by Laura Parker
Behind closed eyes she began to drift. After a while, she forgot that the cool cloth bathing her cheeks and throat was wielded by a stranger who had bought her for his lusty pleasure. The brandy was a blessing, she decided. A swallow more, perhaps, and she would never remember this night.
Merlyn watched her face intently as he wiped the grime from it. Beneath the layer of dirt he discovered fine blue veins throbbing at her temples, the tender curves of her cheek, and a small dimple in the fullness of her chin. How old was she? he wondered. His eyes lowered to the swelling fullness of her breasts above the low neck of her chemise and he smiled. Old enough.
Dark lashes lay like tiny feathers against her skin and he reached out to touch one lightly. She blinked and looked to him, her sherry-gold eyes enormous in her face.
“Ah, Cassie, you do please me,” he said softly and bent to place his lips lightly against hers. She trembled under the caress of his lips, and Merlyn murmured softly into her mouth, “If you would make me desire you less, do not quiver at the mere touch of my lips to yours.”
His lips moved to her ear and breathed in tantalizing whispers, “Be cold, Cassie. Turn your lips to steel, drain the warmth from your skin.” He moved to kiss her throat and then each temple, saying, “Do not allow the pulse to beat so strongly here … and here … and here.”
Like strong drink, his voice mesmerized her, stilling her every impulse to turn from him. He said be cold, and yet her skin felt inflamed wherever he touched her, his thigh against her arm, his hip pressed alongside her waist. He said do not shiver, but she could not still the tremors or steady her pulse or even keep her lips stiff against the assault of his tongue. When it dipped into the moist valley behind her lower lip, the world seemed to explode in a shower of tiny silver stars. What was he doing to her? she wondered. Was it the brandy? Or was this magic that he worked upon her with only his voice and mouth?
Cassandra did not protest when his hands slid under her and raised her up to lean against his broad chest. She must stop him, she thought, but no longer cared to. It was as if he had cast a spell to remove her reluctance and fear, and replaced it with strange rough desires for which she had no name. Dimly she remembered he had called himself Merlyn, the most powerful of magicians.
Again there was the maddening brush of his lips upon hers. It triggered a memory of another kiss, a sweet chaste brushing of lips that had won her totally to a man whose name she could not recall. The memory blended with the present behind her closed lids, and the desire she had felt in that moment urged her to hold this time what once she had lost.
Reaching out blindly, she found the strong column of a masculine neck and her arms encircled it. One of her hands scored into the thick black hair at the nape and her fingers flexed, drawing his head down hard to hers.
With a fleeting moment of surprise at her burst of passion, Merlyn allowed her to direct the kiss. He held back from her, forcing her to hold him close. It was her lips which parted first, her seeking that brought the intimate return of his own.
Stealthily, his hands began a gentle roaming of her slim body. When his fingers grazed the long curve of her spine she arched involuntarily against him. His palms molded the sides of her waist, then rose slowly to her ribs, where his thumbs hooked under the glorious full softness of her breasts.
Caught yet again in surprise by the mystery of his touch, Cassandra gasped, her eyes flying wide in wonder upon the raven-haired stranger before her. It was the memory of the golden-haired man she sought, not the embrace of this man. But a thick sweet stirring of her blood began as his hands smoothed lightly over her face. The throbbing at her temples had found new, unexpected places to inhabit, in her breasts, her belly, and her thighs, and she was helpless against the stirrings.
“Do not fear me,” Merlyn murmured, cupping her face in a strong hand. “Let me hold you, touch you, as I wish. Do you not yet know there is only pleasure to be had from me?”
Confused by her own body’s reaction to his fondling, Cassandra murmured, “’Tis wicked.”
“If ’tis wicked, my lady, ’tis the most delicious wickedness ever devised.” Merlyn eased her gently down onto the mattress. “Let me work. You need do nothing more.”
