He sat down, pulling his hand through her hair, pressing a brief kiss to her lips. “I want to pleasure you first, but I fear I will burst with wanting you if we go too quickly.”
Evelyn satisfied her curiosity by rubbing his wide back when he leaned over to pull off his boots. If she were his wife, they would do this every night, and she would grow accustomed to the sight of those broad shoulders, the texture of his smooth skin beneath her fingers. Evelyn flushed again.
He didn’t give her time to be afraid. Throwing his last boot to the floor, he took her in his arms and greedily captured her mouth.
Before Evelyn knew how they came there, she was lying across the sheets with Alex half on top of her, and the flames had become an inferno from which escape had become impossible. His hand captured her breast, pushing it up to fill his palm and caressing until she was swollen with a need she did not understand—until he pushed the chemise aside and took her in his mouth. She cried out with bliss, felt the need spread to the place between her thighs, and knew she was lost.
She helped him remove the last of her garments, grateful she had worn no corset to hinder their pleasure. She lifted her shoulders from the pillows so he could push the untied chemise off and down her arms. Keeping her trapped with the garment half on and half off, Alex continued to feast on her breasts until she moaned.
His broad hands slid up her thighs, pulling the chemise with them. As she struggled to free her arms, Alex touched the part of her that burned the most. Shocked, she whimpered and fell back against the pillows, flooded with shame. The shame disappeared, becoming a powerful tension as he stroked and played.
“I want you, little tyrant. I want you here.” His finger probed tender flesh, making her writhe with the need for more. “Do you understand what I will do to you?”
Evelyn had difficulty recognizing the question. She didn’t understand, but she didn’t care either. “I don’t know,” she murmured, tossing her head as his lips sucked at the base of her throat. “Will you show me?”
The words were rhetorical. She knew he would. But she sensed his need to be asked. He had been right. He didn’t need to force her. She surrendered willingly.
His finger thrust deeper, and she buried her face against his shoulder. Flames of embarrassment and desire set her ablaze, but she felt no relief when he removed his hand to caress her breast.
“I’ll show you, love,” he whispered near her ear. “But I cannot give it back once I take it from you. There will be no other after me. I’m claiming you as mine. Your children will be my children. Don’t think it will ever be otherwise.”
In this instant his words made sense. She desperately wanted his children. His promises inflamed her desire, and her hips rose to seek his. Alex’s hand returned to assuage her need, but it wasn’t enough. Evelyn bit her lip to keep from crying out her frustration. Alex increased the distance between them, ceasing his kisses. Not even realizing she had closed her eyes, she opened them again.
In the lamplight his skin gleamed a golden bronze. She watched in fascination as he unfastened the remaining buttons of his breeches, including the ones at his knee, before removing the last garment between them. It seemed to take an interminable time, but through eyes glazed with desire, Evelyn thought his motions to be perfection. She would never grow tired of watching the play of muscles across his broad back or admiring the way they narrowed to lean and masculine hips. When he stood to pull off the garment, Evelyn sighed in awe.
He was more magnificent than she had imagined, and more terrifying. As Alex threw the breeches aside, she had a fleeting look at a black pelt of hair narrowing to a jutting staff. Then he returned to the bed, and long muscular legs covered hers.
His heaviness weighed against her, his legs caressed hers, and the fires of his kiss returned.
“You feel so good, my love, I want to touch you all over.” And he did, caressing her in places she turned pale to think about, stroking the fire into spreading everywhere his fingers touched.
It took no daring to wrap her arms around Alex’s neck or spread her legs at a pressure from his knees. He bent to suckle at her breast again, and she buried her hands in his thick hair, holding him there.
***
Watching Evelyn’s desire-flushed face, Alex felt a protective tenderness that he had never experienced before. He had a healthy appetite and enjoyed giving pleasure to women, although their pleasure had never been his main concern. But he didn’t want to fail this one. He wanted her to feel what he was feeling, to want him as much as he wanted her— want it enough to ask for more.
Seducing virgins was more complicated than he had imagined. Evelyn looked at him so trustingly, expectantly, not having any understanding of the pain he could induce. He was thrumming with his need to plunge and take what he wanted, to have her at last. But he had to pave the way for a future of pleasure.
He brushed her cheek with his kisses, found her mouth, and drank deeply of her passion, using his tongue to show her the intimacy to come. She welcomed him eagerly, with no sign of fear. There was nothing for it, but he must breach the last remaining barrier that severed their freedom and joined them irrevocably.
“I don’t want to hurt you, little tyrant, but sometimes it does. Make me stop if I go too fast.”
Her hands slid across his chest and encircled his neck, and that sultry, husky voice of hers responded with a sensuousness that shivered his spine. “I can do anything you can do,” she promised with a wicked smile that relieved all fears. This was Evelyn, not some weeping, vaporish miss. And she was his.
He cupped her buttocks, lifting and spreading her legs to receive him.
Evelyn gasped as a thickness probed and pushed where his fingers had stroked before. She closed her eyes, fighting panic. Alex’s words whispered, soothing her, reminding her it was he and not some invisible monster forcing her. Forcing her. He must not think he forced her. She had told him she could do this, and she would.
