by Betina Krahn
Chapter Nineteen
Antonia awakened some time later to an exquisite ache in her loins and the compensating warmth of a large, hard body pressed against her shoulder, hip, and thigh. She looked up to find Remington propped on an elbow against her, watching her sleep. His eyes were that soft chocolate color she loved and were half-closed to match the half smile he wore.
“I thought maybe you’d sleep the rest of the day,” he murmured near her ear, his hand skimming her waist.
“What would you have done if I had?” she said sleepily, running her fingers over his face, tracing the slope of his nose and the plane of his cheek.
“I would have stayed here the rest of the day, watching you.” He looked deep into her eyes. “Watching over you.”
She felt a glow of sunlike warmth inside and tilted her head to look at him. “When I looked up and saw you standing in Cleo’s room … I don’t think I’ve ever felt so grateful to see anyone in my life.” She closed her eyes and nuzzled her face against his bare chest. “I’d already lost Aunt Hermione … I was so afraid of losing Cleo, too.”
He smiled at her kittenish movements, then wrapped his arms around her and drew her close, settling into a more thoughtful mood.
“You will, you know.” When she opened her eyes and looked up at him quizzically, he took a heavy breath. “You will lose her someday, Toni. She’s lived a long and interesting life, but she won’t live forever. I don’t think she even wants to.”
She sat up abruptly, disturbed, and he sat up with her. “Toni?” After a moment he turned her face back to him. “They’re all old ladies, sweetheart. What will you do when they’re gone?”
She looked up at him with her emotions reeling. What would she do without them? They were her family, her life. She felt as if the bottom had suddenly dropped out of her heart. They would die one by one and leave her … alone.
He stroked her face to bring her gaze back to him.
“I’ll be here with you, sweetheart. Tomorrow, next week, next year … year after year … just as I was last night.”
As he was last night, when she needed him. The thought flowed through her with the clinging sweetness of honey. She needed him. It wasn’t frightening or diminishing at all, certainly not in the ways she had feared. She needed him as she needed the air she breathed and the food she ate, like sunlight and laughter and warmth. She had needed him last night, and he was there to comfort her, to share her worry and heartache. Now he was here to share her joy and pleasure. And there was no other in the world with whom she could share the powerful and soul-rending things that had just passed between them—not Hermione nor Cleo nor any of her ladies. She had not even shared such things with Sir Geoffrey, who had been her husband.
Somehow she understood: these were feelings and experiences shaped into loving acts by the love she bore him. It was her love for him that made the difference.
He watched her coming to terms with it and held his breath, hoping that he had said enough, and not too much. The soft melancholy of her face slowly gave way to a sweeter expression, a glow of acceptance, then a loving look. And he knew it was all right.
“I was wrong. I do need you, Remington Carr.”
It was more than all right, he realized. He grinned and kissed her, wrapping her in his arms and sinking back onto the bolsters with her. But the joy in him was too exuberant to be contained in just kisses. He felt like running, jumping, shouting—like squeezing her to him until her body melted into his. He pulled her harder against him, his eyes snapping with sensual energy.
“Let’s see, now. You’ve decided you like me. And you need me. What’s left? Oh, yes. Trust.” A pulse of pleasure darkened his eyes as he ran his hands down her body and felt her shiver of response. “I think we may have dispensed with that little objection to me as well.”
“We have?” She blushed as she recalled her vehement charges against him. “You think I trust you now?” It was a question she asked herself as much as him. “And what gives you that idea?”
“This, sweetheart.” He glanced down at her bare body, pressed intimately against his. He dragged his fingers up the side of her hip, across her waist, and over the tightly contracted tip of her breast … watching the flow of his fingers and appreciating the lush territory they covered.
Her gaze followed his, watching his hand, feeling the delicious rivulets of sensation that trickled from his fingertips through her skin. What made him think … ? Then it struck her, she was seeing bare skin. Stunned by the sight of his hand caressing her bare breast, she lay motionless, watching, feeling, and realizing that somewhere in the fury of their loving he had managed to coax her out of her chemise as well as out of her inhibitions.
