Face to Face (The Deverell Series Book 2) (11 page)

This
: he brought it between them and she didn’t retreat. The memory of his fury unleashed on her today stabbed him. Was that why she was in his bed, out of a fear it would happen perhaps in fury instead of love?

Merry’s incaution worried him since he didn’t understand how it had come about, so he pressed, “I apologize for my behavior earlier. This is not a gesture you need make if you are worried that I can’t give you your way any longer. I don’t understand why I should find you in my bed after how I treated you.”

He looked at her reflection back at him. That he didn’t understand seemed to please Merry. Her smile was broader and her eyes brighter. She slipped her hands down her legs, the movements unintentionally seductive. She fixed her fingers around her toes. The youthful gesture touched his heart.

“You may sit on the bed while I explain. I am not going to hit you if that’s why you are hovering by the door, Varian. I have never once been afraid of you. I would not be in your bed in fear of your fury.”

He watched as her sapphire gaze raised to squarely meet his and then took on a faint wash of amusement. The tautness of his body held him at the door for moment, before he moved to sink on the bed beside her, close but careful not to touch her. He must do this right, in slow tenderness.

When she didn’t speak, he said, “Are you going to explain? I am too uncertain to be hopeful yet.”

Merry laughed, as she broke their separateness by touching his hand with a finger. Every nerve in his body felt as though it were beginning to blister. His heart filled with both his joy and his regret.

He didn’t want her this way, not in a manner so much less than she deserved, and he knew there was no change of course in this for either of them. Merry had chosen the wrong path, to be his mistress rather than his wife. Still, he wanted to do this in the manner she deserved.

“It is not often I unravel you enough to understand you, so let me take my time in this,” she said.

“You have been unraveling me since your first night on my ship,” he told her softly.

“Good, then we are even in yet another way.” After a pause. “You are a complicated man. You are villainous in reputation. However, you don’t ever behave in a villainous manner. The current fashion in London is all things Greek. You are elegant and fashionable in all things. But, you did not name this ship out of mockery of the current fashion. You, you insufferable man, named it from the bible. I would venture more precisely, 1
Corinthian
’s Chapter 13. Even more precisely, these passages: ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, love is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interest, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.’”

He couldn’t speak. It was not possible to give voice into the beauty of her at this moment.

Merry laughed softly. “Do you know how much you flatter me with your silence? Would you like to know how I figured this out? It is why I am in your bed.”

Holding onto her with his gaze, cautioning himself to move slowly in this, his hands covered hers. He brought her fingers to his lips. After a light kiss, he took a breath and said, “I want it all.”

The pleasure of his fingers clasping hers was different, so much headier, than at any other time. She was just beginning to understand the startling strength of what he felt for her. The kiss, even in her fear and nervousness of what she would later do with him, had a calming affect that returned to her composure to finish.

Merry’s voice was one of airy sureness. “It might have made me less furious with you in Virginia if I had realized the words you spoke were not poetic verse, but a passage from the bible. ‘When the perfect comes the partial will pass away.’ I am not as obedient to my faith as you are, Varian. It took me awhile to recognize it. It put many things into less troubling perspective. I was wrong in my suspicions of you at Winderly. You were sincere in your heart in every word and with what you offered me. Your proposal was not a meaningless gesture to trick me into your bed. Just as the name of this ship is not meaningless to you. All the things you do hold the air of significance because they all have meaning. This ship and Morgan, so unlike the man you are, are tied to Rensdale and the death of your wife.”

“I adore you, Merry. You are my heart.” One of his hands cradled her cheek, running his thumb along its slope in a loving stroke of whispering tenderness.

Lifting her eyes, she saw his face in a new way. All controls stripped, features and eyes transformed by the well of his heart, and the uncontrolled emotion softened his face into something more perfect to her than he had ever looked before. He was a beautiful man when the wealth of who he was rose un-tempered to his flesh.

