Jason waited, taking a slow sip of his brandy to fill the space until Oakley continued, revealed whatever it was he wished to say.
“It’s not really my place to speak of this…”
“No, likely it’s not,” Jason agreed, because anything he might say about Diana and Jason was certainly no one’s business but their own.
“Right.” Oakley sighed and then took a swallow of his own drink, as if he were mustering up the strength. To do what? “Suffice to say then, Blount, that there are stories circulating about you and from the few things I do know, it’s not hard to put two and two together and reason that you’re why Diana came to us looking like a shadow of herself.”
Jason filed that last bit aside, to think on in a moment, but his curiosity was piqued.
“What do you know of her, Oakley?” he asked. Did either Oakley or his lady know about Harridan House? He doubted it, if only because Oakley was known as being a straight-arrow sort of fellow.
“She’s Maggie’s cousin,” Oakley returned, a bit of steel in his voice. “As her relative, I know quite a bit more that most.”
So he did know. And if he’d heard the story about the brawl in Harridan House, then he knew Jason knew.
“And you don’t care?” Jason asked.
“I care about her character.” Oakley placed his glass on the mahogany desk he’d been leaning against.
Jason stared at him. Her character?
“My wife invited you to dinner because she had some idea from your visit yesterday that even if you were the cause of the shadows, you might also be the cure.”
Jason forced himself to laugh.
Oakley’s lips thinned and he leaned forward intently until Jason had to meet his gaze.
“Take it from a man who almost lost the woman he loved, Blount. There is such a thing as too much pride.” There was something in Oakley’s face when he made that admission, something that Jason recognized in himself.
The silence thickened, and Jason turned the glass in his hands around and around, watching the amber liquid swirl as he came to a decision.
“I don’t care about the club.”
“Then what?” Oakley pushed. “Because clearly, you care for her or you wouldn’t be sitting here still, talking to me.”
“I’m just…I’m not certain…I don’t want to lead that sort of life.”
Oakley studied him for a long moment before he finally spoke.
“Does she?”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
He needed to speak to her, to get her alone, but with Maggie and Oakley guarding their interactions there wasn’t an opening and he returned home frustrated. He spent a long night reliving the past, remembering every second they had shared, every look, every word.
He finally found his moment late the following morning when chance allowed him to escort Diana home from the pump room without any other company.
In the bright light of day he finally saw the slight changes to which Oakley had alluded. She was thinner than before, the slight hollow of her cheeks more pronounced, and there was a tentativeness to her conversation that he’d never before witnessed in her.
Was he the cause of those changes? The thought disturbed him greatly and he looked away from her, hardly aware of their quickened pace and the silence in which they walked.
“I wanted to thank you,” Diana said softly, breaking into his thoughts. “I heard, I couldn’t help but hear about what you did to Lord Ashburton.”
“I did not do it for your gratitude.” Jason clipped his words, his jaw tight, lips thinned and pressed together. He did not want to think about Ashburton. He didn’t want to think about that man or any of the other lovers Diana had had over the years.
“Of course not,” Diana said quickly and even her alacrity frustrated him.
Had he done this to her? Broken her so that her throaty laugh had disappeared?
She stopped suddenly and he looked at her in surprise, practically in expectation.
“Thank you for escorting me.” She gestured vaguely with her hand and he realized they stood at the foot of the stairs to Oakley’s house. “Would you…would you care to come in? Have some tea perhaps?”
“Yes,” he said curtly, although tea was the last thing on his mind. He followed her inside, up a flight of stairs to the cozy parlor he had found her in the day before when he’d made his call.
She walked to the fireplace, rested her hand on the mantel. The room was quiet. The house was quiet.
“I believe everyone is out,” Diana spoke into the silence, not quite looking at him.
Alone. At last. Only just then, Jason didn’t know where to begin.
“Diana,” he said, finally. “I…I owe you an apology.”
Her gaze flew to meet his, her eyes wide and surprised. And light. The light, clear green of her irises catching the sunlight.
“I should never have left you as I did.”
She laughed then, that deep throaty sound he remembered so well, and the sound of it relieved him. Aroused him.
“Are you saying, Jason, that you shouldn’t have left in the manner in which you did? Or are you saying you wish you had stayed?”
“What I am saying,” Jason answered slowly, taking a step toward her, and then another one. “Is that I don’t want to talk about the past. I want only to think about the future.”
It was a beguiling idea. Forget the past and look to the future. Diana thought she could revel in such a concept, embrace it as her motto.
Could she, though? Could he really? He had once, she knew, back in Brighton, when they began their affair. But then everything had twisted.
Did she want him enough that she was willing to forget or to chance him rejecting her again?
He was close to her now, so close that if she took just one step forward she’d be in his arms.
She heard the words fill the air as if it weren’t her voice that had sounded then.
“What is the future, Jason?”
His mouth closed over hers and for a moment Diana remained rigid, untouched. Such a yearning filled her that it was hard to accept that here he was now, doing exactly what she wished. Then, the tender heat of his kiss began its slow burn through her body.