“Ohhh—” She tried to cover herself, but he caught her arm and redirected it around his side. Then she tried to roll away, but he stopped her by sliding his body over hers.
“Sweetheart, it’s a little late for modesty. I’ve already made more than a passing acquaintance with your naked self. And with your encouragement, I might add. Look at me.” Slowly she opened her eyes and found herself looking up into his frankly admiring gaze. “You’re beautiful, Antonia … your face, your eyes, your body. And I love looking at you. Where’s the harm in that?”
It was easier to ignore her nakedness with him covering her like a blanket, and she calmed, though her face and entire breast felt as if they were on fire. “I’m not sure it’s quite decent, somehow. I would just feel better with …” She glanced away.
“With a few buttons between us?” he finished for her. “The sainted Geoffrey never saw you without your clothes, did he? Tell me, Toni. And I won’t ever mention it again.” When she wouldn’t answer, he began to worry. “Toni, did he hurt you?”
Her tension eased as she recognized the protectiveness that had shaped his question. She shook her head.
“No, Geoffrey was a kind and gentle man … just very … modest.”
“He made you wear a nightgown,” he supplied, adding on impulse: “with lots of buttons.”
She blushed and looked away, uncomfortable. But in the sheltered confines of her bed, with his warm, solid body pressed intimately against hers, she felt the urge to confide what she had never spoken of to anyone.
“After a while he declined to visit my bed—” Her eyes clouded with a memory that caused her to draw back. “Never mind. It’s not important now.”
“It is if it troubles you. He left your bed? What on earth could have happened to make him abandon making love to you?”
Some of the hot color drained from her face and she tried to push him off her. “I really don’t see what that has to do with you … or us.”
“What was it, Toni?” He refused to release her, sensing from her agitation that he was close to the truth. “Did he make you do things you found repugnant?”
“No, he didn’t,” she said irritably, trying again to lever him to the side and slide from beneath him. It was no use. The more she tried to escape, the more determined he became. She halted and finally gave him what he demanded.
“He wanted me to not do things!”
“To not do … what things?” It took him a moment to realize what her adamant silence meant. “You mean that thing?” he said, eyes widening as he recalled her reaction to her first taste of pleasure with him, and her shamed confession that she had reached a climax before. “You reached a climax and he didn’t want you to?”
Again her silence confirmed his supposition. It shouldn’t have astonished him, but it did. He knew that many men believed it was detrimental for their wives to respond during sex … said it ruined their character, made them loose and unruly and untrustworthy. Such men saved their caresses and lubricious attentions for the already “ruined” Hillarys and Carlottas of the world, while their wives got only dry, miserable duty in their beds.
“The old fool,” he said, looking at her with disbelief that slid quickly into anger. “He left your bed because of that?” Her nod was barely perceptibl
e.
“I didn’t agree with his decision, and one night I went to him and I …” She blushed from the tips of her breasts upward as she recalled that night in her husband’s room. Sir Geoffrey had stood watching her as she … “unbuttoned my nightdress and showed myself to him, hoping to … to …” She couldn’t say it and so he did.
“Seduce him.” He nodded. “And?”
“And I managed to humiliate both him and myself. I had never seen him angry before that night. He buttoned me up, from neck to toe, and sent me straight back to my room like a … a …”
“Naughty child,” he supplied. “And you stayed ‘buttoned up’ ever since.” He began to smile. No wonder she had reacted so strongly when he cut off her buttons that day in the parlor! “Well, if you hadn’t already guessed, sweetheart, I don’t share his modesty or his restraint. I don’t mind being seduced in the least. And on occasion I have been known to behave like a naughty child myself.” With a grin that was some part relief, some part rebellion, he pushed up onto his elbows. “Come with me, Lady Antonia.”
