“Because—because I couldn’t stand by and let them destroy you, and what you’ve made here…” She looked down, at his hand. He’d touched her bare skin with that hand, stroked her and roused her to a frenzy of need.
“Me, or the club?”
She had no choice but to tell him the truth. “You.”
He leaned closer, but she flattened her hand on his chest. “That doesn’t mean I’m here to share your bed.” How she said that without blushing defeated her imagination, but she did.
He retreated, and nodded. Disappointed when he swung his feet down and stood, she began to scramble off the bed. Good Lord, she still had her shoes on! After tramping, or rather running, through the noxious streets, she had not even changed into indoor shoes.
Ignoring her consternation, he held out his hand and clasped hers firmly, helping her off the big bed. “Let me show you something,” he said. “You deserve to know why I ripped up at you. How could you know you were touching a particularly tender spot of my sorry hide?”
He led her back to the large drawing room. To think she was intimidated by the luxury in this space when she first saw it. Now she viewed it as his natural surroundings.
But things were missing. “Where’s the monkey band?” she blurted out.
As she spoke Lightfoot came in from the jib door, bearing a tray with several ornaments laid carefully on the soft linen cloth spread on top. “Well may you ask,” he said glumly. He set about arranging the objects. These ornaments were new.
With a grimace of distaste, Amidei released her hand and seized one of the objects. “What is this?”
“I thought you might recognise it,” the factotum said. “Winged hat, caduceus, winged sandals—has that given you a clue?”
“Hermes,” she said, and at the same time Amidei said, “Mercury. Take it away,” he added. “Take them all away. I want a change.” He glanced up at the chandelier. “That’s still here.” He returned his limpid gaze to a visibly stricken Lightfoot. Whatever was wrong with the man? “No more ornaments. I’ll have crystal and glass only. And books. I like those. I’ll decide what else I want another time. Leave us.”
Lightfoot placed the ornaments back on the tray, taking care to lay them so they would not nudge each other, risking a chip. Before he could turn and leave, Amidei snatched up the figure of Mercury. “I’ll keep this one.”
“I thought you might.” Lightfoot glanced at her, then at Amidei, and left the room without bowing.
“He’s in a strange mood,” she remarked.
Amidei stood the figure on the mantelpiece. It looked strange without another on the other side to balance it. He stepped back. “There.”
She faced the marble fireplace, watching the fire crackle, then lifted her gaze to the portrait above. “That’s your ancestor.”
“Not quite.”
The lady smiled down benevolently on them, her soft, brown gaze taking everything in. Her gown would slip any moment and reveal one perfect, pouting breast. It was barely covered by her shift and the blue gown below. Her hair cascaded in a riot of curls over her shoulders.
“She looks like she has secrets,” Joanna said.
“She did.”
His acerbic tone effectively took her attention from the portrait. She stared at him. “Did she do your forebear wrong?”
“She did me wrong.” Bitterly he gazed at the lovely lady. “She is coming down from the wall today. I have decided it. I’ll have a blameless landscape put there instead, or a view of the Thames from the Tower. That would be appropriate.” He turned his gaze to hers. “Come here.” After a pause he held out his hand. “Please?”
She went and took his hand, but did not look at the lady again. He did, keeping his attention on her. “Her name was Adora. Or she called herself that; I don’t know which. I met her in Rome and brought her to England, because she claimed she was persecuted for her religion. I was completely infatuated with her.” Joanna’s breath caught in her throat. Perhaps the lady was in fancy dress, deliberately made to look like someone from a hundred years ago. Deep down, she knew that wasn’t true.
Amidei continued with his story. “I was, naturally, duped. I was a fool. She knew who I was, or rather, what I was, and she wanted it for herself. I was besotted. I married her, and then planned for her to take the test.” He glanced at her, his eyes dark and bleak with remembered sorrow. “The one with the glass of water that we undertook the other day. She was compatible.” He lifted his gaze again and stared at the likeness of the woman called Adora. “I converted her. After that, she denounced me to the authorities. They took me and locked me up.” He turned to face her and gathered both her hands in his, locking them against his chest. “In the Tower of London, as it happens. I was condemned to death.”
