He even smelled like sunlight. Not just his clean linen, but the warmth of his skin drew her as the sun draws a sunflower. Serena had taken a lover once before, but the entire encounter had not moved her as much as the touch of Arthur's lips on hers.
Though his arms were around her, she could feel his reluctance in the lines of his body as she moved against him. Serena wondered for one moment if he might pull away, if his honor would compel him to set her aside.
She opened her mouth under his, tightening her grip, and felt his resistance begin to give way. Arthur drew back from her to take a breath. “I should not touch you,” he said. “In all honor, I must let you go.”
But still, he did not pull away, and she nestled closer, the heat of his body like a brick in winter, warming her through to her bones. She felt the first deep stirring of desire she had ever felt in her life, and she knew now why men were so obsessed with lust, and with opera dancers. If it led them to feel even a quarter of the heat she felt with Arthur in her arms, they must seek it everywhere they went.
Serena was unable to swallow her smile in spite of the serious look on his face. She knew that even now, with the fire rising between them, Arthur Farleigh was doing his best to push her aside, and to cling to honor. She decided to speak for him, as she had always done in childhood.
“I know you must find a schoolroom miss to marry,” she said. “I know you need a young girl to bear and raise your children. But there are no young girls here tonight. Only me. I am your friend, as you are mine. I’d like to walk this path with you, a man I trust, a man who holds me in esteem and respect. Will you offer me that gift, or have I been a fool?”
She waited for him to speak, not knowing what she would do if her turned her away.
Arthur knew that he would marry this woman.
She wore his ring out of kindness now, but from the moment he had taken her in his arms as he had always longed to do, Arthur knew that he would never let her go.
Serena Davenport might want to travel the world and dig up the past all over Europe, and he would follow her to the ends of the earth if that was her wish. He would raise his heir in a tent beside an open furrow in the ground, watching while his wife unearthed wonders for the next generation of scholars to marvel at. He would use any influence he had among the elite at Oxford and with the Royal Societies to see to it that her work was not only accepted, but taken seriously. Arthur Farleigh knew all this in one sudden flash, as the light of knowledge came into the mind of Adam when he first ate from the forbidden fruit.
She did not love him as he loved her. He put that hard truth out of his mind as soon as he acknowledged it. That fact would no doubt cause him pain in the years to come, but she loved him a little, as a friend, at least, as a man who held her respect, if not her heart. Arthur would force himself to be content with that. If his short time with Catherine Middlebrook has taught him anything, it was that he had waited too many years for Serena already.
He did not make any declarations standing there beneath his father’s portrait. He had seen already that day how fickle women were, to bring a man to ride to Gretna Green only to stop when the first Scot showed up along the roadside. Serena was a woman used to caring for others, and used to getting her own way. When he could think again, when the blood had returned to his brain, sometime the next day, he would figure out how to woo her and how to win her. For now, he said nothing, but drew her close and kissed her again.
Serena leaned back in his arms, letting him take all of her weight. They were of a height, as no other woman he had ever known had ever been. He wondered if their first child would be a boy, and if the boy would wear her red hair or his dark gold. He wanted to see that child in that moment almost as badly as he wanted to make love to her, and bring that child into the world. He wondered what flights of fancy this homecoming had taken him to, and he pushed aside all such thoughts of the future, and kissed her again.
“Will you have me here?” Serena asked, her green eyes bright with untapped desire.
Arthur felt a chill to hear those words from her lips, and wondered what she must have seen alone and unprotected in the wilds of Italy, save for her elderly father who was useless in anything but scholarship. Arthur tightened his arms around her until he saw her eyes widen, and he felt more a man than he ever had as he fought his jealousy down. “I don’t know who you’ve known, and I don’t care. But with me, you are a sacred being. I will have you in my bed.”
She shivered against him, and he wondered for a moment if his ardent speech had changed her mind. But then Serena pressed her beautiful breasts against his chest again, and kissed him.
Chapter Seven
Serena wondered what had happened to the steady, staid man she had known all her life. For with desire etched on the lines of his face, Arthur Farleigh did not look as he always had.
She had never noticed before how beautiful he was. She had known it as an afterthought, as something that had nothing to do with her. But now that he was offering to become her lover, she saw the masculine beauty of him, his strong arms and wide shoulders, and she rejoiced in it.
The heat of his touch made her shiver even as he stepped away from her. He reached out and placed his hands on her upper arms, steadying her so that she would not fall. She wanted to collapse onto that hard rosewood floor, and drag him down on top of her. But she remembered from their childhood that, on the rare occasions when he wore that implacable expression, he would take over their dealings. For one of the rare times in both their lives, Arthur Farleigh was in charge.
And she liked it.
He took her hand without another word, and drew her along behind him. He was stealthy and quiet, his booted feet making no sound on the staircase as they made their way down to the bedrooms on the second floor. Once, when she heard a maid coming down the hallway, rattling a box of coal, Arthur moved before she could think, drawing her into a tiny sitting room. She could not make out the room itself, for the drapes were drawn and the sun was almost down, but she felt the hardwood of the door against her back as Arthur Farleigh pressed her up against it and kissed her again.
