed the missive.
“You can get passage on one of our ships. When you reach Switzerland, give this to my uncle. He will help you.”
“I’m grateful for this. More than you know.”
“You’ve experience that will serve you well, and I think uncle will be glad for someone to work that end of the business. We have empty estate houses and farms, whichever you prefer, so boarding will not be an expense. The merchant side of his holdings depend on a lot of diplomacy and contacts; you’ll be an asset I am sure.”
“I will earn whatever he thinks I am worth.”
Van Wyc stood and regarded him. “Will you not tell Johanna before you go?”
“I had planned to. But, no. It is better that I simply go. I have realized being here that I cannot explain away the mess I am in. neither can I ask her to wait—not knowing what may happen in my life when I leave. It’s not fair.”
“Perhaps you should let her decide, that.”
“No,” Sascha uttered huskily. “I knew when I first saw her that I couldn’t have her. Not yet. And, I still cannot. Fate will either work in my favor, or I will have missed my chance.”
“What of your estate?”
“Before I leave, I will sign everything over to the duchess, for the debt, but I want my solicitor to have it fairly appraised and handle that end. He will send me word of how it goes. I have no duns owed since those years. She will either honor the law or be her usual vicious self. I cannot control her. I can however be wiser, and stop trying to deal with her as usual. She will have to go through my lawyer to get her money from now on—or to communicate with me. I will not tell anyone but him, and my closest friends, where I am.”
Van Wyc leaned over and shook his hand, his eyes on Auttenburg’s face. “I wish you the best of luck. My family will treat you well, and you will have plenty of options and opportunity, to make of this what you wish.”
Walking away from the door, Alex was in a muse going down the hall. She sat in the back garden room, wondering if she should tell Jo or not? She knew her sister was mad for the man. Jo would have gone anywhere with him. However, she also knew Jo was in a mood since Auttenburg arrived, because he was doing, the same ignore and yet silently watch her that he had done in London.
As it happened, Alex was still there when raised voices from the side courtyard jerked her out of her muse. She jumped up, hearing Jo’s voice, but got to the door only in time to see her sister run at Sascha who was striding away and grasp his shoulder.
Jo, her hair down, and wearing her riding trousers, shirt and boots, grabbed his face and kissed him. Then she slapped him.
Backing a step, she cried, “Don’t ever speak or come around me again, damn you! I hope I shall never see you again!”
Jo dashed into the house, leaving Auttenburg standing there with a red handprint on his tight cheek. His eyes skirted to Alex, and she saw the flash of pain, before he turned and continued to the stables.
It was at dinner that his departure was announced. Under the circumstances, Edmund looked strained. The two London ladies sensed the awkward by-play of the men.
Directly after dinner, Edmund announced, “I must go. I beg your pardon, everyone.” He glanced at Alex was brief before he left to catch up with Sascha in the village.
Adam took her aside and murmured, “I will need to escort the ladies back to town.”
“Of course.” She nodded. “Be careful. I will see you in a few weeks.”
He kissed her temple and murmured, “I shall see you in town.”
Jo was obviously locked in her room. Temper or not, the sound of her sobs could be heard in the upper hall.
When Alex found her father in the study whilst Edmund and Adam were packing, he was leaning against the French doors with a brandy.
“Is Jo well?”
“I suppose. She won’t let me in, right now.”
“Ah. Well.” He sighed and shook his head. “The Viscount had problems before he met Jo. I am sure it is difficult for a passionate woman like your sister to understand his pride. It is pride that he could scarcely hang onto.”
“I sensed a bit of it, and I think Jo knew—”
“Yes. Likely she did. But she’s hurt right now.” He drank the brandy and turned. “I offered to help him. He refused. He is a man of great pride. I invited him here to offer him a solution, instead he asked for my advice. I gave it. It seems I have come between Jo and her heart’s desire.”
“There is no easy way for them.”
“No.” He went over and put the glass down.
They walked out in the foyer together, to see Edmund and Adam off. However, having walked out where the horses were waiting, they spied a boy from the village galloping toward the drive.
“What now,” Alex breathed anxious because she desperately needed to talk with Adam. In addition, she needed to talk to Edmund too.
“For the Earl of Sotherton, milord’s.” The lad held a sealed missive.
“I am he.” Edmund stepped up, took it, giving the boy coins before the lad wheeled, and rode off.
Cracking the seal, Edmund cursed and looked to where Alex stood with her father. “My sister’s home has been broken into. Her private apartments were vandalized, and her personal journals taken.”
“Oh, Edmund. I am so sorry,” Alex winced, knowing that those private journals likely not only contained the duchess’s personal purging, but many could name the names of those who used her house.
The Marquis offered, “I shall come to town early. The girls can join me later with Van Wyc as escort.”
“I can’t ask you—”
“Nonsense,” The Marquis cut Edmund off. “I shall be there in two days. Meanwhile, I suggest you take the duchess into your house, and the rest of her personal belongings.”
Frowning, distracted, Edmund mounted up. His tawny eyes touched Alex, before he nodded, and rode away.
Adam was on his horse too, and bid them adieu.
Alex looked at her father. “What do you think it is about? Blackmail, or perhaps—”
“I don’t know.” The Marquis guided her inside. “But I would wager ‘tis someone who wants to hurt her—or Edmund.”
After her father had a word with the servants, announcing his changed day of departure, he said to Alex, “If Jo does not feel up to the season, you and Val can think of an excuse for her.”
Alex nodded.
He touched her shoulder, his lavender eyes moving over her face. “And Alex—I am not blind. Neither, is Auvary.”
“Oh—Lord.” She covered her cheeks with her hands. “I was going to speak with him.”
“Yes, well you should cut him loose. It simply will not do, to be lovers with his best friend.”
“You make it sound so awful.”
“I don’t think more than his pride will be hurt. But whatever he suspects, he will respect you more for your honesty.”
“Yes. Of course. I shall write him, before I reach town.”
Her father kissed her forehead. “Do that. And Alex—”
“Yes?”
“I picked Edmund—for you.”
Her lips parted, mouth opening, but her father stepped away and went into the study, closing the door.
Alexandria closed her eyes. “He’s still not mine, father. He’s still not.”
* * * *
“Well,” said Jo a few days later, after their father left and her sister finally let Alex into her rooms. “Your explanation changes nothing. As if, I would wait! I am to be some (withering away devotee,) whilst he is in another country. Likely, spending his free time with some tavern wench named… Helga!”
Since that was said with sarcasm, Alex fought not to laugh. What she said was, “Try and understand, Jo. He had lost much of his pride through these dealings with the duchess. If he doesn’t gain something of his former independence, then she will have him a puppet forever.”
“I cannot believe Van Wyc—”
“Jo. Listen to me.” Alex grasped her shoulders and shook her. “Set aside your own pride for a moment and consider the impossible position the Viscount was in.”