She could just sense the heat and shape of Chase as the bed shifted beneath his weight. There was a rustling sound, which she fervently hoped was some article of his clothing being loosened and removed—far be it for her to be the only nude one—and an instant later his warm hands began a journey over her skin: landing tentatively at first before wrapping around her ankles to get his bearings, gliding up the curves of her calves with his fingertips, fanning over her thighs, brushing up the short hairs there, skimming over the curve of her belly, discovering her the way a blind man might and leaving behind a trail of gooseflesh and heat and shivers of sensation that fanned through her body.
His palms were on her breasts, cupping their soft weight, skimming over the tight peaks of her nipples, and she arched them with a stifled whimper. His mouth found and settled lightly on hers. She threaded her fingers up through his hair to impose her will, to hold him to her, to make the kiss last, wondering if every kiss with him could feel entirely new. Because this one was different than the others. A soft feinting of lips at first—a bump, a slide, a teasing pull of her lower lip between his—then the leisurely meeting, twining of tongues, the sweet heat and wet, as their fingers knit through each other’s hair. He was dark and endless, and she fell into the kiss as one would plummet down a volcano.
But Chase had an objective.
He began a return journey of sorts: he moved the kiss to her chin, slid it to the beating pulse in her arched throat, settled one into the valley between her breasts and visited each of her nipples, stopped midway along the seam between her ribs to kiss her there, whimsically, deliciously, dipped his tongue into her navel. His hands were on her thighs now, deliciously brushing over short hairs, then her calves, coaxing her knees apart.
Her breathing was rushed now.
She felt his breath there, hot between her legs, where she was soaked and deliciously aching: his exhale built her anticipation. And was followed by a startling cool-ness; this time he blew softly.
She knew, could sense, what was coming next.
It was—dear God—the stroke of his tongue.
Sinewy, hot, velvety, wet. Very, very deliberate. Even in the near perfect blackness of the curtained bed, the man knew his way about a woman’s body. She shuddered.
She could not have described the sensation unless it was with one word: more. Which was hardly a description. She didn’t know yet whether she even liked it because it was too acute and too new and the things it did to her body were total: sent threads of breath-stealing flame through her veins.
But he did it again.
Softly this time, and this time she whimpered and arched into it. And he did it again, and her hands curled into the old velvet counterpane.
And again he tasted her, a persistent and deliberate caress, and she surrendered. Surrounded by velvet dark and with velvet pressed against her back and with the most hedonistic imaginable activity between her legs, she floated, disembodied, her consciousness narrowed to a point of acute and ramping pleasure, and she accepted with greed, as her due.
But he paused.
No, no, no. She wanted to protest, she wanted it to continue until her release shattered her, but couldn’t speak, so drugged with pleasure and darkness she was. He shifted, deftly, quietly, and turned so his thighs straddled her torso, and he bent to kiss her again, a promise, a vow, that he intended to continue, but that he wanted something from her, too. She opened her eyes to see the pale muscular curves of his buttocks, and he dipped so his swollen cock touched her lips.
She knew a moment of shock that nearly jolted her from her torpor of pleasure.
And then she touched her tongue tentatively to him, and then traced the rim of it, lingeringly, and his shoulders bunched; he muttered a hoarse approving oath, so Chaselike, so satisfying: she knew now the wild power she had to please him. And she knew instinctively to take him all the way into her mouth: first, the slippery, silken dome of his cock, then the warm, living, nearly muscular shaft, swelling even as she closed her lips over him.
She felt the pleasure shudder through him, and his hot breath, his deliberate tongue, were once again where she wanted them to be.
In the dark cave of the bed, in this peculiar museum, in this carnal world they’d created together, it seemed once again a sensible, a right thing, to do, to share in this feast of pleasure. To taste and suck and tantalize. She mimicked him; he stroked her hard with his tongue; she stroked him hard with her tongue; he gently sucked, she gently sucked, achieving a rhythm of power and pleasure so primal and instinctive she knew every woman must somehow be born with the knowledge, this right. And yet, had her husband lived, she might never have realized this. And so odd that an act so intensely furtive and intimate, that a pleasure she knew would be cataclysmic should be so quiet.
His thick cock slipped from her lips, but her skin was alight now, and she was arching against him in unconscious demand. She could no longer be in service to his pleasure; she was at the mercy of her own.
Her head thrashed back. A whisper: “I’m sorry—I need—”
“It’s all right, love.”
Love?
No matter what, she knew she would be safe with him. He’d always been there when she needed him, and he was there now.
He turned himself around. His warm body covered her; she reached up, sliding her hands over the delicious hard planes of his chest, the crisp hair tangled with sweat. His cock was in his hand, and then he was brushing it against her, hard, seeking his way into her, and that was all she needed to shatter into glittering, gasping fragments of bliss.
He braced his arms stiffly above her and thrust in.
She clung, watching the primal dive and thrust of his pale narrow hips, that hard race toward his own pleasure, reveling in the savage fact of their coupling, the feel of him deeply inside her, so deep it nearly hurt.
