At Your Pleasure (20 page)

His hands captured hers, not gently. He held them when she would have yanked free, his grip as stern as his expression.

She loosed a small cry of frustration and made her fingers into fists. He pried them open with gentle but intractable force, braiding his own fingers through them.

“Stop it!” she said. “There is no use to it!” There could
be
no use to it. How could he not understand that? Why did he torment them both?

He made no reply, still gripping her . . . waiting, it seemed. He held her there beneath the lime trees for a long moment, watching her, as though his only concern now was to see what she would do.

She stopped struggling. If he was content only to hold her hands, she would wait until he had satisfied his appetite. She returned his regard with stony disinterest, putting all her effort into ignoring the feel of his hands pressed around hers.

But as the moments passed, the sensation nagged at her. With her fingers pressed so firmly against his, the boundary between their flesh grew indistinct. His hand was large, tanned, a few golden hairs glinting on his knuckles. His skin was rough with hard use, accustomed to wrapping a sword hilt with this very surety. A nervous flutter, birthed low in her belly, shivered up her spine.

What a queer thing—that holding hands, that most innocent of lovers’ pleasures, should seem strange, premonitory, fraught with veiled significance that any moment might be put into words and change . . . everything.

She bit her tongue to keep it still. Let the pain act as an antidote to these stupid fancies as well!

But the temptation rode her hard to ask what he was about. He
wanted
her to ask, no doubt. With his silence, with his steady, solemn gaze, he was wooing her into curiosity that she could ill afford.

His thumb made a slow stroke across her knuckles.
“Listen to me,” he murmured, his voice low and gentle as a song. “I know I have caused you suffering. How may I atone for it?”

There was a trick at court among women, a wicked little laugh that communicated every shade of scorn. But she had never been skilled in it. Her laugh now sounded more like a sob. “You cannot.”

He nodded once. “How, then, may I persuade you to let me try?”

Oh, God
. She pressed her lips together and shook her head. This was . . . inconceivable. Had an angel appeared, that night Rivenham had arrived in her house, to predict that the mighty earl would soon beg her to let him make amends, she would have called the creature a minion of Beelzebub.

“You said we must coexist peaceably,” he continued. “I agree. Instruct me how.”

“That was a lie,” she said, her voice choked. “I meant to trick you to my table. You know this!”

“Truths sometimes appear in unbidden forms. I would make no strumpet of you, Leonora, but I would love you again, if you would have me.”

Her astonishment seemed to take her out of her body. For a long moment, every inch of her skin prickling, she gaped at him.

“What . . . What trick is this?”

“No trick.”

He was lying. This seduction was a stratagem. But his face looked so serious . . . “If not a trick, then perfect madness,” she whispered. “You do not know me now. Why should you care for me?”

“I think it better said that you do not know yourself.” Once again his thumbs made their persuasive stroke. “You spent those years in London as a stranger—to yourself, I think, as much as me. What if it had gone differently? What if I had shown more care for you? What if I had contented myself only with caresses . . .”

He leaned forward and placed his lips to her throat.

She gasped. His mouth was hot, soft. Her eyes closed of their own will. The smell of his skin, and crushed grass and green leaves . . .

His hands directed her own behind her back; he held her wrists at the base of her spine as his lips captured her ear, suckling the tender lobe.

“Adrian,” she whispered. The darkness behind her eyes was dizzying. She opened them to stare into the verdant canopy of the lime tree, the bright pieces of sky that showed through. “We
cannot
. Simply because I was honest with you, two nights ago . . .”

“You have said the past is done.” The words came softly into her ear. “Yet this desire never was. It lived even in the distance between us. When you passed me in London, your eyes downcast . . . you felt it then, and so did I. I did not require even to turn to know that you were near. But now, here, that distance is gone. It, too, is in the past. Who is to stop us now, Nora? What can touch us here?”

