He grabbed her hips and hauled her to him. The proof of his arousal was now flush against her belly, every inch as hot and hard as he was. He desired her. A bolt of power raced through her. Nothing could be more erotic.
He slid his palm up her rib cage to the curve of her breast. Her nipples instantly hardened. She moaned as his fingers teased one at a time. The thin layers of her gown were too much of a barrier.
“Unbutton me,” she begged. “Please.”
His mouth covered hers, claiming her. He tasted of sweet brandy and wicked promise. She sank her fingers into his hair and arched into him. He smiled against her lips, then deepened the kiss. One by one, the buttons along her spine popped free. She held her breath.
At last, her dress fell forward. She pushed her arms through the sleeves and let the gown tumble to the floor. Only her shift remained. She reached behind her back to loosen the stays.
He stilled her hand, his eyelids heavy with passion. “I’m in no hurry.”
“I am.” She peered up at him from beneath her lashes. This was her chance to finally have him in her arms. To experience passion with someone who cared about her. “I want to feel my body against yours.”
He turned her around. “As you wish.”
She twisted her hair in one hand and held it above her head to afford him easier access. Cool air kissed the back of her neck, but only for a second.
As he unlaced her stays, he pressed openmouthed kisses to her neck and shoulders. Each kiss reverberated through her body, stealing her breath. Once she was freed, he cast her stays aside. His lips were dark with desire when he spun her back to face him.
“I can’t fight it anymore,” he rasped, pulling her close. “Yes or no?”
There was no mistaking his intention. Or hers.
“Yes.” She had never been more certain. At last he would be hers, even if for just one night. She would simply make the most of it.
She lifted her shift over her head and flung it next to her stays. Her slippers were next. Now nothing covered her, save the silk stockings gartered just above her knees. She was naked before him. Yet she’d never felt so beautiful.
He drank her in as if her body filled him with wonder. The rise and fall of his chest indicated his heart sped just as fast as hers. Without another word, he scooped her into his arms and carried her to the bed.
She reached for him as her head fell back onto the pillow. He immediately discarded his boots and lay down beside her.
“Your breeches?” she prompted.
“Not yet.” He cupped the side of her face and slanted his mouth over hers.
She reveled in the heat of his mouth and the chill of her bare skin in the cool air. The hearth warmed her feet and cast a soft glow about the chamber, but the only warmth she craved was the heat of his body. Her entire body tingled.
Without breaking their kiss, he splayed his hand just below her bosom. Her breast swelled in anticipation of his touch.
When at last he cupped her flesh, she sighed with pleasure. His fingers pinched and teased her nipples until she arched toward him, panting. Surely he could feel the thrum of her heart through the palm of his hand.
He lifted his lips from hers only to lower his head and take one of her sensitive nipples into his mouth. She moaned. His hand slid down over her stomach until it covered the juncture of her thighs. He glanced up from her breast, as if asking permission.
She spread her legs, allowing him access. It wasn’t permission. It was a demand.
The illustrations she’d seen indicated a man could work as much magic with his fingers as with his member. She had every intention of finding out.
Just as he turned his mouth to her other breast, he slid his fingertips between her legs. Pleasure shot through her. She felt swollen and needy. This was heaven. She grabbed his hair as his wet fingers brought her close to the edge.
He slid from her grasp and lowered his mouth to join his hand. Her eyes fluttered backward in rapture as his tongue and fingers emulated what she hoped their bodies would soon do in earnest.
“Breeches,” she croaked, gripping the blanket in fistfuls. “Off.”
He ignored her. His fingers and tongue continued his slow, steady assault on her senses. The pressure that had been building within her grew to a crescendo. She threw her head back. Her legs stiffened about his shoulders as waves of pleasure burst from within.
Only when she fell limp atop the blanket did he leap to his feet and shuck his breeches before returning to the bed.
