The Bridemaker

by Rexanne Becnel

  As if he knew, his eyes swept slowly down her body, pausing at her breasts, almost visible through the thin aqua fabric. His gaze moved lower still, to her belly where her hot restlessness seemed to be centered. One of his hands clenched in a fist, as if he could barely restrain himself.

  At once her gaze swept over him, to the thickness straining against his breeches. She let out a little moan, knowing that fire of need raging in him was all on account of her.

  “I knew you would be beautiful,” he said, his voice husky and low. “The fact that you hide it—” He shook his head. “I’ll never understand why you hide your beauty, Hester. I only know that seeing that beauty now makes me value it even more. My beautiful, secretive Hester.”

  Then holding her wide-eyed gaze with his smoldering one, he removed his boots, unfastened his breeches, and peeled them off.

  Hester couldn’t help it. She looked her fill, seeing more muscle, more bone, more golden skin, though paler. But mainly she followed the line of hair that led to that masculine mystery, that proof of his maleness and of his desire.

  She swallowed hard, then barely restrained a bubble of nervous laughter. That was to fit inside her?

  He bent over her, a fierce god of all that was carnal and she felt every bit the pitiful human sacrifice. How could she ever please him!

  But as his clever fingers plucked open her laced wrapper and gown, as he palmed them open and filled his eyes with the sight of her bare flesh, she saw the appreciation in his eyes. They moved over her like a hot brand, bringing her flesh to feverish life, marking her with his eyes, the first ever to see her virgin flesh.

  She must tell him the truth about her.

  “Adrian.” She lifted a hand to him and he took it. He kissed her fingertips, her knuckles, her palm and wrist and the tender inside of her elbow. “Listen to me,” she pleaded in between little gasps of pleasure.

  “I’m listening,” he said, coming onto the bed. He braced himself over her and she felt his heat like an aura around him, melding with her own until she was damp with perspiration.

  “I… I’m not… Oh, God! I’ve never had a lover.”

  He went very still. “Then who did you go to yesterday?”

  She stared up into his face, afraid to be honest but more afraid to lie. “I went to see an old friend, someone who has been like a mother to me.”

  She watched him absorb that, watched the emotions that were so alive in his eyes. Then he smiled and, with a slow, controlled movement, lowered his body half the way to hers. “So you were not running off to another man.”

  “No.”

  He lowered himself further and her body felt the furnace blast of his. “Have you had a lover since you became widowed?”

  “No…” Tell him the rest of it, the whole truth.

  And she would have. But that’s when his body came all the way down upon hers. That’s when his searing heat, his possessive weight, his physical desires melded with hers, and every thought burned right out of her head.

  Belly to belly, chest to breast, thrusting hardness to accepting softness, they met and sank into the nest of her bed. Her breath left her in a long shivering sigh as she wrapped her arms around him.

  This man, this moment…

  He lifted her knee so that they could better fit together. He shifted lower and she felt the lethal burn of his arousal move down her belly. Then he shifted again, nudging into the open vee of her legs, probing with the male weapon she’d always feared and disdained.

  She still feared it, but not enough to turn away. Not from him. Instead with every part of her quivering for some answer, some release from this terrible chaos inside her, she lifted her hips, just a faint movement, a restless plea.

  But he heard it, for with a groan of his own, a harsh hitching of his breath, he thrust forward, parting her untried flesh, thrusting, thrusting, pushing in past emotional and physical barriers alike.

  She sucked in a startled breath at the fleeting pain, the stretching fullness, and she shrank away. But the bed held her steady. He stopped. Hester couldn’t breathe but only stared up at him.

  She didn’t know what she’d expected, but certainly not this. For she was impaled by him, pierced and claimed in a way too intimate to ever imagine. She closed her eyes to the intimacy of his gaze.

  He knew her now, her secrets, her body. Everything. With his physical possession so real and yet unreal, he’d managed to possess so much more of her.