His mouth tracked downward, to the join of her throat and shoulder, while his fingers whispered down her spine, light blessings, melting pleasure. She fought to breathe. Such touches seemed innocent, but she knew where they led. The liquid heat pooling in her loins had
no business with chaste kisses. “There is also the future,” she said. “The future, and my brother’s return.”

His fingers stilled for a moment, then rubbed a leisurely circle on the small of her back. “If I told you now that my heart knew no greater desire than to remove you from this bind, would you believe me?”

The speech left her puzzled beyond words. She turned to look into his face and his mouth opened on hers.

Alchemy
. Their lips, pressed together, crushed reason.

Some women would never know a touch like this. They would never know what they deserved.

But she knew.
Only the present,
he’d said, and like a spell, the words repeated themselves in her mind, lulling her into quiescence as his mouth took hers. Yes, she would let him kiss her. But she would do nothing to encourage him. She would wait until he was through. She would fix this moment in her mind as a guide in the years to come: the sort of pleasure she deserved from a man.

His hand smoothed up her back again, the track of his nails light but distinct. The sensation drew a shiver from her, the bliss a scratched cat must feel; she wanted to push against him, to rub into him to encourage him to scratch her again. His lips moved her own apart; his tongue touched hers and another honeyed shock rolled through her. Her hands, free now, rose to wind through his soft hair, holding him closer to her as he tasted her deeply.

She had thought of seducing him. In a cooler moment, the prospect had merited consideration—not for her sake but for David’s. That calculation could be
trusted, could it not? To trust it in retrospect would mean that she did not accept this pleasure recklessly, without thought.

She stepped into him, giving him her tongue, urging him to plunder her. Not for herself, but for David she kissed him; the hot sweetness of his body against hers had nothing to do with it. How much safer for her brother to have this man intent on ravishing her rather than prying secrets from her brain. Was there not even a biblical precedent for it? Esther, that most virtuous queen, had seduced a king to save her people.

His long fingers framed her face. Together they sank to the soft earth. She pushed his fustian coat off his shoulders, palming the strength of his upper arms, the bulge of muscle that flexed as though at her command. It was not enough. She reached for his waistcoat, yanking free the fastenings, and then tugged his soft wool shirt from his breeches. His sharp breath gave her a heady feeling, voluptuous triumph; beneath the hem of his shirt she discovered the hot skin of his abdomen, rippling planes of muscle distinct beneath her fingertips.

What risk was there? Her body had proved, after so many years of a barren bed, that there would be no consequences to lying with a man. And did she not deserve such pleasure, just once more? Only once . . . and for her family’s sake, not her own.

She pulled the shirt over his head.

The sight of his bare upper body shocked her. It did not match her memories. Where his belly had once been smooth and hairless, solid shelves of muscle now strapped
him, dividing his abdomen into striated ridges around the narrow trail of hair that led into his breeches.

An ugly scar across his shoulder spoke of violence.

Sobriety felt unpleasant and cold. What was she doing? Six years—

He reached for her, those bands of muscle rippling as he moved. With his thumb he nudged up her chin, and another shock moved through her as she met his eyes, identical to those of the boy she had loved. But this was no boy. His body testified to a history unfamiliar to her.

Whatever lessons it had taught him, he showed no hesitance or uncertainty to match her own. He cupped her nape and drew her mouth to his while his free hand trailed down her body, startling each inch of flesh it passed: her shoulders, her ribs, her hips. In turn, reminded of their due, they awakened; her very skin seemed to tighten and warm, flush with forgotten demands. He palmed her buttocks and pulled her closer yet, so her breasts crushed into his chest.

Against her belly she felt his erection. As a girl, the sensation had embarrassed her . . . and then excited her. She pulled away the slightest inch and placed her hand over him, shaping his length. His groan parted their mouths, and then his teeth lightly closed on her throat. She tilted her head to allow him better access, then gasped when he took her by the arms and pulled her over him as he reclined. His pale hair spilled over the green grass like strands of sunlight. As he looked up at her, he smiled.

No shame in that smile. No doubt. Only joy.