He held her cheek and kissed her as he eased his member between her legs. She was slick and ready from her recent release, but still he could only enter her a fraction of an inch at a time. Pain shot through her.
He froze. “I’m hurting you.”
“I wanted you to.” Already the pain was receding. She reveled in the feel of him within her. This was not her moment. It was their moment. She licked his lower lip. “I want you. All of you.”
“Thank God.” He slanted his mouth over hers.
Gently, deliberately, he began to move within her. The pleasure began to build. She had never felt such utter abandon. His breath was as uneven as her own. When at last he was sheathed fully within her, she gasped into his mouth and wrapped her legs tightly about him.
His kisses became hotter as his thrusts grew deeper. Lovemaking was everything she’d ever longed for, and more. The sweet pressure between her legs coiled once more and her hips rose to meet him. She panted and pulled him close. The friction was dizzying. She couldn’t possibly give this up. Or him. They were too perfect. He made her feel… He made her feel.
He fixed his blue eyes on her mouth. Tremors rocked her legs and she held on tight. She reached her climax with their gazes locked together. If it had been incredible with his fingers, she was struck wordless by the sensation of him driving within her as her muscles contracted around him.
His hips bucked. He jerked free and grunted as he spilled his seed into the blanket. Without raising his head, he flung a heavy arm about her and pulled her close.
She curled against him and pressed a kiss to his bare skin. He tasted faintly salty. The entire room was spiced with their lovemaking. She felt like she belonged. Like she could stay in this bed with him forever.
He cuddled her close. His eyes drifted shut as she laid her cheek against him. Peace enveloped her. This was everything she hadn’t known she wanted. She felt cherished. And finally happy.
Xavier stroked her hair until his breathing slowed to a calm, steady pace. She threaded her fingers in his dark, silky hair. He had fallen asleep.With a smile, she snuggled closer.
She was almost asleep when Xavier’s heartbeat quickened. Her eyes flew open. His breaths became shallow and irregular. She propped herself up in alarm. His muscles twitched as if he were struggling against invisible bonds.
She touched her fingertips to his shoulder. “Xavier?”
He shot upright, his eyes wide and unseeing. Sweat matted his hair to his scalp. His breath was uneven.
She pulled her hands back. “I didn’t mean to wake you. When I realized you were having another nightmare, I…”
His head slowly turned toward hers. His face was ashen, but his gaze was cold and dark. He picked her hand up off his thigh and deposited it onto the mattress. “I’m my own nightmare, Miss Downing. I’m the thing in the dark that other people are afraid of.”
“Jane,” she whispered. “I’m Jane. We just made love.” But he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even looking at her.
He was shoving his legs into his breeches and reaching for his shirt.
“Where are you going?”
“Out,” he grunted.
She hated the querulous tremor in her voice. “Out of doors?”
“Out of this bedchamber. Any other questions?”
Her heart twisted. “You don’t have to be ashamed of nightmares. Many soldiers who return from battle find that it takes time to assimilate into their old lives. I know war is terrible, but you can take hear
t in the fact that—”
“Can I, Jane?” he mocked.
Her stomach sank. She’d somehow made things worse. “I just meant—”
“War is terrible?” His laugh was ugly. “You don’t know the first thing about it.”
“I know you,” she said staunchly. At least, she thought she did.
He snorted. “You know what you want me to be, so that’s all you see. I’ve told you repeatedly that I’m no hero. I didn’t even return from battle. I haven’t fired a musket in two years.”
She shook her head in confusion. “You weren’t in battle?”
“There’s more to an army than soldiers.” His eyes were dark, his mouth twisted. “I wasn’t anywhere near Waterloo. The beau monde romanticizes the military until anyone in uniform is a demigod in their own right. They’re fools.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s been… romanticized…” She trailed off. He was right. Obviously it had. “You’re still a hero. I meant it when I said that fighting for your country is inherently good, even if you have to do bad things.”
