The Last Bachelor

by Betina Krahn

  “Well, well. What’s this?” He paused in the midst of his work and leaned over the mattress to pluck something from under the edge of the featherbed. With one finger he raised a garment that made her eyes widen. “Yours, I presume.”

  “My nightdress.” She snatched at the tail of it, grabbing only air as he jerked it out of her reach.

  “So this is what you sleep in,” he said smoothly, examining the rosette-rimmed neck, the long, flowing sleeves, and the play of light through the fabric. “Foulard, I believe. You do have interesting taste in nightclothes, Antonia. Most respectable matrons consider foulard too thin, too provocative for decent nightwear.” His eyes glowed as they settled on the row of mother-of-pearl fastenings down the front of the garment.

  “And would you look at all those buttons?” He cocked a rakish look at her and chuckled. “Trust me, Antonia, if a man ever gets his hands on you in this nightgown, a million buttons won’t keep it closed.”

  Embarrassment burst through her control, drenching her with crimson and heat. “Give me that!” She lunged at the gown and this time succeeded in grabbing the hem. In a flash she had both hands on it and was pulling for all she was worth.

  Caught off balance, he toppled onto his knees, but he managed to keep his grip on the gown. Each pulled with determination, but their tug-of-war soon settled into a seesawing stalemate. She ordered him to let go. He refused, claiming finder’s rights under the Common Law. After a lulling moment she gave a heroic tug, which he countered by sinking onto his rear and then using her grip on the gown to drag her onto the bed with him.

  “Why, you—” She gasped as she fell on her front across a mound of feather ticking. And a moment later she found herself staring breathlessly into his eyes.

  “I do love teasing you, Antonia Paxton,” he said, slackening his hold and giving her a warm chocolate look that made her suddenly crave a taste of him. “I’ve never seen a female out of schoolroom smocks who blushes the way you do.”

  “I’m not responsible for my wretched skin,” she said, scrambling to hang on to her indignation as she wrestled up onto her arms.

  “I know. That’s what makes it so appealing. It always tells the truth about what is happening inside you, whether you like it or not. And do you know what your skin is telling me now?” He inched closer and relinquished half of his grip on the nightgown, now that he held her by something more powerful. Trailing a finger down the side of her heated face, he felt her involuntary shiver.

  “It’s saying that you like this. It’s saying you haven’t forgotten what it felt like, skin against bare skin.” His finger drifted from her chin to the top of her bodice. “And it’s saying that you’re wearing far too many buttons.”

  She was buffeted by waves of perception. His heat, his male scent, the promise in his eyes, the irresistible tenderness of his hand on her face … she was drowning in sensation. Her beleaguered better sense gave one last gasp, which produced a corresponding breath in the physical plane. That half-voluntary reaction was enough to raise her wits above the flood engulfing her senses.

  “You have no right to do this.” She abandoned the nightgown to his hands and pulled back to the edge of the bed.

  “To do what, Antonia?” He sobered instantly. “To make good my part of the wager? To do an average woman’s work and learn something from it? To change my mind about women?” His face filled with breathtaking intensity. “To want you … to make you want me?”

  The playful, teasing rogue was gone. In his place was a forceful and penetrating man used to going against the “givens” of his world, a man who in a few short words had distilled the essence of their conflicts and poured it out between them: the wager, his opinion of women, and what lay unresolved between them as a man and a woman.

  To want you. To make you want me. The words echoed in her heart.

  Everything that had gone before had prepared the way for this moment. She was afraid to seize it and yet terrified to lose it. Her mouth dried and her frame tensed as she felt him reaching for her without hands, without words, with only his desire. Temptation mounted as she searched his eyes, seeking in them the answers that could free her longing for him. She had to know.

  “You say my ladies have taught you,” she whispered dryly. “Then what have you learned?” She held her breath, not knowing exactly what she needed to hear. Some of the tension in his face drained as he searched her intensity and realized that his answers were important to her.

