by Gayle Wilson
“Do you think you might join me?” he suggested.
Wordless with the intensity of anticipation, she nodded. Awkwardly she rose from her knees, still holding his clothing.
“Drop them,” he said, and at what was in his face, she obeyed, letting the garments fall to the bare wood of the floor.
She stood before him, fully dressed, holding her eyes on his by sheer force of will. Hers wanted to move downward, to touch again that compelling, essential difference between his body and hers. She began to struggle with the buttons and laces of her dress, as clumsy as if her hands were impeded by the bandages that wound his. Fingers trembling, she knew she was making a fool of herself. Too young. Too unfamiliar with this. And too obviously disconcerted by his blatant masculinity.
When she had finally managed the business of gown and slippers and petticoat and was clad only in the thin chemise, she looked up, trying to assess his patience with a process that had seemed to her both endless and endlessly embarrassing. Whatever she had expected Raven’s expression to reveal, it was not the emotion that marked the harsh planes of his face. They were very still, but the skin had been stretched by his ordeal too tightly over the bones to hide what he was feeling. And what he was feeling, what was reflected in the shadowed eyes and the stern line of his mouth, was not impatience with her clumsiness or annoyance at her lack of experience. It was desire. Even in her innocence she was left with no doubt that he wanted her, that he found her body enticing and her hesitancy provocative rather than annoying.
“You are so beautiful,” he said.
Well used to compliments on her truly remarkable beauty, accustomed to the adulation of the best-looking men of her exclusive circle since childhood, she found herself tongue-tied at the simple avowal. The poised and sophisticated society hostess, unable to formulate any reply, shook her head mutely.
“Take down your hair,” he commanded, still watching her with those crystal eyes.
Her hands lifted to remove the pins that held the elaborate chignon. Unthinking, she saved the hairpins as she removed them, holding them in one palm until she had loosened the entire mass. Running the fingers of her other hand through the heavy strands, she let the perfumed cloud of rich red-brown fall over her shoulders, the vibrancy of its color a contrast to the maidenly whiteness of her chemise and the cream of her skin.
Raven said nothing in response to her obedience. He offered no other suggestion, so the stillness again echoed between them. Frightened, finally, that he had once more decided this was a mistake, she opened her hand and allowed the hairpins to cascade to the floor, a few of them landing on the small pile of masculine garments and some bouncing across the wooden boards.
She found the ribbon that laced the bodice of the chemise, and as she had before, she loosened it, quickly sliding her thumb under the narrow, crisscrossing satin. With the release of tension on the fabric that covered her breasts, she slipped the straps off her shoulders, guided the soft material to her waist and then, bending, pushed it down her hips. The garment puddled over small, arched feet. She resisted the urge to cross her arms over her breasts in that primitive gesture of femininity. Instead she bravely raised her head, finding his eyes still lowered, having followed the drop of the last of her clothing.
His eyes traveled upward, as slowly as hers had done. Up the smooth, slim length of leg his callused palms had once traced, exactly as his gaze was doing now. Over the width of very feminine hips and the slender shaft of her waist. To the high breasts, rose tipped and peaking in the cool air of the small, shadowed chamber. Touched and softened by the lamplight.
“So beautiful,” he said again.
At that invitation, she took a step out of the pool of white at her feet. And then another. His arms opened, inviting. She moved against his body as if she had always belonged there, and when he enclosed her in his strength, she knew that she had. She wondered why she had been embarrassed before, why she’d hesitated in enjoying the incredibly sensuous sensation of her bare skin against the warmth of his. Every inch of that muscled body fitted hers, as if it had been made to meld into her smoothness.
Her hands found his shoulders and, as if reading her mind, he moved the hardness of his chest teasingly against the tips of her breasts. Some inarticulate sigh escaped with the lightness of that abrasive contact and with her pleasure in the contrast of his body to hers. While she was still savoring that, he bent his knees and then arched upward, so that the heavy masculinity that had so fascinated her made a tentative union with her body. She was the one who gasped at that, shocked by the feel of Raven’s virility in such intimate proximity. But when he eased back, afraid he’d frightened her, her hips instinctively moved with him, to repeat and prolong the contact he’d briefly allowed.
“Yes,” he said softly. “Very rare.”
Ignoring the awkwardness of his hands, he lifted her, as easily as he had in Hyde Park, and deposited her on the bed. He stood a moment looking at her, blue eyes shadowed in the low lamplight.
Smiling now at what was in his face, she lifted her hand and ran the back of her knuckles along the length of his arousal. His eyes closed, and again that shuddering breath shook his body.
“Come to bed, Mr. Raven,” she invited. And this time there was no doubt of what she intended.
And now, long after she’d whispered that suggestion into the darkness, Catherine Raven woke to the weight of her husband’s leg resting over her thighs. Her body was pale cream against the golden ruddiness of his, Raven’s massive frame, work hardened, a contrast to the slimness of hers. Yet they were one, no longer joined, perhaps, in sexual passion. They had slipped, unaware, into the relaxed intimacy of lovers, familiar and uninhibited.