“I used to think that, too. Now I can’t sleep at night.” His eyes were dark, his face pale. The cords stood out on his neck. “Everyone fought for their country. Not everyone did what I did. They’re calling my friends and me the ‘Dukes of War’ as if we’ve done a noble, heroic thing. Perhaps the others did, but I did not. I don’t deserve accolades or some romantic appellation. I don’t deserve to be spoken about at all.”
She clutched the blanket to her chest to hide her trembling and her nakedness. “If you weren’t in battle, where were you?”
His lips were a dark sneer among the shadows. “You mean, what was I doing that could possibly be worse than shooting men with bullets or running them through with sabers?”
“Yes.” Her voice was barely audible above the beating of her heart. “I suppose that is what I meant.”
“I helped ‘interrogate’ captives. Is that heroic? Forcing the enemy to spill their secrets? My commanding officers thought so. I was expected to follow orders, like a good soldier. So I did. The assumption was that any enemy soldier we captured might possess useful information. Sometimes they did.”
“And sometimes they didn’t?” she whispered.
His face was hard. “Sometimes they died.”
She scrambled backward in shock. He was right. He wasn’t the man she thought he was. He was the thing in the dark that other people were afraid of. Or at least, he had been.
Could she accept him for the man he was now?
Chapter 16
Xavier had thought disillusionment would be the worst thing he could bring to Jane’s face. He was wrong.
There was no point in saying, I’m not going to hurt you. He’d taken her virginity with one thrust, and now he was destroying whatever was left of her innocence.
He swallowed against the sour taste in the back of his mouth. It was time she knew the truth. He would never be the man she imagined him to be. He had lost that hope years ago.
But he hated to see her hunched against the headboard of the bed they’d just shared, clutching the blankets to her naked breasts and staring at the foot of the bed with… disappointment?
Perhaps she wasn’t afraid of him. She simply regretted she’d ever met him.
He hadn’t meant things to go this far. The days with her were so damn exhilarating, and he wasn’t made of steel. He was made of broken promises.
Xavier shoved his shaking fingers into his hair and looked away as self-recrimination washed through him. He’d wanted her to understand. But not like this. Not now.
At last she comprehended the imprudence of offering her body to an illusion she’d constructed in her mind. And he hadn’t stopped her. He’d known it was wrong, and he’d done nothing to prevent the natural conclusion from playing out.
He hadn’t changed at all.
Perhaps he couldn’t. Perhaps he was doomed to make the same mistakes for the rest of his ill-conceived life.
“What did you do?” she whispered. Her eyes did not meet his. “Start at the beginning.”
He almost laughed. The beginning. When was that? He’d been born the year the French Revolution began. No one romanticized battle better than a young boy. He couldn’t aspire to riches or inheriting a title, but could absolutely join the King’s Army and earn the admiration and respect of all.
Nothing ever went according to plan.
“I purchased my commission with my closest friends,” he said at last. “But we were separated after training. I found myself surrounded by strangers. All of them young, all of them scared, and all of them willing to die rather than be seen as less of a soldier than their compatriots.” His throat grew thick. “I fit in perfectly.”
Silence stretched through the chamber.
When Jane again spoke, her voice was hesitant. “This is why you said that not everything one does for one’s country is good after all?”
“I understand why you believe that. I did, too. We all did.” He could hear the bitterness in his voice. And the repressed anger. “I gave everything I had to everything I did, and was rewarded handsomely for it.” His mouth twisted. “But it wasn’t until I was assigned to help oversee the ‘questioning’ of prisoners that I realized how deceptive our beliefs had become. The ‘good of our country’ now justified any atrocity against our fellow man.”
“Overseer.” Her face cleared. “You weren’t the perpetrator of the crimes.”
“Worse. I was a captain.” He would never stop hating himself for earning a promotion under such conditions. “I held rank, power, and the keys to unlock every manacle. I never used the latter.”
