by Diana Palmer
Her heart raced like mad, and her breathing, already dicey, was strained and audible.
He relented at once. His hand came up to brush back the wisps of blond hair that had escaped from the neat bun atop her head.
“Forgive me,” he said softly. “I only meant to tease, not to frighten you. Breathe slowly, Bernadette, slowly. There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
She fought to relax, to repress the furious beating of her heart. Her hand went to her throat and rested there while she looked up at him with wide, tortured eyes.
“Shall I get up and make some more coffee?” he asked. “Will it help you to breathe more easily?”
She shook her head. “It’s not the asthma,” she whispered.
He stilled. “Then what?”
She bit her lower lip. Her eyes searched his. “It’s being so close to you,” she admitted shyly, and lowered her gaze to his mouth.
“Ah.”
Only a soft syllable, but it electrified her senses. She couldn’t contain her nervousness. Her fingers went to the front of his shirt and pressed there. Her courage seemed to desert her when she needed it most.
“It excites me, too, amada,” he said at her lips, watching them part helplessly. He leaned closer. Around them the darkness was like a blanket, the dying fire giving even more intimacy to their situation. “Kiss me,” he said on a breath.
She felt his lips touch hers, brush them. It was a tender, whispery caress, but it made her whole body go rigid with unexpected pleasure. She gasped and her small hands caught at his jacket and bit into it as she clung, trying to coax him down to her. While his mouth teased her lips, his lean fingers moved up her rib cage and paused at the thrust of her breasts. He suddenly felt her body jerk.
His thumbs edged out gently, teasing. “Will you accept my hands?” he whispered. “Or is such intimacy with me unwelcome to you?”
She couldn’t speak for the turmoil inside her. She shivered and her body arched just slightly. He understood the silent message.
He sighed as his fingers smoothed over the part of her that had known only two such caresses. But this one wasn’t repulsive. It was glorious. She relaxed into the bedroll and looked up at him with soft, dazed eyes as he touched her. He felt her nipples go hard under his hands and he smiled gently, reassuringly. “You aren’t afraid of me.”
“No,” she whispered breathlessly. She touched his face, his hard mouth, letting him see the excitement in her eyes. She gasped as his fingers became more insistent. He held the small hardness between his thumb and forefinger and tested its firmness boldly. There was a look on his dark, lean face that she’d never seen before. It was intent, sensual, totally absorbed.
“Is this what men and women do together in the darkness?” she whispered curiously.
“Yes,” he replied softly. “But without clothing, amada.”
She was embarrassed at her own frankness, much less his. But they were to be married. She had to come to grips with her nameless fears.
“And what then?” she asked.
The sound of his hands moving on the fabric of her dress was loud in the soft darkness, which was broken only by the crackling of the fire and the distant sounds of night.
“Do you know anything of true intimacy?” he asked quietly.
“Only that men are made differently from women,” she said. “One of the girls at my school had been with a man, though,” she added shyly. “She said that it was very shocking and fun, and that their bodies became part of each other. None of us understood what she meant.”
He searched her flushed face. “Do you want me to tell you, to explain what happens?”
“I think you must,” she began. “If we are to be married.”
“There is no doubt of that,” he said solemnly. “I would never have touched you in this manner had my intentions been less than honorable. You’re very innocent, Bernadette,” he added, as if it disturbed him.
“And very nervous.” She laughed shakily. “But I like the way it feels when you touch me.”
“As do I.”
He caught one of her small hands and drew it slowly to his belly, sliding it down until it encountered something unexpected and quite shocking. He controlled her instinctive withdrawal and held her hand there.
“This is where we are most different,” he said softly. “This part of my body enters yours where you are most a woman. We join and in this manner we pleasure each other in a secret way.”
Her shocked outcry was audible.