She gasped. “Why?”
“I was a royalist, sweetheart. A supporter of King Charles, and when I returned to England, King Charles had been beheaded and the country was a Commonwealth. Royalists were being executed as a regular occurrence.” He sighed. “I was ready to die. I had made a fool of myself with Adora, and I had no wish to continue as I was. So I did not try to escape. But someone else had other ideas.”
“Lightfoot?” That would explain the man’s familiarity, more friend than servant.
He grimaced. “No, not Lightfoot. He only came to work for me recently. But one very like him, a satyr who lost his life rescuing my sorry hide. I swore never to return to these shores and I went back to Italy to lick my wounds. Adora claimed my estate as a reward for her betrayal. She married her lover and had a few years’ respite. I did not return with Charles II, but someone else killed her for me. Or they thought it was for me. I swore to this person to help keep England safe, and I keep my promises.” He gave a wry smile.
“You’re as old as that?”
“Older. I was born in the early sixteenth century.”
She gasped. Rapidly, she worked the sums, but she let her hand rest in his. “But that would make you—two hundred and fifty years old!”
“More or less,” he said carelessly. “But I live for the day. I am interested in what happens now, not tomorrow or yesterday. I am only telling you this because—because I trust you. And I want more with you.” He pressed her hands, so small under his. His lace tickled her wrists. “When you said that you had another lover, that you were planning to marry him, that took me back to Adora. They were her last words before the guards came for me. I was shackled, and she looked at me, and my humiliation as if she had won something precious.”
“What an evil woman. And you thought I was like her?”
She tugged, but he held firm. “No, never that, I swear. The words you said were similar to the ones she did and because of that similarity, I went back, and felt the same fear and disgust with myself.” He turned to face her directly. His eyes were silver. “I’m sorry, so sorry. I have no excuse for the way I behaved yesterday. I just wanted you to know the reason, that’s all. If you want to leave now, I won’t stop you, and I’ll do my best to wish you well.”
She blinked her tears away. “Apology accepted.” He had been through so much.
“I think my destructive swathe was the last of my anger and distress left from that time. I don’t want to look back any more, only forward.”
“Oh.” That was a good policy. “Will I live as long?”
“You cannot die from disease. You can also recover from most injuries. Anything that destroys your body instantly, like a beheading, will kill you of course. So nobody can say. But your capacity for living a much longer lifespan is increased.”
She loved the meticulous way he answered her question. She would take her cue from him and live for the day. That meant taking each day as it came, until she had absorbed all the changes that had happened to her. “You said ‘destructive swathe’?”
He glanced around. “That’s what happened to the ornaments.”
Open-mouthed at the thought of such wanton destruction, she said, “The monkey band?”
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“To the last flautist.” Drawing her close, he brushed his lips against her forehead. “I was angry with myself, not with you. I could not believe I had been so stupid as to drive you away. But if you had known about—her, you would not have left, would you?”
She shook her head. “Probably not. I only wanted to tell you about Patrick so you would understand. Now it’s worse.”
Releasing her hands, he banded his arms around her. Blessed heat and a sense of tranquillity surrounded her, and she felt as if this was right, where everything else was wrong. “Do you want to tell me here, or in bed?”
“What?” Yes, where they would be naked and she could hide nothing. The space between her thighs tingled with remembered arousal.
“I want to apologise properly. And I want to make love to you very, very much.” His voice lowered and softened.
There, before the portrait of the woman who had betrayed him, Amidei kissed Joanna, and they both forgot about Adora.
He lifted her again, his hands gentle on her body, and carried her back to the bedroom. This time he refused to allow her to remove a single piece of clothing for herself. He demonstrated just how familiar he was with female clothing, loosening the hooks and eyes on her bodice before unwrapping the linen fichu that concealed her breasts and chest.
