He had asked that of her before. To trust him. Believe him. But she couldn’t. There had been too many days in the asylum, too many days when she had known Mother was too ill to be reached even by the deepest love.
She raised her head and disentangled herself from Ash’s arms. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you for trying to help.” She met his gaze. “Oh, Ash.”
How stupid it was that they’d avoided each other. Ash had never attempted to force himself upon her. He knew she intended to remain loyal to Donnington, at least until his guilt was proven. But she had let herself fall victim to her fear of temptation, her wounded pride when she realized that Ash no longer needed her to survive and thrive in the world.
Now, when they looked into one another’s eyes, it was as if all those things that had seemed so dreadfully important no longer mattered.
She never knew quite how it began, but suddenly Ash put his hands on her shoulders and carefully eased her down onto the bed. She lay very still as he shed his jacket and tossed it across the chair. She was just a little afraid until he set his mouth to hers.
It was only their second kiss, and yet their lips fit together so perfectly that they might have done it a thousand times. He was gentle at first, exploring her mouth with his, his tongue probing tenderly at the hollows and dips.
Mariah arched her back, her nipples already aching, pushing their sensitive peaks into the thin lawn of her nightdress. Wetness flooded between her thighs as he slipped his tongue inside her mouth and curled it around hers. She imagined then that this was what it would feel like to have Ash inside her, this thrusting and teasing, these soft moans and cries emerging from her throat.
And imagination was all she’d had until now…the imagination that had made it so difficult for her to bear the thought of what other lovers did in the privacy of their chambers. They would lie together, just so. They would kiss, just so. They would—
The moist warmth on her nipple brought such a shock of pleasure that she forgot every thought that had been floating through her brain. Ash had his mouth there…kissing her through the fabric of the nightdress, molding the silk to her nipple, sucking the peak between his lips. The pleasure was so intense that she almost cried aloud.
She did not, but the pleasure-pain of Ash’s caresses was excruciating.
“Do I please you?” he asked, drawing away.
Please her? She bit hard on her lower lip, knowing that if she dared speak now, she would beg him to continue instead of demanding that he leave her before they had gone too far.
He took her silence for approval and bent to her other nipple. This time he licked as well as suckled, moistening the fabric so that she might as well not have been wearing anything at all. He made her aware of her breasts as she had never been aware before…of their plump roundness, their fullness as he touched them with his fingertips, of the joy that could be derived from anatomy she had once believed suited only to nursing babies.
Ash was no infant. But he suckled her eagerly, hungrily, pushing her breasts from beneath so that her nipples thrust up into his mouth.
“Ash,” she moaned. “Stop.”
He didn’t. He kissed his way up the slope of her breast to lick the crevice between them, moved higher to the base of her neck and kissed the hollow of her throat, the soft skin just below her jaw. And all the while his hands were busy lifting her gown higher—above her knees, her thighs, her hips.
How many times has he done this before? How many women has he taken to bed, caressed, loved…?
She jerked as she felt her body exposed to the cool air and Ash’s stroking hands. Her gown was bunched above her breasts now, and Ash had returned to his original work. Only this time there was no fabric between her nipple and his mouth. His tongue made tight little circles, stroked the darker brown around the tip until it had contracted into a tight band of pleasure.
It would have been enough. It would have been enough for her if he’d never done anything else but kiss her and lick her nipples as he did now, making the moisture trickle from between her legs.
But it was not enough for him. His hands moved from cupping her breasts to stroking the skin over her ribs, drifting down to her stomach, venturing lower still.
She bucked, struggling to pull the hem of her nightdress below her breasts. But she stood no chance against Ash, much less against her own desires. Almost against her will, she lifted her hips, aware only that something was missing, that something had to ease the terrible ache in her woman’s parts, fill the great empty space between her legs.
“Merry,” Ash whispered. His fingers slid into the bush of hair above the wetness, teasing and rubbing. Merry knew there was more to come. Yet nothing could have prepared her for the moment when his fingers moved still lower and dipped into the crevice beneath.
She tried to squeeze her legs together, but they only fell wider apart. Begging, inviting. He began to rub the cleft, lightly at first. She dared to open her eyes. He had lifted his fingers to his lips. They glistened with her body’s rapture, and he licked them, closing his eyes in pleasure.
Mariah understood then what she wanted. The thought was so daring that she could not articulate it even in the privacy of her own mind.
She wanted him to kiss her there.
Her tongue refused to break its silence for such a terrible request. But Ash heard her nonetheless. His fingers slid lower and deeper inside the hidden cleft, finding a place where all sensation gathered. He began to do something to that place, rubbing it and tugging on it until her breath came in harsh pants and the sheets were damp beneath her bottom.
“Ash,” she gasped.
He raised his head and met her eyes. His were black gems that swallowed up Mariah’s reality, leaving her nothing but all-consuming hunger.
And then, just as she felt herself begin to rise up and up into something very like heaven, he stopped. She reached down to snatch at his hand, to make him continue. But he set her hand aside and bent very low, only the crown of his silver head visible between her thighs.