She had best do nothing more! The thought echoed in Merlyn’s mind as he drew a shuddery breath and reached for the lacing that closed her shift. She lay acquiescent and pliant under his hands. An accomplished mistress could have been no more provocative, he thought, savoring the tautening at the base of his belly.
Cassandra tried to remain calm under the path of his hands, but they seemed to feed the fever within her. When he removed her shift cold night air rushed across her flesh, making her gasp.
Merlyn echoed her gasp, but for a very different reason. He had revealed to his sight her full, exquisitely formed breasts.
Cassandra watched his face, waiting for him to speak, but he did not. Instead, he reached down and cupped a handful of water, then let it spill in a tiny waterfall from his palm onto one breast. Before his fascinated gaze, the soft areola darkened instantly, the nipple at its center forming a hard ruby pebble that dared his touch.
Merlyn bent his head to take first one, then the other of the taut peaks of her breasts between his lips.
Cassandra sighed as the heat of his body settled onto her, his warm heavy weight both a comfort and a torment. Hands moved up her sides, caressing the bare skin, then seeking and finding the precious weight of her breasts, touching her in ways she had never before experienced. It was wrong, wicked, she told herself, to garner any pleasure from this, but her body would not deny itself.
Merlyn’s parted lips left a trail of wet flame across her throat and breasts before rising to still the throb of her lips. His fingers found the slender column of her throat, worked down the lushness of her bosom, and then began a gentle massage of her belly.
As his thumb dipped into the tiny well of her navel, he said urgently, “You are my last love, Cassie. You were made for this night—for me. You will remember it, always.”
His fingers dipped lower, into the secret recesses of her being, and Cassandra cried out in astonishment, but his tender assault did not alter or lessen.
“Lie and enjoy, Cassie,” he urged in a bare whisper against her ear. His teeth raked the lobe as he said, “Is this not pleasure? Is it not the most splendid wickedness you’ve ever known?”
Heated waves of sensation swelled and foamed in and about Cassandra’s senses, the surgings of emotion too complex and confusing for her to give them name. There was only the feel of his lips and tongue and, ah yes, his hands. The tightening of her womb was a new experience, yet she knew he must hold the answer to the aching swiftly becoming unbearable. His fingers sought and found, only to give rise to a quickening desire for something more, something as yet unattained.
With a low sigh of surrender, she flung her arms about his neck to pull him down on her, as if by pressure alone she could ease the nearly painful aching that tautened her body like a bow. It no longer mattered that he was a stranger. So was she, even to herself. All that mattered was the magic, the glorious torment of which he was master.
When the instinctive clasping of her thighs loosened, Merlyn knew he had won. She was ready for him, more ready than she realized in her innocence. Quickly, he divested himself of his clothing and then he braced himself on his knees, one on either side of her waist.
Looking down, he found that fear had once again crept into the dark honey of her eyes. As he gazed at her, thoughts crowded his mind. It was his last night on earth, his last time ever to lie with a woman. Her mere acceptance of him was not enough. She would be the last thought of his life, yet he must expect to be forgotten by her.
The thought scored like a blade through the brandy heat of his intoxication. He did not want to be forgotten, to have his memory pushed aside. He wanted … needed …
And then knew what he desired: something of himself to be left behind in a world tha
t had never wanted him. He desired to fill her belly with the seed of his loins, his life, which might flower and bear fruit after he was gone.
“Cassie, look at me.”
Cassandra opened her eyes to the serious dark face above her. There was still the intense green flame of his gaze, but now a new, more tender expression rode his strong features. Her gaze fell before his to discover his nakedness. There, below his belly in a nest of black hair, she saw for the first time the naked perfection of a man.
Merlyn reached out and took her hand firmly in his. “Come. Do not be afraid to feel what your eyes have seen.” Slowly but deliberately he uncurled her fingers and wrapped them about his warm hard flesh, sighing as her hand trembled and his flesh answered with a surge of desire.
“There,” he said raggedly. “I am but flesh and blood, no more than what you hold in your hand. As my fingers give you pleasure, so my flesh will please you. Trust me, Cassie. Let me share your innocence.” Without waiting for a reply, he lowered himself onto her, crushing her softness with the hard warmth of his body.