  “I’ve learned I’m no match for a dozen charming old ladies,” he confessed, edging closer, watching her, ready to halt at the first sign of her withdrawal. “Or for one beautiful and devious younger one.”

  “And?” she said, blushing, her pulse drumming faster.

  “Lord, you are a bloodthirsty wench. You want the gory details, I see. You want to hear how Gertrude faced me down that first day and reduced me to something in short pants. And I suppose you won’t be content until I’ve confessed that Eleanor is one of the brightest and most inventive persons I’ve ever met, regardless of sex. She and your Molly have the constitution of a pair of prize Belgians … they worked me to the bone. And Molly has my vote for chancellor of the exchequer any day; the French wouldn’t stand a chance in tariff negotiations. Then there’s your aunt Hermione. I’m not convinced she’s quite mortal; I expect her to sprout wings and start sprinkling fairy dust about at any moment. It’s no wonder at all to me that she managed to snare four husbands.” He raised one brow. “Need I go on?”

  “Yes,” she said softly, her eyes luminous. “Do.”

  He expelled a long-suffering breath. “Well, Prudence isn’t the least bit prudent, and Pollyanna is practical to the point of either the ridiculous or the sublime … I haven’t yet decided which. But by far the worst of the lot is old Cleo. All that wizened charm and wisdom—and she reads minds, you know. It’s nothing short of terrifying.”

  She bit her lip, watching him reveal a seldom-seen part of himself in his descriptions of them. They had indeed wormed their way past his smug male defenses, and from the deepening tenderness in his expression, she sensed that the lessons had reached all the way to the core of him. She had never seen him quite like this: warm and open, honest and engaging. She could scarcely draw breath around the joy expanding in her heart.

  “And women’s work?” she asked. “Do you still think women are all devoted to feathering their ‘pampered nests’?”

  “We run whole government bureaus with less logic and organization than your ladies employ in your linen room,” he declared a bit sheepishly. “I’ve always believed women are more capable than they are credited with being, that with time and training they would be able to do most things men can do. It never occurred to me that they might already be doing it … only in a different venue.” He smiled wryly. “It’s disconcerting to learn you’ve been so right, and yet so wrong.”

  He couldn’t have chosen more perfect words to answer the half-formed questions in her mind. She could only stare in wonder at him as he leaned forward and took her face between his hands. His angular face, his dark, caressing eyes, and his full, mobile mouth were suddenly all she could see.

  “You know what this means,” she whispered softly, and he nodded.

  “It means you’ve won, Antonia Paxton.”

  His lips met hers and the warmth of his kiss billowed through her, thick and sweet, like applewood smoke. It filled her head, her lungs, and seeped into her blood, freeing her responses as it poured through her body. Its source was a now familiar flame in the very core of her, and the fuel of that flame was his touch.

  She felt his body jerk and opened her eyes to find that he had kicked the mattress so that it unrolled beside him. In a moment she was wrapped in his arms and sinking back onto that soft expanse. She slid her arms around his neck, luxuriating in the feel of him against her, and threading her fingers into his hair.

  They were suddenly in the same position, feeling the same heady rise of passion as they had the
other day in the upstairs parlor. It was as if the three intervening days, filled with doubts and conflicts and confrontations, hadn’t existed. Within moments her long-reined desires were straining at the bounds of her experience, hungry for every bit of sensation he could provide.

  Hindered by the tiny buttons of her bodice, he impatiently pressed a kiss on the skin just revealed at the base of her throat. As the fastenings slowly yielded and her bodice parted, baring her chest, he trailed steamy kisses down her breast to the edge of her corset. Then either a stubborn button or perhaps the tremble of his hands halted his progress, and he raised his head with a laugh.

  “Is this why you wear so many of the wretched things? To deter would-be ravishers? What I wouldn’t give for a good pair of scissors.”

