Most Eagerly Yours

by Allison Chase

  He grabbed her in his arms again, swiftly, roughly, making her yelp and grin and arch her neck in an open invitation for him to set his mouth against it. He suckled her skin and slid his tongue along the underside of her jaw, making her squirm and laugh and press herself more tightly to him. God, she was beautiful. Innocent, yes, and at the same time wickedly loose, a fallen angel that had landed smack in his lap.

  What on earth was he to do with her?

  He hesitated for the duration of two ticks of the mantel clock before reaching a decision that felt as inevitable as breathing. Scooping her up in his arms, he gritted his teeth against the pain in his side and carried her into the next room.

  His bedchamber.

  Chapter 19

  Laurel knew where Aidan was bringing her, and knew she should demur, should put an end to this madness before it spun wildly out of her control.

  Too late. Thought and desire meshed into a sensual conviction that silenced Victoria’s warnings and any admonishments society might have made, leaving only her body’s desperate plea to feel him, know him, join with him in that most intimate of acts.

  The fireplace opened onto this room, too, and rich, tawny light bathed the walls, draperies, and hulking four-poster. Aidan stopped beside the bed and lowered her feet to the floor. He held her, kissed her, slid both hands to her bottom, and pressed her to his arousal.

  His hands moved higher to undo the buttons down her back. Layer by layer he stripped her clothes away. She felt the fire’s kiss on her arms and shoulders . . . her ankles and thighs . . . on her naked belly and finally her breasts. All the while he held her close, keeping her within the circle of his arms so that though she stood naked before him, she felt covered and protected and unafraid.

  His lips played tenderly against her own, hot, feathery kisses that lit a blaze at her core. He raised her chin, kissing his way along her neck and lower. She shivered as his tongue traveled between her breasts, as he held each mound in his palms and kissed, sucked, leaving them heavy and tight with longing.

  His mouth closed around a nipple, and suddenly her entire world felt delineated by the texture of his tongue and lips. At the light scrape of his teeth, her womb contracted. Her knees threatening to buckle, she let out a soft cry.

  Straightening, Aidan stepped back. The flickering firelight caressed his features, smoothing the planes and deepening the hollows. Gilded and shadowed, he was beautiful, breathtaking. Though her limbs trembled with the desire to propel herself into his arms, she waited, spellbound, as he removed his boots and set them aside. Then his hands went to his trousers, his eyes piercing her through the shadows as he undid each button.

  He kicked away the last of his clothing. The room around her spun in her vision while he became the center of her focus, her existence. Solid and firm, he was the only fixed image in an otherwise whirling universe. Her gaze dipped to his hardened length standing proudly and imposingly away from the rest of him. Such power, such strength. Her body ached to have him inside her.

  A feral glint lit his eyes as he came forward, and her body pulsed with the anticipation of his touch. His chest muscles twitching, his features rigid with pent-up emotion, he framed her face and kissed her. No other parts of their bodies touched but their lips and the faintest brush of his chest hairs across her nipples.

  Taken unawares by a surge of passion, Laurel cried out again. All at once Aidan swept her into his arms and dropped her, without ceremony, onto the downy center of the bed.

  In a fluid motion he levered himself on top of her. The heavenly weight of his body pressed her deeper into the mattress, compressing the feathers into a snug nest around them.

  “Frightened?”

  “Not anymore,” she said, and meant it. Tonight she had experienced the most frightening moments of her life, but Aidan had saved her, as he had saved her before. Grabbing the chain that still hung around her neck, she yanked it free and tossed it to the bedside table. The treasure she had coveted all her life now seemed defiled, seemed a lie, and she wanted no further part of it.

  She wanted only this, only Aidan. “How could I ever be anything but safe in your arms?”

  “Oh, but I assure you, madam, there will be no safety for you here tonight.” His wicked grin sprinkled gooseflesh up and down her body. “Prepare to be ravished . . . very, very slowly.”

