Darling Beast (Maiden Lane) (19 page)

“No,” she husked. “Caliban is dead.”

“Do you truly believe that?” he asked nearly indulgently. “I am Caliban and I am Apollo. We are the same.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He stripped off his waistcoat.

“There never was a Caliban to begin with.” She felt sad, as if she truly mourned for that gentle giant, that enigmatic mute man she’d apparently made up from whole cloth.

He actually laughed, the cad. “Do you think I pretended to dig holes and hack down trees? I am Caliban and I am Apollo and I am Smith.” He pulled his shirt over his head, laying his chest bare. “Is this not the same body you saw emerge from the pond?”

She couldn’t help it. She did now what she hadn’t been able to do then—she touched his chest, running her fingertips lightly over his shoulders, down into the wedge of short hairs between his nipples.

He took her hand and moved it so her palm lay over his left nipple. “My heart beats here,” he said, pressing until she could feel the steady thump. “The same heart, the same beat as in the garden.”

He lifted his hand, but she kept her palm there, feeling the pulse beneath his warm skin. Slowly she curled her fingers until she could trace lightly around his nipple. It puckered beneath her touch, a tiny brown bead, and she felt a sudden urge to feel it beneath her tongue. Instead she raised her other hand and circled the corresponding nipple as well, fascinated by how his flesh responded. It wasn’t until she heard the sharp inhalation that she looked up and realized what she was doing to him.

His head was thrown back, his throat rippling as he
swallowed again and again, and his mighty shoulders, so strong, so broad, actually trembled at her simple touch.

Her being lit with awe that she’d moved such a powerful man. That he literally shuddered beneath her fingertips.

“Caliban,” she whispered. “Can I call you that?”

He tilted his head down to look at her, his brown eyes half-lidded. “Caliban, Apollo, Smith, even Romeo, it matters not. I am the man that I am and always will be.”

She nodded at that, for with this she could at least agree: what she called him had never been the problem.

He arched away from her suddenly, and she was forced to let her hands fall. “Let me show you.” He stood and stripped out of shoes, stockings, breeches, and smallclothes, until he was entirely nude. He spread wide his arms, and turned before her. “I am as God made me, no more, no less. Take me as I am.”

He completed his turn, standing proud before her, and she couldn’t help but like what she saw. He was tall and well-made, with a narrow waist and muscular thighs. The hair on his chest was repeated in a knot around his navel and traveled down in a thin line into the tangle about his groin where his cock had half-risen, thick and straight and bold.

He was masculine, not beautiful. Compelling. But more importantly, with the stripping of his clothes he’d discarded all that she disliked and become merely the man she’d met in the garden.

She held out her hand. “Caliban, Apollo, Smith, Romeo,
you
. Come to me,
you
that you are.”

He took her hand, but instead of climbing back on the bed, he drew her up instead. “I have an urge,” he murmured in her ear as he drew her against his nude body, “to make you as I am. Then, truly, shall we be equals.”

So he patiently unlaced, untied, and unclothed her, his fingers working deftly on delicate material and tight cords. Reverently he drew off her bodice, her skirt, her petticoats, her stays, her chemise, her slippers, and laid them neatly aside until he knelt at her feet to unroll her stockings. She placed her palm on his shoulder as he set her foot on his knee and untied her garter. Her stockings were her best, but even so they’d a mended hole at the heel. He unrolled them as carefully as if they’d been lace, pausing to kiss her instep as he pulled them off. Then he set that foot down and picked up her other, drawing her so close that his bent head nearly brushed her bare mons.

She swallowed, watching as those wild locks came perilously close to her maiden hair. She felt his fingertips trailing behind her knee and then he bent and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to the same place.

Her hand moved from his shoulder to his head, threading through his hair, clutching as he moved up her thigh, licking, sucking, the stocking entirely abandoned, until she felt the whisper of his breath against her damp flesh.

She nearly toppled, her knees going weak. He grasped her hips and turned with her until she could rest against the bed, and then he took her leg and flung it over his shoulder and kissed her.

There. Open-mouthed, licking across delicate flesh.

She gasped and could not breathe out again. He’d seized her lungs, made her forget everything but that place between her legs as he lapped at her, thoroughly debauching her.