He bit his lip on a gasp, and went still, trembling over her, his release wracking his body as he spilled and spilled hotly into her.
“Rosalind.” He murmured it.
She’d never heard her name said in quite that way. In her name she heard everything he felt. And such a mix of things it was.
Her body was thoroughly pleasured, her mind adrift. It was likely hardly safe to do so for long, she knew, but they lay alongside each other for a moment.
Together and separate. Their bodies touching, but only just.
Love. He’d said it. But it was one of those big words, used in moments when control was lost. It was either that, or some raw oath.
Rosalind dragged her hand over the slick hard surface of his arm, over his shoulder, over the muscles of his chest, as though searching for the yield anywhere in him. There was tension in him, even now. Her hand rose and fell with the rise and fall of his chest. His warrior’s heart thumped in there. She rested her hand, allowed the steady beat of it to lull her, to reassure her. So many times that heart could have been stopped. She greedily allowed it to beat against her palm.
She wished she could tell him he didn’t have to fight anymore.
She wished she were certain this was true.
She wished he understood that true strength sometimes had to do with the ability to simply surrender. To life, to circumstances, to uncertainty, to his own humanity and fallibility.
To a desire that didn’t require anything of him apart from the giving and receiving of pleasure, which is what he had given her.
She slipped her hands over his broad back, hands sliding over hot satiny skin, skin that could tear and bleed like the skin of any other human. There was too much proof of how he’d nearly died: her wandering fingers encountered the rise of scars, different shapes and textures. Violent hieroglyphics left upon him by the events of his life, some in play, no doubt, most in battle.
She turned her head into him, rested her cheek between the valley of his shoulder blades, and breathed in: sweat, musk, sex, Chase.
For a moment nothing changed: he lay quietly next to her, breathing. Spent, but no
t entirely at rest. Pausing between bouts of being his stubborn, irritating, fascinating, astonishingly sexually sophisticated self. His cock at ease now between those thick hard thighs, looking humble.
Until their breathing swayed now in and out, in and out. Together now.
And then he shifted a little, tucking his arse into her groin. She smiled, her lips curving against his hot skin. Little by little she felt tension ebbing from him, and their bodies blended together.
A moment later his hand found her hand where it had wrapped his waist. He tentatively touched the tips of his fingers to her palm, as though he’d never felt a hand before.
Then slowly, deliberately, threaded his fingers through hers, and held her fast.
She knew she was as strong as he was, perhaps stronger in some ways, and in some ways just as brave.
There was so little she could give to him. Just this moment, before he left for India. And more memories of her, of the woman who had turned his life upside down more than once and given him pleasure in return.
So she held him.
And he allowed himself to be held.
Seconds later he jerked upright, away from her. Put one hand over her mouth and a finger on his lips. And put his hand to his ear.
She listened carefully and heard…
Was that a giggle?
It wasn’t her giggle. There was a heartbeat’s worth of silence.
And then they heard it again. It came from everywhere and nowhere. Muffled and faint.
They needed to scramble upright. He did.
And then a horrible realization: he had his clothes. He only need pull up his trousers and slick down his hair and he could set out. Her clothes were folded neatly, her hairpins stacked, on a bureau once owned by King Henry VIII.
A good, oh, eight feet or so away.
Not counting the seventeen miles of bed she needed to cross to get to them.
Another ghostly hint of sound, musical and cascading and flirtatious: it was indeed feminine laughter. So distant, so muffled, it surely was reaching them from another century.
Her hand still lingered over his heart, which was thumping swiftly now. He pressed her hand hard against him, in reassurance.
She didn’t feel entirely nude while he remained close to her.
“Ghosts,” she whispered into his ear.
He turned his head toward her and scowled so insultingly she practically heard it.
He withdrew his hand from hers, slowly, slowly, and eased away from her slowly, slowly, until his body no longer touched her. She felt chilled and bereft. He turned his head, held his finger up to his lips.
As if she was about to start shrieking now.
It was her turn to scowl.
Which made him smile. A reassuring little half-moon of white in the dark. An odd moment, certainly, but something about it made her heart give a tiny, sweet kick. She knew then she couldn’t bear it if anything happened to him, and was somehow certain it couldn’t, it wouldn’t.
For a man so large, he managed to slink toward the end of the bed without causing undue squeaks in the ancient mattress. She watched him go, feeling a trifle desperate, tempted to begin fashioning a toga of sorts from the elderly, velvet counterpane so she could make a graceful escape.
And then she saw why Chase was still wearing his boots: that’s where his pistol lived. He slipped his hand into it, and out slid the glinting, shining muzzle.
Another moment of utter motionlessness. Of listening. To…dust falling?
There were no other sounds at all. He took one finger and slid it along the seam of the curtains just enough to peer out.
More silent listening. They didn’t hear any more giggling.
It was all growing rather dull, in fact.
Ghosts, she felt like insisting in reiteration. Regardless of its source—through the ether, or in some other sixteenth-century bed somewhere in the museum—surely there was nothing sinister about a giggle?
