One Week as Lovers (17 page)

“To a woman who hates me.”

She tried to tug her hand away, but he held tight.

“You said you wanted me to be happy, Cynthia. Marrying you would make me happy.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It would.”

His thumb stroked the ball of her hand, brushing tingles into the sensitive flesh. How horrid he was, offering her everything she’d ever dreamed.

They’d fall in love. The world would spin to a halt around them. They’d marry too young and move to London, and the whole
ton
would marvel at the strength of their passion.

But no. That wouldn’t happen at all. If he married her, they wouldn’t be able to afford a fashionable life in town. And the whole
ton
would be too busy marveling at the abject foolishness of the match to even notice their passion.

“We cannot marry. Even if you don’t marry that woman, you can’t take me as a wife.”

“I can and I will.”

“Don’t I have a say in this?”

That finally dimmed the sparkle in his eyes. “But I thought…I love you, Cyn.”

Damn him. How could he say that so simply? How could he look at her with those clear brown eyes and make it true? “You love me as a friend.”

“I love you as a woman. And I’ve never told a woman that before. I’ve never even thought it.”

She couldn’t believe that. Nick must have fallen in and out of love a dozen times over by now. At heart, he’d always been a romantic. Surely he’d loved many women.

The room spiraled around her. Only Nick stayed still, the calm center of this quietly raging storm.

His warm gaze held her captive. “I told you we couldn’t make love unless we planned to marry.”

“I thought you’d gotten past that foolishness! Nick, listen. Please. Even if you do love me now, it wouldn’t last long once the creditors descended.”

“I’m happy here, with you, with nothing but a kitchen table and a pot of stew between us.”

My God, he looked like himself again. Young and hopeful. Her foolish Nick. The man she’d always loved. “This isn’t real. It’s not. What of your family? Your sister and brother depend on you. Your estates must need improvements. Your family would hate me. They would all hate me, and then you’d hate me too.”

His smile was patently puzzled. “Where do you get these ideas?”

“I’ve lived in a home drowning in debt for more than fifteen years. It is all my family thinks about. Money.
Money.
Can we afford new dresses? No. But if a new dress will help me find a better husband, can we afford it then? If we sell the carpets, will the neighbors notice? If they notice, will their sons shy away from marriage? But if we don’t sell the carpets, we will lose the horses, and that will be hard to hide.”

“Cyn—”

“There is no room for love when you cannot pay the servants, Nick. Or when your mother cries into her tea every evening. Or when your sister is forced to marry a tradesman and ceases to exist in the eyes of the
ton.
I’ve been the bane of my stepfather’s existence for years now. I won’t be the bane of yours as well.”

He hadn’t looked away from her during her whole speech, and he didn’t look away now. “I know what it means to sacrifice for my family, Cyn. Believe me, I do. I understand duty and obligation.”

“Then you know that we can’t marry.”

One side of his mouth quirked up. “We shall see.”

“We shall
not
see.” Tears burned her throat, swelling into a lump too large to swallow.

Nick raised her hand to his lips and brushed his mouth over her fingers.

How could he be such a fool? Such a lovable, awful fool?

Cynthia jerked her hand from his grasp and ran from him and his storybook dreams.

The cold of the floor soaked through her stockings and numbed her feet, but Cynthia kept pacing. It was late, and they faced another early morning, but she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t even sit down.

After fleeing to her room, she’d cried for a good quarter-hour, but once her tears had dried, her imagination had roused itself.

What if they did marry? Perhaps his estates could be economized to provide more income. Perhaps there was jewelry to be sold. Perhaps there was more than enough income and the family was simply living too extravagantly.

These kinds of thoughts had wound through her head for nearly an hour. She’d even sat down at her little desk and sketched a picture of her and Nick, holding hands, walking down a sunny lane.

How utterly ridiculous.

Thank God the wind had picked up and rattled the shutters. When the cold air had snuck past the seams of the wood and ruffled the paper on the desk, Cynthia had looked up in surprise. Her eyes had fallen on the open wardrobe, and the two dresses hanging inside.

Two dresses, one of them more rag than gown at this point.

One pair of boots, scuffed and scarred and leached of whatever color the leather had once held.