Her expression grew pensive. “Could you have?”
“I didn’t think so.” He asked himself that question every day. His inability to correct the past gnawed at his soul. “But we always have choices.”
“Then why didn’t you?” she asked softly.
He closed his eyes. “I believed defeating Napoleon was the greater good. What was the discomfort of one man if the secrets he spilled saved tens of thousands? But there was no way to know which captives might hold the clue to ending the war without interrogating them all.” His legs trembled as memories flooded him. “Some of them were simple soldiers, fighting for their country. They didn’t deserve to die.”
Her expression was guarded. “You held the keys. But you couldn’t just walk around unlocking manacles. Not if it might endanger more people.”
He nodded. “Had I balked, they would’ve thought me a spy myself. A traitor. I would’ve been ‘questioned’ until my dying breath.”
She squared her shoulders. “Then you didn’t have a choice.”
“That was the other choice.” He shrugged. “I made the wrong one.”
Her eyes flashed. “Martyring yourself would’ve saved the other captives?”
He shrugged. “It would’ve made one less monster.”
Silence fell.
His skin prickled. He looked away. What was left to say? Some soldiers were heroes. He was not. End of discussion.
“That’s a horrible story,” came her quiet voice at last.
He nodded. He was a terrible person. The stain on his sheets proved it. He was destroying lives all over again.
“You’re right,” she continued. “You were following orders, and those awful men could’ve done the same to you, but it was still despicable to allow torture to be inflicted on another person.”
He winced. Those very words careened about his brain a thousand times a day. Awful. Despicable. Torture.
“It’s also over.” She met his eyes. “And something you deeply regret. As you should. But just because the past will always be there doesn’t mean you can’t make the most of your future.”
His laugh was harsh and ugly. Just like the man he knew himself to be. “What future do you suggest? Puppies and babies? Shall I call the banns?” He spread his arms wide. “In three short weeks, all this could be yours.”
“I
wasn’t suggesting marriage,” she snapped.
Of course she wasn’t. No sane woman would.
He lifted a shoulder. “At least you got the meaningless affair you’d wanted.”
Her back pressed higher against the wall. “What I wanted was to make love with someone I liked, and who liked me. I wanted to feel… like a woman. To connect with another person.”
“Well, I’m a man, and men copulate because we have cocks.” He knew he was being cruel. She deserved anyone but him. He needed to ensure she ran back to safety and never returned. “Men like me don’t connect, Miss Downing. We think with our ballocks, not our brains.”
Her lip trembled. “Or hearts?”
“I don’t possess one.” He turned his back to the bed. “Get some sleep. You’ve a long trip ahead of you tomorrow.”
Chapter 17
She might never sleep again.
Jane lay in the center of the still-warm bed she’d shared with Xavier just moments before and stretched out her arms in despondency.
How had something so perfect turned out so wrong? She’d meant what she’d said about one’s past not determining one’s future. But he was right. He wasn’t the man she’d thought he was. Possibly not even a man she wanted.
She stared up at the canopy. Perhaps he was right to believe one couldn’t escape one’s past. Or at least one’s past decisions. The faint soreness between her legs loudly proclaimed her own folly.
He’d warned her, time and again. That she couldn’t change her mind and recover her virginity. That the loss of her maidenhead was permanent. That he was the wrong man to give it to. She gulped. Too late now. She could never undo those choices.
A chill swept across her skin. The past might not fully determine the future, but she now saw how one’s actions might stick with you.
His experiences under the umbrella of war had been horrific. They’d turned him into someone he didn’t like, or even recognize.
She couldn’t let the same thing happen to her, just because she no longer had her virginity.
But what did that mean? Her fingers grew cold. She’d never really thought about the future. She’d wished for love and friends and passion, but she’d wished to have them right now, without considering where she might be five years from now.
My Favorite Rogue: 8 Wicked, Witty, and Swoon-worthy Heroes Page 139