by Nan Ryan
“No,” Suzanna said, her eyes as cold as ice. “I’m afraid not. And you can thank the slaughtering Yankees for its absence. So you’ll both pardon me if I’m unconcerned about the state of Longley’s tender heart.”
* * *
For the remainder of the hot summer and on into the deepening chill of autumn, Mitch seized every opportunity to see Suzanna, if only for an hour or two at a time. And the cottage was no longer the only site of their feverish rendezvous. They spent long autumn nights at his opulent mansion, luxuriating in the comfort and privacy of his plush upstairs quarters. They seized stolen hours in a suite at his favorite hotel. They even snatched precious minutes in the back of the covered brougham when there was no time for anything more.
Mitch was so much in love with Suzanna he would have moved heaven and earth to hold her in his arms for a few breathless moments.
And she knew it.
Suzanna knew that he was in love with her, and believed that she loved him in return. She wished that it were not so, wished he didn’t love her. She wished as well that he were not such a kind, caring, gentle man. Her heartless chore would be so much easier if he were less likable, less thoughtful and unfailingly considerate.
On that first evening, when he’d walked into the ballroom at Mattie’s and paused in the doorway, she had sized him up and immediately supposed that he was the typical despised Yankee, arrogant and insensitive, Satan in dress blues. Handsome, cold and cruel. The epitome of everything she hated about the destructive Union military.
But it was awfully hard to hate Mitch. Had he been on the other side, had he been a Confederate instead of a Yankee, it would have been so easy to fall in love with him. When he took her in his arms it was almost impossible to remember that he was the enemy, the man she intended to destroy. She had to constantly remind herself of that fact.
She remained determined, but twinges of guilt had begun to plague Suzanna. She was painfully aware that she was betraying not one, but two men. Her lost sweetheart, Ty, and her adversary, Mitch. The innocent Ty would have been sickened by the knowledge that she was giving herself to the enemy. And the deceived Mitch would hate her for what she was doing to him, would hate her as passionately as he now loved her.
Despite her growing regrets, Suzanna felt there was no turning back. She had come this far and would stay the course. She would continue the steamy affair with Mitch for as long as she could be useful to the Confederacy. She would not concern herself with how it all might end. If he found her out, she had no doubt he would have her thrown in prison. She had known from the start that such a dire fate might befall her.
So be it.
For now she would continue what she considered to be a vitally important assignment—to break down Mitch’s defenses and learn all she could about any upcoming Union naval operations. This was war, she frequently reminded herself, and she was on the front lines.
* * *
To Suzanna’s chagrin, Mitch continued to staunchly keep his silence on anything having to do with the war or his role in it. She did everything possible to convince him that she would never disclose to another living soul anything they did together. Or anything they said to each other. Any secrets he shared were safe with her.
But Mitch was too conscientious an officer to reveal anything that might jeopardize Union troops, even to the woman he had come to love so dearly.
Still, Suzanna remained confident that in time she could break down his defenses. In an effort to have him hold nothing back from her, she held nothing back from him. She surrendered her body completely, willing and eager to please him. Certain the growing intimacy would breed total trust, she encouraged him to make love to her in any and every way he so desired. She was his for the taking, she often informed him. And she wanted, she added flirtatiously, to learn all he could teach her about the art of making love.
“You never fail to surprise and delight me, Suzanna,” he would declare.
And despite the fact that he would share no pertinent information with her, Mitch was so dazzled, so blinded by passion, he never for a minute suspected Suzanna of spying. He thought nothing of dropping his musette bag on the desk or table in plain sight.
Or of leaving his beloved Suzanna in the room with the secret dispatches.
Twenty-Eight
“Darling,”
“Hmm?”
“Do something to me you’ve never done before,” Suzanna playfully challenged, knowing how Mitch loved it when she was saucy and daring and unpredictable. She laughed, then slipped her hand inside his open shirt and pressed a kiss to his throat.
