by Darcie Wilde
Leannah felt sure there would be nothing tentative about a kiss shared with Harry Rayburn. She already knew the feeling of his hand, of his arms around her body, the lightest brush of his fingers on her hair. He had given her so very much to conjure with. He’d spear those calloused fingers into her tangled hair and press his mouth close against hers. She’d open for him, so he could slip his tongue alongside hers. He’d kiss her cheek, trace the tip of his tongue down the sensitive skin just beside her ear, to her throat. He’d slide his hands up her sides until he came to her breasts. She’d bury her face in his fair hair and inhale his scent. He’d grip her roughly. He knew she was no delicate flower. He wouldn’t be afraid to show her his strength. He’d be merciless as he plumped and squeezed her. He’d make her gasp and they’d both revel in it. He’d take the very tip of her nipple between his fingers and chafe it. He’d watch her face. Would he be stern? No. That didn’t fit somehow. He’d be smiling, perhaps even mischievous as he backed her up against the wall. He’d press his hips against hers to hold her there. She’d be able to feel how hard he was. He’d rub their hips together while his hands worked at her breasts, filling her with that bright, hot, beautiful tension. She’d try to be quiet, and she’d fail.
Please, Harry. Please! She’d shout it so all the world could hear.
Yes, Leannah. Oh, yes.
She’d run her hands across the ridge of his erection and make him gasp. She’d let him know at once that she understood the workings of a man’s body. She could make him hard, and she’d enjoy doing it. She’d find the buttons on his fly. They wouldn’t bother with much more than that. Their need would be too great, too wild. She’d free him and he’d shove her skirts up, and lift her. He was strong enough for that, she was sure. She’d wrap her legs around his hips and press her heels against his thighs, shoving him deep into herself.
What would he be like? Would he fill her? She wanted to believe he would. The wall would be rough and cold against her naked backside. She imagined the inn empty—no one to hear, no one to suspect what they did. He’d thrust fast and hard into her, all restraint and good humor gone. He’d be maddened by his need and hers. She’d beat on his shoulders, shout his name, demand that he take her harder still, and faster. And he would obey. He’d give her what she craved, give her everything, all of him, all of Harry Rayburn and she’d take it, gladly, wantonly, greedily, and return everything that she had.
Oh, no, no, stop. This is a mistake.
Leannah was no stranger to the power of private fantasy, but this was beyond the pale. She was flushed almost to the point of fever, and so dizzy with borrowed desire that her strength had fled. It was only Genevieve’s sleeping presence that stopped her from thrusting her hand between her thighs to rub herself until some kind of release came from the craving that her fantasy of Harry Rayburn raised.
She’d made sure she was the one who took the bed nearest the door and now she regretted it. She wanted to open the window and get a breath of air, but she didn’t dare, for fear of waking Genevieve. She glanced at the door. Could she go down into the yard for just a minute? She needed the cold to calm this fever of Harry Rayburn.
Along with the nightclothes, Mrs. Jessop had left out some knitted slippers. She supposed a woman who had seen so many elopements might take care to keep her house stocked with what was needed for such occasions, and probably prospered by her foresight. Leannah thought about the coins Mr. Rayburn had already laid out on her behalf. She’d have to pay him back out of the housekeeping. She couldn’t remain in his debt.
Leannah wrapped the shawl around herself. Carefully, and once again grateful for the well-oiled hinges on the door, she crept into the dark hall. She did not have lamp or candle with her, but she remembered where the side stairs were, and was able to follow them by touch down to the side door.
Outside, the cold spring wind cut straight through the woolen shawl. Leannah took a deep breath and shook her hair back. The wind across her skin was sharp and invigorating. It smelled of late frost and early greenery and its cold eased the ache she’d brought onto herself with her wicked imaginings of Harry Rayburn. Leannah spread her arms out as if to embrace it.
She heard the sharp hiss of an indrawn breath.