She relaxed, letting his murmurs wash around her, and the flames danced again. She rubbed tentatively against him and his moan escalated her pleasure. He pushed deeper, causing pain and pressure, but also an increasing excitement.
He pulled back, preparing her with his fingers until she writhed with the need for more. When she lifted her legs around his hips, he groaned and plunged all the way.
Evelyn cried out, fighting the sensation of having him full inside of her. He stopped, giving her time to adjust. She opened her eyes to find him watching her. In that moment he revealed more of himself than she had ever seen, and her heart twisted. There was vulnerability and tenderness as he watched for her reaction. She wanted to love him, to hold him, to tell him everything would be all right. All she could do was hold out her arms and bring him down for her kiss. Her body would have to say what her words could not.
She shuddered with renewed eagerness. Her hips rose, bringing him deeper.
Alex’s thrust warned that his patience had come to an end. Evelyn bit back a cry as he withdrew and thrust again, but he carried her with him, making her feel his need, teaching her the rhythm of his pleasure until it became hers too.
He not only possessed her, they possessed each other, until they became one. The pleasure rose to an exquisite torment. Alex smothered her groans with his mouth as the explosion came, quaking their bodies and melding them with the heat of his seed.
They collapsed in a tangle of limbs, not moving. Alex’s weight pushed Evelyn into the mattress, but she wanted it that way. She wrapped her arms around his neck, loving the intimacy of his broad shoulders beneath her fingertips. There was pain where they joined, but she didn’t want him to leave.
It couldn’t last, of course. Alex finally stirred, rolling to one side so as not to crush her. Cool air rushed between them, and she turned into the circle of his arms, aware of their nakedness.
He watched her warily, and she smiled and caressed his newly shaved jaw. “Did I go too fast for you?” she asked.
Alex grinn
ed then, a heart-stopping grin that tickled Evelyn to her toes and made her want to kiss him until he took her again. Why couldn’t he look like that more often?
“You can go as fast as you like with me, my dear. I’ll keep up somehow.” Alex smoothed his hand down her back. He kissed the top of her head as she snuggled against his shoulder, and pulled the quilt higher around her. “We have the rest of our lives to learn different paces. I’m in no hurry.”
He drove the first crack into Evelyn’s comfort. She wanted to sleep. She wanted time to absorb the myriad sensations to which he had introduced her. She was insane to let his words disturb her. But she couldn’t let them go unanswered.
“I’ll still not marry you, Alex,” she murmured cruelly against his shoulder.
He stopped his stroking to grip her shoulder and push her back against the pillow where he could see her face. “You have no choice. I told you that. You could be carrying my child already. I’ll not lose this one too.”
It was evidence of the extent of his desperation that he let this slip out, and the scowl between his eyes grew.
Evelyn ignored the scowl, seeing only the pain she had caused. “You had a child?”
***
His intrepid Evelyn always succeeded in entering where angels feared to tread. Alex flung himself back against the pillow, fighting long-denied memories. But he must put that long-ago pain to use to protect his future happiness, and hers. Alex struggled for the right words.
It had been the spring of his sixteenth year. He had outgrown his tutor, but the man had no other position and did not reveal his uselessness. Alex wanted to go to Oxford, but his mother would use fainting spells to keep him terrified and tied to the house. He was restless, with no outlet for his energy.
He had been aware for some time that Sir Hugh had been calling, but the man was soft and old and of no interest to a headstrong sixteen-year-old. So when Alex’s mother called for him while Sir Hugh was with her, he had thought nothing of it. She liked to parade him before her friends. All Alex’s clothes were tailor-made in the latest fashions to suit her taste, and she would have the vapors should he ever appear with a tie or a button out of place. Since she was the only family he knew, Alex tried to please her.
When his mother announced that Sir Hugh had asked her to marry him, she might as well have announced that the moon was made of blancmange. For most of his life she had been telling him how wicked his father was, and that she would never allow another man into her home again. He had taken it for granted that he would be the only man in her life.
But as Alex noticed the way the old man looked at his petite blond mother, he wanted to smash his fist into the randy old goat’s face. When they asked for his approval, he gave a curt “Fine. Why not?” and walked out.
He hadn’t believed she would do it, but within the month they were married and on their wedding trip. Alex had never felt so alone in his life.
Until the day he found sweet Bess. She was a plump armful, all sunshine smiles and golden curls. They were much of an age, but she had more experience than he, and he had considerably more wit than she. It didn’t matter when they discovered the pleasures of their youthful bodies in the summer heat of the hayloft. The scent of new-mown grass still filled his nostrils as he remembered it.
She was lovely, and they learned their pleasures together. Without a hint of shame, she described how her father used her when he felt the need. She assured him she had felt no pleasure until Alex came along. Jealous, Alex had ordered her to start spending her nights at the house instead of returning to the village.