He rolled from her and from the bed, pulling her up with him. She squirmed and resisted, blushing furiously as he dragged her across the floor and stood her in front of the pier glass. Shocked, she twisted and shoved at his arms, but he tightened them forbiddingly around her waist and ordered her to look at herself. She clamped her eyes shut and he chuckled and began in sultry tones to describe her to herself.
“God—you are a piece of work, Antonia Paxton. Look at those, long, silky legs … ummm … trim little ankles … strong, sleek thighs.” His hand joined the exploration as he reached her hip. “Extraordinary curves … a soft little belly … sweet curls …” He brushed them with his fingers, and she groaned. “Very nice waist, Antonia … and then some of my favorite parts … your lovely breasts.” He held her against his body with his elbows, freeing his hands to cup her breasts. “Round and soft … just made to fill my hands … and those long, pouty nipples … tight little swatches of velvet. Ummm, how they make you squirm. I do like the way you squirm, sweetheart.”
She went still and caught her breath as he rolled her nipples back and forth between fingers and thumbs. Her knees gradually weakened and the fight drained from her as she surrendered to his hot words and tactile persuasions. On impulse she opened her eyes, filtering the sight of her naked body through her lashes.
Then with his seductive words flowing into her ear and his supple hands flowing over her body, she opened her eyes wider, and still wider. She looked at herself, then at the tantalizing outline of his body behind hers. His strong arms wrapped her, his agile hands cupped and caressed and skimmed her body with sensuous assurance. And the sight of him claiming her nakedness both unnerved and reassured her.
She dragged her gaze up the legs in the mirror, then over the hips, up the small waist and to the full, rose-tipped breasts. She met his eyes in the mirror. They were glowing with pride and desire and not a little mischief.
“What do you think? Isn’t she the most beautiful naked woman you’ve ever seen?”
She blushed and laughed with an edge of embarrassment. “She’s the only naked woman I’ve ever seen.”
“Well, she’s not the first I’ve seen … though I admit some have been on French postcards—ow!” She had jabbed his ribs with her elbow, and he straightened and grinned. “Well, I told you I was naughty sometimes.”
He turned her around and pulled her hard against him, with their sides to the mirror. “Look at us.” Thigh to thigh, breast to breast, they stood looking at the softly merged lines of their bodies in the glass. They were like a statue or a painting, one of Winterhalter’s sylvan romps.
“Any time you want to ‘unbutton’ in my presence, sweetheart, feel free.”
Feel free. That was exactly what she was doing and she liked it—the sound, the feel of it, the way it resonated through her body, bringing her to life. She stepped out of his arms and swayed across the room to the bed, sensing his eyes on her as she stretched her arms wide, rolled her shoulders, then arched her back and wiggled her hips, trying out her new freedom.
“I think I like this,” she said, turning to him, drawing him toward her with a sultry look. Nakedness was not all she was trying out, he realized. “What if I come to like it too much?”
“I believe that was precisely what old Sir Geoffrey was afraid of,” he said huskily, watching her hands gliding down her sides and then up her ribs, brushing the tips of her breasts. He saw the flicker of pleasure in her eyes and felt his temperature rise. “I’ll try to see that you get loose and libidinous only in my presence.”
“And how will you manage that?” she said, squirming seductively, and watching the effect it had on him.
“By keeping you … busy,” he said, feeling his throat tightening at the way she was twitching her hips, moving to some internal rhythm.
“Ummm … I like being busy.” Her eyes darkened to an alluring midnight-blue. “But what if I’m not busy enough? What if I get unruly and loose and wicked? What if I get … out of control?”
“Every husband’s nightmare,” he breathed softly, unable to pull his eyes from the erotic movements of her hands over her body. He felt a sudden pang of sympathy for knotty old Sir Geoffrey. The old boy hadn’t had a prayer of keeping up with her, and obviously knew it. “Believe me, sweetheart, I have never suffered the illusion that I have ever been in control of you.”