  The darkened-jewel glow of her eyes and the delectable reddening of her lips snared his gaze. Lying beneath him, she was the embodiment of womanliness in a way he had never experienced it—open, warm, and vulnerable. For the first time in his life he knew what it was to truly want a woman. With growing wonder he realized that the wanting involved every part of him, from the depths of his passions to the very heights of his pride. He wanted to touch every part of her with every part of him.

  For one heart-stopping moment his evolving desire met the awakening need in her eyes, and the power of that convergence shook him to the core of his being.

  “I was wrong about Cleo,” he murmured, when he could free his desire-seized throat. “She’s not the worst.”

  “Oh?” she said in a whisper, closing her eyes to hold that breathtaking moment of intimacy a bit longer before letting it go.

  “You are.”

  It was a stunningly sweet accusation. To be the worst thing he could imagine: a woman who defied his prejudices and charmed his fears and coaxed him out of his closely guarded resentments. To be the woman that he couldn’t help looking at with all the tenderness and longing he was capable of feeling. To be the most irresistible woman in Paxton House. She absorbed that charge into her heart, where it freed her feelings and unleashed her responses.

  Breathless with excitement, she surprised them both by dragging his mouth back to hers and brazenly capturing the tip of his tongue between her lips, demanding he make full use of it. He complied eagerly with her demands, laving her lips, teasing her tongue, exploring the silken depths of her mouth even as his hands explored her body. Her skirts began a gradual slide up her legs, then bunched and caught somewhere around her knees. He groaned in frustration.

  “If it isn’t those wretched ‘crinoline’ cages, it’s these stovepipe skirts. Whoever designs these things must despise both men and lovemaking.” When he raised his head, she could see his aggrieved expression and laughed softly.

  Then she took her lip between her teeth, giving him a frankly provocative look that challenged him to do the same thing. With a quiet groan he abandoned all talk in a long, voracious kiss that left them feverish and straining together.

  He drew back to watch her response as he released her nipple from her corset and teased it rhythmically. She caught her breath and undulated, pressing against his fingers, seeking a deeper touch, wanting more. He released her other nipple and lavished succulent, drawing kisses on it, then took it into his mouth, commanding her response, wringing shudders of pleasure from her that produced corresponding tremors in his own loins.

  A familiar pressure settled in her woman’s core as his mouth caressed and tantalized her breasts and his hands slid over her bared knees. She somehow understood that this desire had resided, dormant, in every part of her body until the stroke of his hand awakened it. His supple fingers slid between her knees and under the lacy edge of her drawers, rising along the bare skin of her inner thigh, and pleasure trickled from his fingers in quicksilver rivulets up her limbs, pooling in her woman’s flesh.

  The stroking went on and on, rising ever so slowly up her thigh until his hand reached the limits of the access her skirts would allow. Digging her fingers into his shoulders, she urged his body on top of hers. Her hips were caught between the thick pad of her bustle and the tantalizing force of his body bearing down on hers behind a hard ridge of flesh. The weight and heat of him drove out the last of her inhibitions, so that when he flexed against her, she responded by tilting her hips to direct that divine pressure downward and inward.

  Suddenly there it was—that rasp of sensation that seared through her nerves and flung her aloft on a rising draft of excitement. His kisses deepened, his hands grew more urgent at her breasts, and she could feel the pulse of his desire in the swollen ridge thrust hard against the barrier of her garments. She wanted him to salve this burning ache inside her, to fill the taut, expectant hollow of her body. With a soft groan she rocked her hips, seeking that part of him that she knew lay hot and ready against her.

  “Remington.” She whispered the deepest longing of her heart: “Love me.”

  For one moment he paused, then raised his head from her mouth to look at her. She was glowing with heat and her body was fluid with passion beneath him. The sight of her and the feel of her coaxing motions unleashed his reined desires. “I will, sweetheart.”

  He captured her lush, swollen lips and bore down, thrusting against her, finding her center, making her shudder deliciously with each stroke. Again and again he raked against her, carrying her higher, pushing her beyond the bounds of control and reason, into realms of pure sensation.