It was a chill evening in late October. Moments earlier, Suzanna had hurried into the cottage on a rush of cold air. Inside, flames shot up the fireplace chimney and the large front parlor was as warm as toast.
Mitch was there waiting for her. He stood with his back to the fire, his uniform tunic tossed aside, his white shirt open down his chest and the sleeves rolled up over tanned forearms.
Suzanna had paused where she stood and, deliberately, slowly, had taken off her long cape and tossed it over the back of a chair. They then stared at each other for a moment, neither saying a word. The only sound in the room had been that of the snapping, crackling fire in the grate.
Finally, Mitch came toward her, his movements catlike and sensual, the expression in his green eyes unmistakable. At once the warm room was suffused with subtle sexual promise, and Suzanna realized with no small degree of alarm that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. Enemy or no, he was the handsome lover of any woman’s fondest fantasy, and she had experienced incredible ecstasy in his arms.
Mitch put out his hand. Suzanna took it. He slowly walked backward, drawing her with him toward the warmth of the fire. When he stopped directly in front of the fireplace, she eagerly looped her arms around his neck and lifted her lips for his kiss. It was a long, slow kiss of elemental need and intense yearning, his tongue delving deep into her mouth to taste and stroke and arouse.
When finally the drugging kiss ended, Suzanna tipped her head back and smiled dreamily at him. “Hello, admiral.”
“Hi, yourself, angel. Thanks for meeting me on such short notice,” Mitch replied, his hooded eyes dilated with passion.
Suzanna leaned her forehead against his firm chin. She whispered, “Let’s get into bed.”
“Let’s don’t,” he said. She quickly raised her head and looked up at him in surprise. A muscle danced in his lean jaw when he added, “It’s cold in the bedroom. Nice here.” And he kissed her once more.
They kissed over and over again until finally, hearts thundering, breath coming fast, they sagged weakly to their knees, still continuing to eagerly and urgently embrace. Neither was fully aware of when it happened, but at some point during all the heated kisses, they fell over onto the soft fur rug and stretched out. Once their lips finally separated, they lay for a while saying nothing, the blood zinging through their veins, their bodies tense with thrumming passion.
It was Suzanna who broke the silence, by suggesting he do something to her he’d never done before. Love her in a manner he never had before. If there was such a manner.
“If there is still any way left that you haven’t made love to me,” she said. “Is there, darling?”
Mitch chuckled softly and drew her closer. “Yes, sweetheart. Numerous ways. Many things we’ve not yet done. Many physical joys await us.”
“Show me,” she quickly exclaimed. “Teach me, darling. I want to learn everything there is to know about making love with you. I’ll do anything you want.”
Mitch felt his pulse leap. “You mean it? You trust me?”
“You know I do,” she assured him, her hand inside his white shirt, exploring the firm muscles of his chest, her mind already racing. What, she wondered, might he do to her that he hadn’t done before? Would she like it? Would she hate it? Would it shock her? “I trust you totally,” she purred.
“You have nothing to be afraid of with me, Suzanna,” he
said, his voice low, soothing. “Not ever. You know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” she managed to say, thinking that it was just the opposite. He had every reason to be afraid of her. “Yes, I know.”
Mitch slowly rose up onto an elbow and looked down at her. Suzanna gazed into his luminous green eyes and knew, in that instant, that she actually was willing to love and be loved by him in any way he might desire.
“I want,” he said, sliding a hand up from her waist to her breasts, “to make love to you here in front of the fire.”
“Is that all?” she said with a teasing smile, and made a move to sit up.
“No, not quite,” he replied, pressing her back down. “You’re to lie there and allow me to undress you. You’re not to lift a hand to help.”
“A capital idea,” she said. “I can think of nothing I’d enjoy more.”
And it was true.
Suzanna found the unique ritual of having him disrobe her as if she were a helpless child to be exquisitely exciting. He was quite adept at removing each and every article of her clothing, but he took his own sweet time. And he paused to kiss each new expanse of pale soft flesh he bared.