He came away from her, his lips close to her ear. She wanted to tell him to take her then and there, that she could not wait. But before she could speak, he opened the door again and drew her farther down the corridor.
He stopped outside of his own suite of rooms, and drew her inside.
There was a fire lit in the grate, though it was early June. The firelight gave the room a warm cheer that candlelight alone would not have. Arthur closed the door and locked it, leaving the key in the keyhole so that no one passing by might look in.
He turned to her, and she thought he might sweep her off her feet and carry her to the bed, or have her there on the beautiful Aubusson carpet. But he was Arthur Farleigh, and he did neither.
He took both of her hands in his, and kissed each one, then looked into her eyes. She had forgotten how blue his eyes were, the color of the first light of a spring sky, when all the world was new, and anything was possible. Standing in that room alone with him, for the first time since she had gone away, she felt like that again.
Serena felt an odd lump form in her throat. She was not one for weeping. But Arthur was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. She had loved him all the time she was away. She would always love him, even after she left him to his debutante wife, whoever that young woman would turn out to be. But now, here, in this moment, she knew herself to be blessed, that she might stand alone with a man like him and feel a love like this.
“I love you,” she said. “Whatever comes after.”
“I love you,” he answered. “I always have, and I always will.”
The words on his lips warmed her heart even as they pierced it. She felt tears rise in her eyes to join the lump lodged in her throat, but she swallowed hard, and blinked them away. She might have only this one night with him, but it would be a night worth savoring. She would save her tears for tomorrow.
&nbs
p; Arthur Farleigh was a sensitive man. He saw the tears in her eyes, and did not move to draw her close, but only kissed her cheek. "Serena, if you wish to turn back, do it now. I will not blame or reproach you."
She smiled and blinked the last of her tears away. "Thank you, Arthur. But I do not want to turn back."
***
She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen The sun had finally set, so there was only the firelight and the muted light from one candle cast on the burnished bronze of her hair. Her dark green dress was trimmed in some kind of black stone that seemed to drink in the light around her neckline and cuffs, so that the skin of her hands and throat seemed impossibly white.
Arthur drank in the sight of her standing with him alone in his rooms. He knew in all honor that he should never have brought her here, that even now he should take her to her own room, and tell her to lock the door to keep him out. But he knew just as well that he would not.
He would show her what love could be in the hands of a man who worshipped her. He did not know what her past held, if it was checkered or chaste, and he found that he did not care. Once he had lain with her, he would ask her for her hand in marriage, and pray that she would give it.
Of course, there was no way of truly knowing what this woman might do. Which was part of the reason he loved her, part of the reason he had never forgotten her in the long years she had been away.
All the time he had spent among the ton had been one long search that led nowhere. In every ballroom he had ever entered, he had looked for a woman who carried herself like a queen, a woman with dark auburn hair and snapping green eyes. He had searched in vain for a woman with that singular tilt of her head, that singular turn of mind. He had never found her. Today, after seeing Serena again for the first time in ten years, he understood why. In all the world, this woman was unique.
His hands shook with wanting her, even now. He was not sure he could cross the divide of all those years, and touch her. He had waited too long. His ring was on her finger, but only as a pretense. He did not know if he could bed her unless his ring lay on her finger in truth.
Of course, Serena Davenport knew her own mind. And, as always, she did not hesitate to act.
She did not touch him, as he both feared and hoped she might. Instead, Serena stepped away from him, her breasts rising underneath her gown as reached up to unwind the long braid that curled around the crown of her head. She drew her hair down with deft fingers until the mass of auburn curls lay in soft waves down her back, over her shoulder, falling over one breast. She lay the hairpins down on a mahogany table where they clattered in a porcelain dish he had never noticed before.
He listened to those pins hit that porcelain as she began to unlace the bodice of her gown.
It laced down the side, and she made short work of it, unbinding herself as easily as she had taken down her hair. With any other woman, Arthur would have crossed the room to help her, but he stood frozen, caught in amber, as he watched first her skirt, and then her bodice, fall to the soft carpet at her feet.
Serena Davenport stood in her chemise and stockings, the pale silk glimmering in a sheen against the milk of her skin. She stood smiling at him, one eyebrow raised. “Arthur, am I the only one who is going to take any clothes off?”
He laughed, as he knew she had meant him to, and he crossed the room in three strides and took her into his arms. Her hair smelled of the strange cinnamon concoction she wore on her skin, and it also smelled of roses. He breathed in it, and let his lips trail along her temple to her cheek, and down to her mouth, where at long last, he kissed her.
Chapter Eight
Serena forgot every other clumsy kiss she had ever experienced, every awkward, uncomfortable moment of her one love affair when Arthur’s lips touched hers. His hands were on the skin of her arms, soothing her, caressing her, leaving a heated trail down to her fingertips, and then up to her waist.