“What a disservice our parents do us by keeping such things mysterious,” he said, his voice deep and solemn. “By surrounding them with myth and romance. Sexual intimacy is a gift from God, Bernadette, not a shameful thing, but a reverent thing between man and wife. It serves not only to give us the greatest pleasure life can offer, but also to create children.”
She cleared her throat, embarrassed by so much blunt speech about a subject that all her life had been clouded and hazy. “Nobody ever talks about it,” she said.
“Such subjects, they say, are unfit and indecent for discussion between men and women.” He chuckled softly. “But I’m a wicked man, Bernadette, and you’re no shrinking violet, despite your frail lungs.”
Her hand was still resting where his had put it, but now he began to feel familiar to her, less shocking. She was about to say so when her fingers moved restlessly and something began to happen to him, something tangible.
She heard a deep sound in his throat, accompanied by the sudden jerk of his body.
Fascinated, she looked into his eyes as he became aroused and she felt it happen under her trembling hand.
“Another aspect of the mystery revealed,” he said in a lighthearted but strained tone.
She was awed. She felt suddenly old, wise. Her eyes searched his without embarrassment. She swallowed. Her body felt the wonder of what they were sharing, her mind rippling with forbidden thoughts. Her own boldness surprised her as her fingers moved hesitantly.
He stilled them at once with a husky laugh. “Curiosity is dangerous,” he whispered to her. “Especially in a situation such as ours. These explorations are best saved for marriage.”
She smiled shyly. “I look forward to them.”
“So do I.” He rolled over onto his back, grimacing a little because he was aroused and uncomfortable. But he pulled her close to his side and covered her more tightly with the blanket. “You are unexpected.”
“Brazen?” she murmured.
His arm contracted. “A delightful surprise,” he replied. “The only married intimacy I have known was distasteful and demeaning.”
“What?”
He sighed. “Do you know how Consuela reacted to me when I took her, Bernadette? She stiffened her entire body, gritted her teeth, closed her eyes and mumbled prayers until I was done. After the second time, I never visited her bed again. Our son was born nine months later, and I knew there could never be another child after him. My pride would not have survived another night in her bed.”
She bit her lip. “Oh, dear.”
“Oh, dear?” he echoed, curious.
“What if...what if I’m like that?”
He laughed softly. “You won’t be.”
“How can we know for sure, until...”
He moved just a little, tugged the blanket down to her waist and suddenly put his mouth right over one small breast.
It was the most incredible sensation she’d ever felt. She cried out with pure delight, her hands catching his dark head and cradling it to her, pulling at it as her body arched to keep the forbidden contact.
He was laughing! She felt his breath against the moist fabric as he bent again and took the hard nipple in his teeth and nibbled it with exquisite tenderness until she shivered.
He lifted his head, keeping one warm hand over the place he’d kissed as he looked down into her wide eyes. “I know that you are not and never will be like Consuela,” he whispered.
She searched his face. “You trul
y are wicked.”
He smiled. “Yes. Aren’t you glad?”
She hid her face against him and smiled as he folded her close and brought the blanket back over them. She was glad, but it wouldn’t do to admit it. Marriage, it seemed, wasn’t going to be anything of the terror she’d expected.
* * *
BUT WHEN THEY AWOKE THE NEXT morning, she was embarrassed and a little shy with Eduardo. He noticed this and held her when she would have jumped up from their shared bedroll.
“Nothing has changed since last night,” he chided softly. “Except, of course, that you are now ‘ruined’ and must marry me.”
She sighed. “Yes, I know. And we’ll never live it down, not for the rest of our lives.”
“You must admit, it was the only way to secure your father’s permission,” he reminded her. “And to save you from his own candidates.”
She lay back against the saddle, forlorn and worried. “He would have given it, gladly, but you didn’t come near me. He assumed that you didn’t want me.”
His breath caught. “He said nothing! Nor did you!”
She shifted a little away from him. “You were his best candidate from the beginning, I think,” she said. “He offered you as an alternative to the German and the Italian and said that if I could interest you in his proposal, he’d send the foreigners home. But you didn’t come, so he assumed that you weren’t interested in me at all.”
