This. This was a tempest as powerful and encompassing as the one raging outside. Her belly quivered, her limbs trembled, and her breath caught on little gasps of need that he took into his own lungs as if to lock parts of her inside of him.
His kiss was ferocious where his fingers were not. He dominated her mouth once more, his tongue flexing and exploring in decadent strokes reminiscent of the act itself.
Gentle fingers petted through the intimate hair at the apex of her parted thighs, finding abundant moisture there.
They gasped against each other’s mouths when he split the silken center of her with one lithe stroke.
Reflexively, her thighs clamped together, imprisoning his hand there.
William had struggled with her pleasure, had become frustrated with how complicated sensation had been to evoke from her body. He’d written about it. Told the world she was impossible to please.
That the fault had been hers.
And she’d believed him.
She understood now it was because she never wanted him like this. She never felt anything close to this unleashed frenzy of mindless, animalian need.
Sparks already threatened to take her over the edge as she realized that whatever miracle of magic and energy that made John corporeal also produced that strange, indescribable vibration wherever his skin connected with hers.
Against the sensitized flesh of her sex, it was an ultimately unparalleled sensation.
His finger slid easily between the slick ruffles, testing the damp folds and swirling her liquid desire around the little bud that throbbed with such fervency it bordered on pain.
“John,” she implored against his lips.
“So wet,” he groaned, his eyes unfocused as if he didn’t mark her plea.
“John, I’m already going to—”
“Yes,” he agreed fiercely. “Yes, you are.”
With a couple expert flicks of his finger, he blew her entire world apart.
Vanessa felt as if the storm outside now originated from somewhere within her. The climax whipped her this way and then that, pushing and pulling her in powerful gusts of pure extasy.
Hoarse cries were ripped away from her throat as she threw her head back into the mattress, whipping it from side to side as if to escape the overwhelming intensity of the pleasure.
He seemed to instinctively understand when it became too much, and he slowed his lithe ministrations, bringing her back to herself in slow increments.
She lay sprawled out for a moment as his hands remained beneath her skirts, soothing and petting her. Cupping her as he crooned soft encouragements into her ear, nuzzling her neck and exploring it in little nips before soothing them with a glide of his tongue.
Vanessa wasn’t certain what she expected from him, then. Perhaps that he would rip her clothing from her, spread her wide and sink inside of her for a few barbaric thrusts. Lord knew he’d earned it.
But no. He reclined away from her, covering her with her skirts.
His eyes glittered with masculine mischief as that cruel mouth spread into a dangerous Cheshire grin.
“What?” she queried with an anxious little gasp.
He gave her one dark command that both startled and stymied her.
“Kneel.”
It occurred to her to explain to him that she wasn’t one to be ordered about…as she obediently scrambled to her knees.
Yes. Just as soon as they finished, she’d certainly tell him so.
Curious anticipation dispelled whatever languor had stolen into her blood after her initial release, and she found that excitement began to build at this new and unique encounter.
In a moment he was behind her, fiddling with her skirts.
She had the idea that she knew where this was going, and the thought rather disappointed her. Not that she minded being taken from behind, especially not by him. She just didn’t think that their first time would be in such a position.
“Would you like—that is—should I bend down?” she ventured.
“Stay as you are until I move you.”
She did. Kneeling straight like a penitent at prayer as he rustled and disturbed the bed a bit.
And then his hands were on the insides of her thighs, prying her knees wider to make room for…
His shoulders?
Her eyes peeled wide as he maneuvered himself on his back beneath her skirts, his hands splaying her thighs wider, charting her bare backside as his breath grazed the intimate flesh splayed open over his face.
Her knees nearly lost their starch.
Thoroughly scandalized, Vanessa leaned to one side, meaning to wriggle away, when his long, unyielding arms clamped around her thighs.
Oh dear God. She blindly grabbed for anything, her fingers grasping the headboard.
“I—I don’t think we—”
“Don’t think for once, Vanessa,” is what she thought he muttered, though the words were a bit muffled by her skirts.
Clearly, he didn’t know her well. Which meant they should not be doing something so astoundingly intimate and immoral. “I just—”
He stole her words with one wicked kiss. One wicked, carnal, wet, and languorous kiss to lips that had never before known the mouth of a man.
Suddenly the entire world was very far away. Anything and anyone she’d ever known might never have existed. She was not herself. He was not a dead Earl. They were not in Scotland on a snowy winter night trapped by a gale and perhaps by fate.
There was only what his mouth did to her sex.
First, he supped and sampled in teasing little tucks and twirls, using only his lips, causing her body to respond with little flinching twitches as the pleasure ebbed and flowed beginning at her core and sparkling through her entire body. She’d have not been able to support herself in such a position if it weren’t for his arms winched around her thighs, taking the crux of her weight.
His tongue joined the fray before too long, eliciting a sharp gasp of delight from her as her knuckles tightened on the headboard. His mouth was relentlessly skilled as he slipped and slid around and through the petals of her flesh with inquisitive delight.