“Ummm.” She halted, her eyes half-closed, her arms wrapped around her just beneath her breasts so that she looked like the veriest temptress he had ever seen, French postcards or otherwise. “What if I decide to take up a placard and demand the vote?” As she swayed across the room, he watched her legs flex and her hips swing provocatively. Then she stood in the middle of the clothes they had shed and demanded, “Or what if I decide to take up wearing trousers?”
He felt the bedpost at his back and leaned heavily against it, watching in heated fascination as she reached for his trousers and, with an eye on him, held them open. First one pale leg, then the other, sank inside the black legs of his trousers as she raised them to her waist. With her lip caught between her teeth, she worked the buttons, then released the trousers, letting them sink so that they caught on her hips. She laughed softly and bent to roll up the bottoms so she could walk. Catching sight of his starched collar and tie on the floor, she wrapped them around her throat and swayed to the mirror to tie his tie. With the collar in place beneath a creditable knot, she turned this way and that, watching his reaction in the mirror.
“Well, what do you think?” She strolled seductively toward him, his trousers hanging just below her navel, her throat bound in his proper collar and tie, and her breasts and body bare between the two. His eyes went black as he watched her hips wriggling inside his trousers, watched her breasts jiggle with each step, and saw the way his hard collar circled her neck and forced her chin up to a provocative angle. She was rebelling against years of sexual constraint, and he knew it.
“I believe you said something about making me wear trousers and a stiff collar. How would I look?”
She turned slowly, letting him look her over, tempting him. She had no idea just how tantalizing she looked or just how close he was to ripping those trousers off her body. He snagged her arm as she swayed into reach. Pulling her against him, he let her see the desire she ignited in him, then pressed her trouser-clad hips hard against his swollen desire, making her feel his arousal.
“When you dance, sweetheart, you have to pay the piper.”
She laughed softly, letting her desire show in her eyes, too. “Take whatever payment you want, piper.” As his hands slid feverishly over that collar, down her bare breasts and waist, to squeeze her buttocks through his trousers, she groaned softly and thrust her pelvis against his in a slow, grinding motion. “I’m not through dancing.”
He crushed her lips beneath his and felt her explode slowly in his arms.
Together they toppled onto the bed, kissing, strai
ning close, arching hungrily into each other. He fumbled with his fly buttons and finally laughed, admitting he had never had to undo pants on somebody else before. She laughed and helped, peeling open the placket to reveal a slice of silky abdomen. The contrast of his half-open trousers and her pale skin was the most erotic thing he’d ever seen. He leaned down to trace that seductive V with his tongue.
Shortly, his trousers lay in a heap by the bed, and his body was sliding onto and into hers with the same liquid motion. They moved together in wild, changing rhythms: frantic and lustful one minute, light and playful the next. They rolled and writhed and teased and laughed, exploring and celebrating their closeness even as they did their passions. And this time, as sensation and response built, they held each other tightly and went tumbling one after another into wild, churning waves of pleasure that carried them onto the broad shores of release.
It was dusky in the room when they awakened. Antonia gave an involuntary moan as she sat up. Every muscle in her body was aching; it felt as if she’d been pounded.
When she extracted her legs from his and tried to slide across the bed, she halted and turned a look of distress back over her shoulder.
“What is it, Toni?” he said, rising onto his elbow, his voice concerned.
“I feel like I’ve been pummeled … all over,” she said with an agonized look.
He laughed and pulled her back onto the bed. “I know just the thing to help that. Lie down … facedown.”
Frowning uncertainly, she obeyed, and he began to rub and knead her aching muscles, turning them to butter under his strong hands. After a while he had her sit up, and she found most of the soreness gone. “That’s wonderful,” she murmured, giving him a gentle kiss.
“You see?” he said, holding her with only a smile. “You trust me.”
She stared into his eyes, hoping she wasn’t making a huge mistake.
“Heaven help me, I do trust you, Remington Carr.”
His smile widened and took on a triumphant curl, then he glanced at the window. “Would you look at that? The sun is going down. You’ve slept the day away, lazybones.” When he turned back, she caught his eye with a wicked look.