“We spoke the day of your asthma attack,” he said shortly. “I told him then that I would not be averse to marrying you.”
She gasped. “He said nothing!”
He took one of her small hands in his and held it lightly. “I was ashamed of my own behavior,” he said curtly. “It was dishonest and low to arrange such a marriage behind your back without your knowledge. My conscience ate at me like acid.”
Her heart skipped with pure delight. He wasn’t such a rogue, after all. But it surprised her that he’d been willing to marry her.
“You might have said something to me about it,” she said.
He chuckled. “Yes, I might have.” He turned his head and suddenly rolled over, so that her face was beneath his. “But I was very attracted to you, and not at all certain that I wanted such a complication.”
Her thin eyebrows rose. “You wanted a wife who didn’t attract you?”
He shrugged. “Put like that, it sounds absurd.”
“I think I understand, a little,” she replied. Her gaze was intent on his handsome face. “You wanted to be honest about how you felt. You weren’t willing to pretend an emotion you didn’t feel.”
He nodded. “That was it exactly, Bernadette.”
“So you stayed away and my father thought you’d decided against marrying me at all.”
“And I thought that he’d decided I wasn’t good enough to marry his daughter,” he confessed.
Her eyebrows arched. “You didn’t!”
“I did.”
She shook her head. “But, didn’t you know that he admires you more than any other man he knows?”
He sighed. “No. I didn’t.” He searched her soft eyes. Impulsively, his fingers went to her eyebrows and traced them curiously. “I’m half Spanish and half Texan,” he said. “It’s a curious mixture, like being part Indian. Some people object. They call me a half-breed.”
“Are there Indians in your past?” she asked.
“If there are, my grandmother would never admit it.” He searched her eyes a little worriedly. “You’re going to have a hard time with her, Bernadette. She won’t approve of my marrying outside the nobility, despite my mixed parentage.”
“It isn’t as if we’re different races,” she pointed out.
“And your father is wealthy. I know that. But it won’t matter to her. She’s old-fashioned about such things. Like your father,” he added curtly, “bloodlines matter too much to her.”
“My father said that she might not be able to find you another match in Spain.”
His eyes flashed. “Because my wife died under mysterious circumstances,” he added for her.
She reached up and touched his hard, thin mouth. “Don’t be angry. We can’t have secrets, not in a marriage such as ours is to be.”
He grimaced. His fingers caught hers and held them. “No, we can’t. But those secrets are for a time when you and I are less constrained with each other.” His fingers contracted on hers. “I didn’t kill Consuela,” he said. “That will have to do for now.”
“Your grandmother is to come this summer, isn’t she?”
“She’ll come the minute she knows there’s to be a wedding, and she’ll bring Lupe with her.”
That was a new name. “Lupe?”
“Lupe de Rias,” he said shortly.
“A man or a woman?”
“A woman. And my grandmother’s first choice of wives for me, after Consuela.”
Bernadette’s heart skipped. “You mean, there is a candidate to marry you, one of the nobility?”
He looked hunted. His dark eyes went to Bernadette’s breasts and he remembered the soft warmth of them under his mouth. They weren’t large at all, but they were pert and firm and sweet to touch. He wished he could see them through the fabric.
“What?” he asked, distracted.
“I said, you haven’t lost your chance to marry into the nobility?”
“I don’t want Lupe,” he said simply. “I prefer you.”
Her heart jumped and she laughed softly. “Do you, really, pitiful lungs and all?”
“Yes.” His head bent and his mouth found her soft breast.
She gasped and caught his face in her hands, but it was a halfhearted effort to restrain him.
“I want to look at you,” he murmured. His hands moved on her body and his face shifted to her soft neck, her cheek, her lips. He moved so that one long leg smoothed sensually over both of hers.