She swayed against him, leaning into his embrace, the support of his arms—the world falling away at the touch of his tongue on her lower lip.
Then he traced a path from her mouth, across the line of her jaw, to her neck. And with each inch of skin, she felt her heart expanding, stretching beyond its earthly bounds.
She gave herself over to him, to his touch, his exploration of her body. She could hardly do anything but that when his kisses made her feel boneless, a mass of quivering sensation. Vulnerable, all her usual defenses stripped away entirely.
“Diana.” There was an edge to his tone, to the steady cadence of his voice. She struggled to open her eyes, but her lashes fluttered weakly and instead she merely turned her face to rest her cheek in the palm of his hand. “Diana.”
She didn’t want to open her eyes. She didn’t want anything else but the feel of him touching her, the beautiful fantasy that in the gentleness of his embrace lay a deeper regard. The ridiculous dream that there was anything more than lust in his eyes.
“I’m going to make love to you, Diana.”
Which she wanted…desperately.
“Here, in this parlor.”
“Yes,” she managed to whisper, the words more of a sigh against his wrist than anything audible.
He must have heard her, or taken her movement for assent, because he turned her face back and plundered her mouth once more with his.
He let go of her only briefly, to turn the key in the lock of the door, and then he was back, holding her in his arms.
It was only when a cool flutter of air touched her bare skin that she realized he’d managed to successfully unfasten her dress, her stays, and her chemise, all of which gaped, freeing her breasts to his gaze…
…to the heated suckli
ng of his mouth……oh, Lord—to his tongue!
Energy coursed through her and she stirred in his arms, needing now to be an active partner in this, to touch and taste him as he now tasted her.
Her eyes flew open. The scalding look on his face was the succor she needed—the tinder to feed her flaming desire.
She tugged at his jacket, but he wouldn’t release her. Finally, one arm at a time, she managed to get the bloody thing off of him. While his hands ran down her dress and cupped her buttocks through the many layers of cloth, she did away with the perfection of his cravat and the restriction of his waistcoat.
Then the floor was beneath her, and she could smell the earthy wool of the rug. He knelt between her legs, his hands resting on her ankles, stroking the skin through her thick winter stockings.
His shirt hung loosely around him, gaping, and she could see the soft hair of his chest. She wanted to sit up, push him down and lick the bare skin, follow the contours of his muscles. But she didn’t, she lay there where he had placed her, her arms above her head, her breasts as bare as his chest, and met his eyes once more.
What she saw there shook her more than even his touch. She’d never seen such a thing in any other man’s eyes, not to her. Still, she recognized it.
The idea of a man caring for her was so new, so frightening, that it colored everything. When his hands inched up her legs, it felt just as frightening, new and beguiling as the first time anyone had ever touched her. As he skimmed over the woolen stockings, her dress pushed higher and higher, she held her breath, anticipating his touch on the bare skin of her thigh.
The touch came and finally he broke their locked gaze. He bent down to kiss the exposed flesh just above her garter. There were so many sensations, the roughness of his cheek, the soft touch of his lips, his breath hot and moist on her skin, and then his tongue drew lines of fire.
When his mouth closed over the small pink hill of her clitoris, sucking, drawing her hips up toward him, she nearly jumped off the floor with the intensity of the sensation.
It was too much…but not nearly enough. Her hands found purchase in the waves of his hair and she found her fingers making little swirling motions, echoing the ministrations of his tongue.
The shuddering peak came over her before she even knew she was rising, so sudden and sharp that she nearly pushed him away. His hands clutched at her hips and his lips kept their position, till the climax grew fuller, rounder.
Finally he released her, eased himself up her body till his lips met hers and she tasted the earthiness of her own juices on his mouth.
His hips were solidly between her thighs, the heat of his cock nearing her cunt and then she felt the hard, thick length of him part her wet folds, sliding in easily, smoothly.
He filled her as if he had always been meant to be there, a part of her, his warm, male body joined completely with hers. In the long moment before he began to withdraw, began to make love to her with deep, rhythmic strokes, she knew a complete and utter peace.
So this is what it is like to make love to a man one loves.
“No, I can’t do this,” Diana whispered, twisting to push at his shoulders.
Jason stopped moving. He was struggling, she could see, to bring himself back, to gather himself.
“What,” he said softly, each word measured and separated, “do you want me to do?”
“Please move. I need air.”
For a long moment he didn’t move. Then he pulled back, rolled himself to the side. She was vaguely aware of him lifting his arm up, covering his face, even as she curled up into herself.
Stupid. She was inexcusably stupid and foolish. As the cooler air blanketed her body, she knew she had panicked and in the silence, long after she understood why, she shivered from embarrassment.
Then he placed his hand on her hip, just that one touch, not stroking, not doing anything but letting his warmth seep into her.
“Jason?”
