by Louise Allen
Eva busied herself setting out the meal, then went to scoop water from the stream. ‘Shall we make coffee?’
‘Why not?’ Jack folded himself down on to one of the bedrolls with enviable ease for a man who had been in the saddle all day. ‘Do you know how?’
‘Er…no.’ Eva passed the packet of coffee across and began to slice and butter bread. Somehow, in the last few minutes she had made up her mind what she was going to say to Jack, how she wanted to resolve the conflicts inside her.
‘That was good,’ Jack said at length, pushing away his empty plate and flopping down on his back. ‘Are you warm enough?’
‘Yes, thank you. It is going to be a very warm night.’ Now, while I have the courage… ‘Jack, I did not thank you. For last night.’
‘For what? Fishing you out of the river? Yes, you did. When we were on the horse.’ He was flat out on his back, one knee raised, the other foot balanced casually on it.
‘No. I know I thanked you for that. I meant for later, in our room.’ Eva took a deep breath and plunged. ‘You could have seduced me with no effort at all and I think you know that very well.’ The foot that had been describing lazy circles stopped. She had his full attention now. ‘I was exhausted, vulnerable and I had been very frightened and I want to thank you for not taking advantage of that. In the morning I would have felt regret, whatever the night had been like.’
‘I know.’ Jack’s voice was neutral, but she knew him well enough by now to hear the tension in it.
‘I am not exhausted, vulnerable or frightened now,’ Eva said deliberately. And waited.
His reaction seemed to take for ever. He put both feet on the ground, then levered himself up on his elbows and finally sat up, looking at her. The sunset painted gold and rose across his face. ‘What are you saying, Eva?’
‘That I feel myself now. More myself than I have for nine years and I can see clearly what I need and what is important to me. I have been chaste since my husband—’
‘I know. I could tell almost by looking at you. Eva, you do not have to—’
‘Let me finish.’ She smiled at him, smiled at the serious expression in the grey eyes.
‘Here, I am not the Grand Duchess. I am not a widow, I am not a mother. I am just Eva. And I am alone in a beautiful place with a man I desire and I trust and I like.’ Jack moved abruptly, as though he was going to stand, and Eva held out a hand to still him. ‘I am just a woman, asking a man if he would like to make love to me. If you say no, if I am wrong about what I see in your eyes, what I feel when you are close to me, then I apologise. If you lie to me, I will know and that will hurt far more than you explaining that you do not want to do this.’
‘Not want? I have wanted you since I first set eyes on you.’ The breath, so painfully held, left her lungs in a soundless sigh of relief. Jack pushed himself up so he knelt on one knee, the movement bringing him close enough to take her hand. ‘I desire you so much it hurts, but I fear hurting you far more than I fear that pain. Eva, have you thought about this?’
‘Idiot man,’ she said roughly, tears forming behind her eyes. ‘I have thought of very little else since I turned and saw you in my bedchamber, brought there by magic.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Jack said. Oh, thank God, he is smiling…
‘Well, I admit I think a lot about Freddie, and Philippe and the Duchy and how we are going to get back safely and whether I have a blister on my behind. But in all the gaps between I think of you and how I want to be in your arms and feel your mouth on me.’
‘Do you want to sleep on it?’ He was still regarding her with questioning eyes.
‘No,’ she declared roundly. ‘I want to sleep with you.’
Chapter Thirteen
Jack searched the wide brown eyes looking so candidly into his. She meant what she said, and he could believe that she had been thinking about it, seriously, all day. Something like this, for Eva, was not to be taken lightly. And for him, after an adult life treating such encounters as either a matter of amicable business, or simply a fleeting moment of mutual pleasure, the responsibility of what she was offering felt as heavy as the duty laid upon him to keep her life safe. She, for some bone-deep reason he could not understand, and was afraid to analyse, was different from all the women before.