He kissed her. There. Light exploded behind Mariah’s eyes. His tongue took the place of his fingers, nimble, hot, wet. It darted into her cleft, found the little button of pleasure and flicked rapidly over it. Mariah felt a warm gush of liquid spill out of her, felt him lick it up.
Once again he took her very close to the edge of the that mysterious paradise that waited just beyond. Once again he drew her back. Then, as she cried out quickly, desperately, he pushed his tongue inside her.
There was the place. There was the ultimate ache, the emptiness that had to be filled. And he filled it, thrusting inside, withdrawing in a rhythm as natural and necessary as breathing itself. With each push she lifted her hips higher, higher, knowing there was still something missing. Knowing that what she wanted was not his tongue but the ultimate manifestation of his masculinity.
Breath sawing in his throat, Ash rose up above her, then knelt between her thighs, and she saw that his trousers were unbuttoned.
She had never seen an erect male member before. Her mother had briefly mentioned it as a giver of pleasure, but what Mariah saw now was a delicious shock. It was a magnificent thing, meant to fit inside her like a key into a lock.
Unthinking, she reached for him. Her fingers touched skin that was remarkably smooth, even silky. Ash groaned and flung back his head. She pushed herself up on the pillows and slid her hand lower, then up again. The expression on Ash’s face was one she’d never seen before, as he thrust forward into her hand.
A little shift in position, a little lifting of her hips, and that powerful organ would be inside her. The emptiness would be filled. She would know the mystery of what those other women knew, those women who crept through the corridors to risk everything in pursuit of this.
The other women. The adulterers. The ones she had determined to despise…
She snapped her legs together and scooted back into the pillows. Ash lunged away as if he had been burned. They stared at e
ach other, flushed, barely breathing, horrified.
Mariah averted her gaze and fumbled with the sheets, trying to cover her lower body. Ash retreated into the corner of the room, his hands working at the buttons of his trousers.
Bitter memories darkened Mariah’s vision. “I shall be in no danger at Marlborough House.” How utterly foolish she had been to make such a promise to her mother-in-law. How hypocritical she had been to judge others for their behavior. She should have known from the moment she left Donbridge that the end result would be this: falling into Ash’s arms without a thought for her “reputation.”
She had nearly surrendered what remained her only valuable possession: her honor. Surrendered her virginity—and not to the man to whom it rightfully belonged, but to the one she loved, the one who might get her with child in the course of a single night.
She knew she was, in a very real way, betraying Ash, just as she knew she had no other choice.
You will have the choice between defeat and victory. But where was the victory in this?
Mariah struggled into her dressing gown and sat on the bed with her knees drawn up to her chest, unfulfilled, shivering as if all warmth had seeped out of the room. Ash’s harsh breathing was the only sound. He didn’t approach her but stayed where he was, frozen, his eyes abyss-black.
“Please, Ash,” she whispered. “Please go.”
He left as silently as he had come, without a single word between them. Sick and shaking, Mariah fell into bed, wrapped in the scents of Ash’s body and her own desire. The aching inside her was worse than ever, and she knew it would never go away.
An hour before dawn, after a sleepless night, she saw the fairies again…and the unicorn, silver and white, who looked at her through Ash’s black eyes.
ASH LEFT THE HOUSE, his shirt loose and open, his feet bare in the wet grass. He walked blindly, leaving the grounds of Marlborough House behind and plunging onto the streets of Westminster. Few were abroad to see him: a handful of servants, sleepy coachmen, and a pair of inebriated gentlemen, perhaps returning from a late party, who gaped at him in drunken amazement. He ignored them all and walked until he began to glimpse carts on their way to market and knew he would soon lose the privacy he so desperately craved.
Tonight had been a disaster. During the past three weeks he had deliberately avoided Mariah; he had known that her stubborn sense of honor would not permit her to remain too close to him. He had hoped to provoke her jealousy of the other ladies who sought his company, compelling her to desire a return to their former intimacy. He had watched her fail to make a real place at Marlborough House, expected her to come to him so that they might grow closer still.
But he had been more stupid than even the dullest human. If he had simply maintained their friendship from the moment they had arrived, tonight would not have happened.
For tonight he had almost destroyed himself, destroyed his only hope of returning to his world. And all because he had wanted Mariah with such a deep and overwhelming passion that he had been unable to control himself.
Until she had pushed him away. She, with her virgin’s power over the unicorn within him.
He looked around to make sure he was unobserved, then leaped the wall surrounding the Marlborough House park. He paused just inside, then turned sharply to follow the park’s border. He still ached with wanting her; his cock was hard, his breathing rapid, and his vision so blurred that he could scarcely see the ground directly in front of him.
Rage. It ate at him, and he could not escape it. He raged at the fates that were tearing him in two. He raged at himself for allowing Mariah to believe, in spite of his reassurances, that the things she’d seen might not be real. And he raged because he knew the true identity of the “man” with whom Mariah had danced.
Cairbre, who had remained invisible to all but Mariah herself. Cairbre, who had demanded such an impossible price for Arion’s former life.