Helplessly she grasped at his head, holding on for
dear life as he found her nub and fitted his lips around it, licking delicately, relentlessly until she suddenly felt the gentle scrape of his
teeth
and that was it.

She shoved her fist into her mouth and only just in time as she arched into him, her leg tightening on his broad shoulders convulsively. She shook, wailing behind her fist, black spots in her vision as warmth flooded her. And all the while he licked and licked and licked until she had to weakly push against his shoulders to make him stop.

He raised his head and wiped his chin and mouth with his hand before prowling up her body, stopping to lave her navel. He pulled her all the way on top of the bed and then pushed her thighs farther apart. He settled between them, his belly at her center and his head just on a level with her breasts.

“So pretty,” he crooned, and for an amused moment she wondered if he was talking directly to her breasts.

Then he dipped his head and licked around one nipple.

She whimpered and he opened his mouth over her nipple, suckling gently but urgently. With his fingers he tapped the other nipple, making it peak. She ached with want, almost painful so soon after her orgasm. Surely he was hard by now? Surely he was ready to join with her?

But he seemed in no hurry, lifting his head only to move to the nipple he’d fingered. When he pinched the one he’d left she nearly screamed at the feel against her wet flesh.

“Please,” she moaned, grasping his head, trying to pull him up. “Please, please,
please
.”

He looked up at her, lazily licking her breast. “Who am I now?”

She shook her head, restless, on edge, and so very, very wet for him. “It doesn’t matter.”

He smirked then and rose over her.

She looked down, watching as he grasped his penis, fully engorged now, an angry red pillar rising from his pubic hair. He brought it between her legs, rubbing it up and down, wetting the head with her moisture.

She lifted her legs, wrapping them over his hips loosely. “Now, now, now.”

He glanced up at her and his smile had left his face. He bit down on his bottom lip as he notched himself, the skin white beneath his teeth. He flexed his hips and nudged inside.

Big. He was a big man.

She gasped, holding her legs wider, higher, trying to give him more room.

His eyes were closed, his upper lip hitched in a snarl, almost as if he were in pain.

Or great pleasure.

He thrust again,
hard
, and the entire length of his erection filled her.

She made a sound, restless, wanting.

He opened his eyes, looking down at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

She was stretched and so delightfully full of him. She twined her arms over his shoulders, digging her nails into his back. “Yes.
Move.
”

And he did.

He pulled nearly out and then pressed in again, over and over, each time a little faster, a little harder, until he was pounding into her.

His back was slick with sweat and her hands slid
against him as her fingers moved restlessly over him. She trailed her nails down, scoring him, probably hurting him, and she no longer cared. She reached his buttocks, muscled and rounded, and grasped him, pulling him tightly into her.

He propped himself on his elbows and screwed his hips into hers, his cock deep in her. And as he did so, he watched her, a bead of sweat slipping down the side of his dear face. He pushed a lock of her hair off her face and brought his mouth crashing down on hers, open and wet and not entirely in control.

But his hips kept moving, plundering her, owning her, making her climb those heights again.

She groaned into his mouth, animal and wild, and felt the slip of his hard chest against her nipples.

This man.

Whatever his name.

This
man.

She broke, shuddering nearly violently, throwing back her head, wailing her release as he slammed into her one more time and withdrew, suddenly and awfully.

She stared up at him, shocked, as cold air caressed her entrance and hot semen spilled on her belly.

He shook with his release, moaning as if in pain, and another splash hit her thigh. He slumped against her, a heavy weight, but she couldn’t push him away.

Instead she stroked his cooling back, staring at the ceiling and wondering what she’d just done.

A
POLLO WOKE TO
the feel of soft flesh under his palm. He stroked upward, cupping a silky breast in his hand, and smiled without opening his eyes.

This, this must be paradise.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and he realized for the first time that she was awake as well.

He opened his eyes. It was a small room that she and the other actress had been given, with only one bed that apparently they had been expected to share. A candle still guttered on the bedside table, throwing a flickering yellow light across her face.

He couldn’t read it. “I think it’s I who should be thanking you.”

“Not for that.” She turned her face to his suddenly, her mouth curled wryly. “Thank you for not spilling inside of me.”

A delicate tint colored her cheekbones.

