by The Impostor
Fortunately for Dalton, he was experienced with unbuttoning gowns in the dark.
Clara felt each button slowly give way with a sense of inevitability. It was as if Monty was caught up in the same dreamlike lure that she was.
“Sweet,” he breathed as he freed her bindings. “My Rose by any other name …”
Shakespeare? Dear Lord, was there anything more alluring than a dashing masked thief who studied poetry? Clara’s final iota of will melted away at his gentle whisper.
He would still feel the same if he knew who she truly was—wasn’t that what it meant?
As would she.
The last button gave way, and the bodice of her gown fell forward. For a moment, she was reminded of when she came back to consciousness that night in the garden. Then the thought was burned away as his touch brought her to flames.
Her breasts were bare in the darkness. She could feel the soft movement of warm breath brushing over them as Monty returned his lips to her neck.
She’d never been bared for anyone in her life. She felt so wicked, unprotected yet free. When his warm palm cupped her, she jumped from the suddenness of his heat on her. Then his caresses began and she forgot all about the strangeness.
First he took all of her into his hand that he could and squeezed gently. Then he let his fingers trail in a decreasing spiral until the tips of his fingers plucked gently at her nipple.
She squirmed and he took a soft bite of her neck between his teeth to hold her still. He moved his hand to her other breast and repeated the teasing, plucking motion. The tingle at her neck combined with the ache in her middle, along with the shocking pleasure of his gentle twisting of her nipples.
She was going to die. Right there, right then.
Then his hand left her bosom, and he released the bite on her neck with a kiss. She was shivering with longing, on fire with need. “Don’t stop,” she breathed.
He did not reply, only slid his hand down her side to the bend in her knees. She felt her hem rising up her calf. Her head fell back upon his shoulder. “Oh, yes,” she whispered. “Please.”
He shushed her again and drew her skirt above her knees, then above the tops of her stockings. She felt the cooler air on her skin, then his warm fingers stroked her inner thigh.
“Open,” he demanded in her ear, and she obeyed. Why deny him when she was nothing but one vast ache for his touch?
She felt the faint brush of his hand on her curls, then a gentle exploring touch. Unerringly, he found the center of her pleasure, the one Bentley had never truly located. Swiftly he dampened his fingertips in her wetness, then drew them up and over her button in a caressing circle that took her breath away.
She twisted helplessly against him as he drove her higher and higher with his dancing, circling touch. She was only dimly aware of his own labored breathing and of the rigid erection that he pressed firmly to her bottom.
His mouth returned to her ear. “Don’t make a sound,” he ordered. Then he entered her with his finger in one deep plunge. A cry of pleasure welled up in her throat until she was forced to bite her lip fiercely to quell it.
That was the last of her control. She jerked and quivered helplessly against him in her release, her body throbbing tightly around his finger still thrust deeply within her.
She came back to awareness in the darkness, the only sound their mingled rasping breaths. Suddenly she remembered where they were and why.
“Did they hear us?” she whispered in horror.
He kissed her ear. “My fine flower, they’re long gone. The help was clearing up when you came apart for me.”
She felt his hand retreat from under the folds of her skirts and felt mingled longing and panic. What had she done?
When could she do it again?
“I think we’d best make for the attic, my rosebud.”
“Y-yes,” she stuttered. She opened the cupboard door a tiny crack and peered out. Once she was certain that no one remained in the room, she quickly scrambled out. Blushing furiously and completely unable to look Monty in the face, she made for the hall and the safety of the servants’ stairs beyond.
He caught up to her on the stair and closed them both in the darkness once more. “I suppose we cannot light the candle now.” He took her hand. “Lead me, then, my flower.”
Clara couldn’t answer. She could only climb the stairs in a daze of mortification and lust.
Dalton was still aflame, his blood still pounding. He tried not to let her sense the ferocity of his need. If she had any clue how profoundly he ached to raise her skirts again and press her up against the wall…
She’d been so hot and ready for him.
And she was no virgin.
The fact of her experience didn’t resolve the barriers between them, and he still vowed to send her safely away somewhere. But there was no denying that it inflamed him deeply that were he truly Monty the Thief he might have shared sweet Rose’s attic pallet tonight.
When they reached the attic, moonlight was streaming in through the open window. Silver glow glamoured the battered leftovers of the household until the raftered chamber had the air of a fairy bower. It was damp and chill, yet somehow the more magical for it.
“Oh!” She moved forward to lean her hands on the sill and raised her face to the sky. “I love the moonlight.”
“And it loves you,” Dalton whispered from behind her. She was so sweet in the pure light, a fairy maid, born of a rose and given to him by the moon for this one last moment.
A dream, he knew. Yet he felt as though if he lost this fantasy then he would face nothing but the dry fact of duty for the rest of his life.
“I’ll not be back,” he said. “This is becoming too risky.”
She turned to him, her sweet face a delicate harlequin mask in the half-shadow. Still he had yet to see her in true light. “It’s gettin’ too dangerous for you?”
With a smile, he shook his head. “No, dear rosebud. It’s too dangerous for you.”
She studied him for a long moment, then turned once more to the moon. “So I’ll not see you again, then?”