In spite of his assurance that he would not directly interfere in Ash’s attempts to win Mariah, the Fane lord had obviously chosen to become involved. Perhaps he had grown impatient with Ash’s painstaking work, though time often passed far more slowly in Tir-na-Nog than in the mortal world. Or perhaps…
The sprites.
Of course. Cairbre’s sprites, which Mariah called fairies. Cairbre’s spies, who could very well have been watching Ash and Mariah from the very beginning. Watching, and reporting Ash’s progress to the Fane lord. But they had not been able to hide themselves from Mariah’s Fane blood.
Ash broke off the low-hanging branch of a tree with a violent snap. He remembered Donnington telling Cairbre that Mariah’s mother had been considered mad in the mortal world. Mariah herself had confirmed the story and revealed how much she feared the same fate.
Now Cairbre’s actions in the ballroom—and even earlier, when Mariah had seen the sprites before she’d come to Marlborough House—had made her doubt her sanity. Cairbre must have known the trouble he would cause by appearing to her.
How could driving Mariah to such a state serve Cairbre’s purpose? It was true that Mariah had turned to Ash in her time of extremity, but if Cairbre’s intention had been to use her fear to bring them together, he had made a serious error. The Fane had relied on Ash’s desperation to keep both himself and the human girl under control, but he had not calculated on the strength of human desire.
Human desire, powerful enough to steal Arion’s true self forever.
With a toss of his head, Ash began to run. There was little enough space, but he made use of it, his two human legs pumping, his heart slamming against his ribs. If he hadn’t smelled and heard her first, he would have collided with the woman who stepped out from behind a mass of shrubbery, her wool-and-fur manteau moving slightly in the early morning breeze.
“Mr. Cornell,” she said.
He came to a halt. “Lady Westlake.”
She smiled at him, a lovely expression that dared anyone to doubt her extraordinary beauty. Even he felt it, and the tightness inside his trousers grew more uncomfortable.
“I have been watching you,” she said. “I believe you could best even the swiftest competitor in a footrace anywhere in the country.”
Ash caught his breath and stared at her, surprised that she could meet his eyes without lowering her own. “I was not running for your entertainment,” he said.
“No, indeed. But I wonder why you found it necessary to run at all.”
His mind told him to walk away, but his legs would not obey his thoughts. “I enjoy it,” he said.
“Ah.” She continued to smile, and her gaze moved slowly from his face to his feet and back again. “I believe you are not enjoying yourself at the moment.”
Ash clenched his fists. “What do you want from me?”
“It is not so much what I want from you but what you want from me.”
She could not have made her meaning more clear. Her manteau blew open, and Ash saw that she wore nothing but a thin chemise underneath. He could easily make out her taut nipples and the pale triangle of down between her thighs.
“Do you not admire what you see?” she asked.
Deliberately he looked away. “Cover yourself and leave me.”
“Are you the prince himself, to give me orders?”
His nostrils flared, taking in her ripe scent. She was aroused, as aroused as Mariah had been, but she had no doubts about her desires.
“I know what you want,” she said, moving closer. “I can give it to you.”
He swallowed thickly. “Why?”
“Why do I want you to share my bed, or why do I come to you now?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You most certainly do understand, my friend. I know where you have been, and how the liaison ended.”
He grabbed her arm. “How do you know?”
“It could not be more obvious.” She fingered the fur of her collar. “Never fear. No one else shares our secret…yet.”
He wanted to shake he
r as much as he wanted to push her to the ground and take her then and there. “I know what you are,” he said. “You are Mariah’s enemy.”
She laughed, a sound almost as bright as that of a Fane lady of the highest rank. “I am hardly a threat to the little girl to whom you are so devoted. She is an honorable woman. She will never know the pleasures of love. She will wait for Donnington with her purity intact, but he cannot love her. She will live out her days in sorrow and loneliness.”
Her words stung like the scrape of Cold Iron against Ash’s skin. “Donnington is my enemy. I will not let him hurt her.”
“Your enemy?” Her eyes widened. “How can that be, when you have never met him?”
“He left Mariah…he—”
“Thought so little of her that he abandoned her on her wedding night?”
That he had not known. But of course humans regarded their weddings as the prelude to consummation, and Donnington, being a human male, could not risk the temptation of taking her himself.
Pamela stepped closer and rubbed her fingers over her nipples. “Tell me,” she said, “when did you fall in love with her?”
He shivered. “I am not in love with her.”
“But you desire her, and she will not have you. You can have me, at no cost to yourself, and cause Mariah no pain. She will never know.”
“I forbid you to speak of her again.”
She continued to smile, unmoved. “You cannot forbid me, Ash, just as you cannot forbid yourself what you see before you.” She opened her manteau and ran her fingers from her breasts to her thighs. She moaned as she rubbed herself.
“I want you inside me,” she whispered. “I have from the first moment I saw you.” She leaned down, and her breasts swayed. “How many women have you had since you arrived in England?” She reached out to touch his groin with damp fingertips. “None, I think. And a man as virile as you cannot be expected to abstain long.”
Ash’s head had begun to throb in time to the blood pulsing in his cock. “Remove your hand.”
She did not. She only squeezed…lightly but firmly…and he closed his eyes.
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