She touched him and her hands did a gentle and intimate glide on his clothing. “I am at the end of the part of this, I know how to manage.”

He laughed. “Ah, and it was going so wonderfully. Perfection. I could not have done so well. I will never be able to manage a hint of that.”

“You had better be able to manage something, you insufferable man. I have waited in this bed for you a long time.” Merry’s eyes swallowed her face as she lifted them to him. “Show me. Show me how to love you.”

Merry’s youth and innocence were nearly enough to stop him. She deserved so much more than this fate, but her guileless handling of this made his will drift from him, piece by piece, like sand being sucked by the surf from the shore. Varian wanted to do this right, and yet he wondered if he’d able to do it at all.

Touching her, opening her body to share completely at last what was between them, at this moment of absolute joy held the bitter bite of obscenity. To share the perfection of Merry like this was an act that would scar her. What made him love her made him not want to do this. He was a well versed lover and, at this moment, he knew no direction to go, having not shared himself in an act of love for so long. An act of love. It was the only way he might be able to do this and not hate himself forever for having done it.

Brushing the gossamer curls back from her face, Varian said in voice that surprised him by being unsteady, “You don’t need anyone to show you how to love, Little One. It is you who returns that to me.”

Merry surprised him again when, with shaking hands, she began to edge apart the buttons on his shirt. It wasn’t easy for her, her fingers were clumsy and each fastening agonizingly slow to open. The slowness was torture for him, but he let her finish. When at last the neat row fell back from his chest, she dropped her hands away as he undid the cuffs on his own.

She lowered her eyes as his hands moved to the fastening of his breeches. She was struggling not to look at him and blushing very prettily.

She said, “It’s not fair. I know not how to do this and I suspect that part of your reputation is correct and you do know how to do this. You have the advantage in everything, always.”

He sank down beside her on the bed, breeches over hips, only partially unfastened. Tilting up her face, he carried her hand to his body, pressing her palm to his furious heartbeat. “This is your advantage, Merry. You have been every beat of my heart since I first saw you.”

He lifted her hand to his lips, and she slipped her tiny fingers on the sides of his waist, clasping for support, to nuzzle her cheek where he’d put her hand. Then she put a delicate kiss there. He took in a sharp breath, the touch of her lips nearly shredding the restraint he was trying to maintain.

“Merry,” he whispered, seeking her cheek with an unsteady hand, his fingers lacing through her hair in little wandering circles. “Every part of you is a treasure to me. I will only be gentle with you.”

New to this as she was, she needed time. So keeping her carefully bound by blankets, he curled her onto his lap. Murmuring his desire for her, he let his hands glide the bare length of her arms, his face nestled into the foamy cloud of her curls, touching in a light kiss.

They sat like that a long time, sharing a glass of wine between them in a gentle intimacy of touching and kissing that hopefully would carry them both through this. By the time the sharpened edge of her tension was gone, his need for her was running like flame-tipped swords through his flesh.

Stroking her cheeks with the backs of his fingers, he said, “I am going to douse the candle and finish undressing.”

Setting her from him, she pressed her pearly cheek, dappled of pink mist, against her knees. She made little darts with her eyes, watching him as he moved about the cabin, though unmistakably trying not to watch. She made him almost crazy from the love in his heart for her.

He came down beside her in the bed and slowly drew her up against him, carefully, without full touch of their bodies. Breathing tender words against her flesh, his caresses roamed her in an unhurried glide. Each slope, the line of her neck and collar bone, the swell above her breast, soothing her until the tautness of her muscles moved to supple yielding.

His face dipped to the underside of her breast, feeling her jerk sharply. His fingers spanned their lush roundness, with tips gently coaxing, and she slowly relaxed into his touch and mouth as his soft kisses learned each inch of their fullness.