He wasn’t certain she obeyed. The servants’ rooms were in the attic, and he didn’t have the courage to run the gauntlet of footmen and maids to find her bed. He just felt confident that she was happy to be safe with him, and thought no more about it.
By the time his mother moved into Sir Hugh’s hideous mansion, Alex had decided to remain in his own home. She took the news with only a slight attack of vapors, followed by asking her new husband to help her back to the carriage.
Alex watched her leave with a new layer of callousness.
By the end of summer, Bess was swelling with his child. They admired the hard curve of her belly with equal pride and no shame at all. The child was something they had done together, a symbol of their independence. Alex asked her to marry him, but she put him off with giggles and pulled him down into the hay. Her swelling breasts were a temptation he could not resist, and he let her lead the way. He just knew she was his. The child growing between them was proof of that.
The day that he couldn’t find Bess anywhere ended that fantasy. Fearing her father had come for her, Alex had ridden into the village in a frenzy. The man showed no fear of him. He looked at Alex slyly, spat in the dirt, and announced his Bess was happily wedded to the father of her child.
Alex went a little crazy after that. He had just turned seventeen. He owned nothing of his own. His mother’s estate now belonged to Sir Hugh. He lived on their charity. He was helpless to fight this injustice in any way but rage.
He located Bess one September day when the air was crisp and cool and the sun shone so painfully he had to pull his hat over his eyes. He had been drinking with the footman again, but the alcohol had not alleviated the pain. When he rode up to her husband’s solid brick farmhouse and studied the well-built barn and acres of field around it, he knew what Bess had done, but he refused to admit it. He dismounted and sought her out to prove it to himself.
She was eight months pregnant by then and more beautiful than ever. She met him with eager kisses, let him touch her belly and breasts, but laughed when he offered to take her away.
“Why should I go?” she had asked cheerfully, gesturing toward the comfortable rocking chair beside the warm fire in this jewel of a farmhouse. “Can you give me all of this?”
He had given her love and his child, but he could give her nothing else, and she knew it. He protested. He threatened to tell her husband. He raged and pleaded, but she couldn’t be stirred. Her husband had married fully believing he was the only one and that the child was his. He’d had no children by his first wife, and he dearly wanted this one. It could be his. It might be. Who knew?
The full extent of her betrayal came to Alex in bits and pieces over a matter of weeks. By then he’d persuaded Sir Hugh to send him to Oxford. He wasn’t home when Bess had the child. He never really went home again.
His drinking and his womanizing got him sent down so many times Alex lost count, and finally he just forgot to go back. The quarterly allowance from his stepfather was sufficient to find him a small suite of rooms in London. It didn’t pay for his expensive habits, but his cousin, the Earl of Cranville, had married a woman who could not have children, and he was the only heir. His creditors were willing to wait.
Unable to explain all this to the woman in his bed, Alex fell silent, uncertain how much of his thoughts he had spoken out loud. She said nothing when he didn’t go on. Apparently the tale had been sufficient to put Evelyn to sleep.
He didn’t tell her how his disillusionment had led him to one deceitful whore after another. He always felt a certain satisfaction when he found them out. He never had any objection to sharing the beds of wives of other men. If they didn’t cheat with him, they would cheat with others, he had rationalized. Not until he had Evelyn in his arms and knew he couldn’t share her did he have a better understanding of the harm he had done.
He needed her to erase the pain, and he turned on his side to wake her. To his surprise, she was staring at him with tears darkening violet depths to almost purple.
“I’ll love you, Alex, but will you ever be able to love me back?”
Chapter 16
Alex stared at Evelyn in apparent disbelief.
Perhaps he’d expected that his recital would cause tears of pity or angry denunciations for his wasted years. But she already knew that he wasn’t a temperate man, which was why she knew he’d never love her.
“I didn�
�t ask you to love me.” Irritated, Alex dropped back to his pillow.
Evelyn lay silent, unable to think of a witty reply to offset that hurtful remark. He had opened his soul to her, and she had accepted it. Why couldn’t he accept her? Stupid question. He had just told her why. He hated and distrusted all women. Yet there had to be some feelings, some trust, or he would never have offered marriage.
It didn’t matter. Everything he had said just made it that much clearer that she couldn’t marry him. The wounds he had taken were apparently mortal ones. And she couldn’t go to another country and face the hostility of a new life without at least the slender support of her husband’s love and trust.
“I’ll do as I please,” she answered stiffly. Seeing no point in continuing to lie naked in his bed, Evelyn started to rise to look for her clothes.
Alex caught her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“To hell, evidently. I want to get dressed.” She tried to jerk away, but he rose on one elbow and pulled her back. She glared at his darkened face.
“The night has just begun. There is no reason to go until dawn. I don’t think you found what we did together terribly unpleasant.”
He was pressuring her back into the pillows. She had no defense against his greater strength. She could use words to wound him, but she didn’t want to cause him more pain. What difference would leaving make after what they’d already done?
His kiss was angry, but she wouldn’t let him force her. He had enough guilt on his conscience. Quite shamelessly she wanted him to love her again but not this way.
Rebel Dreams Page 16