by Liz Carlyle
From the first, Camille had given the impression of a woman in control of her destiny, but now that Rothewell knew her—really knew her—even he could see that it was abandonment which had always driven her. She had been determined never to entrust her fate to a man—not insofar as she could avoid it.
Alas, it was too late. She was Lady Rothewell now—and selfishly, perhaps, he was glad. And he would do anything in his power to protect her.
“Look on the bright side, my dear,” he murmured, lifting her chin with one finger. “I know it isn’t much, but you do have me. And Jim-Jim, or whatever the devil he’s called.”
She did laugh then, her dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “Chin-Chin,” she said, casting an affectionate glance at the spaniel. “And I thought you were returning him to Lord Tweedale? Instead, he is sleeping in your bed and getting fat.”
Rothewell looked away. “I cannot seem to catch Tweedale at home,” he said vaguely. “But if he’s to stay here, he’ll need a proper name. I’ll be damned if I’ll call a dog Chin-Chin.”
She stilled in his arms for an instant, her face calmer now, her eyes shifting swiftly from humor to something altogether different as they searched his face. “Oh, Kieran,” she whispered. “It is not true, what you said today. It is not.”
He looked down at her, confused. “What did I say?”
“I will not think of it—of her—every time I look at you,” she whispered. “Every time you come to my bed, I will remember this day, oui. But not, I think, for the reason you believe.”
He looked at her gravely. “Camille, my dear, you are—”
“Non,” she said. “Do not say it, s’il vous plaît. Do not tell me what I think.”
“No, I gave that up weeks ago,” he murmured.
Just then, the mantel clock struck the hour.
“Zut! Look at the time.” Camille stood, and dashed a hand beneath her eyes. “We should dress for dinner.”
Kieran eyed her from the bed. “Let’s not,” he softly suggested. “If you meant what you said—if you still feel…something in your heart for me, Camille, then undress instead. Undress, and let me make you forget all this.”
Camille turned to look at him. “I care for you, Kieran,” she whispered. “My feelings—oui, trust me when I say this—my feelings for you are unchanged.”
He was watching her steadily, his gaze softer than she had ever seen it. “Then lock your door, Camille,” he ordered. “And come back to bed. That is a husbandly command, by the way.”
It was one command she was more than willing to follow. After this tumultuous day, Camille was emotionally spent, and she wanted only Kieran, and his arms about her—not a roomful of servants, with course after course of food she would not taste and could barely eat.
She went to the door and snapped the key in the lock. She turned and leaned back against the cool, hard wood, her hands flat against it as if she might keep the world and all its ugliness from bursting through. Kieran still reclined upon her bed, one booted foot set upon the floor, the other crossed over his knee. His cravat was disheveled from her tears, and he looked darkly, disarmingly handsome, with his stern face and sensuous mouth.
She shivered when Kieran’s gaze slid languidly down her length. “What witchery, Camille, have you worked on me?” he murmured. “Even now, I cannot fathom it.”
Camille left the door and started toward the bed. She dared not ask him what he meant, dared not press him for the answers he had always been so unwilling to give. He cared for her—more than he wished to admit. And in this moment, it was enough.
At the corner of the bed, she stopped and began to pull the pins from her hair.
“Wait.” Kieran unfolded himself from the bed. “I wish to do it.”
He walked behind her, and set his searing lips to the turn of her neck. Camille closed her eyes and let the familiar, aching warmth go twisting through her. She wanted him—needed this—and she was tired of denying it. “Make me forget,” she whispered. “Oh, Kieran, make me forget.”
“You are a fool, you know, Camille,” he murmured as if to himself. “A fool to want me—for anything other than this.”
Camille did not answer him. The truth was, nothing he had said in Hyde Park had jerked her back from the emotional precipice she seemed destined to tumble over. And if she was a fool, so be it.
One by one, he drew the pins from her hair, threading his fingers through the loosened locks with unerring gentleness as he pulled them down. When he was finished, Kieran’s lips brushed the shell of her ear. “I’d best cancel dinner,” he whispered, “before Trammel comes looking for us.”