One nightdress, one corset, one petticoat, one chemise, one tattered pair of stockings. And one ancient diary upon which she’d pinned all her hopes.

This was what she owned. This was what she would bring to a marriage.

And Nick?

She’d looked slowly around the cold, bare, drafty room.

Nick clearly needed more than what she could offer.

And so, here she was, angry and alone, pacing the perimeter of her tiny chamber, wondering how her plan for a torrid affair had descended to this sad state.

Actually, there was no need to wonder. It was the one thing she’d feared from the start. Gentlemen’s honor.

“Blast it,” she muttered, hitting her palm with her fist. Men and their stupid honor. By God, it would drive her to her grave.

Honor had turned her into a piece of chattel to be given over to any man owed a gambling debt. Now honor would ruin her plans and lull her into becoming a lifelong burden on Nick’s family.

She wouldn’t do it. Nick’s kind of honor could go to hell. She had honor too. And plans. And dreams and desires. She’d wanted something simple and good before she left the only place she’d ever known. She’d been honest about what she wanted, and Nick couldn’t change the rules now.

Crossing her arms, she glared at the door that led to his bedroom. He’d knocked a half-hour before, but she’d ignored him just as he deserved. Was he asleep now? Was he lying there smug in his assumption that she’d fall in line with his honorable plans?

Was he still sleeping in the nude?

Cynthia set her jaw and stripped off her nightdress. She narrowed her eyes and pushed down her stockings.

He could take his honor and stuff it.

He was just floating into a lovely dream involving Cynthia, a pot of honey, and a set of silk ropes, when a floorboard creaked and snatched him from his fantasy. The sound set off a vibration of fear that traveled through his muscles and snapped him into immediate tension.

“Who’s there?” he barked as he shoved up from the bed.

“It’s me,” a soft voice answered.

Lancaster drew in a deep breath and exhaled all the tension from his body. He could just see the pale glow of her beyond the faint light of the night lamp he’d left burning. “Cyn, are you all right?”

“I’m well, yes.”

“Are you ready to talk?”

“No,” she answered sharply.

He frowned into the darkness. “Are you planning to murder me then?”

“Probably not.” Her voice came closer.

Nick squinted toward the sound as he reached for the lamp. His fingers twisted the knob, pushing the wick a bit higher. Then he swallowed his tongue.

She was nude. Starkly, beautifully nude. And walking right toward him. “No,” he said. “No, absolutely not.”

Her eyes narrowed and she kept coming, breasts bouncing slightly with every step.

“I told you we wouldn’t do this.”

“And I told you we would.” She came to a stop a foot from him and raised her arms out from her body as if to give him a better look.

He didn’t need a better look. He could see everything quite clearly. The way her nipples tightened in the cold, offering a temptation for his tongue. The way her hips flared out at the perfect angle for his hands to grip. And the dark curls covering her sex. He could
feel
the way he’d slide inside her, the way her sex would resist with delicious tightness before giving way to the full width of him.

His cock, already half hard from the interrupted dream, pulsed to brilliant life at the thought.

“Go back to your room,” he ordered in desperation.

Cynthia arched an eyebrow and took the one last step that brought her flush with his bed.

Lancaster scrambled back, but despite his best intentions, he couldn’t stop himself from watching when she raised one knee onto the mattress. “Oh, Lord,” he groaned at the brief glimpse of pink sex. “Cyn…”

Though he had enough restraint left to resist reaching for her, Lancaster couldn’t make himself back farther away. He could only freeze like a cornered hare.

“Do what you did this morning,” she said, her voice low and soft, like the finest kid leather on his skin.

He shook his head. “We must wait.” But his eyes wandered from her face to her breasts as she knelt before him like a supplicant.

“Take me, Nick.”

On her knees. Begging.

A tremor took over his muscles. And then she reached for him as if she meant to spread her fingers through his hair. He grabbed her wrists to stop her, and his fight was finished.

His fingers curled tight around her bones. He felt her tendons press against his grip as she strained against him. His heart pounded harder, and the world and his worries disappeared.

He wanted this. He wanted it now, with Cynthia, good intentions be damned. They’d find that blasted treasure, and he’d marry her and all would be well, because he would make it so.