A good half hour had pleasantly passed before Suzanna was finally naked, save for the sapphire necklace she always wore when she was with him. She lay stretched out on the soft fur, totally at ease with her nudity, perfectly comfortable with allowing him to examine her unclothed body.
Mitch sat back and admired his handiwork.
The leaping flames tinted Suzanna’s pale porcelain skin a honeyed peach hue, while her unbound hair and the matching triangle between her thighs blazed like the fire in the grate. His heated gaze moved slowly over her, appraising her, adoring her.
When finally he lifted his eyes to her face, he said, “God, you are exquisite. A rare work of art. Far too perfect to be real.” He leaned down and kissed her parted lips.
“I’m real, Mitch,” she said against his mouth. “Flesh and blood, just like you.”
“Thank God.”
Suzanna raised her hand and slipped it back inside his open shirt. “Why don’t you get undressed now.”
He gave no reply, but kissed her again. During the kiss she felt his thumb rub back and forth across her left nipple, and she squirmed with pleasure. Her shoulders sank more fully into the soft rug, while her hips lifted slightly. She finally tore her kiss-swollen lips from Mitch’s and looked into his hooded eyes. She saw raw passion glowing in their depths and shivered.
“Your clothes,” she again prompted.
“No, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Not just yet. Let me cherish you for a while. Let me love you with my mouth. You’re so sweet, so clean, I want to smell you and taste you and show you a new kind of loving.”
Before she could reply, he pressed his lips into the curve of her neck and shoulder. Then he slowly, carefully, trailed butterfly kisses out over her shoulder and down her slender left arm. When he reached her hand, he turned it over, kissed her warm palm, then gently urged her arm up over her head. She swallowed with difficulty when his heated lips kissed a path from her elbow to her underarm.
Suzanna drew a quick breath of shocked surprise when she felt the lick of his tongue against the prickly flesh of her underarm. Her face afire, she closed her eyes tightly, then tingled and trembled as his mouth moved down her ribs to her waist.
Her eyes opened when he gently eased her onto her stomach.
“Relax now, my love,” Mitch murmured, admiring her golden-skinned, long-limbed body stretched out on the dark sable fur like a glowing sacrifice to the gods of love. “Lie still while I adore you,” he whispered, and Suzanna did everything but. She squirmed and sighed and clutched at the downy softness of the rug while Mitch’s lips spread fire along the tops of her shoulders.
His strong brown hands leisurely caressed her bare bottom while he trailed the gentlest of kisses over her delicate shoulder blades and down her slender back. And as he brushed kiss after kiss to her sensitive skin, he spoke to her of love in a low, rich baritone that both soothed and disarmed and excited.
Supine, cheek pressed to the rug, taut nipples rubbing against the softness of the fur, Suzanna tried very hard to keep still, but it was impossible. It was one of those moments—which there were more and more of lately—when she forgot that her lover was also her enemy. How could she be expected to remember when his marvelous mouth was pleasuring her so completely? And when he was saying all those things every woman longs to hear?
“Suzanna, you’re the only woman I have ever loved, will ever love,” Mitch told her truthfully. His lean fingers stroked her pale buttocks and cupped the rounded cheeks. His mouth moved down to the twin dimples at the base of her spine and teased them with his tongue. Suzanna purred and arched her back, giving herself up to the elation of the moment.
She couldn’t keep from whispering his name when his burning lips moved slowly down her trembling thighs. He nibbled playfully at the backs of her knees, kissed her shapely calves, her slender ankles and ticklish toes. It was all she could do to keep from swooning.
And then he turned her over.
The kisses he had sprinkled over her backside had been thrilling, but nothing compared with the heated caresses he now pressed to the tight-nippled, passion-heavy breasts that were rapidly rising and falling with Suzanna’s shallow breaths.