  Tears sprang to her eyes, unwanted and wholly embarrassing. She tried to turn away but his hands bracketed her face. “I’ve hurt you. Damn.”

  He started to pull out of her until she gasped.

  “Ooh…”

  Slowly, so slowly it was a torture, he sank back into her, even deeper than before. This time her gasp was a hoarse, wondrous moan.

  “Better?” He whispered the words against her lips, nipping and licking them.

  She didn’t answer with words, but he understood just the same. He pulled her other knee up, and this time when he pulled back it was a long, hot streak of fire.

  “No!” she said, afraid he meant to withdraw entirely. But she had much to learn. For this time when he thrust inside her, it was harder, firmer. All the way in and all the way out. Then again. Hotter and faster. Impaling her on the flaming sword of erotic possession until they were racing together, mindless and yet of one mind.

  His chest abraded her nipples. His tongue stabbed rhythmically inside her mouth. His hands fisted in her hair as he used her body for his pleasure.

  But it was for her pleasure too and she reveled in it. It was madness, pure physical madness, that went on and on, an insane spiral that was heading somewhere… somewhere…

  Then she found it, the explosion of yesterday, and she arched up against the power of it.

  “That’s it, that’s it,” she heard him say, followed by a ragged cry and spasms of his own.

  He made several more violent thrusts. Then he collapsed over her, just as spent and drained as she felt.

  No longer a virgin, she thought in that muddled portion of her brain still able to function. She was no longer a virgin.

  What happened now?

  CHAPTER 16

  They slept. At least Hester thought she’d slept. When her eyes opened to the still flickering candlelight she wondered if perhaps she’d actually fainted from the violence of her emotions.

  Not only violent emotions, she realized, but also violent physical reactions. Her body, her mind, and her heart—like a trio of instruments that together made a sweeter sound than they could separately do, they had come together tonight in the most magnificent concert she’d ever heard.

  Why had no one ever told her about this?

  She shifted in the bed, and as she felt Adrian shift to accommodate her, it occurred to her that her mother had told her about it. Or tried to. With Mr. Benchley, with Lord Gallatin, and the Honorable Mr. Richardson. Isabelle had tried to explain to her disapproving daughter how intense her feelings for them were, how absolute her adoration, how violent her passion.

  “I am in love,” she used to say, flinging her arms wide, then hugging them to her, and all the while smiling in a way that seemed to exclude Hester. I am in love.

  Hester lay very still, conscious of the heavy thudding of her heart. She was naked in bed with a man. Not just any bed, nor just any man. But still…

  Am I in love with Adrian Hawke?

  Her heart pounded even harder. Surely she was not in love with him. How could she be?

  Yet what else could account for this drastic reversal of her long-held feelings? She’d never before been so violently affected by a man. Most men she barely tolerated.

  It must be love.

  She closed her eyes in horror. What if she’d opened a gate she could never again close? What if she had unleashed the monstrous side of her nature? What if, like her mother, she went from one man to another, always falling in love, always seeking that pinnacle of feelings, but destined alwa
ys to be disappointed?

  She drew the sheets up tight to her chin. She couldn’t be like her mother. She wouldn’t be!

  On the other hand, what if she never fell in love again? Never found another man who could rouse these terrible, wonderful, indescribable feelings in her? Inside she trembled, for she could hardly bear that bleak possibility.

  Without thinking she turned to Adrian—and found him awake, his eyes open and watching. Likewise his arousal was unabated and waiting.

  He draped an arm across her waist and slid her up against him. “I see you have survived.”

  “Yes.” She could feel her heart drumming in her throat as he studied her. She studied him back. The golden light loved him, disheveled and naked, and she wished absurdly that she had a talent for art, for she would love to paint him just as he appeared now, a virile man at the peak of his masculine beauty.

  She feared, however, that a painting done of herself would not be so flattering. The Fallen Woman and the Man She Loves.

