With a resigned sigh, she stood up beside him and quietly said, ‘‘I’ll tend to your wounds now. Take off your shirt.’’
Sophie returned from the main kitchen moments later bearing cloths and a washbasin filled with water. Chad had not removed his shirt. He had done nothing but brood and drink wine and wonder if she would ever be content to stop probing.
He might not have recognized those men at the farmstead last night, but he felt fairly certain they belonged to the same smuggling gang with which he had involved himself over the past two years. And someday soon their leader would come for him, either to embroil him deeper or to make him pay for testifying against their cohorts.
Good God, what if today was that day, while Sophie was here?
As she set the bowl and linens on the table, he wrapped a hand around a bottle and tipped the remaining contents into his glass. ‘‘Not now.’’
‘‘Yes, now.’’ She leaned over him and summarily began unbuttoning his shirt.
Her fingertips sparked his flesh and prompted him to suck in a sharp breath as a pain of sorts shot through him—the lancing of acute desire, of wanting her, all of her, and knowing he didn’t deserve her. His hands closed over hers. ‘‘I’ll do it.’’
She nodded, her cheeks mottled pink. Her blush deepened as he peeled the shirt from his arms and draped it over the bench beside him. Cool air grazed the web of scratches covering his shoulders, arms and chest. In contrast the heat of her gaze scorched him raw.
‘‘Good heavens.’’ Eyebrows knitted tight, she wet a cloth, wrung it out over the bowl and pressed it to his rib cage. He winced, hissing through his teeth. ‘‘I’m sorry,’’ she whispered.
Delicate, graceful hands bathed the wounds clean. The torn flesh stung where the cloth touched, but her fingertips roused excruciating pinpoints of pleasure. Her repeated apologies for hurting him feathered across his skin. Desire wrestled with pain until the two entwined to become one aching, single-minded resolve.
He seized her wrist. ‘‘Stop.’’
‘‘I’m sorry, but you don’t wish an infection, do you?’’ Held in midair, the rag dripped water onto his trousers. Her cheeks flamed; her eyes mirrored his own riotous emotions.
‘‘Infection be damned. You’ll be the death of me, Sophie St. Clair.’’
With a yank he pulled her onto his lap. She cried out, a yelp he quickly swallowed when he pressed his mouth to hers. He felt the slightest hesitation before her fingers raked through his hair and her body melted against his. Her lips opened and she returned his kisses, panting into him and meeting each thrust of his tongue with equal force.
Throbbing desire strained his trousers, a thunderous need intensified by the mingling of her sweet taste and the wine he’d consumed. He was drunk—drunk with wanting her, with impatience to be inside her. He knew right from wrong but reached, nonetheless, for the bliss he had hungered for since that very first night at the chapel.
And this was no chapel. This was Edgecombe, where he was master.
‘‘I shall tell you this once.’’ He opened his mouth against her chin, biting down, dragging his tongue across the soft angle until she shivered against him. ‘‘You are not safe here, Sophie. Not safe with me. Go if you wish. But do so quickly.’’
‘‘You’re forever telling me to go. To be safe.’’ Her lips traveled over his brow, leaving moisture, tender fire. ‘‘Haven’t you learned that I’ve no liking for safety?’’
Words dissolved into the joined heat of their mouths, dissipated on their twining tongues. His abrasions stung where her fingers roamed his skin, breath-stealing pain that heightening his senses. Given the passion seething inside him, she flirted with a far greater danger than any they had thus far faced. Cliffs and bullets and cave-ins. Danger, passion . . . inescapable temptation.
‘‘So be it.’’ His arms around her, he surged to his feet. She hung on, her legs wrapped about his waist. He moved forward until her bottom hit the table edge. Then he set her down upon it and shoved her skirts to her thighs.
Her breathy ‘‘Yes’’ fired his blood, his lust. Right and wrong? Holding her, drinking her in, burying his rigid length in her luscious flesh seemed entirely right. Within the madness consuming him, tugging open the buttons down her back and peeling away her bodice to expose her breasts seemed the only reasonable act.