Catherine’s toes traced slowly the long, hair-roughened muscle of Raven’s calf. Eyes still closed, she moved carefully, turning her body more snugly into the inviting warmth of his. She was aware of, and ignored, the slight soreness between her legs. The pain of Raven’s entry had been negated by his determination to pleasure her exactly as he’d promised. And this small, telltale evidence of her lost virginity was not something to regret, but a memory to cherish. To hold to her heart as she had held Raven’s body, its strength controlled and dominated by his desire for the enclosing frailness of hers.
She realized he was still asleep, the strong features vulnerable as she’d never before seen them. She resisted the urge to touch his lips, parted with the soft exhalations and inhalations of his breathing. She was afraid she’d wake him, and despite the fact that he had, being Raven, made no reference to the suffering he’d undergone during his abduction, she remembered that there had been injuries beyond the damaged hands.
Her fingers wanted to caress him, to feel again his responsive reaction to their touch, but they were forced to wait. She allowed them to move over her own breast, lightly tracing across the rose nipple, remembering the touch of his. lips.
Denied the use of his hands, Raven had employed what tools his expertise allowed. His warm mouth drifting with sure experience over and then into all the small, provoking contours and silken crevices of her body. His tongue darting quickly to explore, to touch, to suggest. And then returning, hot and sensuously slow, stroking and building. Heating to flame the tinder that was her body.
She had known the first time he’d touched her that her responses to his lovemaking pleased him. And that they were apparently unusual in a woman uninitiated into these arts. Tonight he had again made obvious his delight in that so easily evoked responsiveness. She lifted her head to look down with remembered pleasure at the intimate position they shared.
Their bodies, still entwined, lying among the stained sheets of the high bed, were clearly marked with the evidence of their first joining. Suddenly embarrassed by that realization, Catherine began to move carefully out of Raven’s embrace, only to feel the muscles of that confining leg tighten over hers, his knee squeezing downward, effectively holding her prisoner.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, his l
ips lazily caressing her temple. “Are you trying to leave me already?”
She knew by the teasing tone of the question that he certainly didn’t understand her sudden discomfort..
“I just thought I should…” Somehow she couldn’t find the words to finish that embarrassing confession.
“You should what?”
His mouth moved, slightly opened, along her cheekbone and down the slender slope of her nose, finally stopping over hers. His tongue dipped inside and then retreated, to trace slowly around the outline of her lips. When she didn’t answer his soft question, Raven propped himself on one elbow to look down into her face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, studying her features.
Her eyes fell, and she shook her head. Despite all they had shared as he’d made love to her, despite the fact that he had worshipped delicately but thoroughly at each of the shrines to Eros nature had erected in its design of her body, she was hesitant to confess that she wanted to get up to wash off the embarrassing evidence that she had given him her virginity.
“I told you that you could ask me anything,” Raven reminded her, still smiling. “Or tell me. What’s wrong?”
“I thought I should clean up,” Catherine whispered, feeling the heat moving under the translucent skin of her cheeks.
“You’re getting up to clean the room?” Raven asked, amused. He turned to survey the clothing scattered in shadowed mounds across the gleam of the polished wood.
“No,” she admitted. Her eyes again found the dark smears, so obvious she wondered why he didn’t understand.
There was a long silence. Finally, his gaze followed hers, his lips lifting in understanding. “Catherine?” he said softly.
She looked up, to find the planes of Raven’s face highlighted by the lamplight, the hollows darkened with mystery. Only his eyes were readable, and in them she found the same enigmatic tenderness with which he had always regarded her innocence.
“To my grandmother’s people the first blood is holy, as sacred as baptism. And the honor of cleaning your body should be mine.”
He said nothing else, although she waited another eternity. She was fascinated by his concept of something she had felt could only be an embarrassment.
“The honor?” she repeated finally.
“The first act of caring for a wife,” he said. “The promise of eternal protection.”
She felt again the quick burn of tears at the images he’d drawn in the soft dimness of this English bedroom, so far removed from those who had devised that ritual.
“Your grandmother’speople?” she whispered, suddenly wondering at the strange phrasing.
“They called themselves The People,” he said, smiling down at her puzzlement. “My grandmother is Indian.”
“Raven,” she said, thinking aloud, finally understanding so much. “That’s… Indian?”
“My father took her clan name. It was a matriarchal society. Since she and my grandfather were never married except by tribal ceremony, my father had no right to call himself MacLeod.”
“And so you became John Raven.”
“By choice,” he explained softly. “The old man, my grandfather, wanted me to be John MacLeod. But like my father, I chose to retain the ties to the other part of my heritage. My mother’s family were also Scots. They had come to America as indentured servants. My mother fell in love with my father too quickly to worry about his background. She thought, as you did, that Raven was simply his name. Until she met my grandmother.”
Catherine could hear the love and humor in his tone. An often repeated and beloved family story, she imagined, the inevitable confrontation between two different ways of life.