‘Well, that was definite enough.’ He smiled at her decisive declaration, fascinated by the play of colour under her creamy skin. She was shocking herself, he could tell, seeing the soft pink ebb and flow in her cheeks. But she was enjoying that sensation at the same time. ‘Eva, we are out of our real worlds here, for as long as this journey lasts. What happens when we get back to England?’
‘I do not know,’ she said frankly. ‘I do not care.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I do know—it must stop then, I cannot risk the scandal. But we may never get there, for all your skill and courage. I do not want to add losing this to the list of my regrets.’
‘Come, then.’ Jack stood up with a sensation that he had cast the dice, laid his bet and that his life would change for ever with the fall of those fickle white cubes. Which was madness. She was right; this liaison, whatever it was, could last only as long as it took to feel the swell of the English Channel under their boat’s keel. How could that change his life?
He held out his hand to Eva and she took it, with a certain formality, and got to her feet. ‘Let me put these together.’ He shook out the two bedrolls to their widest, laying one upon the other and raked the fire, adding a thick log. He did not want her becoming chilled; he sensed she was nervous enough, despite the strength of her declaration.
When he turned, she was balanced on one foot, tugging at her boot. ‘I’ll do that,’ he promised, ‘and you can help me with mine. Let’s start at the top.’ The neckcloth he had tied for her that morning was still firmly in its knot. Jack untied it, unwrapped it from around her neck and folded it carefully in his hands before raising it to his face and inhaling. He held her startled gaze as he filled his senses with the fragrance of her skin.
‘But I didn’t wear any scent this morning,’ she murmured.
‘I know.’ Jack put the neckcloth into his pocket. ‘I can smell gardenia perfume any time I want. I cannot bottle the scent of you.’
Eva reached up and began to untie his neckcloth, her face serious as she fiddled with the knot. He ached for her to hurry, desperate to ignore clothes and simply pull her to the ground and take her here, now, while he still felt he had any control left. But this was Eva, and for her this night was not something to be taken lightly, and for him his whole focus and pleasure must be her delight.
She had managed the knot and was untangling the neckcloth, pulling it free and bunching it in her hands, burying her nose in it in imitation of his gesture. ‘Man, warm cloth, bay soap—Jack.’ She folded it and put it in her own pocket. ‘For nights when I may need courage to sleep,’ she said simply, starting on his waistcoat buttons, her lower lip caught between her teeth in an agony of concentration. Jack imagined her applying the same intensity to touching his body and shifted, uncomfortably aware of the constriction of well-fitting breeches.
To hasten matters he threaded his arms through hers and began work on her waistcoat. The effect as their release allowed her bosom to swell free was far more interesting than the equivalent result in his case, he was certain.
‘This feels very odd,’ he observed, his fingers grazing against fine suiting cloth. ‘No ribbons or bows, it’s like undressing myself.’
‘Indeed? Her eyebrows went up in mock-outrage, then, as though teasing was too dangerous a step into intimacy, she slid her hands up hurriedly and pushed his coat from his shoulders, then his waistcoat. The warm air was delicious through the fine linen of his shirt. Jack felt his eyelids grow heavy as he contemplated the effect of that breeze on bare skin. His, hers.
Jack copied her actions, pushing off her coat and waistcoat, and studied the result. The breeches, which he had chosen with some care, moulded her rounded hips and thighs,
but were inevitably too big in the waist. She had cinched it in hard with a leather belt and her hands were hovering, uncertain, over the buckle.
Jack reached out, brushing her fingers away and undid it. He had to stand closer to do so, no longer able to see the whole of her, but close enough now to observe how her pupils had dilated, and trace the flickering pulse under the fine skin at her throat. His own pulse was thundering in his ears as though he had run full tilt up a flight of stairs as he drew the length of plaited leather slowly through the belt loops. It dropped away, a warm snake in his hands.
With a snap of his wrist he flipped it around her again, this time lower, around her buttocks, catching the free end in his left hand and using it to pull her in against him. With both hands holding the leather he could not hold her, but she leaned in of her own accord, her face tipped up for his kiss.