He gazed down at her cleavage, her breasts bursting out of her stays. He traced the line with one finger. “These are too small for you,” he said.
“Stays are expensive. I’d rather eat than have fancy brocade and whalebone where nobody can see it.”
She’d had the stays for years, and just adjusted the lacing to fit. The pretty flower pattern that had adorned the ecru linen was all but gone, and she’d had to renew the bones every so often, replacing the expensive whalebone with strips of wood and bits of wire, but she still looked respectable, which was the main thing.
“I can see it,” he murmured, bending with the swiftness that was so typical of him and touching his lips to each breast. She swayed towards him, his touch irresistible. “And from now on you will have what you deserve.”
When she took a breath to respond and deny him, he looked up at her face. “This is not open to dispute.” He smiled wryly. “At least, not at the moment.” While he spoke, he was loosening the stays, quickly discovering the row of hooks and eyes that marched down the front. As she did at the end of every day, she sighed in bliss. He paused, gazing at the red lines the stays had caused. “You will never put this pair on again. I can’t bear to know you are doing this to yourself.”
“So I’m to go naked?” Trying to lighten the mood, she laughed, and it seemed her tactic worked.
He grinned. “The notion is getting better all the time.” He set to work undoing the strings of her petticoats. Unlike the ribbons and soft tapes used by the wealthy, her drawstrings really were that—rough twine worked just as well as silk, if the fabric was hard-wearing. And hers were, her skirts always in dark, subdued colours, to stand up to the rigours of the London streets.
He made her sit on the bed while he removed her shoes and stockings. She had ribbons for garters, a faded blue, but they made her smile when she removed them. She’d darned the stockings a few times, but only at the top, and she’d refashioned the heel of one, where it had worn completely through. As long as the repair did not show, then the garments were still fit to wear. But now embarrassment washed over her in a great wave. However much she told herself that as long as she was respectable and clean, nothing else mattered, she longed for him to look at her with desire and even admiration.
He glanced up, his hands on her feet. “I felt that.” He stood and rested his hands on her shoulders. “If I wanted to be with anyone else, I would be. But I want you, Joanna, all of you and everything you are.”
Stepping back, he stripped out of his own clothes, swiftly and efficiently, dropping them over a nearby chair. When completely naked, he stood facing her, his arousal jutting out with an aggressive challenge, the head reddened and damp. As she watched, a drop oozed from the tip, a single tear that ran over the shiny surface and down over the softer skin beneath.
“There,” he said softly. “Apart from obvious differences, we’re the same now. Naked, willing and ready.” He smiled and came back to her, bending and planting his hands on either side of her. His hair, free of its confining ribbon, fell over his powerful shoulders in silken waves. “Underneath, we’re all the same, sweetheart.”
He leaned forward, urging her to fall back against the soft bedcover. The fire was lit, and the room warm. They had no need of sheets. The midnight blue silk was cool against her back, but his big, hot body would keep her warm. Slowly, he leaned farther in, his cock grazing her belly, nudging at her navel as if blindly seeking a way into her body. When he kissed her, she was done.
Groaning in surrender, she opened her mouth and let him in. The process seemed so easy, two people meeting in a mutually satisfactory union. She felt no embarrassment now.
He pushed his fingers into her hair at the base of her skull, holding her to him while they kissed. He lay over her, claiming her without words, and then rolled, so they were side by side, still in the kiss.
Returning to her mouth again and again, he stroked his hands over her body, and at first hesitant, she did the same for him, glorying in his sharp intake of breath when she ran her palms over his chest, and then his stomach, before she paused.