“I never even thought to wonder,” she said, touching again the bronze skin of his shoulder. That heritage explained so much. The dark, angular beauty of Raven’s features. Even, perhaps, the way he wore his hair, deliberately clinging to his American ancestry in the face of the fashions of London society.
“And your eyes?” she asked, running her thumb across the black brow, arched like a raven’s wing, above the piercing blue.
“My inheritance from the Scots side of my family tree.”
Slowly the corners of her lips began to lift at the thought of His Grace, the Duke of Montfort, acknowledging an Indian half-breed as his son-in-law. “I don’t think we should tell my father untilafter the grandsons have appeared. I’m not sure he’s quite ready for that revelation.”
Raven didn’t answer, knowing, as she could not, how far from acceptance Montfort’s feelings for him were. Instead he lowered his mouth to nuzzle softly along the underside of her jaw and then over the slim column of her throat. His lips found, eventually, the small peak of her breast, and he began to tease gently until he caught the hardened bud between his strong, white teeth. He pulled, his eyes laughing into hers at the whimpering response that escaped her lips.
“Could you…” she began, and then paused, unsure of how to ask. “I mean could we… Would it be possible to…”
With a laugh, he released his captive. “I believe that might be arranged. Given that my wife is again willing to help.”
“Of course,” she said softly, feeling, despite the soreness, sweet anticipation at the thought of all the ways he had touched her last night, in spite of his inability to use his hands.
“And this time…” Raven said, rolling onto his back.
Surprised, she lifted herself on her elbow to look into his face.
“This time,” he whispered, cupping that bandaged hand on the back of her tangled hair, “you do most of the work, my lady.”
She still didn’t understand until he told her, in whispered phrases, what he intended. Because there was no barrier to his entry and because she had always enjoyed controlling her own affairs, the experience proved even more satisfying than before.
And when it was over, she lay limply against the massive body beneath her, feeling each breath he took, harsh and deep and then easing, slowing, until they both were still and still one.
“I love you, Catherine,” he said, whispering the words into the darkness. But she heard them most clearly in the ear that lay on his broad chest.
“I love you, too, John Raven.” She touched her tongue to the small dark bud of his nipple. “Every inch of you.”
“Are you measuring me, Catherine?”
“No, but I told you I liked you big. And you laughed,” she teased, remembering.
He laughed again, the intimate noise vibrating under her cheek.
“Always happy to oblige a lady.” As he said the strange American expression, he arched his hips under hers ever so slightly, so that she realized what he was suggesting.
“Raven?” she whispered in wonder.
“We are taught endurance,” he said softly, lifting once more. “And patience,” he whispered, his body arching into hers, slowly advancing and then retreating. “But I’ve waited for you a long time, Catherine. A very long time through this most inconvenient of marriages. And tonight…”The movement of his hips was stronger now, thrusting upward, so that her nails tightened into the red-gold skin of his shoulders with the growing, sweetly shattering sensations moving through her body.
“I thought Indians were also taught silence,” she suggested daringly, raising her upper body away from his. But she was smiling down into the gleam of starred sapphire eyes as she said it. And slowly she again began to move above him. Helping him, as he had taught her.
Chapter Seventeen
His grandmother’s voice whispered from the darkness. He was again in the shaft, stretching far above him into the starred sky, matching its blackness. He could feel the rock’s abrasion against the unyielding rope and the too-yielding flesh of his hands. To fight the pain, he filled his mind again with the images that had sustained him there, their promise overlain now with the perfection of fulfillment. With the remembrance of Catherine’s body arching in trembling response beneath his, he fought his way out of the net of the dream.
An Englishman feeling that same cold breath of dread against the back of his neck might have denied the premonition, given in to a practical man’s disregard of any hint of the supernatural and put a pillow over his head to return to sleep. Or turned again to the welcoming embrace of the woman who slept beside him. John Raven was not far enough removed from a society in which heeding such warnings meant the difference between life and death. There was this time no snap of breaking twig, no whisper of undergrowth, no sudden silence of the night birds—nothing that he could point to as significant. But still the hair all over his body was rising in the age-old precursor of danger.
He glanced at Catherine’s small form, and the line of his lips softened, but he did not allow himself to think of touching her to wakefulness. Spoken or unspoken, his vows had included the promise of protection, and that was what he must concentrate on now, rather than the panting sweetness of her responses.
He pushed off the sheet, slipping out of bed silently to stand naked on the oriental rug. On broad, bare feet he crossed the room to the small chest he had not opened since his arrival in England. The memories it held were too emotionally weakening for a man so far from all that he held dear, so far from home. But now this was his home—the small, hesitantly guiding fingers, the gasping reaction to his touch, the fragrance of Catherine’s skin trembling under his.
He pulled his mind away from the seduction of those memories and with the tips of his fingers released the simple catch on the box. He knew he could manage none of his London clothes. He thought, however, that the softness of the buckskin tunic and breeches his grandmother had made for him so long ago would allow him to pull them on, despite his ruined hands.