Derek...
I can owe you nothing more than my deepest regret for my inadequacy that resulted in the scars you carry. You were a friend to me, closer than a brother, and for all the times and ways you saved my worthless life in battle, you gave one of the greatest sacrifices. I would take all that pain if I could. Instead...
Heart thundering, she hurriedly skimmed her gaze over the note, mouthing the words written by the Marquess of St. Cyr. “So that is what happened,” she whispered into the quiet. Society whispered about the person he’d become, but failed to honor what he’d done to be so transformed. For his protestations of the contrary, he was, in fact, a hero.
“A woman who’d show up on my doorstep and demand the post of governess would take to snooping through my notes and not ask those questions herself?” The sound of a harsh, furious voice sounded from the doorway, snapping her attention up.
Lily gasped. The note slipped from her fingers and sailed silently to the stack. She spun about. Her heart picked up a frantic beat. Derek stood framed in the doorway. He shifted, leaning over his cane, and glared at her with such dark ferocity, that an unwitting terror stirred in her breast. This was not the gentle, caring man she’d come to care for, but rather a savage, fierce beast. The kind who’d take apart any person who’d wronged him. Her gaze flew to the damning case, open on his desk. With hasty movements, she snapped the lid closed. Oh, God. “You,” she breathed and backed away from that box, foolishly hoping he’d take chase and fail to note the piece that bore evidence of her thievery.
He stood there, coolly unaffected, assessing her from under thick, dark lashes.
“D-Derek,” she managed to force out that whisper. For in this moment, with austere fury emanating from his frame, this coldly aloof stranger bore no hint of the gentleman who’d gently claimed her lips and caressed her shoulders as she’d told him some of the darkest pieces of her story. In this moment, he was the feared, fabled Beast of Blackthorne and never more did she want to flee than she did just then. She eyed the open door contemplating escape, but with his broad, powerful frame between them, she’d never make it past. Nor could she leave that damning box behind.
As though he’d followed the cowardly direction of her thoughts, never removing his gaze from her, Derek shoved the door closed with the bottom of his cane. She jumped at the soft click and backed up a step. “Y-you are awake.” As soon as the words escaped her lips, she flinched at the damning quality of that statement.
“I told you, Lily, I never sleep.”
She bit down on her inner cheek hard unable to make anything of his eerily quiet tone. Yes, he had said as much, but she’d still known from her time in his household that in the early morn hours, when the black night sky reigned, he sought out his own chambers. She’d just failed to know he actually returned to his offices. Lily cursed her folly in entering these rooms. “I-I find myself s-struggling to sleep as well.” Those were the truest words she’d given him since he’d discovered her this night. Though with him here, she couldn’t dredge forth a thought of Holdsworth’s plan or that cursed diamond...but rather Derek. Even terrifying as he was, she desired him, still. She grimaced. What hold did he have over her?
His cane thumped a terrifying rhythm as he limped purposefully forward. “And so you thought you would come into my office and go through my personal notes.”
Lily gripped the fabric of her night-rail hard. His was no question. It was a lethal-edged statement that dried her mouth with terror. This was a man who’d never pardon one who’d lied to him, deceived him—even if her reasons for being here were driven by the need to survive. No, he was not a man who took to interlopers in his world and she’d invaded his refuge yet again—and this time, in the dead of night, like a thief from the Dials.
“You’ve nothing to say?” he asked, closing the space between them. Her body thrummed with an awareness of the heat pouring off his powerful frame. He came around the desk and unnerved by her response to him, she retreated, too late. Her back knocked against the wall.
“I did not know there was a question there.” She wetted her lips. “Furthermore, I expected if they were of a deeply personal nature,” which they clearly were from the pieces revealed on that page, “you would keep them tucked away.” As she did her own notes.
God, the chit was brave. What other man, woman, or child could be caught snooping through those intimate pages, and then stand so proudly before him with her shoulders back and her chin tipped at a mutinous angle?
Panicky tension thrummed inside him; a sense of being exposed and wanting to run. Of wanting to retreat and roar all at the same time. In reading those notes sent ’round by St. Cyr and Maxwell, she’d uncovered a piece of him he’d never shared with others, pieces he’d never intended to share with anyone. Instead, through her own curiosity, she’d stolen that and he didn’t know what to do with that truth.
He was torn between tossing her out on her arse and taking her lips under his in a fiery explosion of passion and he hated that she should rouse feelings of anything in his deadened chest. Derek lowered his head. “Do you think I am amused by your presence here?” He stretched that inquiry out on a steely whisper.
Her breath caught loudly and the faint puffs of nervous air caressed the scarred portion of his face. “N-no.”
His neck went hot at those secret parts she now knew of him. The men he’d called friends whom he’d gone off to fight Boney’s forces with were men he’d consigned to the grave that was the battlefield of Toulouse. He did not speak of them and they’d ceased to exist. Now, her knowing of them and that day, made it impossible to forever bury that. “Do you think I care to have my personal notes read?” He felt exposed. Splayed open in ways he despised.
“N-no, I did not m—”
“What do you want?” he demanded. Wanting her answer to be—
“You,” she said quietly.