She knew who it was. She knew from the warm weight of the gaze she felt settling across her. She knew from the anticipation prickling across her skin and the way her heart beat heavily beneath her breast. There was only one person it could possibly be.
Slowly, Leannah turned.
There by the inn’s corner, stood Harry Rayburn.
Ten
“Don’t,” whispered Harry. He held out one hand in a gesture that was both reassurance and plea. “Don’t be afraid of me.”
Leannah realized she had clutched her shawl to her throat. She didn’t remember doing it. All her attention was taken up by Harry Rayburn. He was staring at her and there was something wild, almost fey, in his gaze. Despite this, it was not fear, or anything like it that stole through Leannah.
Of its own volition, her hand lowered. The corners of the shawl fell open. Her nightdress and chemise were thin stuff, and she had no corset on underneath. A gust of wind pressed the cloth tight against her breasts and hips. Cold tightened her nipples to hard points, and Harry could see that. He could see all of her.
“I’ll go,” Harry said without moving. “I’ll go now. You don’t have to worry.”
He would leave if she didn’t do something. The thought stabbed into her. He must not leave. “I’m not worried.” Her voice sounded harsh in her ears. “Please don’t go.”
She saw the shadow of his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard. Harry took one step forward. “You want me to stay?”
“Yes.” Like I want my heart to keep beating.
“I will stay.” He took another step forward. “If I may stay close.”
There was moonlight in his fair hair and moonlight in his wild eyes. He slipped into the shadows with her, becoming for one instant a mere shape, a dark ghost of himself. He had the grace of a dancer. Each slow movement was fascinating to her and the anticipation from this deliberate approach tightened every fiber of her body. He was giving her a chance to cry off, to get away if she wanted to. But she didn’t want that.
“Yes,” she breathed. “I want you to be close, Harry.”
And he was. He was right in front of her. Although he did not yet touch her, she could still feel the warmth of him on her skin. He still had his boots on and she was in slippers, which made him that much taller. She tipped her face up to feast her eyes on his magnificent face and the intensity of his gaze. A stray breeze caught up the ends of her hair and dragged them across her face.
Harry reached out, and gently pushed the curls back against her shoulder.
“Leannah.” The sound of her name in his mouth made her shiver. His hand slid around her shoulder, under the curtain of her hair, and her neck to cup the back of her head. She did not resist. She did not speak. She only allowed her lips to part, just a little.
Harry saw. He understood. He bent down and he kissed her.
Leannah had imagined a wild, almost brutal kiss from Harry. This was nothing of the kind. The kiss he gave her was an easy, almost polite introduction of his lips to hers. It warmed her, comforted her, as did the way his broad hand cradled her head. All was calculated to make her understand that she was safe here with him. She could relax.
And she did. Leannah felt her whole body soften. She leaned forward so that her breasts could brush against his chest and she could answer his kiss better, opening just that much farther to touch her tongue to his lips.
She felt him smile into their kiss. His free hand stole around her waist, urging her forward. She needed no urging. A sharp, hot ache had blossomed in the center of her body, and she knew the only relief was to have the whole of him tight against her. She pressed closer, shamelessly rubbing her heavy breasts against him. The rasp of the wool and linen and the warmth of his hard chest beneath caused h
er nipples to ruche tighter yet. She liked it. His hand on her back moved lower, sprawling across the curve of her derriere so he could hold her still and rub his hips, and his wickedly erect member against her mound. The sensation filled her with fiery delight, and that delight was only brightened by the understanding of how very much Harry relished her body, her touch, and this coming together.
Harry’s tongue slipped deeper into her mouth, turning their kiss urgent. Leannah moaned. A fresh flash of desire sparked through her. She wanted more. She reached around his shoulders to pull him down closer to her, but to her dismay, Harry broke the kiss and pulled back.
“You mustn’t,” he whispered, taking hold of her wrists where they rested on his shoulders. “We can’t risk you opening those cuts again.”
“But how am I to touch you?”