His mouth covered hers and her hands clenched at his neck while she fought for a little sanity. She didn’t find it. Her lips opened, as he’d taught them to the night before, and she reveled in the slow caress of his fingers.
He lifted his head to look at her rapt face and misty eyes. His hand covered her breast blatantly. “I would sooner cut off my leg than trade you for Lupe,” he said huskily. “Already you belong to me.”
She relaxed into the bedroll and stared at him hungrily, her body yielded, soft, patently enjoying his bold caresses.
He sighed heavily and glanced around them. “The day is getting away from us already,” he said regretfully and drew his hands away from her. “As much as I prefer to stay here and continue this delightful pastime, we have to face the music.” He stood and pulled her up with him, pausing to smooth back her disheveled hair. “You need a brush, and I haven’t one.”
She smiled. “It won’t matter. We’re in so much trouble already that my father probably won’t even notice.” She grimaced. “He’s going to be furious.”
“Do you think so?” He bent and kissed the tip of her nose. “I don’t think he will be, Bernadette.”
“Eduardo.”
He put a finger over her soft mouth. His eyes went down to her bodice and lingered there while he smiled wickedly. “I hope the heat will dry that swiftly,” he gestured, “long before your father sees it.”
She looked down at the small wet spot just over her nipple and she laughed shyly. “It will,” she said.
He held her by the shoulders, his face dark and quiet and very mature. “You delight me,” he said softly. “Your responses are everything a man could hope for, dream of. We’ll make a good marriage, Bernadette.”
“Yes, I think we will,” she agreed. She hesitated. “You don’t love me, though.”
He hesitated, too. He didn’t want to be this honest with her, but perhaps it was the wisest way. “No,” he confessed. “I’m fond of you. I like your spirit. I love the way it makes me feel when I make love to you. When the children come, they’ll bind us even closer. It will be enough.”
<
br /> She didn’t know about that. She loved him desperately. And there was that remark about children. She was still terrified of childbirth, even though she felt the same overwhelming desire that he did.
“Stop worrying,” he said when he saw her brooding expression. “Trust me. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“I do hope so,” she said.
He smiled. “Wait and see.”
* * *
IT TOOK THEM AN HOUR TO GET home. Sure enough, as Bernadette had feared, Colston Barron was pacing the area near the stable, smoking a cigar and looking ferocious. He glared at both of them without saying a word while they dismounted and turned over their horses to the boy to stable.
Eduardo took Bernadette’s cold little hand in his and held it tightly as they approached her father, but he wasn’t looking apologetic. In fact, he almost swaggered.
“I’m sending a cable to my grandmother today to announce my forthcoming marriage to Bernadette,” he said, spiking the little Irishman’s guns before he could get the cigar out of his mouth. He held up a hand when Colston started to speak. “There will be protocol to observe, of course, and our relatives will have to have time to make arrangements to attend. My best friend belongs to the House of Windsor, and I would like him to stand with me at the ceremony. You do understand that it will be a gala event, I hope,” he added with deliberate hauteur, “since Bernadette will be marrying into most of the royal houses of Europe.”
Colston looked as if he might swoon. “You mean, you still want to marry her?”
“Of course I want to marry her. I always did. We get along well together. It will be a good marriage.”
Colston wiped his sweaty brow, looking from one to the other. His face hardened a little. “But she didn’t come home last night, and the servants all know it.” He groaned. “They’ll gossip.”
“Not when they know that she spent the night with my cousin Carlita from Mexico City, who was staying with me overnight,” he replied calmly. He let go of Bernadette’s hand and lit a cigar of his own. “I have brought her home this morning. My servants will swear, of course, that this is the truth.”
Colston let out a long sigh. “It’s all my fault,” he said miserably. “I thought you didn’t want her anymore. The German seemed to.” He shifted uncomfortably, avoiding his daughter’s accusing eyes. “I thought she’d get used to him. I never dreamed she’d run away.” He glared at Bernadette. “You could have been eaten by wolves, you silly twit!”