He shot his eyebrows up, as with her quiet admission, the fury went out of him. “Lily,” he began, his voice garbled.
And Lily leaned up on tiptoe and kissed him. He stiffened. The cane slipped from his fingers and he shot his arms out, not knowing what to do with the malleable, pliant body pressed to his. She moved her mouth over his with the hunger and desire of a woman who wanted him, in all his flawed ugliness. She twined her fingers into his hair and drew his head closer, making love to his mouth in a way that no one had even before the war. As though she wanted to taste him, and lose herself forever in his kiss and this explosive exchange of want. It was the homecoming he’d been denied years earlier, found now in her arms.
With a groan of surrender, he met her kiss with the same hungry intensity that had dogged him from the moment she’d stuck her foot inside his office door and refused to be turned away. He thrust his tongue deep in her mouth and she boldly met it. Their tongues danced and twisted in an erotic rhythm that sent heat rushing to his shaft and it throbbed to life.
It had been so long since he’d had a warm, desirous woman in his arms. But this passion between them was about more than two bodies meeting and it was all the more terrifying for it. Derek drew his lips away and she cried out in protest. “We should not do this,” he rasped. “You are a member of my staff.”
“I will die if you stop.” Her breath came in gasping pants. She twisted her fingers in his hair and dragged his mouth back to hers. Then abruptly, he pulled away and she cried out, but he shifted his attention down to the soft skin of her neck, sucking at the flush until her legs buckled. Effortlessly, Derek caught her to him and then guided her to the edge of his desk. Whimpering, Lily braced her palms on his chest.
“You are a siren, Lily Benedict,” he whispered against her mouth. In one fluid movement, he stretched her arms over her head and guided her down atop the surface.
She looked at him through thick, black lashes. Passion clouded her aquamarine eyes, momentarily freezing him with the evidence of her wanting. “I...” His chest tightened. “Want you, Derek,” she whispered.
What was to account for this inexplicable rush of disappointment? Tamping down the fool, irrational sentiment. Did he think she would speak words of love? Derek dragged his mouth down the long curve of her neck, lower. He loosened the ties of her wrap and cursed the tremble to his fingers that made a muck of his efforts.
“Here,” she whispered. Lily reached between them and easily freed the neat tie. She shrugged out of the modest garment.
Derek drew back, wanting to worship the view of her in this way, as he’d longed to since she’d first proven herself unafraid of the monster and desirous of the man. The generous swell of her breasts pressed against the white fabric and the cool night air pebbled the tips of those perfect mounds. Mouth dry, he palmed one of those generous swells.
Her lashes fluttered wildly as he cupped and caressed her right breast. He toyed with the peak. A shuddery moan slipped past Lily’s lips and desire coursed through him once more. Driven by the breathy sounds of her longing, Derek shoved the fabric down her frame, baring her naked breasts to his gaze. The engorged pink tips beckoned and on a groan, he lowered his head and claimed that taut bud between his lips. He drew it deep and sucked.
Lily cried out and clenched and unclenched her fingers in his hair, anchoring him close. “Do not stop,” she pleaded.
He could not if the earth’s movement depended upon him stopping. “Never,” he pledged. There was an added thrill of masculine satisfaction in knowing that his scars did not matter and that he could bring her to a keening woman, aflame for him. He shoved her night-rail further down her body until she lay bare before him. Their chests rose in tandem, as they assessed one another. Never before had he damned his lost vision more than he did just now. Even with the veil of night and one missing eye, the resplendent beauty of Lily in her naked form sucked at him. Derek cupped her breast once more and then continued his quest, downward, skimming her flat, smooth belly, and then he palmed the thatch of black curls that shielded her femininity.
Lily cried out and she lifted her hips to meet his touch.
“You are perfection,” he whispered, his tone ragged, when everything in her words and body and tone were soft and gentle.
“I-I am not,” she rasped, as he slid a finger into her wet channel, her skin the smooth cream white that men wrote sonnets over and worshiped with words. Had he been that man from long ago, he would have had all those words to give her. He was a shell of the man he’d been, and yet, with her, for the first time in years, he felt alive—because of her.
Lily pushed herself upright. “I want to see you,” she whispered, running her fingers along his jaw and then gripping the lapels of his jacket.
Derek swiftly wrapped his hands about her wrists, wringing a gasp from her. He gave his head a terse shake. Even in the heat of passion, with his body aching to claim her, he could not. “I am...” His throat constricted.
She shook her head. Confusion, mixed with desire clouded her eyes, as she urged him to speak.
“I am a monster,” he said through stiff lips. “I am scarred.” The fire lit by St. Cyr’s misfired volley had badly burned the upper portion of his chest and singed the hair from his ruined body.
“Oh, Derek,” she whispered. She leaned up once more and took his lips in such a fleeting, gentle kiss, that emotion stirred in a heart she, in her short time here, had proven was very much alive. “How can you still not see? You are beautiful for the sacrifices you made.” She shoved his coat off and touched her lips to the skin exposed above the fabric of his white shirt. “You are beautiful for the courage to survive such pain and despair.” She slid his shirt up and the cool night air slapped his skin. Shame licked at him. With his disfigured body and missing eye, he was the beast Society whispered of and she deserved more than to lie with a monster. He made to pull back but she pressed her lips to his chest and the fight went out of him on a sharp exhalation. Lily stretched her arms up to divest him of his shirt. She tossed it to the floor and then froze.