She gasped, opening her mouth under his as his hands came up to cup her breasts. The Italian “prince” had pawed at her breasts through her shift before he had taken her, but this caress from Arthur was nothing like that. It was like comparing a guttering, smoky lamp to the light of the sun.
Arthur’s hands did not move to strip her of her shift, but caressed her through it until the flesh of her breasts reached for him of their own accord, and she was left breathless with wanting him. The heat of her desire pooled between her thighs, making her long for his touch. But he was still dressed.
She reached up, breaking the kiss, and pulled at the contorted linen of his cravat. He smiled at her as she stripped it from him quickly, with the efficiency of a decent valet, for she had tied her father’s cravats for years while they were on the dig, after his Italian servant had left them for lack of wages.
She took his coat off next, and he helped her, shrugging out of it as he had when they were younger and going swimming in the lake on her father’s land. It fell away as he skirt had, and he did not move to pick it up, so neither did she.
This was as far as she had ever gotten in disrobing a man, and Arthur seemed to know that without being told, for he stripped away his waistcoat and shirt, so that the golden hair on his chest shone in the firelight.
“You look like Apollo,” she said without thinking.
“And you had too much wine with dinner.”
She laughed, and batted at him to punish him for his dismissal of her sincere compliment, but he caught her hand in his and raised it to his lips. His breath was hot on her fingertips, and on her palm, as he moved his lips into the center of her hand, and tongued her gently, softly, as much a question as an exploration. Her body leaped and the heat below her waist seemed to throb, and she wondered what else he might do with his tongue, where else he might kiss her. She had heard rumors when she was in Rome dining with married women with no men present. Surely such talk had been idle bragging. At the time, she had thought the whole idea perverse, but now that she stood with Arthur alone in his room, she was not repulsed by the concept, but intrigued. Of course, Arthur was not Italian, nor was he French. He was the best man she had ever known. No doubt such an idea would never even occur to him.
Arthur picked her up, making her squeal, and then laugh at herself for her foolishness. He laughed with her, but low, his lips on her throat as he lifted her high before laying her down on the silk counterpane of his bed. “Not too loud,” he said. “The servants might hear.”
She bit her lip as she watched him drop first his breeches, and shuck his hose and his small clothes to lie down on the bed beside her. They had lain side by side near the lake when they were children, but they had only been talking and laughing then, drying off from their swim in the sun. Now he was a man, and she a woman, and this was altogether different.
Serena thanked every listening god for that.
His hand moved to her thigh, drawing her shift above her waist, as he caressed her very lightly along her inner thigh. Arthur touched her, his blunt, calloused fingers finding her spot of bliss with the unerring certainty of a bloodhound, and she stopped being able to think at all.
***
Arthur touched her with the careful reverence, but his hand was shaking. He wanted her so badly, more than he had ever wanted any woman who had ever graced his bed. He had cared for some of them, and liked others, but always, after they had coupled, his thoughts would return to this one woman, and how he wished that he had been with her. Now Serena was here, in his bed beside him, and it was all he could do to keep his lust in check long enough to satisfy her first. He would give her the gift of care, of loving kindness, for all the gifts she had ever given him. He would do this for her, and then he would make her his wife.
He toyed with her gently, his fingers playing over her body as he had learned from his other lovers. In that moment, all those lovers ceased to exist as if they had never been. Arthur Farleigh found himself once again in Eden, and grateful to be there.
She reared under him and gasped as he circled her
place of bliss and slipped three fingers into her passage. She whimpered then, and pressed her body against his hand, and it as all he could do to keep his focus on her pleasure. As she began to moan, he wondered if the servants could hear her, and found that he did not care.
He slid down her voluptuous body, caressing her from breast to hip with the hand that was not buried inside her. He settled himself between her thighs, spreading them wider, and she whimpered again when he took his hand away.
“Arthur,” she said, her voice breathy with desire. He felt the first stab of hope that, when he asked for her hand in marriage, she might say yes. His ring still gleamed on her hand where it rested along her waist. When she reached up and caressed her own breast, his breath shuddered in his chest, and he almost lost control of himself. He did a bit of math in his head, and told himself to stay steady on his task. If there was one thing Arthur, Baron Farleigh was good at, it was keeping his head. But in that moment, it was a near thing.
Arthur bent to her secret places, and kissed her.
Chapter Nine
It was not a rumor.
Men really kissed woman down there. Arthur was doing it now, and she had not even had to ask.
She felt herself come apart in one long spiral of pleasure. Even as she crested, the pleasure was languid, drawn out, as if there were all the time in the world, and her starved body would drink down every last drop of it. She lay afterward, quaking, Arthur’s name on her lips. She wondered if she had screamed it at the last, and found that she did not care.
Arthur leaned over her, a masculine, satisfied smile on his face. He looked as a cat might once it had been in the cream. She almost teased him to take him down a peg, but then she realized that she still wanted him, and that perhaps teasing him would not be the best way to get him to come to her again.
“I still want you,” she said bluntly, unable to dissemble or to soften her words. Arthur did not seem offended, but indeed, smiled a little more.
How To Bed A Baron Page 4