And then Chase slipped all the way out of the curtains, and she was left alone in that big bed.
Quiet for a tick or so. The in-out of her own breathing was suddenly deafening, and then unnerving.
A hand burst in through the curtain.
She sucked back the shriek so quickly she nearly choked on it. Then the hand beckoned impatiently.
Chase was telling her it was safe to exit.
She tried to do it as gracefully as he had, without causing the bed to heave or squeak unduly, or any more than it already had. She’d begun to creep across on all fours toward him when he poked his head in through the curtain so he could watch her crawl, nude, across the velvet counterpane.
Another of those white grins flashed in the dark. He was enjoying himself.
If he was a gentleman at all, he would hand her the clothes and she would get to the business of dressing in the safety of the curtained bed.
Otherwise she would be forced to dress while he watched.
Though dressing while he watched—and this was evidence of his effect upon her—held a certain amount of appeal. Regardless of whatever peril they might be in at the moment.
She’d been well and truly corrupted, obviously. Somehow she couldn’t find it in her to regret the loss of her morals, if indeed this was what she’d lost to him.
He handed her clothes to her then, and rudely, delightfully, refused to turn his back as she dressed, as quickly as was possible. With his eyes upon her, getting dressed was nearly as pleasurable as getting undressed, and he helped her, swiftly, his hand leaving hot places behind on her skin.
Chase relit the candle using knife and flint and nursed the spark of lit wick until it swelled and gained strength and officially became a flame. He tucked his unlocked pistol into his coat pocket within quick reach, grasped her hand, brought it to the waist of his coat and folded her fingers over it. They inched from the room, Rosalind clinging to him.
There was the giggle again. Faint, unearthly.
The nub of the lit candle turned his fingers into a grid of light, almost but not quite burning them. And in this fashion they crept quietly, just a few feet, until they stood once again before that painting. They paused and listened and felt: he could indeed smell linseed oil powerfully here. Myrtleberry had said the laughter was louder in this room.
And suddenly the candle flame swayed and twitched, slightly singeing his fingers.
Suspicion touched a cold, fine arrow point to the base of Chase’s spine.
He slowed his breaths to near silence.
He thought back to the first day he’d seen Rosalind staring at that painting. He’d studied her from behind, fascinated by just the back of her, of course, but there had been a moment when he thought she must have turned to look at him. And in a split second turned away from him again. It had seemed impossible—for why wouldn’t he have noticed?
But the plume in her hat had been quivering. Ever…so…slightly. As though she had moved. As though someone had sighed over it, he’d thought then.
Or as if…as if…
Tentatively he lifted the candle again, level with the middle of the painting. He could see the big dark bovine.
And one by one uncurled the fingers of his hand until it burned unsheltered, tiny but shocking as a lantern in contrast to the previous moment.
He waited.
He heard the thud of his own heart in his ears.
He heard Rosalind’s breathing behind him, syncopating with his, her body tense with an unspoken question.
A second later the tiny flame gave a leap, then swayed like a tiny South Sea dancer.
With blinding speed he licked his fingers, pinched out the candle, and spun about to face Rosalind, covering her mouth with his hand to stifle her gasp.
Total dark bell-jarred them.
He held her fast, one arm wrapping her waist from behind, the other across her mouth. She was rigid with astonishment. For a worrying moment he thought she might have stopped breathing. He kept his hand firmly over her mouth for a comm
unicative second before slowly lifting it. And then he dragged a finger over her soft lips, a luxury, a temptation, a caress, and a signal: remain utterly silent.
She understood. She complied. She trusted him now, and he felt the honor of the responsibility.
And her curiosity remained nearly as palpable and dense as the surrounding dark.
He lifted his hand from her lips.
He couldn’t yet explain himself; he could only wait for the shadowy outlines of things to emerge from the blackness, which seemed tacked down around them.
And as luck would bloody have it, the first thing to materialize from the dark with any clarity—thanks to an unfortunately angled shaft of moonlight through one of the arched windows—was the hideous lumpy puppet. In the grayish light it was all leering red lips and bulging white eyes and impotently dangling limbs. Its head listed limply, like a man hauled from the water after an unfortunate diving accident.
Chase was riveted. The little hairs on his arms pricked up in revulsion.
Rosalind, perhaps sensing his tension, instinctively pressed her body even closer to him, gathering up a tighter grip on his coat. He almost smiled. She was protecting him from the puppet.
He jerked his gaze away and redirected it at the painting, willing it to come into something resembling focus.
In seconds he could make out the bosomy angel, because she was all in white, and then the cherubs, glowing in their flowing nappies and wings, and then the contours of the enormous blob of the cow.
He licked his finger again, held it up before him and waved it with painstaking thoroughness, with something akin to ceremony, horizontally across the painting. Beginning at one end. Rather like a sorcerer conducting a ritual. He was distantly amused when he became aware that Rosalind was watching him with grave concern. Doubtless thinking he’d finally surrendered to lunacy.
Since the Surrender Page 25