“Très bien,” she agreed.
He turned and snapped his fingers at the dog. “Jim! Out, old boy.”
Dutifully, the little spaniel leapt off the bed. Camille watched Kieran’s lithe, muscular form pace across the room to the connecting door, the dog trotting happily at his heels.
By the time he returned to lock the door behind him, Camille wore only her shift and her stockings. Fleetingly, he hesitated, his expression softening as he watched her.
“What?” she whispered. “What is wrong?”
His smile returned, wistful and vague. “Nothing,” he answered. His warm, long-fingered hands came up to cup her face. “It is just that…you are so beautiful. Too beautiful.”
Camille rose onto her toes, and slid her arms about his neck. “Kieran, why do you say—”
He silenced her with his lips. The kiss was long and deep, his mouth demanding. She turned her face willingly to his and let him possess her. When they parted, she looked at him through the dying light, and watched as his face shifted yet again, into something which looked hesitant, and a little despairing.
She held his gaze, willing him to speak. It was as if he wanted her, yet watched from a distance, afraid to come too close. He was a man eaten with regret for his past and unwilling, perhaps, to hope for a future. But with her eyes, she begged him to let her in.
In response, his thick, black lashes fell shut. Acting on feminine instinct, Camille lifted an unsteady hand to his face. Sliding her fingertips across the turn of his cheek, she caressed him, then brushed the pad of her thumb across the corner of his mouth.
With his eyes still closed, his nostrils flared at her touch. And then, as if searching for home, he turned his face into her hand and pressed his lips into her palm with a sigh.
“Kieran,” she whispered as his breath came more roughly against her skin. “Mon chéri.”
He was drowning, he thought. Drowning in Camille’s touch; a simple, gentle caress which was neither seductive nor demanding. And yet those small, warm fingers skimming over the hardness of his face made him ache for more—not just a carnal longing, but a deeper desire he could not explain. This moment was a joy, a tenderness; emotions undercut by a bone-deep sorrow in the knowledge he had wasted his life. Sorrow that fate in all her cruelty had chosen now to gift him with this woman who instilled in him a yearning he could neither subdue with his own acrimony, nor obliterate with alcohol.
Camille drew away, and some sense of reality returned. He watched as she set her foot to the bed, drew up the hem of her shift, and began to roll down her stockings revealing, inch by inch, the perfect, silky length of her legs. And as he watched her, Kieran’s mind returned to their afternoon in the park. He had finally told her—knowing full well that he owed her the truth. And that the truth would be the end of it. Yet here she was, slipping off her stockings. Untying the ribbon of her shift.
He reached out, mesmerized, and drew the soft white linen off her shoulder. Her neck, the hollow of her throat, that tiny pulse point which he foolishly imagined beat only for him; all of it was perfection. Dear God, what had he pledged to her? He had tried to measure his words, and yet he had made promises he likely could not keep. She probably knew it, too—and another betrayal was the last thing on earth she needed.
He set his lips to the turn of her throat again, and let his cheek rest upo
n her shoulder. Once upon a time, he had foolishly believed Camille cold. But she was not cold, she was strong—and there was a world of difference between the two. Without him, Camille would survive. Without her, Kieran feared, he might not. He loved her. Completely, fully, he loved her. It was not an emotion he welcomed, and yet it came to him with a searing certainty.
Kieran was silent for so long, Camille began to feel worried. She whispered his name, and he lifted his head, opening his eyes to reveal the desire which burnt there. “Good God, Camille, I need you,” he rasped. “Beside me. Beneath me. Just…with me.”
Relief surged through her at his words. “Kieran, mon cœur, I am here,” she whispered, her lashes dropping shut. “I am with you. Always.”
“I want you, Camille,” he rasped.
“Oui.”
Slowly, Kieran undressed, shrugging off his coat, and unfastening his waistcoat with a languid, masculine certainty. Camille raised her hands to unfurl the snowy white cravat about his neck. He lifted his chin, quietly watching her.
He surprised her when he spoke. “I desire you, I think, more than I have ever desired anything in my life,” he said abruptly. “Should I have told you that? I daresay not.”