It was an exquisite torture. An excruciating bliss.
She wondered dimly where the distant, pathetic, demanding little mewls and gasps were coming from. Surely not her. She’d never dream of making such sounds.
Then, oh then, merciless monster that he was, he cleaved her with the flat of his tongue. Tasting the entirety of her topography, he laved at the little bud at the aperture of her sex with a relentless pressure that catapulted her into the stars.
Her fingernails scored the wood of the bed frame as he centered all his attentions on her core, his muscles tightening around her thighs as she bucked and writhed, arched and contracted against the onslaught of pulsating pleasure. She rode his magnificent mouth as unadulterated bliss rolled over her like a tide this time, slamming into her with the strength of a rogue wave and drawing her under. Each time she threatened to surface, the wave in the distance was upon her and again she would be dragged beneath it, helpless against the fluid potency.
And yet he was her anchor, his unfailing strength gifting her with the precious knowledge that she would never be lost. Not while he held her.
He unlatched himself from her with a noisy sound before the storm of her climax had truly passed. She made a plaintive sound in her throat as his strong hands held her legs open and he maneuvered himself into a sitting position. Resting his back against the headboard, he split her legs over his lap while she still shuddered and twitched in the aftermath of an orgasm woefully interrupted.
He stared at her for a moment, and Vanessa scrambled to find her wits so she could fathom what she read in his eyes.
But she never had a chance, not when he lowered her to where the hot, blunt head of his cock rested against the flesh still quivering with release.
Before she could beg him to do so, he lowered her onto him, filling her with one long, slow impale.
&n
bsp; Chapter Seven
If John wasn’t already dead, joining with this woman would have killed him.
The wet velvet sheath of her was a heaven in its own right as it welcomed his cock, giving way only in incremental inches as her intimate flesh pulsed around him.
He set his jaw against the storm of a release already gathering at the base of his spine.
It was why he’d not undressed her.
Of course, he’d wanted to see her body again. To unwrap her like God’s very own Christmas gift. But also, he found her prim, high collar stitched with simple lace unwaveringly erotic when her sex was currently pulling his straining shaft into her body somewhere beneath her skirts.
It would last longer like this. Without the added tantalization of watching her unbound breasts sway in front of his eyes.
It’d been longer than a century since he’d been with a woman, goddammit, and a man could only take so much.
But she took all of him. And she gave as well, holding nothing back as he made his erotic demands of her.
God, she was magnificent. Her lips bee-stung from his punishing kisses and her silver eyes a gunmetal grey, dark and dilated with passion and the aftershocks of a pleasure he was about to resurrect.
There wasn’t a man alive who deserved her.
And neither did he.
Lodging himself to the hilt, he held her there for a moment, flexing within her, kneading the soft globes of her ass with restless fingers.
When he could stand it no longer, he arched away, lifting her up to enjoy the soft pull of her channel as it clenched at him.
She was so fucking small. So tight. So perfect. He couldn’t use the word enough. Vanessa Latimer was the perfect woman. His perfect match.
He’d only had to die and wait a century and a half to meet her.
It had been worth it.
His every muscle clenched and corded with tension as he released her hips to run his hands down her smooth thighs.
Trembling as they were, she took over, her knees gripping his hips as she lowered her body to meet his relentless upward thrusts.
Of course they found a perfect rhythm immediately. Of course they did. Of course they would.
Even as they gathered speed, he reached behind him to unlatch her fingers from the headboard and nudged them to grasp his shoulders.
He wanted to feel the bite of her nails as he made her come one more time.
Licking his thumb, he reached beneath her skirt and found slick places where they joined—his hardness, her softness—and he thrummed the little peak of her pleasure, knowing her climax still lingered there because he’d left it at the ideal crest to make it crash upon her once again.
Her mouth fell upon his, open and gasping. And the moment he felt her silken sheath clench around him, drenching his cock with yet another release, he threw open the gates and allowed the storm of his own pleasure to devour him.
It took him with more force than even he expected, locking every muscle into a paroxysm of bliss. His skin caught fire, his veins constricted then released, filling his blood with an inferno of pure, carnal power.
One word swept through him as he released an agonized groan into her mouth, clenching her to his arching, straining body.
Mine, he thought, a wave of melancholy following on the wings of the most powerful pleasure he’d ever taken with a woman.
His woman.
Mine.
It was a fact. She was his. He’d claimed her just now.
And it was also a lie, because they could never be.
They stayed locked like that for an eternity, or perhaps only a few moments, it was impossible to tell in the dark.
She collapsed against him, her ear to his chest. John took entirely too much delight in wrapping one of her ringlets around his finger, uncurling it, and starting again.
Finally, after the silence had stretched between them for too long, she said, “I can feel your heart beating.”
“Really?” he murmured. Because he could only feel it breaking.
She sat up, miraculously still joined with him as she blinked languidly with her doe-bright eyes. “But you’re not—returned. I can feel you fading. I can see that you’re diminished.”
She swallowed what he knew was a lump of tears and summoned a brave smile for him, even though anguish shined in her eyes.