Her breasts sprang from her camisole into his palms, the nipples erect with passion, begging to be touched, kissed. He eased her backward onto the table until she lay half propped on her elbows, head back, neck straining, breasts thrusting like the peaked hillocks on the moors.
He bent over her, took a nipple in his mouth and sucked, teased, pulled. Not gently. No, while his scruples urged restraint, Sophie’s moans of pleasure persuaded him to do otherwise. With the seasoned skill of the rake he had once been, he unhooked her corset, whisked it out from under her and tossed it away.
Her hand came up, wrapping around his nape and pulling him down. She smiled as she tugged him to her lips, went on smiling as their tongues engaged in a sweet battle and her fingers hooked onto the waistband of his trousers. An inferno raged as she slipped each button free, as she stared into his eyes with a deliberation that turned his knees to jelly and his shaft to granite.
Their groins met at the edge of the table, his pulsing and exposed, hers encased in eyelet cotton dampened by desire. The room around them, heretofore lost to a blur of passion, sharpened into focus. His conscience gave a shout.
‘‘Sophie, we can’t. Not here.’’
Her smile subtly challenged. ‘‘Where then?’’
‘‘Upstairs.’’ He dipped his lips to her breasts. ‘‘My bed.’’
She shook her head, hands fisting in his open shirt. ‘‘Too far. Too much time to think. On the way you’ll devise a dozen reasons why we shouldn’t.’’
‘‘Perhaps we should think.’’
‘‘No.’’ Her ankles crossed behind him in a slender-legged embrace that pulled him flush against her. The all-too-thin layer of cotton between them did nothing to stop her heat from flooding him. Dragging his head down again, she pressed her lips to his ear and with a lick whispered, ‘‘Together we’ve defied bullets and the forces of nature. We don’t need pillows and down.’’
In that instant he knew she was right. All his life he’d been a risk taker, a cavalier who had never met his match. Not until Sophie St. Clair pushed her way through the mist and into his life, armed with nothing but foolhardy courage and a wide-open heart.
Yes, he had met his match and it terrified him . . . humbled him . . . and filled him with an overwhelming need to believe he might somehow, someday, be worthy of her.
Using both hands he smoothed the tangled hair from her face, spilling it over her shoulders and onto the tabletop in a pile of dark, glossy ribbons. ‘‘You are right. We don’t need pillows and down.’’ He thrust the tip of his shaft against her, delighting in the tremor that shook her frame. ‘‘Nonetheless I insist you have them.’’
He spared a moment to secure his trousers well enough to keep them on his hips. Then he swept Sophie into his arms and carried her up the stairs.
Sophie shut her eyes and burrowed her face in Chad’s neck. A dizzying fear swept her as he raced up the stairs. ‘‘Chad, your ankle.’’
‘‘Is giving me no pain now, I assure you.’’
She didn’t know how that could be, yet his steady hold and sure footing assured her they wouldn’t both go tumbling head over heels. No, he would never drop her, never let her fall. Hadn’t he already proved that beyond all doubt?
As they reached the dining hall she wondered fleetingly where his manservant might be, but they encountered only the echoes of Chad’s hurried steps and the frenzied harmony of their audible breathing. He dashed through the rooms and up the main staircase. At the top he shouldered his way through a doorway. With a gentle hiss her bottom landed at the center of his four-poster bed.
He stood over her, golden and chiseled and b
eautifully male. A sheen of perspiration accentuated his perfect features; his broad chest, crisscrossed with scratches, rose and fell sharply.
‘‘We made it, and I haven’t changed my mind.’’ His voice bore a dangerous rumble, like a warning from the earth. ‘‘I haven’t thought of a single reason why we shouldn’t.’’
‘‘No, nor have I.’’ She held out her arms to him. He hesitated only long enough to peel off his boots, unbutton his trousers and step out of them. Her breath caught at her first-ever view of all of him. Words like rock and stone and granite flew through her mind but were dismissed as inadequate as he stood, naked and erect, displaying not the faintest trace of self-consciousness.
He eased onto the bed and filled her beckoning embrace with the ruggedness of his body, with flexing muscle, with the heat of his desire throbbing like a living thing against her thigh.
