A Christmas Bride / A Christmas Beau (6 page)

She was pleading with him. She was swearing at him, he realized in some surprise. And then she lost her own control and came shuddering and shattering about him. He continued to stroke her while it happened and then, when she began to relax, he drove to his own release, growling out his pleasure into her hair.

He was not quite sure he was going to survive, he thought foolishly, relaxing downward onto her damp and heated flesh. He felt her legs untwine themselves from about his and somehow found the energy to lift himself off her and draw her against him before closing his eyes and sinking into sleep.

S
HE DID NOT
sleep. She lay relaxed against the heat of his body. She tried to summon the energy to wake him and dismiss him. She would have to dismiss him. She needed to be alone.

She needed to digest what had just happened—what
she
had caused to happen. She had not even taken him as far as the drawing room. She had scarcely even paused on the first landing.

She had seemed to be led by a power quite beyond her will to control. A ridiculous notion—
though it had happened before. She
had chosen to bring him to her bed, just as she had chosen that other time.…

She breathed in slowly—a mistake. She breathed in the smells of his sweat and his cologne, of his maleness.

Her earlier curiosity at least had been satisfied. She knew now how it felt with him.

It had felt frightening. The pleasure—oh, yes, there had been an overabundance of that—had got far beyond her control. It had been in his control and he had held it from her—quite deliberately, she would swear—
with his weight holding her immobile and with his insistence on setting the pace himself. Having made the decision she had made, she had at least wanted to command the situation. She had wanted to protect something of herself. He had not allowed it.

She had been frightened. All she had was herself.

He had the most magnificent body she could ever have imagined. It seemed all massive, solid muscle. And that part of him … She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly. She had been stretched and filled. For one foolish moment she had felt the terror of a virgin that there could not possibly be room. She rather believed she had screamed.

He was a man who expected and got his own way. He was a businessman. Clearly a very successful and wealthy one. A man did not achieve success in the business world unless he was firm and controlled and even ruthless, unless he was well able to make himself undisputed master of any situation. She had sensed that on her first sight of him, of course. It was not his looks alone that had prompted that rush of lust and the growing temptation. And then she had had her intuition confirmed at supper when he had told her, a look of cool defiance on his face, that he had been a lawyer and was a merchant. Lustful words. She wondered if he had realized that she found them so.

She should not have chosen to break her own—and society’s—rules with him of all people.

She wanted him again, she thought after a while. She could feel her breasts, her womb, her inner thighs begin to throb with need. She wanted his weight, his mastery. No, she did not. She wanted to be on top. She wanted to master him. She wanted to ride him at her own speed, to drive him mad with desire, to have him shatter past climax so that she could feel she had avenged what he had done to her.

She wondered if she would be able to master this man if she woke him and aroused him and got on top of him. Would she win this time? Or would he merely resume that alarmingly controlled stroking and endure long enough to send her headlong again into release and happiness—and weakness? It would be humiliating to have that happen twice.

And wonderful beyond belief.

She did not want anything wonderful beyond belief.

And then, while she was still at war with herself, the decision was taken out of her hands. She had not noticed that he was awake again. And aroused again. He turned her onto her back and came on top of her. She found herself opening her legs to him, lifting to him, letting her breath out on a sighing moan as he came, hard and thick and long, sliding into her wetness. And she found that she had his full and not inconsiderable weight on her again and that she did not fight either it or him. She lay under him rather as she had always lain beneath Christian—but no, there was no comparison. None whatsoever.

She observed their coupling almost like a spectator. Almost. There was, of course, the throbbing desire she had felt even while he still slept, and the crescendo of desire that built
there
, where he stroked relentlessly, and spread upward in waves, through her womb, up into her breasts, into her throat, and even behind her nose. He found her mouth with his and she opened to his tongue and did not even try to fight the total invasion of her body—or even the frightening sensation that it was her whole person that was being invaded.

She was, she thought a moment before she burst past control to another of those intense moments of something that felt deceptively like happiness, though it was not that at all—she was a little frightened of Mr. Downes, Bristol merchant and cit. And that was perhaps a large part of the attraction. She had never felt frightened of
any other man. His own climax came a few moments after hers, as it had the first time. He was, then, in perfect control of himself, even in bed.

She had made a mistake.
Of course
she had made a mistake.

They lay beside each other, panting, waiting for their heartbeats to return to normal. The backs of their hands touched damply between them. She wondered if he had set out to make a fool of her, or if mastery came so naturally to him that he did not even think of her as a worthy adversary. She hated him in that moment, quite as intensely as she had earlier lusted after him.

She got off the bed, crossed the room unhurriedly on legs that shook slightly—the candles, though low, were still burning—picked up her night robe, which her maid had set out over the back of a chair, and drew it about her as she went to stand at the window, looking out on the deserted street below. She drew a deep, silent breath and released it slowly.

“Thank you, Mr. Downes,” she said. “You are superlatively good. A master of the art, one might say. But I daresay you know that.”

“I can hardly be expected to reply to such a compliment,” he said.

She looked over her shoulder at him. He was lying on the bed, the covers up to his waist, his hands clasped behind his head. Even now, sated as she was, he looked magnificent.

“It is time for you to leave, sir,” she said.

“Past time, I believe,” he said, throwing back the covers and coming off the bed with remarkable grace for such a big man. “It would not do for me to be seen slinking from your house at dawn, wearing evening clothes.”