“I know.” He lifted his knuckles to run them against her downy cheek, realizing that he could almost see her skin through his hand. He was tied to the ring, and it had given him precious time…
But it wouldn’t be enough to keep her.
Slowly, with infinite care, he finally got around to undressing her. His fingers appreciating every button, buckle, and clasp. Delighting in every slip of skin he uncovered.
She lifted off him and they found a fresh ewer and towel left by the innkeepers, and washed themselves before sliding into bed like a couple long used to each other’s nearness.
Like it was the most natural thing in the world.
He tucked her against him, her back to his front, and he rested his head in his hand so he could gaze down at her. Commit her face to his memory.
For who knew if he would ever see her again after tonight?
She snuggled into him with unabashed relish, greedily drawing from his warmth.
“You should rest,” he murmured. Pressing a kiss to her temple as she covered a yawn with the backs of her knuckles.
“I’m not going to sleep,” she mumbled, her eyes opening a little less each time she blinked. “I’m not going to miss one moment with you.”
“I know,” he said against her hairline. Pressing little love kisses to her eyebrows. Her lids, feathering his lips across them, tasting the salt of the tears she refused to let fall. He didn’t want to say goodbye, either.
“Will you do something for me, Vanessa?”
“Anything.”
He slid the ring that belonged on his pinky onto her ring finger. “Return this ring to Lioncross Abbey for me. Perhaps it can put me to final rest.”
She curled her fingers into a fist. “Perhaps, if I keep the ring with me, I’ll keep you, too,” she slurred, half asleep. “You could be my ghost. You could haunt me.”
Somehow, he knew it wouldn’t work, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her so. His fingers worked over her face, as if learning her features like a blind man. Smoothing at her brows with featherlight touches until her jaw cracked on a yawn.
“Don’t make me sleep.” She fought it valiantly as a recalcitrant toddler. “I haven’t shown you your photograph yet. The glass negative.”
“Tomorrow.” He said the word like a promise. A promise he already knew he would break. “I love you, Vanessa.”
She mumbled something he thought might be the reply he hoped for. It didn’t matter. As much as he desired her heart, he also wanted it free. Because she would live the most extraordinary life, and he was just lucky to be a part of it for one memorable solstice night.
Chapter Eight
Christmas Day—Lioncross Abbey
Vanessa let out a violent sneeze as she once more descended into the dust of the de Lohr crypts, her body and her heart recoiling from what she was about to do.
She’d infiltrated the de Lohr crypt, a monolithic cavern beneath the granite cliffs upon which the incomparable stones of Lioncross Abbey lorded over lush and verdant lands.
If the noble family had been in residence, there’d be signs of life, but as she circled the grounds on horseback, she’d spied none. No gas lamps lit the predawn light, nor did even so much as a drape twitch in the tower.
The castle itself was an impenetrable fortress, but sometime over the past hundred years or so, an enterprising Earl had added on a lavish manner home to the keep and landscaped it in such a way that the gardens at Versailles would weep with envy.
The crypts, fortunately for her, were situated on a dark corner of the grounds and were accessible enough if an enterprising body didn’t mind clipping away vines
of ivy and squeezing through the slats of an iron fence that would have kept out an invading army.
But not one enterprising slip of a woman.
She’d eschewed her skirt for the mission, donning a pair of lad’s trousers and a coat that swallowed her to the knees. She’d pinned her hair high on her head and hid it beneath a cap.
Frost had crunched beneath her feet as she crept across the outer bailey to the mausoleum-like crypt entrance. She descended a few of the spiral stairs down below the frosted earth, before lighting her lantern. She tiptoed past the stone slabs covering many a de Lohr ancestor until she came to the one marked the year of Culloden, chiseled with the same name as was etched into her heart.
She pulled the chain upon which the ring rested from beneath her blouse, and wrapped her fingers lovingly around it, letting it burn against her palm. Could she do this? Could she uncover his bones and not fall to pieces at the sight of them?
She’d only known him one night. And that was all it took to fall.
Whatever shame and sadness she wore as a coronet before was no comparable tragedy to the past few days she’d spent waiting for him to appear.
Awaking in the sunshine after a Scottish storm, alone in the bed they’d shared, had just about broken her spirit.
He was lost to her, of that she had no doubt. Lost so soon, when she’d only just found the one man to whom she’d consider relinquishing both her name, her hand, and her heart. A man who’d transfixed and teased her. Who’d pleasured and protected her. A man to whom true honor meant more than reputation.
He’d only ever asked one thing of her.
But it was a cruel thing.
She closed her eyes and took a fortifying breath, filling her lungs with the loamy scent of earth and frost and a hint of decay. She released the ring, letting it settle between her breasts, a comforting weight around her neck.
One she’d have to give up.
She could do this. She’d done difficult things before.
She set the lantern onto the earth and discarded her gloves beside it before placing her hands on the stone slab above his coffin and pushing with all her strength. She groaned and strained, even let out a few curses, but it didn’t budge.
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