He remembered Indio. Obviously some man had once
not
bothered to pull out at the crucial moment.

Apollo bent to kiss her shoulder and then took a corner of the sheet to tenderly wipe his seed off her belly and thighs. “May I stay?”

She sighed. “Yes, unless Moll returns before morning. I’d”—she licked her lips—“I’d like for you to stay.”

He smiled against her shoulder, ridiculously pleased.

Her hand reached up and he felt her fingers in his hair. “So they’re your family?”

He wasn’t sure he wanted to delve into the matter now—his blue blood seemed to dismay her. “Yes.”

She moved as if she were looking at him. “Are they all you have left?”

His head was on her shoulder and he concentrated on tracing around one rose-tinted nipple. “Besides my sister, yes.”

“She knew you were in the garden?”

“Artemis?” He finally cocked his head back so he could see her expression. She had a tiny frown between her brows. “Yes. She brought me food and clothes and other things when she could. It’s how Trevillion found me.”

“
Found
you?”

He sighed, abandoning the nipple with regret. “Trevillion was looking for me. He knew Artemis was my sister and he followed her until she led him to me one day. The day you saw us fight.”

“But…” The frown had grown deeper. “Why was he looking for you in the first place?”

His jaw clenched as a sudden shiver shook his frame. The fire had died down in the grate and the room was drafty. He got up, padding to the fireplace.

“Apollo?”

He closed his eyes. She’d stopped calling him Caliban and he didn’t want that. Didn’t want his past to rise up between them again.

He glanced over his shoulder to see that she’d sat up and pulled the coverlet over her breasts like a barrier between them. There was no help for it, then—it always came back to that wretched night. The night his life had been destroyed.

“Trevillion was the soldier who arrested me for the murders.”

Lily watched Apollo. He squatted unselfconsciously nude at the hearth, stirring the fire. He was silhouetted in the firelight, powerful shoulders black and almost monstrous, narrowing to muscled hips and thighs. No wonder they’d thought him a murderer. No wonder they’d taken one look at such a big man and been afraid.

But was that entirely what had happened? He’d told her little, and what else she’d heard was from snippets of gossip and newssheets. Trevillion was the soldier who had arrested him, but now that same man was working to prove him innocent. There were gaps in her knowledge and she was tired of secondhand information.

She cleared her throat, the sound loud in the silence. “Can you tell me what happened that night?”

He’d been about to lay a scoop of coal on the fire, and at her words, he paused for a fraction of a second before continuing. He rose, dusting his hands, broad back hunched, the flames reflecting off the sheen of his skin. He turned his head so that she could see his profile, large nose, prominent forehead, craggy lips and chin.

“You have to understand,” he said quietly. “I was young. Four and twenty. That might not seem so very young to you, but I’d spent most of my life in schooling. First at Harrow, where my grandfather paid for my education, and then Oxford. When I came to London I had a very small stipend from the earl, delivered through his lawyers. I spent it drinking and wenching, mostly.”

He turned at last, though she still couldn’t see his features.

“That’s what men of my rank do. They spend money and drink. They don’t labor—even if their family might be starving.”

“Was your family starving?” she asked sharply.

He shook his head immediately. “No. But neither did they have very much to live on. My father had gone through nearly all the money he’d had and the earl refused to give him more. My sister and mother lived very simply in the country because of it. Artemis never had a season, nor a dowry.” He began walking toward the bed. “But I grew weary of the aimless days, the expectation of
nothing
. I was supposed to live my life waiting for the old earl to die.”

She couldn’t imagine him—so physically and mentally active—consigned to waiting on another’s death.

He’d reached the bed now and he climbed in, sitting up against the headboard and pulling her back to lie on his chest.

She laid her head on his shoulder, listening.

“I’d met some fellows at Oxford who had new theories on gardening. Grand schemes that broke from the medieval idea of straight little lines and ordered plantings. They were thinking in terms of vistas. Of beautiful sights that would last for generations. Of natural lines and shapes—made better. I began corresponding with them while I was in London, exchanging ideas and plans. Then I was hired to help on an estate outside Oxford itself.”

He wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned forward to kiss his hand, silently urging him on.