Again Cassandra felt the magic of his fingers; then he lifted his hips slightly and a new probing began. He lifted her, holding her buttocks, and slowly entered her. The pressure built quickly and then a quick deep thrust brought him into her.
He smothered her cry with his mouth, but a tear slipped out of her, trickling down her cheek. In natural response to the invasion of her body, Cassandra lifted her hips to throw him off. But he, too, moved, meeting her surging with strong deliberate thrusts of his body which drove him deeper and deeper till she believed she would split in two. Where was the pleasure he had promised and first given? she wondered in misery. Was it all a lie to keep her from fighting him?
Yet, even as the questions formed, the thrusting found a new rhythm, an irresistible pattern that her body adopted as its own.
Merlyn made himself move gently at first. He knew and understood the gift of her virginity, and exulted in the victory. She would not be able to forget him now. He had made her a woman.
When, at last, she found the ancient rhythm, he gave a chuckle of joy and made her his with the swift long shooting out of his seed.
“Now! Now! You belong to me!” he whispered fiercely. “Always!”
Cassandra lay awake listening to the rhythmic breathing of the man sleeping by her side. What have I done? What have I done? Over and over the single thought tolled in her mind.
The curtains of doubt parted and memory burst upon her, complete in every detail. She was Lady Cassandra Briarcliffe, wife of Nicholas Briarcliffe, and a fugitive from the care of her father-in-law, the Marquess of Briarcliffe.
Tears spilled upon the bedding beneath her head. She had been running away to London, in search of her husband, when a carriage accident and a blow to her head left her at the mercies of an unsympathetic magistrate. And now she had shared the lust of a Newgate criminal.
Cassandra closed her eyes, not wanting to see the cell in which she lay, but she dared not move away from the arm that encircled her waist and held her firmly against the naked length of the man beside her. Twice this night he had made love to her, whispering in her ears words of passionate longing such as one might offer a lover. And she had listened because they matched so closely her dreams of lying in her husband’s arms and hearing the same words. But now she dreaded his next awakening because it was all a lie.
“Cassie?”
Cassandra shuddered at the sound of his voice, heavy with sleep but warmly persuasive. She felt him move, and then he was looking down at her, an infinitely tender smile on his mouth.
“You are here. I thought—I believed I’d dreamt you.” Merlyn touched her cheek with a fingertip. “I wish I had time to make you love me, Cassie. I have only the night, too far spent already.” Suddenly he jerked the emerald and sapphire ring from his hand. Reaching out, he took her left hand and placed the ring on her third finger. “It’s all I have, Cassie, that’s of any value to me.”
He paused, searching for words which would make her understand. “I would wed you, if only there was time. I would wed you and love you and give you babes aplenty.”
Cassandra stared up at him through tears and Merlyn saw it as her recognition that he was to hang in a few short hours. “Don’t cry for me, Cassie. You’ve nothing to fear with the dawn.” He reached out, his fingers combing back the hair from her face. “Ah, but it’s a joy simply to touch you. You’re silk and velvet, my love. I have money enough sewn in the lining of my coat to buy your freedom ten times. You must take it and leave here. Go home, leave London. No one but you and I will ever know of the hours we’ve shared.”
Merlyn suddenly lay his cheek against her heart and whispered, “Generous, sweet Cassie, do not deny me this night. I’ve never begged a soul on this earth for anything since I was a boy of eight. But now I beg you, for the time left me, be my love.”
Later she was to marvel at the power of his voice, this mortal Merlyn with the gift of magic at his command. His voice, so tenderly pleading, had drawn her across the barrier of her uncertainty. It was as though she heard in it the fierce tenderness that was his soul. He was a stranger, for all that she had shared his bed, yet he no longer seemed so. He was right. No one need ever know of the hours they spent here or of the words they spoke or the joy they shared. In the morning she would obtain her freedom and he—he would reap the harvest of his life. This was a moment never to touch the reality of her life.