He smiled, and that smile was as sweet and wicked as anything she had imagined. It lit sparks in his blue eyes that had nothing to do with cool moonlight or distant fantasy. Keeping hold of her wrists, Harry spread her arms out wide. Slowly, as if they were on the dance floor, he walked her backward, his gaze feasting all the while on her body, barely concealed beneath her nightdress. She felt the rough brush of the inn wall against her buttocks and back. Harry raised her arms up, bringing her wrists together over her head, and crossing them so he could hold both in one hand.
“There,” he whispered, and he was kissing her again. She opened her mouth for him at once, and it was so sweet. She sighed, deeply content to let strength and sense drain away beneath the attentions of Harry’s clever tongue as he explored, enjoyed, tasted, and took. She wanted nothing except to let him hold her exactly where he wanted her, and continue this wanton kiss.
But Harry was not content with so little. His free hand stroked down her throat to her collarbone, and down farther, to the curve of her breast. His warm, rough palm caressed her, and Leannah moaned into their kiss. It was slow and firm, that touch. He took his time discovering her curves and lines. His fingertips danced lightly across her aching nipple. She gasped at the sensation and felt him smiling again.
He pulled back, but only a little, so she could still feel the brush of his lips as he whispered. “Now, you stay just like this.” He squeezed her wrists where he held them over her head. “And let me please us both for a while.”
He dragged his right hand down the underside of her arm, down to her shoulder, down to cup her other breast. Leannah drew in a ragged breath, and Harry was kissing her again. She closed her eyes and gave herself wholly over to the sensation. Now he caressed both of her breasts, cupping, massaging, delighting himself and her with his wicked play. Desire’s warmth deepened, weakening her, softening her, opening every inch of her to his touch. He pressed her breasts together, chafing them against each other while his thumbs teased the exquisitely sensitive tips, and she thought she might die from the pleasure of it. If he hadn’t held her pressed against the cold wall, she would have fallen. Her strength was entirely gone. She had no room for strength within her. She was too full of the pleasure Harry brought to her with the press of his body, his wicked mouth and his busy, knowing hands.
She was gasping. She couldn’t breathe. He moved his mouth from hers and instead pressed his lips against her throat, her ear.
“Leannah,” he whispered. “Beautiful Leannah.”
“Kiss me again,” she pleaded.
“Oh, yes.” She felt the curve of his smile against her cheek. “I will do that.”
Her mouth opened eagerly for him. But it wasn’t her mouth he kissed. His hands gathered her breasts, pressing them up and close and tight, so he could drop a kiss on the top of each. That was good. She wanted more of that. She tipped her hips forward, to rub against him and urge him on, and that, too, was very good. His member was exquisitely hard beneath his breeches, and the ridge of it pressed against her hard enough to part her folds and brush the most sensitive nub of flesh at their tip, just as Harry’s wicked tongue darted out from his open mouth so he could take his first taste of her breasts.
“Yes,” she hissed. Pleasure buckled her knees. He felt it. He pressed his hips closer, to hold her against the wall. With hands and mouth, he ravaged her breasts, and she arched her back to press her mound still more tightly to him. His fingers rolled her nipples while his mouth dropped kisses on her skin. She barely remembered she must be quiet. They could not be heard. It was shocking, what they did. It was forbidden. She did not know this man. She knew nothing but the urgency inside her, the hot dampness of her thighs and how her hips moved to rub against him and find the pleasure his body could give. He lifted her right breast so he could suck on her through the thin fabric of her nightdress. His mouth and tongue were hot and hard as they surrounded her nipple, taking her deep. All the while his left hand worked her, stroked her, pinched and plumped and played.
Oh, she was lost. Lost to bliss, lost to need. Lost to this man, this wanton pleasure, the touch of the night wind and the rasp of the lime-washed wall against her back. Her whole body was roused to a fever pitch and the source of her madness was the source of her release. His hips ground against her, and she welcomed that rough gesture as she welcomed his mouth and his hands at her breasts.
“Yes, Harry,” she gasped. “Yes, hard, like that.”