His raven hair ruffling against her chin, his mouth captured an aching nipple as his hand stroked her flat belly. While she gazed down at his dark, handsome head, Mitch continued to pay slow, sensual homage to her bare, tingling body, sending shivers of sensation through her until she felt weak and dazed and unaware of her surroundings.
When his burning lips spread moist fire along the trembling flesh of her thighs, and his teeth gently sank into the warm skin inside, Suzanna gasped and thrust her hands into his lustrous hair.
“Mitch, no…no…” she breathlessly protested.
He didn’t listen.
Didn’t raise his head.
He continued to kiss and excite her, and by the time he was lying between her open legs, his hot face hovering just above the flaming red curls of her groin, Suzanna was too weak with wanting to offer any further protests. Her pelvis involuntarily lifting from the rug, she closed her eyes, flung her arm across her face and bit the back of her hand when she felt his tongue part the curls.
Mitch raised his head. “Open your eyes, Suzanna.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Open your eyes, sweetheart. Look at me.”
Her face aflame with embarrassment, Suzanna reluctantly obeyed. And her face grew even hotter. His dark hands urging her legs wider apart, Mitch was gazing into her eyes as if she were the most precious thing in the world to him.
He said huskily, “I’d never hurt you, never. Let me, baby. Let me make you mine, all mine.”
“I…yes, oh yes,” she panted.
“Relax your body completely and I’ll give you a kind of pleasure you’ll never forget.”
“But I…” Suzanna’s words trailed away as Mitch bent back to her.
She gasped aloud when he kissed her in that most secret of spots where all her passion was now centered. His mouth was closed, but his lips were scalding hot, and she had never felt such a splendid sensation before. She involuntarily tensed, sure that she shouldn’t like it.
“Mitch, Mitch.” She whispered his name as his mouth opened on her and he touched his tongue to that throbbing button of sleek female flesh. “No, no…” She offered a halfhearted objection and frantically clutched at the fur beneath her.
Mitch never raised his head. With his eyes closed, his hands beneath her bare bottom lifting her, he set her on fire with his tongue, teasing, circling, licking until she was literally sobbing his name in a frenzy. On the verge of sexual hysteria, she rolled her shoulders off the rug and sat up, grabbing at the hair of his head, begging him to never, ever stop!
And then an unbelievable explosion of blazing ecstasy so o
verwhelmed her that she screamed and frantically pushed him away. Jerking uncontrollably, she sank back down onto the rug as though she were a rag doll.
Mitch quickly moved up beside her, gathered her into his arms and held her close, calming her, crooning to her, telling her how much he loved her. Trembling, she clung to him, burying her face against his chest and saying his name over and over.
“Tell me you love me, Suzanna. Just once, say it. Say you love me.”
“I love you,” she whispered, and wondered if it could possibly be true.
* * *
The next time Suzanna saw Mitch was the last time.
It was that snowy November afternoon she’d gone through his musette bag while he was taking a bath. She had learned of the upcoming strike, which was sure to catch the Rebels off guard and cost lives.
When Mitch had left her at the cottage, he’d had no idea that he would never see her again.
But she knew.
In his full dress blues, he had come to her and gently cupped the back of her head.
Looking at her with all his love in his eyes, he had said softly, “I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get away again.”
“Kiss me as if this were the last time,” she replied.
He crouched down on his heels, kissed her and said, “I love you, darling.”
“Please be careful,” she’d murmured in reply.
Mitch had barely exited the cottage before Suzanna jumped up, took a sheet of vellum paper from the desk in the corner and wrote down everything she had read in the damning dispatch.
She then dressed and trudged through the deepening snow to reach the landmark—a carefully chosen leaning rock near her rented rooms—beneath which she consistently hid messages laying out information she had gleaned from her unsuspecting enemy lover.
But this particular message was different. Unlike the other dispatches she had memorized and passed on to her operatives, this one directly involved Mitch. He was to be in command of a Federal ram that would lead a surprise attack on the unsuspecting Confederates.