Camille smiled, her heart almost bursting. “Why should you not?”
He looked away. Her eyes took in the slightly gaunt bones of his cheeks, and the faint stubble of beard which shadowed his face. He looked neither old nor young, but merely beautiful. And alone.
“Perhaps some things are selfish to say?” he suggested, jerking his shirttails free.
Camille pushed the shift from her shoulders. His eyes followed it to the floor. “Perhaps the time for talking is done,” she answered.
It was almost dark inside the room now. She drew down the bedcovers, then watched as Kieran shucked off the last of his clothes. By the faint, wintry light she let her gaze drift over the sheer bulk of his body. Despite whatever weight he had lost, Kieran was a large man in every sense of the word. There was nothing of grace or beauty in his lean, hard-muscled form, for it was a body forged by long hours of hard work and scarred by deprivation and abuse. Yet he was graceful. To her, he was beautiful. And when he turned to toss aside the last of his clothing, and the dying light caught the long, layered scars across his back, Camille found herself blinking back tears.
“Come to bed, mon amour,” she whispered.
To her surprise, he caught her up in his arms, one arm beneath her knees, and laid her on the bed as if she weighed nothing. He crawled over her, his eyes dark with need, his erection heavy and jutting. One heavy lock of hair fell forward, shadowing his high forehead. Impulsively, she lifted her face to kiss him. Their lips met once, twice, then his mouth took hers in earnest. Camille’s hands settled on his hips, drawing them to hers.
“I want you, Kieran,” she whispered when the kiss ended. “I am impatient.”
His hand seemed to shake as he set it to her inner thigh. “I mightn’t be gentle,” he answered. “You are sure?”
Her arms came up to embrace him. “Oui, very sure.”
He slid his hands beneath her hips and dragged her down the bed. One knee pressed her thighs wider as his hand went to his erection. Camille drew up her knees and guided him to her. When he entered, it was swift and a little forceful. At her sharp exhalation, he cursed beneath his breath.
“Non, do not stop,” she choked. “Please just—”
With a soft, guttural sound, Kieran pushed himself deeper, bracing one arm above her shoulder. Slowly, so slowly, he rocked himself into her, his eyes closed, his nostrils flared wide. “Sweet Jesus, Camille,” he whispered. “You are—oh, Lord. So tight. So…like home to me.”
She felt her heart lift, rising unburdened to him. As her body relaxed to take his, she lifted one leg and twined it over his heavier, stronger one. Kieran kissed her possessively, with his lips and his tongue, plumbing her depths as she rose to him. When she returned the kiss, darting her tongue into his mouth, he groaned and deepened the kiss. The sweetly familiar desire drew at her, making her sigh beneath him.
“You are mine, Camille,” he rasped when their lips parted. “Tell me you are.”
“Kieran, mon trésor,” she whispered. “Always.”
Over and over he thrust, his powerful thighs taut, his eyes closed. The heat of his body began to surround her, tantalizing and seductive, as the tension built. Beneath the weight of his thrusts, the bed began to creak in a faint, steady rhythm. Camille felt caught up in him, a part of him.
The longing deep inside her swelled until she began to sigh with each stroke. She was spiraling, higher and higher. His body drew hers, possessed hers. He took her long and hard as the afternoon gave way to evening, and a soft, cool gloom settled over the room. The hearth was empty, the lamps cold. And yet, a fine sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead and trailed down his throat to pool in the hard-boned vee below his throat.
Suddenly, his eyes opened, his silvery gaze mesmerizing. “I can’t give you up, Camille,” he choked. “I won’t.”
A little shaken by the fervency his voice, she faltered.
Kieran responded by dropping his head to kiss her, swift and hard. “Don’t draw away from me, Camille,” he murmured against her lips. “Please. Not now. Not when it is too late.”
He was not speaking, she understood, of this simple act of lovemaking. The words went deeper, to the heart of what they were together. Man and woman. Lovers joined by something more than a physical act. And what it cost him to make such a request, Camille could not imagine. She let her hands slide down to the taut muscles of his buttocks, urging him to her.