“No.” It was better this way. He’d see to her improved employment anonymously and his life would be a little brighter, knowing she had some happiness.
“Then for this one night, Monty …”
“Yes?”
She turned and gazed into his eyes. “For this one night, will you be my lover?”
If Monty didn’t answer soon, Clara felt as though she would burn away like paper from the fire inside her.
Perhaps he merely needed a little reminder of the pleasure they could share. She stepped closer to him and ran her palm under his coat, slipping her fingers under his rough waistcoat to trace a small spiral on his soft shirt over his heart. She could feel the rhythm beneath her fingertips. “Let me give you what you gave me, Monty.”
His breath was coming harshly now. “But—I’ll not be back. Rose. You’ll—I can’t do that and then leave you.”
Her honorable thief. She leaned close to touch her Ups to his throat. “Don’t leave me unloved, darling,” she whispered just beneath his ear. “I have never met a man I wanted the way I want you. I’ll never meet another. Would you have me live my days never knowin’ how wonderful it can be—should be—between a man and a woman?”
He was trembling now. She could feel his heart pounding beneath her hand, his pulse straining beneath her caressing mouth. Still he didn’t touch her, didn’t make a move.
She waited, counting the beats of his heart while he held himself stiffly from her. Nothing.
It was over, then. Clara pulled herself away from him and tilted her head back in defeat, closing her eyes against his rejection. “I’m sorry. I thought—”
He pulled her hard to his chest and kissed her. It was a rough hungry kiss and she answered it with her own flaring need.
This time, both of Dalton’s hands were free to caress her. He tried to recall why he shouldn’t be running his palms down
her slender back to her round bottom, but the fullness of her flesh in his hands sent the last trace of reason from his mind.
There was no Lord Etheridge. There was no Liar’s Club.
There was only the ancient frigid void of his loneliness and the warmth of his Rose in the moonlight.
Clara had never wanted to touch a man the way she wanted to touch Monty. Her hands were shaking with her need to feel his body. She laughed a little at her trembling attempts to undo his waistcoat, but he only covered her smile with his hot mouth and tore his vest off, sending buttons spinning into the shadows.
She wanted him, oh, how she wanted him. Yet the power of her want seemed as nothing compared to the torrent of his need. She was being devoured.
Never had anyone craved her so. His desire was harsh, naked, and overwhelming. He stole her breath with his kisses, sent her into flames with his hands, and still it seemed he could not get enough.
She needed only make a motion to tug the tail of his shirt from his trousers to have him tear it off and fling it aside. The merest motion of her fingers toward the buttons of his trousers incited him to a flurry of action that left his hard, rippling flesh completely bare in the silvery light.
His body was astonishing. She’d never seen a fully naked man, had never been pressed skin to skin in an intimacy that shadowed anything she’d had with Bentley.
Monty was as bare as a Greek statue, but this was no cold marble beneath her seeking hands. This was hot rigid male animal, whose hardness left her melting with answering longing. If she could have, she would have drawn every inch of her naked God in silver ink to show the moonlight glimmering on the planes and dips of his bare and rippling strength.
Bare but for the mask. The mask that shaded his eyes in the dimness, the mask that hid his identity from her. The mask that, heaven help her, she made no motion to remove. The mask was the mystery and the dream that was Monty in her mind.
As much as she longed to see him, a part of her knew that when the mask came off, the dream would end. Then she must wake up and go back to being precise and proper Clara.
Somehow in the fray, her own clothing had gone the way of his, tangling together in the shadows while she and he tangled together in the moonlight. She was trembling in the attic air, but her shivers had nothing to do with the chill.
He backed her toward the pallet of draperies, kissing her fiercely all the while. She let herself fall, knowing that he would ease her gently down.
Once he lay above her with one hard thigh parting hers, she pressed him back for a moment. She needed her breath and her wits for just a moment more.
“I’ll not conceive,” she told him breathlessly. “’Tis not the time.”
Apparently the thought had never crossed his mind, for he only stared down at her for a long moment, his gaze unreadable behind the mask. Was he not much used to women? She herself had learned the trick of planned conception from Bentley, who hadn’t been interested in immediate fatherhood.
Then Monty slowly lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her softly, his hard demand still present beneath the tenderness. “Were things only different, my flower, there’d be no finer thing than to make a child with you.”
Tears came from nowhere and she impatiently brushed them away. “If things were different, my darling, I’d never let you leave me through that window.”
She placed both palms on his jaw and urged him close for another kiss. “But we are who we are, love. This attic, this night, is all we’ll have. Don’t let us waste another moment of it.”
Dalton could feel the trace of tears that her hands left on his skin and it burned him. What he was doing was wrong. It was unfair and untrue—except that it was the most honest moment of his life. His throat ached from the bright lovely truth between them.
Slowly he lowered his hot hard body onto her chilled soft one. He levered his thighs between hers and she welcomed him with the embrace of her legs about his hips.
“Come into me,” she whispered. “I shall keep you there always.”
Dalton felt a burning behind his own eyes at her words. This was no fevered coupling such as he had imagined on the stairs. This was a sacred moment, a promise. If he took part in this woman, he would never be the same.