The clock ticked away the moments. Seconds stretched onto minutes, which may as well have been hours. Never before had he been so exposed before another and, now with her eyes trained on the red and white puckered flesh, he was open to this slip of a woman in ways that left him shaking.
“Oh, Derek,” she whispered. His body went taut as she moved, braced for her flight. He’d not blame her. He understood the horror, the fear, and yet, he’d mourn her loss the way he mourned the loss of that very flesh.
Except... A hiss slipped from his teeth. “What are you doing?” he rasped.
“Shh.” Lily touched her lips to the scarred and marred skin.
His body convulsed at that tender caress. “I am a monster.”
“You are a man and a beautiful one,” she said quietly, trailing kisses over the burns that had nearly ended him and the ones he’d spent so many years wishing had finished him for good. Better to die on that field, than to return to this cold, lonely world where all feared him and most whispered of him.
Only, she did not. She touched him and spoke to him in ways that reminded him of all the wondrous reasons that life was worth living. Derek closed his eye and raised trembling hands. He cupped her neck as she continued to move her lips over his body. “Men are not beautiful,” he whispered.
Lily paused in her ministrations and looked up. He wanted to cry out in protest and plead with the last vestige of his pride for her to continue. “No. Most are not.” She placed her mouth against the flat disc of his nipple. “But you are.” He’d thought her a siren or a temptress, but the truth was she was something more. She was an angel who’d come to heal. A rusty smile turned his lips up, unrestrained and painful for the lack of use. And this from a man who’d embraced the dark and commiserated with the devil all these years.
Lily froze and with a question in her expressive eyes met his stare “What is it?”
“It is—” Everything. You are everything. You are hope and happiness, and the taste of living, and I am a man long starved, aching to feast on that offering. “For the first time, I feel alive,” he said quietly.
Chapter 18
How were their thoughts a mirror harmony of one another’s? This was the first he’d felt alive? Being here in his home and in his arms, this was the first she’d ever felt alive, as well.
Because of him.
She’d lain with two men and neither of them with their hurried, thoughtless touches had caused this liquid heat to pool between her thighs and fueled her with desperation to know...more. Lily lay back upon the smooth surface of his desk and held her arms up.
Unhesitantly, Derek covered her in one fluid motion. His lips were everywhere; working over her neck, her breasts. The drag of his mouth teased with the promise of more, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Then he laved the sensitive tip of her breast and she screamed, her voice echoing off the high ceiling.
As he worshiped that tender bud, heat spiraled through her and the throbbing grew to an incessant, inexplicable ache. One she did not understand; one that left her oddly empty and desperate, and frantic for surcease. He made to pull away and she wrapped her arms tight about him. “Don’t,” she rasped. Derek offered her the first taste of passion, a passion she’d never imagined herself capable of and she selfishly wanted it to go on forever. “Don’t stop.” How many entreaties had she made in her life? This, however, was the most meaningful. This was the pleading that had led Adam and Eve to that fabled fruit. It was driven not of despair and fear but of a pulsating rapture and bliss that threatened to consume her and one she desperately craved.
“You are perfection.” Derek’s breath stirred against the swollen nipple. “You are all things beautiful.” He layered his cheek against her breasts. “Your beauty reaches to your soul.”
His voice gravelly and tender words, rolled together raised tears. She’d spent so long hating herself that she’d begun to believe herself ugly in all the ways that mattered. Uttered in that gruff tone, she could almost believe he saw perfect in her imper
fect soul. Would he still see my soul as beautiful if he knew what brought me into his life? Lily jerked.
“What is it?” He picked his head up and probed her with his eye.
She gave her head a shake. “I—I want to know all of your touch.” Despite the others to come before him, this was the first time she’d spoken those words in truth. With the one bumbling time she’d known George, there had been pain and awkwardness. With her protector, she’d simply been a receptacle for his lust. He’d not cared of, or about, her pleasure.
Unlike Derek.
Love suffused her heart. I love him. My God, I love him. Later there would be time for the proper terror. For now, this moment was all that mattered.
“And you shall, love.” Her heart caught at that endearment. A slow, seductive grin curved his lips, hinting at the man he would have been years earlier; a rogue, a charmer, who could capture hearts and bodies and leave a lady quivering with the force of her desire. And irrationally, even with her own sordid past, she hated every single one of those women for having known pleasure at his hands, wanting this exchange to be just as special to him as it was to her.
He returned his attention to her body. He swirled his tongue around her navel and her hips shot off the desk. “Derek!” How could such an innocuous movement have this maddening effect on her senses? The softness of his mouth on her belly like satin dipped in sunshine with a power to burn her from the inside out. He continued on. His mouth hovered above the apex of her thighs. Lily pushed herself up on her elbows as he rubbed his cheek over the curls shielding her from his attentions. “Wh-what...”
Rescued By a Lady's Love (Lords of Honor, #3) Page 24