  She gave herself up to it, waiting, expectant, suspended on wild rising waves of pleasure. Abruptly, she stilled, and the collected tension exploded in her loins.

  Searing bolts of pleasure shot outward from her woman’s center, burning along her nerves, contracting her muscles, driving her against him with a choked cry of pleasure. Her arms convulsed around him as she arched, shuddered, and surrendered. After a long, blinding moment of white-hot intensity, the feeling began to slowly fade, retreating like a wave, lowering her gently back into reality, leaving her limp and trembling against him.

  He held her tightly as he felt her tension draining. He was panting, trembling, aroused to the very edge of his being, but he was still lucid enough to understand what had just happened. She had taken her full woman’s pleasure, he was sure of it. Never, in his entire carnal career, had he encountered a woman whose response was so volatile and near the surface that she could find paradise in just the caresses of his body. After a moment he shifted back to look at her.

  The soft fringe of her lashes lay against her moist and glowing cheeks. Her lips were parted and the skin of her throat and breast was rosy with the blush of climax. She was sensuality incarnate: female, desire, completion. And when she opened her eyes, the dark mystery, the wonder of the ages was there in their depths.

  “Madam?” A querulous voice burst through the heat. “Are you there, madam?”

  Antonia squeezed her eyes tight, wishing she could shut her ears as well. But the voice came again, closer this time, and she felt Remington stiffen against her, listening. Over the surge of her blood in her head, she recognized Hoskins’s voice. Annoyance was her first reaction: billowing irritation that someone should interfere with her impulsive pleasure. But then horror was her second.

  Hoskins stood just inside the door, scowling as he searched the room for his mistress. The bolsters and feather mattress that were mounded up on the end of the bed prevented him from seeing them, and the old fellow grumbled and shuffled out.

  It was a long, prickly moment before Remington pushed up onto his arms and peered over the mountain of feather ticking beside them. The room was empty.

  “He’s gone. I don’t think he could see us behind the featherbeds.” He managed a wry, somewhat confused smile. “Why is it whenever I have you in my clutches, he barges in? Do you plan these things? Or does he just have an exceptional nose for sniffing out roused passions—like a moral bloodhound of some sort?”

  His words slammed through her senses, driving the embarrassment she felt into her very marrow. Did she plan this? Did she
plan to lose all control? To take the ultimate pleasure from him? To disgrace herself yet again with her rebellious passions? Her heart and her body both contracted with humiliation.

  “I did not plan this—” she said in a choked voice, pushing him off her and fumbling with her garments as she sat up and scrambled toward the edge of the bed. Her panicky reaction caught him off guard, and it took a moment for him to reach her. Caught in his grip, she strained to escape, turning her face as far from him as possible. “Let me go—”

  “Antonia—Toni—” Confusion gave way to understanding as he watched her shrinking, trying to escape both him and the fact of what had just happened to her. “Look at me,” he said, his voice husky with both need and compassion. “No, you don’t plan these things,” he said softly. “I do. I’m the one who plots and schemes to get you into a compromising position. And I’m not the least bit sorry for it.” He slid to the edge of the bed, beside her, and pressed a soft, evocative kiss on her cheek. “And you mustn’t be sorry for it either.”

  Something in his tone, the unexpected softness of his words, reached through her shame. When he reached for her chin this time, she let him turn her face back to him. Her heart gave a painful, arrhythmic thud as she faced the soft glow in his eyes. It wasn’t what she would have expected of him in his moment of conquest. It was a mercy when tears welled in her eyes and blurred the sight of him.

  Her shame pulled strings in him that he hadn’t realized had wound around his heart. He dragged her against him and wrapped her in his arms, holding her tightly. She was stiff and resistant to his warmth, but he wouldn’t let her go.

  “Was that the first time?” he murmured into her hair. After a moment she pushed back as far as his arms would allow. “It was, wasn’t it?” he prompted.