He took his hand away and at the absence, Diana pulled into a tighter ball, her knees pushing the bunched up fabric of her dress toward her chin.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She knew he moved. She heard the rustling, felt the vibrations through the floor, felt the heat grow as he neared. He curled himself around her, nestling her against his body.
Diana felt safe there, safe and protected in his arms. She was grateful as well that it was he who was there, holding her, waiting, making her feel as though the future was more wondrous than her childhood self had ever imagined. Making her feel strong, beloved.
“You don’t need to…”
“I love you,” Diana interrupted, turning her head back up toward him.
His face darkened, tightened and expanded—that was the only way she could describe the transformation.
She didn’t know if it was the guidance of his arms or her own volition, but she turned to face him, her mouth meeting his.
“I love you,” she said again, urgently, her lips tugging on his. The words freed her. The panic had fled and what was left was a bouyancy that she poured into the kiss.
He moved over her, positioning himself between her legs again. She welcomed him in, as if she could simply wrap all this newly embraced love around him as she wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his chest.
Then his hips bucked against hers, driving her down into the rug. His lips moved against hers but she didn’t hear anything until he buried his face into her neck with a growl.
With his mouth, open and hot on the sensitive skin under her ear and his cock pounding into her, the wave of sensation built.
He grew within her, impossibly hard, impossibly large, touching every inch of her inside, stretching her. He was close, she knew. His lips moved against her neck, mouthing words that pushed her to her limit. When he finally came within her, hugging her tight within his arms as he convulsed, kneading the muscles of her back with his hands, she exploded again, pulsing around him, shuddering in the strong circle of his arms.
When his movements eased, her shaking continued, joined by the hot sting of tears and an involuntary gasping sob, till suddenly she was weeping in his arms like a child.
“Did I hurt you?” he whispered, holding her tight. “God, Diana, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I don’t want to…”
“No,” she gasped through the tears, “No, you didn’t, I’m fine.”
He moved back so he could look at her, so he could see her face.
“But you’re crying.” The knowledge of it felt like a hammer to his chest, to his heart.
“I can’t help it,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “I don’t know why, I just can’t help it.”
He held her close again, silently, feeling her shuddering against him.
Jason didn’t understand why she was crying. He was afraid that, despite her protestations, he had somehow hurt her. She was so much more fragile, so much more precious to him than he had ever imagined and he couldn’t bear her tears.
She was laughing then, even as she cried, until finally the weeping ceased.
He didn’t stop touching her as they dressed. Then, after he finally unlocked the door, when they sat, he pulled his chair close to her, finding little ways to stay in contact, his hand on her knee, on her wrist, his thigh touching hers.
They didn’t speak, but they were giddy with the freedom to enjoy each other’s body. Even when they rang for tea and the maid came in, he didn’t move his hand from hers.
He heard the chime of the church bells in the distance strike the hour.
“They’ll be back soon,” Diana said, lifting his wrist to her mouth, kissing his palm, his fingers.
“Then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing that,” he murmured, “or they’ll find a shocking scene.”
“I don’t think anything would shock Maggie anymore, or Oakley for that matter. But I suppose I mustn’t forget that Miss Coswell is with them.”
“We wouldn’t want to shock Miss Coswell.”
“
Or perhaps we would,” Diana teased.
Jason thought of that moment in the rain when he’d seen her there, holding his daughter as if it were the most natural idea in the world. In that one instant, seeing her again, he’d known. Just as if Cupid had shot his arrow and struck unerringly.
“Marry me,” he said abruptly.
She stopped kissing his hand and moved it down to her lap but didn’t let go. He was glad for that.
“What about Harridan House? What about everything else and your daughter?” They were reasonable questions, he knew, for Diana hadn’t had the luxury of being in his head, of knowing that though what she said was true, he had had all those concerns and in truth still did; he just didn’t care as much because now he cared about Diana just as much.
“But I’m teasing you, Jason. I’ll find some way to dispose of it,” Diana laughed, squeezing his hand.
“You mean that?” Jason asked, stunned. Stunned, pleased and happy. Diana nodded with a tentative smile.
“I don’t need it anymore. It isn’t my future. You are.”
He didn’t trust himself to speak just yet, to say the right thing to let her know how much he understood what this meant. That he didn’t take her decision lightly.
“I’m not going to be stupid now.” She lifted his wrist to her lips again. The touch of her mouth was exquisite, and watching her kissing him—it took his breath away, how beautiful she was. “This isn’t about pride, or proving that I am free and can take care of myself, that I don’t need to answer to anyone.”
“You can,” Jason said quickly.
Again she dropped his wrist to her lap but this time she let go. She let go, rose from her chair and stood in front of him, stopping him before he could rise too, as a man should do in a lady’s presence.
“Do you love me, Jason?”
“Of course, haven’t I said?” he asked before he realized that perhaps he hadn’t. “Yes, I do.”
That wasn’t enough, of course. He dragged her down into his lap, and brought his lips to her ear.
“I love you, Diana, and I intend to spend the rest of our lives letting you know just how much I do.”
On These Silken Sheets Page 27