The past lay open between them, emptied of secrets. With a trembling finger she traced the curve of his lips.

He caught her hips in his hands and turned her onto her back, pinning her to the grass with his body. A sound escaped her, a breathy gasp he captured with his mouth as he rolled his hips against her. Then he slid down her body, pulling down her neckline and putting his mouth to her breast.

A moan escaped her. That wild, reckless girl she had once been returned to her now, possessing her body, driving out every ounce of hard-won wisdom, every shred of painfully gained restraint. She remembered now how it should be: the ferocity of his attentions; his hands and lips and tongue, the way he used his entire body to seduce her, angling himself so his knee came against the softness between her thighs, coaxing her to ride him, to buck and flex beneath him as he suckled her.

She made some noise and he lifted his head to look into her eyes. His shoulders blocked out the sun, but all around him the sky glowed lividly blue. For the space of a heartbeat, the intensity of his expression frightened her. He looked at her as though he would devour her—as though nothing she could say or do would sway him from the intention so clear in his hungry face.

But then he took a long, audible breath, and lifted his hand to cup her cheek. His eyes followed his fingertips as they traced her brow, skating down to her cheekbone, pausing there. His lips parted as though to speak, but he did not; after a moment, he lowered his face to hers, and softly he kissed her.

His weight shifted off her. He supported himself on one elbow as he sipped from her mouth. His hand
slipped down her body. Cool air brushed over her calf, her knee . . .

His hot palm stroked up her thigh. Higher and higher yet it stroked before retreating. She instinctively understood the tease, and it made her twist and grow desperate again. She tried to turn into him, but the combined pressures of his palm against her thigh and his lips against hers held her in place. Her grasping fingers quested down his body, over the bumping slope of his ribs, the hard muscle banding his waist. She broke free of his mouth to cover his throat in kisses, begging silently for his hand to find its destination. She licked the bare length of his throat and knew triumph when he hissed.

His hand slipped up to cover her, pressing firmly over her most tender flesh, stroking. She turned her face into his throat, gasping as sensation built. Here was what she had forgotten: true desire. Unbearable, exquisite. No room for fear or conscience. Wanting,
needing
, to feel his mastery: be devoured, laid bare, filled, left no say in it. And yet at the same time hungering for more—hungering to wrap herself around him and hold him there forever; to sink her teeth into him and grip him when he cried out.

Her release came without warning—a violent shuddering, a convulsion so painfully sweet that tears pricked her eyes. She sobbed out a breath. So long, so long it had been . . .

As the pleasure ebbed, she forced her eyes open and looked upon a world that was shockingly unchanged.

The birds, after another moment, resumed their song.

She felt transparent, light-filled. Not fragile but newly alive. She had wagered so much for this feeling as a girl, and the courage it had taken to do so now seemed to return to her as well. She pushed herself up by her elbow and looked into his face.

He watched her with a narrow, grim focus.

As she frowned, his expression changed. He smiled, taking her face in his broad hand as he leaned down to kiss her.

His kiss seemed somehow deliberate, like a tool of distraction. Her euphoria shifted, suddenly and jarringly, to unease. The leisurely play of his lips suggested that he was not done with her by any measure. He came over her, deepening the kiss, his weight settling again between her thighs, and her body responded even as her foreboding strengthened.

There was an instrumental quality to the press of his hips against hers. He meant now to satisfy himself. And it would not be for David if she permitted him to do so.

The realization lashed through her: this quickening within her was purely carnal, self-interested. She was no Queen Esther; she did not control this desire. Her thighs parted further to accommodate the weight of Adrian’s body, and the throb between her legs urged her to tilt her hips against him. The feel of him unraveled her inborn restraint.

She would not be the seducer now, but the seduced.
She
would be the one softened by this.
She
would be the one destroyed.

She ripped her mouth from his. “Wait,” she gasped. “I can’t.”

He stilled above her. His thumb stroked her lower lip as he dipped his head to catch her gaze. “Explain to me why.”