“No, indeed,” she agreed. And she stood watching him dress. She had never thought of any other man as beautiful—
oh, yes, she had
. Yes she had. She clenched
her hands unconsciously at her sides. But he had been youthful, slender, sweet.…

She turned back to the window.

She shrugged her shoulders when his hands came to rest there, and he removed them.

“Thank you,” he said. “It was a great pleasure.”

“I daresay you can see yourself out, Mr. Downes,” she said. “Good night.”

“Good night, ma’am,” he said.

She heard the door of her bedchamber open and close again quietly. A minute or so later she watched him emerge from the front door and turn right to walk with long, firm strides along the street. She watched him until he was out of sight, a man quite unafraid of the dark, empty streets of London. But then he had probably known a great deal worse in Bristol if his work took him near the dock area. She would pity the poor footpad who decided to accost Mr. Downes.

What was his first name? she wondered. But she did not want to know.

She stood at the window, staring down into the empty street. Now, she thought, her degradation was complete. She had brought home a total stranger, had taken him to her bed, and had had her pleasure of him. She had given in to lust, to loneliness, to the illusion that there was happiness somewhere in this life to be grasped and to be drawn into herself.

And she was to be justly punished. She already knew it. Her bedchamber already seemed unnaturally quiet and empty. She could still smell him and guessed that the enticing, erotic smell, imaginary though it doubtless was, would linger accusingly for as long as she remained in this house.

Now she was truly promiscuous. As she always had been, though she had never lain with any man except Christian—until tonight. Now her true nature had
shown itself. She closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the cold glass of the window.

And she had enjoyed it. Oh, how she had enjoyed it! Sex with a stranger. She heard herself moan and clamped her teeth hard together.

She was awash with the familiar feeling, though it was stronger, rawer than usual—self-loathing. And then hatred, the dull aching hatred of the one man who might have allowed her to redeem herself and to have avoided this. For years she had waited patiently—and impatiently—for him to release her from the terrible burden of her own guilt. But finally, just a year ago, he had plunged her into an inescapable, eternal hell. She felt hatred of a man who had done nothing—ever—to deserve her hatred or anyone else’s.

A hatred that turned outward because she had saturated herself with self-hatred.

She could feel the rawness in her throat that sought release through tears. But she scorned to weep. She would not give herself that release, that comfort.

She hated Mr. Downes. Why had he come to London? Why had he come to Lady Greenwald’s soirée? He had no business there, even if his sister was married to a member of the
ton
, even if he was something of a nabob. He was not a gentleman. He had stepped out of his own world, upsetting hers.

But how unfair it was to hate him. None of what had happened had been his fault. She had seduced him. His only fault had been to allow himself to be seduced.

For one moment—no, for two separate moments—the loneliness had been pushed back. Now it was with her again, redoubled in force, like a physical weight bowing down her shoulders.

She must never again—not even by mild flirtation—try to dislodge it. She must never again so much as see Mr. Downes.

E
DGAR FELT SHAKEN
. What had just happened had been a thoroughly physical and erotic thing, quite outside his normal experience. He had been caught up entirely in mindless passion.

Lady Stapleton. He did not know her first name. It somehow disturbed him that he did not even know that much about her. And yet he knew every inch of her body and the inner, secret parts of her with great intimacy.

He had had women down the years. But except for his very early youth, he had never been led to them from lust alone. There had always been some sort of a relationship. He had always known their first names. He had always bedded women with the knowledge that the act would bring him more pleasure than it brought them. He had always tried to be gentle and considerate, to make it up to them in other ways.

He had never known a truly passionate woman, he realized—until tonight. He was not sure he wanted to know another—or this one again. There had been no doubt about her consent, but still he felt vaguely guilty at the way in which he had used her. He had not been gentle. Indeed, he had been decidedly rough.

He felt distaste at what he had done. He felt dislike of her. She had clearly set out to lure him to her bed. If there was a seducer in tonight’s business, it was she. He did not like the idea that he had been seduced. If she had had her way she would have dictated every move of that first encounter, including, he did not doubt, the moment and manner of his climax.

He had come to London, he had gone to that soirée, in order to find himself a bride. And he had been presented with three quite eligible prospects. He would perhaps choose to pay court to one of them. He would betroth himself to her before Christmas or perhaps at
Mobley Abbey during Christmas. He would wed the girl soon after and in all probability have her with child before spring had turned into summer. He had promised his father, and it was high time, even without the promise.

And yet on the very evening he had met those three young ladies, he had allowed himself to be drawn into a scene of sordid passion with a stranger, with a woman whose first name he did not know.

She was a lady, not a courtesan. A beautiful lady, who was accepted by the
ton
. Obviously tonight’s behavior was not typical of her. If it were, she would be unable to keep it hidden well enough to escape the sharp eyes and gossiping tongues of the beau monde. Clearly, then, he was partly to blame for what had happened. He had stared at her when she had first appeared, and she had caught him at it. He had freely admitted his origins and present way of life to her at supper and had thus revealed to her that he was a man outside her own world.

Somehow he had tempted her. He understood that young widows—and perhaps those who were not so young, too—could feel loneliness and sexual frustration. One of his longer-lasting mistresses had been the widow of a colleague of his. He might eventually have married her himself if she had not suddenly announced to him one day that she was to marry a sea captain and take to the sea with him.