Merry looked down at the tanned fingers. It was a shock to see his darker flesh against her pale skin and his strong male hands running the contours of her legs. Her body trembled in want from the gentle caresses, while a flutter of fear danced in her stomach. He was so strong. Even the gentleness of his touch couldn't completely mask his strength and did nothing to camouflage his size. She felt tiny against him, like a dainty collection of bone and tissue, and it was all supposed to blend with that powerfully muscled man.

She had never lay with a man before, had never been with one like this. Could he understand what that meant to her? She knew the basics of the act, but that was all. Both his kisses and caresses became more thorough. Her flesh tingled, wanting him more, but she made no move. She didn’t know how to meet the knowing caresses of her flesh.

As his experienced fingers trailed downward on her throat, her eyes rounded and she breathed thickly, “I know nothing of what to do to satisfy you.”

He stroked her chin with a lazy finger as his lips kissed her once on each eyelid. Those angel bright blue eyes were anxious with uncertainty, but that was not all he saw there. She hadn’t said that she was afraid, but fear was there, a dark lacing in her eyes.

His husky whisper came, “Whatever you do with me will satisfy me. I won’t hurt you with my body.” Her muscles ached from the tenderness of his touch. “I will just touch you... as long as you want.” His hand glided the slope of her hip and she relaxed into him. “Nothing more.” His erotically light kisses traced beneath her ear. “If you don’t like what I do, you must tell me and I will change it. I won’t do anything you’re unwilling to have me do. I would never want to hurt you in this.”

Merry felt his breath against her shoulder, and then the palms of his hands, running slowly up her arms. His hands were drifting over her, gently exploring. His caresses were sure and potently stirring. A surprised moan swept from her mouth, as his lips closed over one hardened nipple, teasing her there as his hand moved from the smooth contours of her back to the sensitive slope of her buttocks and lifted her into him.

Her body followed of its own demand, closer and closer, until she touched him full length, arching into him as her arms slipped over his shoulders to entwine behind his neck. She leaned forward, skimming her lips across the sculptured surface of his chest. The brush of his hair there against her chin sent vibrations downward along the nerve-tips of her limbs.

At first she touched him lightly, hesitantly, and then more boldly as her body screamed for heightened contact. Clumsy and anxious, she twisted into him, feeling the turn of her body onto her back, his body at a half angle over her, and then the parting of her legs as his mouth devoured her breast.

She jerked with a sharp intake of breath as his hands slipped to the inside of her thighs, cupping her center, then stroking there. As his finger opened her dainty flesh, the air trapped in her lungs left in little spurts as her muscles unrolled with it. His fingers moved in a brushing rhythm that flooded her body with aching dampness, as his mouth moved across the rising heat of her flesh. He traced upward from her breast, to the line of her neck and under jaw, to capture her mouth. The dance of his tongue shot currents through her body as she pushed upward into his fingers there, eager and seeking.

“Varian...” she murmured weakly as he roamed her throat with his mouth. She was breathless and weak. She whispered his name over and over until she could whisper nothing.

It was as if she were floating as he guided her beneath him. It felt so wonderful, with his male body pressed fully to her, that the thought of stopping this never entered her mind as he lay there stretched across her, ravishing her lips. She let her body melt, molding into him like a perfectly formed single puzzle. They were so close. But it wasn’t enough. The ache in her body was wild and demanding. She was desperate for him. As overwhelming as his hands touching her everywhere had been—in her most intimate spots and places not intimate at all—it was nowhere near enough for her. She wanted more. Her desire for him was a spinning web, wrapping around her, drawing her to him.

His hands brought every inch of her body to wakefulness. There was no part of her that missed his attention. Every inch was stroked into eager want. When at last he entered her body, she was eager to receive him, it was right and necessary.

He joined them with careful restraint, in delicious slow degrees, letting her body yield to his invasion. Not even the pain when he was at last buried himself deeply within her, the vague awareness of the forever loss of her innocence, diminished the pleasure she felt in sharing herself with him in that first moment they became one. Every kiss, every touch, every move was slow, patient, and tender.