He took a deep breath, drawing in not just the familiar scent of her but the sweet musk of arousal that seemed to perfume her skin, just on the edge of his ability to sense it. Could she detect that on his skin yet? Soon, very soon, he knew their urgent bodies would be sending that thrilling signal unmistakably; now it was as tentative and shy as Eva felt against him.
But this wasn’t a virgin trembling so close that the tips of her breast brushed in agonising unpredictability against his chest. This was a woman who had been married, even if she had been alone for a long time.
There were some benefits to being married to one of the most accomplished lovers in Europe.
Hell and damnation. He had tried so hard not to remember those words, not to dwell on them, to tell himself that, just as he never thought of one of his former lovers when with a new one, she would not remember Louis when she was in his arms. That was all very well when the thought of making love to her was just a fantasy to keep him painfully awake at night, or to distract himself with while he should have been thinking of practical matters. Now he was about to put that theory to the test and he knew, perfectly well, that while he could dismiss any number of lightly undertaken affairs, Eva’s memories of lovemaking were going to be clear, specific and important to her.
Well, Jack, he told himself ruefully, you had better do your very best. And he lowered his head, took her soft mouth with his and found that rational thought fled before the sensual shock of her yielding.
At last! She had dreamed of his mouth on hers again ever since that fierce, intense kiss in the alleyway, dreamed how it would be, wondered if it would be as overwhelming the second time. He was so gentle, yet so certain, in the way he kissed her. He did not even use his hands to hold her; he did not need to. His mouth angled over her lips, seeking, tasting, the flicker of his tongue teasing at the seam until she opened to him with a little gasp of surrender.
Eva found her hands were locked around his neck, her interlinked fingers brushed by the thick black hair at his nape where the strong tendons braced against the pull of her urgency. He explored her mouth slowly, as though seeking to understand something, tasting perhaps, as she tasted him, coffee, the freshness of the celery he had crunched and a taste that just had to be him. Jack.
Louis hardly had ever kissed her like this, taking his time, caressing. It almost seemed that for Jack this was enough, an end in itself, not a hasty part of a rush to consummation. Perhaps she could be more active…Eva let her tongue tangle with Jack’s then, greatly daring, thrust it into his mouth, almost gasping at the intensity of the experience. Something slithered across her bottom; he had dropped the belt, catching her in his arms and straining her against him in a blatant gesture that pressed her intimately against the hard ridge in his breeches.
Eva burrowed closer, twining herself wantonly against him, rubbing like a cat urgent for stroking, the hot ache low down where their bodies throbbed together, crying out for him to assuage it.
Jack left her mouth and began to lick and nuzzle at her neck, bending her back over his strong arm so that she arched like a bow in the hands of an archer while he followed the curve of her throat to where her breasts, unconfined by corset or waistcoat, swelled in the vee of her shirt.
‘You are so beautiful.’ His voice was husky, the words murmured against the aching curves as he lowered her on to her back on the blankets. He followed her down with a control that spoke of his strength and his care of her and lay against her flank, propped up on one elbow as he slowly opened the buttons to reveal her. ‘It is like pushing back the petals of a rose to find the fragrant, golden centre.’
As the sides of the shirt fell open, he made no move to caress her, only lay there, watching her, his warm hand lax on her ribs. As she breathed in and out she was conscious of the roughness of a rider’s calluses on his palm, the slight friction of his nails as his curved fingers touched her.
The intensity of his gaze shook her confidence. What was he looking at? What was he seeing? Surely she could never match up to his mistresses who thought of nothing else but how to make their lithe young bodies and smooth faces attractive to men. Her certainty wavered.
‘What is it, sweet? He sensed her mood instantly, his hand coming up to cup her cheek. ‘Are you cold?’
‘No.’ She shook her head, her lashes falling to hide the embarrassment she knew must show in her eyes. ‘Jack, I’m not a girl any more…’
‘No,’ he agreed instantly, his voice a sensual growl. ‘I can see that.’