‘‘These must go.’’ He stripped away her chemise, then tugged the drawstring of her drawers. Together they shoved them from her legs and kicked them to the floor.
His lips followed where the fabric had been, sparking the sensitive places between her legs and sending intense little shocks through her. Her fingers tangled in his hair, clenching to the rhythm he created against her with his skillful mouth.
Gasp after gasp spilled from her lips. Pleasure twisted, then streaked like lightning when he cupped her breast and closed his fingers around her nipple. She cried out, and suddenly his mouth was on hers, soft, melting, consuming.
‘‘My darling,’’ he whispered into her, ‘‘this will hurt, and will be irrevocable. Are you quite certain?’’
Her eyes, shut tight in response to excruciating pleasure, flew open. His face filled her vision; his tender expression encompassed her soul.
His words echoed in her heart. This will hurt. . . .
How did he know? What made him so certain? Oh, but he was certain. She heard it in his voice, saw it in the sorrow-tinged joy burning in his eyes.
No one, but no one, had ever shown such faith in her before.
Gathering her breath, she paused to quiet the sensual chaos frothing inside her. She wished to assure him her answer was forged in sincerity and not mindless passion.
She braced her hands on either side of his beautiful face. ‘‘I’ve never been more certain of anything.’’
A lustful murmur slid from the deepest part of him, and a desperate aching gripped her thighs, her womb, her very being.
He positioned himself above her. ‘‘Trust me?’’
Her reply rushed from her heart. ‘‘Oh, yes.’’
‘‘Then hold on tight, my Sophie.’’
As her name rumbled from his lips, he eased against her with a tenderness she had never imagined, that seized all of her and made her his. She wrapped her legs around his waist, crossing her ankles and holding on tight, as he’d commanded. Gradually she felt herself parting, opening, his impossible width stretching and filling her. And then . . . the halt of a barrier.
The last barrier between them.
‘‘You mustn’t stop.’’
‘‘I couldn’t if I tried.’’
Drawing back, he slid his length nearly out of her. His head dipped and his tongue speared past her lips in a kiss that mimicked the act of lovemaking. Sophie took his tongue into her mouth, holding on to it as her body held on to him. He thrust again and she felt the break, the splintering of her maidenhead.
All movement stopped. Tears rolled from her eyes, pooling in her ears. She clung, not knowing what would come next, but trusting utterly. Slowly he began to move. His eyes opened and locked with hers. From somewhere within passion and pain she summoned a smile. For him. For this gift they gave each other.
Rapture and relief flashed in his eyes. His movements quickened, intensified, sweeping thought and sensation in a violent surf. Realizing that the pain, or most of it, was gone, she moved with him, rocking her hips to meet his thrusts. Her ankles uncrossed and her legs slid from around him until her feet hit the mattress.
Higher, harder she drove herself against him, helping him to fill her. Their bodies advanced and retreated like the tide against the shore, while he moved inside her with the fierceness of the Devil’s Twirl.
‘‘Let go now, my love. Give yourself up to the pleasure. To me.’’
With those words her very self shattered into a thousand glittering shards of sunlight on splashing waves. As her being broke apart again and again his seed surged into her, filling the tender, throbbing places. Screams tore from the deepest part of her to converge with his raw cries.
Together their bodies pulsed and squeezed until all had been given and taken and returned. Until his beautiful form blurred behind the salty sting of her tears, tears that mingled with those trickling from his eyes. Exhausted and sated, they turned on their sides with their arms wrapped around each other and drifted off to sleep with his length buried inside her.
Chapter 17
Chad awoke with a start. He could have dozed only a few seconds, but he hadn’t meant to sleep at all. Admittedly Sophie’s slumbering form tucked against him provided an almost irresistible temptation to do just that. Sleep and forget about everything but the incredible joy she brought him.
But sleep brought dreams, and dreams brought demons, and once again Sophie might have shared the horror, as she had the last time they’d fallen asleep together. He couldn’t let that happen.
The depth of her trust humbled him. She’d given him her virginity, her heart. What would happen to that trust if she learned the truth of what he was and what he had done; if she realized she’d given herself to a man who didn’t come near to deserving her?