  He began at the tips of her fingers, suckling each into his mouth with tantalizing swirls of his tongue. He nuzzled a moist path along her arm to her shoulder, her nape, then turned her to tend to each beaded ridge of her spine, lower and lower, all the way down to the cleft of her bottom. He touched her in places that tingled and tickled and shocked, that reduced her to shivering delight and made her beg him to stop and then plead for more.

  Smoothing her hair away, he eased his body over hers. His mouth worked shimmering magic at her nape while his shaft nudged between her legs and teased her entrance from behind until she throbbed painfully and whimpered her longing into the pillows. Ah, but he didn’t torment her for long. Rolling her onto her back, he reached a hand between them, seeking and finding the sensitized flesh between her legs. A finger slipped inside her.

  Her cries this time came longer, louder, as bursts of ecstasy hurtled through her body. Bucking against his palm, she clenched and unclenched her fists while her surroundings dissolved into rippling pleasure.

  “Laurel, look at me.”

  She opened her eyes. Her senses felt heightened. Even the fire’s glow seemed overly bright, its crackle sharp in her ears.

  The beauty of Aidan’s smile brought tears to her eyes. “Laurel, darling, this is your first time.”

  A tear spilled over. Her throat closing around the truth, she could only nod.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Yes, why hadn’t she?

  Because she had been deceiving him all along, weaving falsehood into falsehood until even she could barely discern between truth and lies. And because she feared how he would react when he learned the depth of her deception, how he might push her away and turn his back on her . . . forever.

  “I am sorry, I—”

  He held his fingers to her lips. “You’ve nothing to be sorry for. Just tell me what I should do, either stop or go on, because, so help me, at this moment I don’t know what is right.”

  No more than she did. She knew only what she wanted. “Please, don’t stop.”

  He hesitated as if still uncertain, still debating. Then with a gentle thrust, he entered her. There was the glide of his length, then a raw, stabbing pain. He retreated, then eased himself deeper inside her, stretching her inch by inch, each time waiting for the discomfort to subside before advancing again.

  “So tight,” he murmured. “So luscious . . .”

  She felt his restraint, the postponement of his release, however excruciating, until he had satisfied her. Retreating and surging, he filled her, became part of her, her body, her being. Pain faded, leaving only his thrusts to carry her headlong into a breakneck passion as exhilarating as it was frightening.

  An overwhelming energy built and burst and rippled inside her. He swallowed her cries and lunged, seeking fulfillment by sheathing himself fully and sealing their bodies. The heat of his seed as it pumped into her sent her soaring again, and she shouted against his shoulder, unaware that there should be any reason to hide her rapture, her delight.

  Her love of him.

  When at last the rapture receded, he draped himself over her. His lips moved across her eyelids, her cheeks, her lips. His body covered hers for a long moment. Then she felt him begin to ease away.

  Her hands closed over his shoulders. “No. Stay.”

  “I’m not going far. I’m heavy, Laurel. I don’t wish to hurt you.”

  “Stay. You feel, oh, heavenly.”

  He relaxed against her, his muscular weight filling the contours of her body. “As long as you wish,” he whispered.

  Forever. She didn’t say it out loud. But it was a hope that fi
lled her heart, her soul.

  With her cheek pillowed on his chest, Laurel dozed while Aidan held her. His thoughts raced as he stared into the fire beyond the foot of the bed.

  He had once claimed to her that even a rogue followed his own rules. Well, he had just broken the most cardinal of those rules, for if this had been a first for Laurel, it had been equally momentous for him.

  Married women of less-than-spotless virtue, widows who had sworn off marriage, high-class courtesans, and honest, workaday whores—these had been the focus of his sexual exploits since he’d joined the Home Office. All had been women who asked no questions and demanded no commitments.

  Would Laurel? He would bet his life she wouldn’t. If he had learned anything about this woman, it was that her actions were dictated by pride and a strict code of integrity.