  Life was not fair to women. It never had been.

  Then he made the tiniest little movement with his hips, tiny but unimaginably erotic. He smiled. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Only if you’re thinking that maybe you love me.

  What Adrian was thinking was that he would never get enough of Hester Poitevant, not in the week and a half he had left in England. Maybe he could delay his sojourn to Scotland. Maybe she could be convinced to accompany him there.

  He breathed in the lily-scented muskiness of her, so intensely feminine. His hand moved wonderingly in her hair, lifting a silken strand from her cheek, smoothing another curling one from her brow. Between her soft belly and his tensed one he felt his arousal thicken. Just the touch of her hair and lust turned him into a lunatic, craving her once more when he’d barely survived their last go-round.

  His hand slid down her back, through the tangled masses of that lovely, lovely hair, until it rested at the top swells of her perfectly rounded derriere. “I was thinking,” he murmured when she did not reply. “That we might try that again.”

  Her eyes, as dark as a turbulent green sea, widened as if in shock.

  “You said you were all right.”

  She averted her eyes, sheltering her thoughts behind the sweep of her long lashes. “Yes. Yes, of course I am.”

  He smiled at the image she presented, so innocent and yet at her core a deliriously wanton creature. She’d been artless in her responses to him, as skittish and new as a virgin at times, which he’d loved. It only confirmed what she’d said about not having a lover.

  “How long have you been a widow?”

  “What?” Her gaze flew back to his, then away.

  “Has it been a very long time since you’ve… done this with a man?”

  After a moment’s hesitation she nodded.

  “Ah, Hester. No need to be embarrassed about that. You don’t know how happy that makes me.” He tilted her face up to his to kiss, and something in his chest swelled even as the demanding thing between his legs reached its full potential. He would teach her everything, this poor widow who was at once both worldly and naive, prudish and wanton, innocent and incredibly sensual.

  He rolled onto his back and pulled her over him, enjoying her soft gasp of surprise and then delight. He had a week and a half left in London, and not one minute of that time did he intend to waste.

  Adrian arrived at his uncle’s house just before dawn. He was exhausted, barely able to dismount his horse. Yet he was also energized in a way he hadn’t been in months. Years.

  He paused in the stable entrance before starting for the house. He hadn’t felt this way… ever.

  Then he shook his head. It had been months since he’d bedded a woman, that’s all. And this one just happened to be especially good at it, the perfect combination of innocence and wild abandon. Three times they’d pushed one another to that peak, the first time wild and violent, the second slow and sensual, and the third…

  He leaned against the door post for support. The third time had been both the most carnal and the most emotional joining of his body with a woman’s that he’d ever known. No part of her was too insignificant not to require his total attention. And she’d returned the favor, kissing him, learning him, mirroring his every action.

  When he’d finally plunged into her, maddened with lust and need, she’d been as hot and tight as the first time.

  He groaned now to even remember the magnitude of his climax, as if every drop of life had been wrung out of his body. She’d taken everything he had, and everything he ever would have. If he hadn’t left immediately afterward, he would have fallen into a stupor, and never left her bed at all.

  The irony was, he wanted to stay. He’d wanted to sleep the day away with her in his arms, then awaken and do it all over again. If it weren’t for her housekeeper and whoever else might spy his horse tied in her alley, he would have done just that.

  But there was her reputation to consider, so he’d left. Damn, but he wasn’t sure his legs would make it across the yard and up the stairs.

  In the kitchen the cook’s bleary-eyed helper was just stirring the fire in the main hearth and putting water on to heat. Adrian snagged two cold biscuits and a half bottle of last night’s wine from the wide wooden table and kept going. He’d almost reached his room and escaped discovery when a door down the hall opened and his uncle came out.

  With his hair mussed and his dressing gown haphazardly tied, Neville looked like Adrian felt: a man sneaking away from a romantic tryst. Except that the room Neville was leaving was his own bedroom.