Kieran tried to clear his head. To think. But a sort of madness drove him now, a dark need to possess her. There was an edge somewhere in the darkness, and he had crossed it. Given himself to her irretrievably. He deepened his thrusts, and she cried out, her voice thready in the dusky light.
“Camille, Camille,” he chanted, stilling her to his thrusts. Skin against silken skin. The scent of desire swirling about them in a sensual heat. It was ecstasy, and he was lost. Lost to her. She was panting now, soft, rhythmic sobs of need. He lifted himself higher, holding that sweet, perfect angle as he drove himself into her. And then she cried out again, her warm, silken sheath drawing at him as her hips rose to his.
“Kieran,” she gasped. “Kieran, oh…”
He tried to gentle his thrusts, to draw out the pleasure, but her breathless cries of urgency spurred him on. Camille clung to him, trembling, her nails raking down his buttocks as her head went back into the softness of the pillow. And then her release seized her, shook her, and left her sobbing beneath him. Kieran felt his groin spasm uncontrollably, and on a harsh, guttural cry, he spilled himself inside her as a perfect, brilliant light exploded inside his head.
The room was nearly dark when Camille stirred to awareness. Kieran lay beside her, his legs entangled with hers, their bodies slick with perspiration. She closed her eyes and drew in the comforting scent of him.
It was over. There was nothing left of her heart to hold apart from him, this man she had once thought harsh and unlovable. A man she had hoped to hold at arm’s length, emotionally if not physically. And even as his body warmed hers, and his masculine scent comforted her, the uncertainty which lay ahead was a bleak and frightening thing.
Oh, what a fool she had been to underestimate him. Camille drew a deep, shuddering breath.
Kieran leaned nearer and set the back of his hand lightly to her cheek. “Camille?” he murmured, nuzzling her neck.
When she did not respond, he lifted his head to look down at her, a quizzical smile curling one corner of his mouth. “What’s wrong, hmm?”
She closed her eyes and exhaled a little roughly. “Mon Dieu, Kieran, I am sometimes afraid of this,” she whispered. “I do not wish to lose my heart to you. I cannot.”
For an instant, he went perfectly still. “No,” he said quietly. “No. It would be best for you if you did not, I daresay.”
“I know—I know—that I said it was not possible,” she continued, her voice thready and nothing like her own. “But this line I drew in my mind—something is changing, Kieran. Once it was so sharp. So clear to me…”
His faint smile faltered. “You are too wise, Camille, to fall in love with me,” he assured her. “Today, after all that we have shared, you feel sorry for me, perhaps. But I assure you that I am unworthy of either sentiment—particularly your love.”
But it was too late for her, Camille realized. She could neither look away nor leave him. Not in any sense of the word. His silvery gaze held hers warily, seeing, she was sure, into the pit of her soul. “Kiss me,” she whispered. “Kiss me, Kieran. And let me decide your worth.”
Something like regret sketched across his face. Then his hand came up, hesitated, and slid round her face. His eyes dropped shut, and when his lips touched hers, Camille flew to him, her arms going round his neck. This time his kiss was infinite and aching in its sweetness. Not a kiss of heated lust or of tempting invitation, but a gentle, languid thing, which was almost reverent. A kiss which was not his, and yet was the very essence of him.
Kieran’s hands cupped her face gently, his thumbs stroking slowly across her cheekbones as he kissed her mouth, her brow, and the delicate bones beneath her eyes. Finally, he kissed the length of her neck, his mouth warm and soft against her skin, then set his forehead upon her shoulder
“My beautiful girl,” he murmured. “My beautiful Camille. What in God’s name have I done?”
“Nothing,” she said fervently. “Mon Dieu, you have done nothing.”
He gave a muffled, humorless laugh. “I thought you so wonderfully coldhearted,” he murmured, one hand making soft, soothing circles between her shoulder blades. “But I miscalculated, did I not? Beneath that hard façade of yours beats a heart as tender as a ripe peach. And I am sorry for it.”