He was kissing her mouth again, maybe to keep her quiet, maybe because he needed to. Leannah didn’t care. She thrust her own tongue into his mouth, hungry for him. No, starving for him. His hands scrabbled at the skirts of her nightdress, bunching the hems up around her bare thighs so he could caress her there. His calloused hands rasped across her softer skin and she gloried in it. She knew what was coming, and her whole body thrummed with anticipation. She was a mass of contradiction—soft and hard, weak and yet filled with wild strength. That was what came of this plain, graceless, wicked desire—desire for this man, for his body, his hands, and his mouth. She must feel every inch of him against her, and inside her.
His hand brushed the damp, tangled curls between her legs and she rocked her hips forward, forcing his fingertips into her folds so he could feel how wet he’d made her.
Yes, her whole body cried. Yes, now. Yes.
And then he was gone.
Eleven
Leannah’s eyes flew open, unable to understand this abrupt and terrible absence of Harry’s touch. It took a wild moment of searching, but she saw Harry was beside her now. He was bent over with his arms out straight in front of him and both hands pressed flat against the wall. His breath rattled in his throat. A trickle of perspiration ran down his temple and dripped onto the cobbles.
“No.” He spat the word through clenched teeth. “No!”
She couldn’t understand what he was saying.
“We have to stop,” he told her.
“I don’t want to.”
He turned toward her and in his face she saw something painfully close to anguish. “Oh, my beautiful Leannah, we must.”
Slowly, she realized her wrists were still crossed above her head. She brought her arms down and her bandaged hands automatically searched for the ends of her shawl to wrap around herself. The shawl was gone. Her skin was damp with sweat and quickly growing cold. She felt exposed, but that exposure no longer felt like triumph. Shame, as cold as the night wind against her skin crept into her blood.
“Was it . . . something I did?”
Her question straightened him up at once. He had been trembling a moment ago, but now as he reached for her, his hands were steady and gentle.
“You did nothing.” He cupped her chin and lifted her face toward his. Harry’s smile was suffused with such tenderness it raised a fresh ache in her breast. “You did nothing at all, except drive me to the brink of madness.”
“And you don’t want that.”
The oath Harry uttered was blunt, and startling. “That’s not what I mean. Leannah, I want you. I want everything you will give me, but not like this.” His thumb caressed the corner of her mouth. “Not up against a wall where anyone might see
us, see you.” He brushed her trailing locks back from her cheek. “I will dare anything for myself, but I will not risk disgrace for you.”
It’s not disgrace, she wanted to shout at him. It’s perfection. She wanted to grab him by the collar—never mind her wounded hands, never mind Mr. Jessop awake right on the other side of the wall. She wanted to kiss him until he forgot everything but her and their desire.
But he was right. She might hate that fact as much as she had ever hated anything in her life, but she could not deny it. She had been driven beyond caution by his kiss and his touch. She would have done anything in that moment and not cared at all. But if anyone had heard, or seen . . . If Genevieve had heard or seen . . .
Leannah’s chill deepened. Reality came back, carried on dawn’s cold wind. Genevieve was sleeping upstairs. Mr. Dickenson was sprawled on the sofa in the public room. She was Leannah Morehouse Wakefield and her family waited in their rented house for her to bring her runaway sister home and then settle back to dealing with all the other problems that had come with her father’s many failures.
She was not free to indulge any shameless yearnings in the moonlight with this man, or any man.
Leannah shivered again and looked about for where the shawl had fallen. Harry spotted it first, lying in a crumpled heap by the inn wall. He lifted it off the ground. She saw him move to place it around her shoulders, and then think the better of it. Instead, he laid it across her arm.
He did not look away even for an instant as she wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. He stared at her hands as she raised the plain woolen folds to cover her bare, cold skin. Regret tightened her throat and its bitterness filled her mouth to overpower the last of the sweetness his kiss had brought. Leannah lifted her fingertips to Harry’s mouth, and ran them across his lips. Harry closed his eyes and swallowed hard, but he did not move away.