  Neville’s brows arched in question when he spied Adrian. Adrian just shrugged and went into his room. But the image of his uncle stayed with him. Neville Hawke was obviously content with his wife, whom he loved and who just as clearly loved him.

  Even when Adrian stripped off his clothes and crawled into his bed, with the cocks crowing morn in the distance, he could not stop thinking of the people he knew who were happy together. Happily married.

  Certainly Neville and Olivia. Also Sarah and Marsh back in Boston. There was Catherine and her fiance too, so giddy in love it was becoming a family joke. But there was also his own mother who by all accounts had abandoned her wild ways for the contentment of marriage to Duffy. Hard to believe, but he’d find out for himself once he reached Scotland.

  Then there were those who were still looking for that sort of contentment, those who wanted to marry the right person with no cause ever to regret their choice. Horace stood at the top of that list, and perhaps a few of the young women he’d met. Like Dulcie Bennett. Those two were both naive enough to believe they could find that sort of love among the ton, and maybe they could.

  Well, maybe Horace could. Dulcie was doomed, for her coldhearted brother fully intended to marry her to the highest bidder.

  He thought of her and Horace, heads bent together, discussing horses and stables, and their favorite sort of rides in the countryside.

  Of course. Horace and Dulcie.

  He grinned up at the ceiling. Some pairings were so obvious they were almost overlooked. He’d have to push harder to get the two of them to recognize their eminent suitability.

  Finally he could not avoid thinking about the pair of people he least wanted to think about: Hester and her deceased husband.

  Had she been content with him? Or had it been a marriage arranged for practical, perhaps monetary, reasons?

  Then again, perhaps she’d been in love with the man, madly, passionately in love with him.

  He grimaced, hating the very idea. But he could believe it of her, now that he knew her better. That sort of deep emotional love would explain why she’d not taken a lover during the six years since he’d died.

  Though the thought that she’d been celibate until she met him should have pleased Adrian, the fact that she could have loved her husband that much overshadowed it. He fell asleep frowning, pondering the mystery of Hester Poitevant, and wonder
ing how soon he could see her again.

  Horace and his father arrived at the Mayfair Academy at ten in the morning. Hester pleaded a headache, just as she had an hour earlier when Mrs. Dobbs had come to awaken her.

  The Vasterling father and son were turned away as well when they called on Adrian.

  “Harrumph,” his father said, his mouth turned down in a frown. “These city people sleep through the best hours of the day. Carousing all night, I ”s’pose.“

  “It’s not all carousing,” Horace said. “People do a large portion of their business at those parties. That’s where I met Mr. Hawke, and that’s where I meet the young ladies on the marriage mart.”

  “And have you fixed on one?”

  “Perhaps.”

  They were silent a moment as Horace guided the old-fashioned trap through the morning traffic along Gloucester Place.

  “Don’t go for one of those flighty ones,” his father muttered.

  “I won’t.”

  “And don’t be fooled by a pretty face.”

  “No.”

  “Or a bold manner. Flirts.” The man shook his head in disgust. Horace didn’t bother to respond. He’d been hearing this lecture for years, since before he’d even neared a marriageable age.

  “You’ve got to know her people. They’ve got to be the right sort.”

  “We’ve got to be the right sort too.”

  “What? What do you mean? Of course we’re the right sort.”

  Horace hunched over the reins. “We live in a cold dungeon of a place. Bad enough it’s so remote, Father. But it’s small and understaffed.”

  “It’s a huge place. Too big, if you ask me.”

  “Yes, but we live in only four rooms.”

  Another silence fell until Horace said, “I want to open the south wing. For me and my bride.”

  “Mrs. McKeith cannot possibly manage another apartment.”

  “That’s another thing. Mrs. McKeith is too old to run our household, especially once I have children. My wife must be free to run the household as she sees fit, and that means hiring servants. And decorating.”