“It was a great opportunity,” he said, but his voice was sorrowful. “It was practical work when before all I’d done was dabble in theory. That garden took a season to build and after that I was recommended to another estate. And then my grandfather found out what I was about.”

She frowned. “Why would that matter?”

“Because,” he whispered, leaning his cheek against her temple, “remember what I already said? Aristocrats don’t labor. When my grandfather found out, he cut me off. He considered my desire to learn the art of garden planning on a grand scale to be an early sign of the same disease that had driven my father mad. He thought our entire line tainted.”

“Oh, Apollo.” She hadn’t much family herself, but to be so harshly judged simply because one had found an interest in life? It seemed ridiculous.

He nuzzled her hair. “That day I was in London. I met up with three friends. We resolved to spend the night together—two were from school and I’d not seen them in some years. We reserved the back room of a tavern in Whitechapel and ordered wine and food.”

She stirred. “Why such an awful part of London?”

“We hadn’t much money, I’m afraid. The tavern was cheap.”

He stopped speaking, but she could feel his uneven breaths.

“What happened?”

He inhaled. “I don’t know. We shared a bottle—and after that all is blackness. I woke the next morning with my head pounding as if it would split. As soon as I moved I vomited. And then I saw my hands.”

“Apollo?” She tried to twist her face to see him, but he tightened his hold on her.

“I’d been drunk before,” he rasped. “But this was nothing like that. It was as if I were dreaming and couldn’t wake. My hands were covered in blood, I held a knife in my right hand, and there was screaming. I couldn’t stand—when I tried, I fell. And my friends…”

She squeezed his hands. She already knew what had happened to his friends. The scene of the murder had been recounted in countless newssheets—and whether the details had been correct hardly mattered at this moment. They’d been murdered.

Horribly slaughtered.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “so sorry.”

“The soldiers came,” he murmured, his voice flat now. Had he even heard her? “They took me away in chains—on my ankles, wrists, and neck, for they were afraid of me. I was taken to Newgate to await trial. I vomited again and again and was half out of my mind for several days. I don’t remember much of Newgate. But I remember Bedlam.”

She raised his hand, pressing her lips to his palm to
keep from blurting that he didn’t have to tell her. For she was very much afraid that he
did
have to tell her—not for her, but for himself.

“It…” He panted for a second, then burst. “The
smell
. Like a stable, only the manure is from
humans
, not horses. They chained me there as well, for I raged, in fear and desperation, for the first days. Until I was too weakened by lack of food and water.”

She sobbed, turning swiftly. She could not bear to hear of this—such a strong, good man brought low. Chained like a beast by petty people who didn’t understand him. She knelt on the bed, wrapping her arms around his head, bringing it to her breast, and only then did she feel the wet trails of tears on his face.

He kissed her between her breasts, a sweet brush of his mouth. “Artemis came when she could. She brought me food and gave all her coin to my attendants—more jailers, in truth—to make sure they wouldn’t beat me to death while she wasn’t there. My father died a year before the murders and our mother passed away in the first month I was in Bedlam. No doubt my incarceration hastened her death. My sister, my brave, proud sister, was forced to become a companion to our cousin.”

His voice broke.

She smoothed her palms over his great head, running her fingers through his hair, trying to comfort though she knew she must be failing.

He turned his face, laying his cheek against her chest. “At least Artemis had a roof over her head and food aplenty. I lay awake for nights after I received word of our mother’s death, fearful that Artemis would be tossed into the streets. I could do nothing. Nothing. She
was—is—my sister. I should’ve been able to protect her, to care for her and make sure she never had to worry, and yet I was helpless. Hardly a man at all.”

“Shh,” Lily murmured, pressing kisses against his hair. She could taste her own tears on her lips now. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Apollo—her Apollo—should’ve had to endure such inhumanity.

“The things they did there…” His voice was hoarse, broken. “There was a woman,” he whispered. “A poor mad thing, but she sang in such a lovely voice. One night the keepers came to do her harm and I called to them, mocking them, and they came to me instead.”

She stiffened, her throat clenching in fear. Oh, her brave Apollo! How noble and how foolish to draw the ire of his jailers.

“They beat me until I passed out,” he said. “That was when I lost my voice. Afterwards—after I was rescued by the Duke of Wakefield, after, when I lay abed, regaining my strength, though not my voice, I thought of her. I went back one night, but she was already gone. Some fever had taken her. Perhaps it was for the best.”