  The latter notion brought him up short. Why would he assign such an attribute to a woman who had lied to him at every turn?

  But hadn’t he done the same? Should he assume that she had done so for reasons any less noble than his?

  No, and that made his actions tonight all the more irresponsible, not to mention reprehensible. His work for the Home Office precluded his allowing a respectable woman into his life. Men like him didn’t have wives and families. Attachments were a liability and made a man of his occupation vulnerable. Despite appearances, he existed on the fringes of society, observing and analyzing but never truly belonging. People only supposed they knew him, and that made his job both easier and safer, for him and for them.

  Was it time to quit?

  That such a thought would even cross his mind shocked him . . . and demonstrated the extent to which this particular woman affected him. The prospect wrapped its allure around him as he pictured the two of them retiring to one of his country estates, occasionally visiting Town with their several children in tow. . . .

  The idyllic images were shattered by the remembered crack of a pistol and the ghastly sight of his father slumped across his desk six years ago.

  With a silent groan, Aidan threw an arm across his eyes and attempted to blot out the blood and gore and the hopelessness of his younger self squeezing his hands around his father’s shattered skull, desperately trying to undo the horrific act.

  He’d been too late then, just as he had been too late in detecting the financial scam that had driven a broken Charles Phillips to load his gun that day. He could never bring back his father, but now that he understood his talents for rooting out financial fraud, he could save countless others from a similar fate.

  Would he abandon them in pursuit of his own happiness?

  Laurel stirred, her soft exhalation across his chest a stark reminder that the question was not an easy one to answer. What of her happiness, her needs?

  If he had only adhered to his damned code of ethics . . .

  Little would be different now if he had. He had to admit that. It wasn’t simply making love to her that had thrown his future into a shambles. It was having met her, touched her, held her . . . loved her.

  God help him.

  Laurel shifted again, the movement ending with a twitch of her shoulders. Her breath caught, rasped. She began to mumble.

  “No . . . no. Holly. Danger . . . run. No . . . not safe. Don’t speak. . . . Not safe. Ivy . . . go, go through the garden, through the garden. . . .”

  Aidan held her tighter, remembering someone once telling him that it was best not to wake a person in the middle of a nightmare. Such dreams usually passed quickly and were instantly forgotten, unless the dreamer awoke suddenly. He kissed her hair and lightly stroked her back in an attempt to soothe the dream away. She startled him by crying out and lurching upright.

  From within the tangles of hair that streamed around her face and over her breasts, she stared wildly about the room. Aidan sat up and reached for her, but she lurched out of his arms. Then she seemed to bring him into focus.

  “Aidan . . . ?”

  He gathered her to him. “You were having a nightmare.”

  “Oh, God, it was awful.” She leaned her cheek on his shoulder and raked her spiraling hair back from her face.

  “Tell me,” he whispered. An ache gripped his throat as he wondered if he would ever be strong enough to let her go, to continue in a life without her that now seemed as empty and dismal as a winter’s famine. “It might help to dispel the images.”

  “He came back,” she murmured against his shoulder. “He chased me with his dagger and cursed me. He said . . .” Frowning, she lifted her head.

  He took her hands in his. “Yes?”

  “He shouted at me in French, but I understood him. I should not have been able to, but I did, only . . . it wasn’t quite me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was younger, a child. He demanded to know how I’d survived the fire, why I hadn’t died as my parents did. He said only a witch could have evaded the flames, and that witches must be made . . .” Tremors racked her body. Her fingers clutched at his hands. “Must be made to suffer and die.”

  “Good God.” The thought of Laurel in such danger, of coming under the threat of so vile a fiend, filled him with an unspeakable, trembling rage, but one masked by the calm of a simple decision. He would commit murder before letting harm come to her.

  He looked deep into her eyes. “Are you certain you aren’t confusing your dream with reality?”

  Her expression adamant, she shook her head. “No. I remember distinctly that he said those awful things to me tonight—those very words. In French. I don’t understand how, but in my dream I came to understand him. He is someone from my past, and he abhors my very existence.”