Drawing away from her lips, he smiled. “It’s all yours. Every part of me. Touch me, Joanna, before I explode.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.” Pressing another open-mouthed kiss to her lips, he licked her, probing her mouth gently. She dared to touch his cock. She’d learned that word on the streets, but now it seemed not vulgar at all, but natural, a good word for a beautiful part of a man. He was hard, but the skin was delicate, soft under the straining head and the ridge where his foreskin had pulled back. Could she circle it with her fingers?
Barely.
He dragged his mouth away from hers and sucked in a gasping breath. “Oh God, that is too good. Magnificent.” Reaching down, he touched her too, inserting his fingers into her wet cleft and sliding them closer to her. “You need no preparation. You are so wet for me, you could take me now. Come over me.”
He clasped her waist with both hands and lifted her, rolling onto his back and taking her with him, so she straddled his thighs. His legs dangled over the edge of the bed, and she found the position awkward until she lifted her knees and used them to support her. He glanced down at their bodies, his erection straining for attention, her juices soaking his thighs. “Ready?”
She nodded. “Yes. I want you, Amidei.”
“Never stop saying that. When you want me, all you need to do is tell me so.” Effortlessly, he lifted her a few inches in the air. “Hold me steady, sweetheart, and bring us together as I lower you.”
Grasping his cock again, but this time at the base, she did as he instructed. When the tip contacted her opening, she paused, unsure what to do now, but he held her firmly and lowered her, watching her face the whole time.
“I can tell when you’re aroused. Your eyes darken and your lips flush.” He glanced down. “As do your nipples. They taste so sweet and they are so soft in my hands. Look down, Joanna. Watch us.”
Her private hair softened the view for her, but he must be seeing everything, the way he was entering her body, everything she could feel as his erection slowly slid home. His hold on her did not lessen, nor did his arms strain, but the muscles bulged and flexed with fluid strength as he slowly brought her down on to him.
Just like before, he filled her to bursting. When he was embedded like that she hardly dared to breathe.
“Now lean forward and move,” he said softly. “What does it feel like to have me there, deep inside you?”
“Wonderful.” She, the journalist, sought for the right words and could not find them. “As if this is what I wanted all along, but did not know it.” She laughed, trying to
find better words, but stopped when he flinched.
“When you laugh, the vibrations run along my cock and through the rest of me.” Holding up his arms, he smiled into her eyes. “Come to me now.”
Lifting his knees and tucking his feet on to the end of the bed impelled her forward, so she had to fling out her hands to prevent herself tumbling right on to him. She opened her eyes to see him watching her, a hunger on his stark features that she could not deny in herself.
“Open to me,” he whispered. “All of you. Heart and mind I want you, Joanna.”
When he slid his mind into hers he caressed it in a way that made her shudder. In that moment she was his completely, his seduction, if that was what it was, fully in place.
But a reward awaited her. He did not surge in, did not take control, but showed her himself in return. While he opened and let her anywhere she wanted to roam, he grasped her hips and urged her to move her body on his.
The instant shot of sensation roared through her. Addicted already, she shifted, moved up and down his length, eager for more.
She found his weaknesses, there for her to read as easily as an open book. The way he closed his emotions after Adora had betrayed him, anger driving him until he found his cause in restoring his people and fighting their enemies. That occupied a large part of him, but it was soft at the edges, fading, as if something else was rising to swallow it. If she could give the conqueror a colour, it would be purple, a mixture of the red of passion and the blue of tranquillity.
Strange to find difficulty in placing words. Her gift had always been to find the right words and put them precisely in place, but here she was lost in a world of sensation, where words were irrelevant next to the beauty of his thoughts and his mind. Was he seeing similar places in her?
Oh yes. You are strong and true and faithful, he said into her mind, his words encircling and caressing her. And so beautiful.
Her laugh made him groan and thrust into her with renewed hunger. Although shocked, Joanna did not stop moving, too afraid of missing the pleasure her body was chasing, as she stroked and caressed his mind and his thoughts, his being. “I’m not beautiful.”
Her Quicksilver Lover: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 6 Page 17