“Come,” she said, reaching out hesitantly to touch his face. “Come and hold me tight!”
Chapter Three
The Marquess of Briarcliffe sat before the blazing fireplace of his London residence. The long tongues of red flame did not penetrate the cold of his bones as he sucked steaming tea through the pleated lips of his toothless mouth. Once it had been a fine mouth, wide and thin-lipped to suit a handsome face. Veins worked only a spiderwebbing of color through the now-faded parchment of his bony nose and thin cheeks. The once copper-bright hair was bleached with age and covered by a red velvet turban. Those who remembered him as a high-spirited rake who had gamed and whored and drunk his youthful way through London Town would hardly have recognized him. They would look at the blue piping of his hands, large-knuckled with rheumatism, and exclaim in pity for the musician who had fiddled a tune worthy of the king’s ear. They would say nothing remained.
And yet they would be wrong. One had only to look into his gaze. The eyes that had once been a perfect foil for his fine aristocratic features now protruded from their sunken sockets, the last vivid evidence of the spirit of the man locked now in a shell of rigid bone and flaccid muscle. The clear irises, so pale a blue they appeared like lake water, were sharper than ever.
A narrow crinkling of his lips that might have been a smile moved the marquess’s mouth. He might hate his disabilities, but they had their uses. They earned him a kind of power over his household he had never attained as an active man. When he sat so still his household thought he dozed, he listened to learn the guilty secrets of others that he might later turn against them. He had learned to foil, bedazzle, and direct the lives of every man, woman, and child within the boundaries of his property, everyone but Nicholas.
Enraged by the pain and frustration of his useless body, he had quickly come to a malignant dislike for those who still possessed youth and vigor, in particular his only child, Nicholas. They were too much alike. As the father’s resentment of his son’s inherited beauty and charm turned from envy into hate the son had merely flaunted his dissolute pastimes in his detested sire’s face for spite.
“Confound the boy for a fool!” he muttered suddenly and flung his Chantilly teacup toward the fireplace, where it smashed against the brass screen and littered the marble hearth with porcelain splinters. He would settle the score with Nicholas. But first, he must find his runaway daughter-in-law, the discarded bride Nicholas had left on his doorstep two years earlier.
“My lord?” A fain
t rustle of petticoats accompanied the cry as his housekeeper appeared in the doorway.
The marquess did not look up but tucked his chin deeper into the folds of the tartan blanket spread about his shoulders. “There’s a damnable chill about. Colder than a witch’s tit and twice as bitter!” He thumped the arm of his chair with a gnarled fist. “Where’s Dermont? Am I so ill served that I must go myself to do my business? Call for a sedan chair. I will take to the streets of this Sodom myself!”
“That won’t be necessary, m’lord.” Kendal Dermont stepped into the room, the edge of his cloak streaming with damp from the fog.
The marquess was not often affected by the sight of the tall, slender man who served as his secretary and companion. On any other occasion he would have castigated the plain-featured second cousin for his overt attempt to impress his employer by appearing in his street garb. However, the success of the mission upon which the man had been sent was too important. The older man could not quite control the tremor in his voice as he said, “Well? Where’s Lady Cassandra? Haven’t you found the girl?”
Kendal heard the sharp tone with an inward smile. So, the old bastard was worried. The hell-for-leather carriage ride from Derbyshire to London had made him wonder, but the marquess was not always motivated by the needs and greeds of most men. He might only have seen the chase as a form of exercise, a chance to catch out and humiliate the girl.
Kendal moved quickly across the room, thinking that it was too bad Lady Cassandra had not importuned him to help in her escape. It would have made his position as the marquess’s bloodhound less difficult. Still, he had news.
“I’ve news, m’lord.” Kendal snatched his tricornered hat from his head to reveal a poorly groomed peruke. “The news I’m bringing—” He faltered in his country speech, hardly daring to reveal his news lest his pleasure at angering the old man betray him.