  Her certainty iced Aidan’s soul. Leaning back against the headboard, he drew her beside him and into the shelter of his arms. “I can protect you, but only if you tell me everything, Laurel. Everything. Can you do that? Can you trust me enough to finally tell me the truth about the woman in the yellow dress?”

  The question seemed so simple, so straightforward, as though it would not derail every promise Laurel had made to Victoria. As though it would not strip her bare and lay her greatest vulnerabilities at Aidan’s feet.

  Did he even realize how his fingers grazed back and forth across her bare breasts, showering her flesh with tingling goose bumps, or how the tip of his forefinger now circled her nipple with an inferred propriety that cut through all the layers of deception and rendered her defenseless to resist him?

  Perhaps he did. Perhaps each seductive nuance served as a tactic of persuasion. Regardless, she owed him the truth, insofar as that truth did not put Victoria, and the monarchy, in jeopardy.

  “My name is Laurel Sutherland,” she said, looking up at him to gauge his reaction. “There is no Mrs. Sanderson.”

  He gave no outward sigh of reproach, but gently stated, “Then you have never been married.”

  She shook her head. “I made that up in order to—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “We’ll save that for now. Let us instead begin at the beginning.”

  “But I don’t know the beginning.” As disapproval claimed his features, she hurried on. “I’m telling you the truth. I have no memories prior to my sixth year. That was when our home burned to the ground and my parents were killed. I only know what my uncle has told me about my early life.”

  “Your uncle Edward raised you?” When she nodded, he smiled faintly. “You and those sisters who may or may not exist, depending on your mood?”

  “I have three, all younger. Holly, Ivy, and Willow.”

  His eyebrows went up. “I heard you speak of Holly and Ivy in your dream. You also mentioned a garden, which led me to believe you were speaking of running through the foliage.”

  “We did run through the garden the day of the fire. Nurse brought me out through a tunnel that ran from the wine cellar out to the carriage house. Other servants brought my sisters out.”

  “Then you do remember the fire?”

  “Only vaguely, and only because it
is part of a nightmare that has plagued me ever since.”

  “Again this blending of dream and reality,” he mused. “Where were you living at the time? Surely your uncle would have told you that?”

  “Yes. Peyton Manor was not far from here, actually. Twenty, perhaps thirty miles to the north. Near a town called Billington.”

  “In the Cotswolds. Have you never gone back?”

  “There was nothing to go back to.” An ache of loss spread across her heart—for her home, her parents, and the part of herself she had lost that day. “There would only be the foundation and the charred remains of the outbuildings.”

  He must have heard the sorrow in her voice, for he held her closer and pressed his lips to her hair. “It is time, then.”

  Despite the heat of his body against hers, an unnamed dread blew coldly at her nape. “Time for what?”

  “To return. Perhaps your past holds the key to the danger in your present. I propose that we set out first thing in the morning.”

  The prospect terrified her. Returning to her home meant facing her nightmares, meant facing death.

  For the first time, it struck her that Uncle Edward’s reticence through the years might have been due to more than his sorrow over losing his sister. Perhaps he had believed there were things in the past that Laurel and her sisters were better off not knowing. Safer not knowing.

  As of tonight, she could no longer afford the luxury of ignorance. If a threat had reemerged from her past, her sisters might be in danger as well.

  She pulled up straighter. “You are right. This is something I must do. But can you make time for such a journey? I realize there are vital matters keeping you in Bath, and—”

  “I believe vital matters brought us both to Bath,” he interrupted. “And soon enough, you and I shall come to terms with those matters.”

  However quietly spoken, the commanding force of that pronouncement wrapped itself around her. Aidan knew she had been lying to him, yet tonight he had gallantly set aside all questions that didn’t pertain to the immediate danger she faced. Eventually, however, he would demand more . . . as would she, for he surely kept as many secrets as she did.