‘I’m nearer thirty than twenty, I’ve had a child…’ He cut off her stumbling words by pressing his hand over her lips as he sat up. The other hand caressed over the fullness of her breasts, stroking and cupping the weight of them, his thumb flicking from one nipple to another until she bowed up, moaning against his palm.
‘You are a woman, Eva,’ he said huskily. ‘A beautiful, sensual woman. I am a man and what I want—what I need—is a woman. Not a girl, and not a woman pretending to be one, either. A real woman. You.’
She heard him, believed him, but she could not reply, for he was kissing her breasts now, suckling her pebble-hard nipples until she thought she was going to climax from that alone. Her fingers dug into his shirt; she felt the fine cloth tear and, reckless, ripped it more so that she could feel the skin of his back, hot satin, under her fingertips.
Jack’s hands were at the waist of her breeches, fighting with the fastenings, dragging them down over her hips, taking her drawers with them. He reached her boots, swore and spun round on his knees to drag them off, then sat down, pulling his own off with equal force. By the time he turned back to her she had kicked the tangle of cloth away. The heat of his gaze on her naked body stilled her and she crouched there, her eyes wide on his face as she absorbed the look in his eyes. Desire, heat—and something so fragile, so tender, it took her breath. This hard man, this adventurer felt like that about her. Her.
‘Jack,’ she whispered. ‘Jack, love me.’
‘Yes.’ He sounded as though his teeth were gritted in pain. ‘Eva—’
Her hands were on the fall of his breeches, slipping under the cloth to caress hot flesh as she found the buttons and pulled, breeches and underthings with them, freeing him in all his awesome state of arousal. ‘Oh. Oh.’ She should be fearful—how long was it since her body had known a man? Would it be like losing her virginity all over again? She did not care; all she knew was that she wanted this magnificent man inside her, joined with her.
Coherent thought, even about her wants and needs, fled as Jack came down over her, his knee pushing hers apart, his long, clever fingers slipping between them to caress her intimately. ‘Oh, so sweet, such honey.’ He teased and explored, inciting her and opening her ready for him.
As he thrust, one long stroke of mastery and possession, Eva wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him close, so close against her that she could feel their pubic bones together. He filled her, completed her and she pulled his head down to her lips as he began to thrust. Both of them were desperate for this, neither had any desire to temper the pace of their passion.
She felt his ardour buildi
ng, meeting her, driving her and she knew only that she screamed as he took her over into dizzying oblivion and that the sound mingled with his shout as he left her body. And then the little grove fell silent.
The moon was riding high when they finally fell apart, lying side by side, fingers entwined, bathing in the silver light.
So this is what it can be, Eva thought in wonder. This intense, this tender, this fierce. It was as though she had found the counterpoint to herself, she marvelled. They had hardly spoken—single words, gasps of pleasure, murmurs of delight—yet he had known how to drive her in to ecstasy, time and again, and some sure instinct had steered her hands, her mouth to bring him there, too.
‘Jack.’
‘Mmm?’
‘Just Jack.’
He chuckled and sat up, propped on one rigid arm, running his free hand down over her. ‘Cold?’ Without waiting for an answer, he stood and began to make up the fire. Eva found her shirt and pulled it on, leaving it loose. With the warm night air and the glow of the fire it was all she needed. Warm inside, she thought, wrapping her arms round her knees and sitting watching Jack.
In the moonlight, lit by the fire, he seemed like primeval man—naked, unselfconscious, beautifully made. The light slid over matte skin, highlighted muscle, threw intriguing shadows. She wished passionately that she could draw, could capture him, just as he was now.
He came and lay down again on his back with the relaxed, unselfconscious grace of a big cat. Eva lay, too, propped on her elbows at right angles to him. She rested her chin in one cupped hand and began to run the other over Jack’s torso.
‘What are you about?’ he asked lazily, his mouth twisting as she inadvertently tickled him.
‘Exploring.’ She let her fingertips trail down the line of hair below his navel, then drifted them lower to thread into the dark tangle of curls.