He kissed her long and slow, then submerged himself slowly in her. It was like coming home.
Clara ached at his thickness, her hips twisting as she slowly accepted him. This was not Bentley, this was not some anonymous lover—this moment was as beautiful and unique as Monty himself.
Her struggle to take him eased and in answer he increased the pace of his movement until she was unable to think beyond his thick presence within her and his hard male beauty above her. She lost her mind, lost her every thought.
Every thrust was a revelation, every breath they traded a promise. Dizzily she ran her hands over him, memorizing every inch of him she could reach. Above her he rocked and drove into her with slow implacable lunges. His jaw muscles flexed in time with his thrusts, mesmerizing her even as it timed with her pleasure.
His sharp cheekbones glistened damp in the ghostly moonlight, a sculpted contrast to the shadow of his mask above. His eyes were mere glints in the blackness, mysterious and tantalizingly dangerous.
She should be appalled at herself, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. She would not go on without this moment with him.
Then the drawing spreading pleasure captured her and she thought no more. Only sensation and pulsating connection existed.
Him. Inside. Above. His touch. His heat.
His love.
The peak approached and she stepped willingly over the edge, her gaze held by the glinting eyes within the mask. When she fell, it was with the knowledge that she loved him and always would.
She wrapped her arms about him, held him close and took him with her.
Chapter Fifteen
The room no longer spun about her, yet Clara’s mind still whirled. What she had done should have been unthinkable. To take a veritable stranger for a lover?
Why did she feel no shame at all?
In fact, she felt the opposite. Bliss, perhaps. Or possibly even… hope. As if her weary heart had finally bloomed in the warmth—the heat—of his desire for her.
Outlandish plans swam through her mind, the kind she’d not dared believe in since her girlhood. She could go, right now with Monty. Marry him and five in some tiny room and live on nothing but love.
That was being a bit dramatic, of course. She did have some funds tucked away, and she was sure that with a bit of encouragement Monty would see the sense in a more conventional career.
Of course, he hadn’t asked her to run away with him. But he’d said that if things were different…
You’ve never even seen his face.
Clara sighed. The tiresome little voice was right. Perhaps she was being premature. She rolled over into the warmth of Monty’s body and rose onto her elbows next to him.
He was dozing in the moonlight, mask and all. His beautiful body was covered only by the merest corner of the velvet draperies. She eyed that small modesty for a moment, then flicked it from him with a snap.
“Hey, there!” His eyes opened and he grinned at her. “And here I was worried you’d be all proper again.” He gave her own velvet covering a tug. “Sauce for the goose, now.”
Clara laughed and allowed him to slide the cover to her waist. Then she put one hand over his to stop him.
“‘Tisn’t gentlemanly, me being all naked when you’re not.”
He looked down at himself in surprise. Clara tapped her own cheekbone meaningfully. “What kind of woman does that make me, when I’ve never even seen your face?”
He raised one hand to his mask. When he hesitated, Clara’s heart began to twist. Then he gave her a sheepish grin.
“Forgot I had it on.”
“Oh, so you weren’t born with it, then?” She poked at him as she teased. He retorted by wrapping one big hand around the back of her neck
and pulling her down for a kiss that made her knees go weak and her legs fall open involuntarily. When she opened her eyes, the mask was gone. There was only him in the moonlight, every plane of his face as familiar as her own.
The pain was fierce and immediate as her heart broke quite cleanly in two.
Dalton waited in silence for her reaction, but except for a widening of her eyes he could see no change in her expression. He shifted slightly. Finally he had to break the silence. “You don’t like what you see?”
“You’re perfect,” she whispered. “Quite the most handsome man I’ve ever seen.”
Dalton raised his head to kiss her again. Her lips were cool for a moment, then warmed fiercely under his. He rolled her over, his erection rising instantly in response to the feel of her beneath him.
What this woman did to him…
Her arms rose to cling tightly to his neck and hold the kiss until they were both breathless. He pulled away, covering his astonishment with a small chuckle.
“If I’d known I’d get a buss like that I would’ve taken me mask off the first night,” he teased.
She didn’t smile, but only cupped his face in her hands. There were tears in her eyes that did not fall. He saw the glint in the last bit of moonlight left to them. A glance at the window proved that the sky had clouded. The light would be gone entirely soon. Darkness again for them, as always. He realized that he still had not seen her full in the moonlight as she had seen him.
Yet it was time for him to go.
“I’ll be back,” he promised as he reached for his clothes.
“No,” she said. She stood and turned to pull her plain gown over her head. “There was only ever to be this one moment of Rose and Monty in the moonlight.” Her voice sounded muffled in the fabric, almost as if she were crying. However, when she turned back to him, she seemed composed.
He moved to stand before her, wrapping his hands gently over her shoulders. “I can’t just walk away—”
She covered his lips with the tips of her fingers. “I can.”
It hurt to hear her say it. “You can?”
“You mustn’t mistake fantasy for reality, S—Monty.” She stepped back once, then again, letting his hands fall from her shoulders. “This attic was a dreamland, and you and I only a mirage.”