A man who was guilty of the very thing they had been investigating these past days?
His chest constricted with a painful, overwhelming emotion he had no right to feel for a woman he had no right to claim. Yet claim her he had, and he couldn’t find it within himself to regret any part of his actions.
She didn’t sleep long before her soft sigh murmured against his skin. Her warm body stirred, rousing his desire anew. Not blazing and urgent as previously, but sultry and languid, a beast stretching its limbs in the sun.
Her eyes opened and she reached her arms around him. Her smile beckoned. When she hooked a leg over his hip, he eased between her thighs. Their earlier lovemaking had left her moist and ready; he needn’t fear hurting her again. He rode her gently, hands splayed on her bottom to press her fully to his hips. Only when he’d carried her over the edge and set her safely down did he allow the predator inside him to satisfy its hunger.
Afterward, as he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed each of her fingers in turn, he realized he might never be satisfied. He wanted her, needed her that badly, that entirely. Perhaps that was why he had done the one thing he never did, not once, but twice.
Experienced as he was with lovemaking, he knew at least a half dozen methods to prevent pregnancy: French letters, herbal rinses, withdrawal. . . .
Ah, yes, he’d always relied on that last strategy when none of the others were at hand. It was the easiest, if the least enjoyable, and though reputed to be less-than-dependable, it had always worked for him. At any rate, no mistress or demirep had ever come knocking at his door with an infant in her arms.
He’d used none of those safeguards today. And what unsettled him most was the utter and appalling lack of dismay on his part. Quite the contrary, the thought of their actions resulting in a child produced a flutter of elation.
Good God.
‘‘What’s wrong?’’
He shook away his musings and kissed the tip of her nose. ‘‘Not a thing. Wait here.’’
Leaving her looking puzzled and slightly out of sorts at his hasty retreat, he pulled on his trousers and bounded down the two flights to the kitchen, where he drew fresh water into the basin she’d used earlier. He gathered up the clothing that littered the floor and tossed it over his shoulder.
A glint of reflected light sent him back to the
table. He lifted the sword, and as he had felt in the cavern, the metal shivered with an unsettling energy. The sensation traveled up his arm and spread into his chest, seeming to curl like a cool hand around his heart.
He wrapped his shirt around it, tucked it beneath his arm and, carrying the basin of water, returned to Sophie.
When she realized what he intended, she clutched the bedclothes high beneath her chin. ‘‘I’ll take care of it. You needn’t.’’
Moistening a cloth, he settled on the bed beside her. He distracted her with a kiss and dragged the sheet aside. ‘‘You’ve nothing to hide from me. Not ever.’’
‘‘Oh, but . . .’’ Her face flamed at the sight of the rusty stains marring her thighs. She made a grab for the coverlet.
‘‘Stop it.’’ He placed his hand very deliberately on one of those blotches. ‘‘Don’t you know how beautiful this is to me? How beautiful you are? Especially now that you’re mine. Oh, hang it . . . don’t cry. I’ll stop if you wish. I didn’t mean to upset you.’’
Her quiet sob rippled into laughter. ‘‘You didn’t. I could cry buckets right now and I haven’t the slightest idea why. Absurd, aren’t I?’’
‘‘No. Not in the least.’’ He touched the cloth to her thigh and gently wiped. With a sigh and a brimming gaze she parted her legs for him in yet another gesture of trust that gripped his chest. ‘‘What we did binds us, Sophie,’’ he whispered. ‘‘Binds us as nothing else can.’’
Near the entrance to her sex her hand came down on his wrist. The tears magnified her lovely gray eyes. ‘‘How did you know? After the debacle at the Winthrops’ ball, dreadful rumors about me spread through London society. People called me loose, shameless . . . a strumpet. How were you so certain . . . ?’’
He couldn’t help a quiet laugh. ‘‘No one who has met you could possibly believe such nonsense. I certainly never did.’’ He tossed the rag into the washbasin, sending up a splash. Then he kissed her gently. ‘‘From the moment you walked into my arms in the chapel, I knew what sort of woman you are. I tried not to want that woman. Tried to stay away.’’
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