She looked down and saw that he’d closed his eyes, though his brow was knit fiercely.

“But I made sure that guard—the one who’d meant to harm her, the one who’d led my beating—could harm no one ever again. I dragged him from that place and gave him to a press-gang. Wherever he is now, he’s not around women. I never would’ve done that before. Bedlam changed me.”

They had taken away something very important from him when he’d been made helpless. It should’ve broken him, being forced into chains. Yet it hadn’t.

Even in her grief she was amazed.

She framed his face with her hands, tilting it up so she could look in his eyes. “You survived. You endured and survived.”

His lips curved bitterly. “I had no choice.”

She shook her head. “There’s always a choice. You could’ve given up, let them take your soul and mind, but you didn’t. You persevered. I think you are the bravest man I have ever met.”

“I think, then, that you’ve not met many men,” he whispered. His voice was light, but his face still held the years of tragedy.

“Hush.”

She kissed him, not as a lover, but almost platonically, to acknowledge all that he was. Her lips brushed his forehead, both cheeks, and finally his mouth. Softly. A benediction.

“Let us sleep,” she said, and helped him to lie down on the bed.

She arranged the covers over both of them and then laid her head upon his chest, listening to the beat of his heart:
ba-thump ba-thump ba-thump
.

And that was how she fell asleep.

A
POLLO WOKE TO
the realization that he’d overslept. When he’d worked in the garden, he’d awoken as the birds had heralded the rising sun. But here inside, in a soft bed with a softer, warm woman against his side, he found it harder to brush away the tendrils of sleep.

“What?” Lily mumbled as he gently removed her arm from his belly.

He’d like to linger longer. To kiss her awake and make
love to her again, but it was only a matter of time before the servants descended on the room. Besides, the sooner he left, the less likely that he’d run into other guests.

So he dressed quickly as she sighed and rolled to burrow into the warm spot he’d left.

Apollo gathered his coat and gave a last glance around the room before bending to kiss her again on the lips.

Her brow wrinkled ferociously and she cracked her eyelids to mutter, “Is it?”

He smiled. Evidently she wasn’t an alert waker. “I’ll see you later.”

Her only reply was an unfeminine grunt as she pulled a pillow over her head.

The smile still lingered as he crept into the hall and gently shut the door behind him.

He caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look to his right. Had someone just disappeared around the corner at the end of the corridor? Or had the movement been imagined?

Apollo narrowed his eyes, thinking, but in the end decided that even if he’d seen someone, most likely it had been a servant at this time of the morning.

He turned in the other direction—only to find the Duke of Montgomery watching him.

He prevented himself from starting only by sheer willpower. “I hadn’t thought you an early riser, Your Grace.”

Montgomery cocked his head. “What makes you think I’ve slept?”

Apollo examined the other man. He was perfectly groomed in a bloodred suit, pumps, and clocked hose. His golden hair had been swept back into an elegant tail, the
ends curled. Or perhaps his hair curled naturally. In any case, Apollo felt like a rat next to a sleek greyhound.

Not that he cared in particular.

“Have you?” he asked curiously, approaching the other man. “Slept?”

A secret smile curled the duke’s lips. “I find sleep a bore—especially when I might spend the nocturnal hours in more… pleasurable pursuits.”

“I see.” Apollo fell into step with the other man. He had no idea where the duke was headed, but he himself was bent on the breakfast room in search of strong coffee.

God, he hoped his uncle provided coffee for his guests.

“Morning is the best time to discover the inhabitants of a house sneaking out of bedrooms not their own.” The duke gave him an entirely too-innocent look. “As you were doing just now from Miss Goodfellow’s room. I now understand your ire yesterday at the unexpected sight of her.”

Apollo glared. “I’ll thank you not to spread my connection to her about.”

“Why would I do that?” Montgomery looked honestly puzzled and Apollo repressed an urge to punch the man in the nose. “What good is knowledge if one shares it with everyone?”

Anything he answered would only provide fuel for Montgomery’s scheming, so Apollo changed the subject. “Have you discovered anything of interest in your sneaking about, Your Grace?”