When he pushed her to her back, Cynthia gasped. He slid between her legs, and pressed his naked weight into her, watching her eyes widen.

“Oh,” she breathed. A nice enough sound, but he suddenly needed her moaning, sobbing, screaming.

“Open your legs,” he growled.

Cynthia blinked up at him. Her lips parted as she breathed harder, and her knees inched higher on his thighs.

“More. Wrap them around my hips.”

She didn’t obey him at first. He waited to see if she would trust him, or if she’d push him off and demand to know what was wrong with him. She should push away. He knew that. But when her knees rose up to his hips and her ankles slid over his thighs, Lancaster’s blood surged in triumph.

Now his cock was snug against the cradle of her body, held by the heat of her. He rocked his hips and her eyelashes fluttered. So did his heart.

Ah, God, she felt sweet and warm and soft against him. He kept rocking his hips in a slow rhythm, rubbing against her until he felt her wetness begin to ease his way. He slid easier, faster against her.

“Nick,” she groaned as her hips tilted up, pressing her softness into his hard shaft. “Oh, God, yes. Oh, yes.”

“Does that feel good, love? Is that what you wanted?”

“Yes.” Her hands curled into fists under his hold. “Keep doing that. It’s…It feels so…”

A bead of sweat trickled down his neck. “Tell me.”

She shook her head. “It’s so good. Please don’t stop.
Please.
”

He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t stop. He’d keep her like this forever.

Her thighs began to tremble around him. She threw her head back. Though Lancaster was desperate to shift his hips and slide deep inside her body, he clenched his teeth and maintained the exact rhythm, the exact pressure that was making her jaw quiver.

A soft keen began deep in her throat. Her heels dug into his thighs. Lancaster’s arms shook, but he managed to hold onto his control until her cries swelled into screams. Then he plunged deep and hard into her sex, shuddering as her flesh spasmed around him.

“Ah!” she cried out, her hips bucking up to meet his thrust.

Heaven. Or something better than heaven, something more earthly. A timeless limbo where right and wrong ceased to exist. He had no past, and there was no future; there was only Cynthia and her hot, tight sex around him.

He flexed his fingers and ran his hands down her arms before dragging them back up to grip her wrists tighter than ever. He rode her slowly, trying to hold on, trying to keep them in this place forever.

“Cyn,” he whispered. “I love you.”

When she turned toward him, he caught her mouth in a kiss, and this was a whole other intimacy he wasn’t used to. Kissing during sex. Drinking a woman down as he filled her up. This was sweetness to temper his bitter need.

Sweetness, love, and her arms shaking under his grip…These things shouldn’t go together, but here they were, wound together and spiraling through him like a storm.

The pressure spun tighter and tighter, dragging him under, until he couldn’t breathe.

He desperately wanted to spill himself inside her, fill her up, mark her with his very essence.

But they weren’t married yet. “Not yet,” he murmured. “Not yet.”

“Nick,” Cynthia moaned. And he wanted her to say his name over and over again. His
name.
The name no one ever called him anymore. He was real with her. He was whole.

“Nick,” she breathed again, and he felt his climax begin to build with sudden, bright pressure.

“Ah, God. Cynthia. Cyn.” Though it nearly broke him to do it, he slid free of her body when he most wanted to push deeper, and spent himself on her belly.

Despite that he’d been in Cynthia’s room countless times already, Lancaster felt more than a little titillated to be standing in her chambers as she slept. He turned a slow circle, not focusing on any one thing. Just taking it in.

The gray dawn had only just begun to sneak past the cracks of the shutters. He felt as if he were underwater, wading through murky depths toward a glowing undersea angel.

Grinning at the newly romantic bent of his thoughts, he walked the last few steps to Cynthia’s bedside. She didn’t look like an angel when she slept, despite everything he’d read about women and the gentle bonds of Morpheus. No, Cyn looked a bit put out, as if she anticipated that he hovered near, about to disturb her rest. Her forehead crinkled, and her lower lip jutted out, tempting him to nibble on it. But he had a feeling he might encounter a fist against his ear if he tried that.

Touchy girl.

Somehow her moodiness relieved a pressure deep inside him. In London he was surrounded by acquaintances who seemed hidden beneath a clear, impenetrable veneer. They treated him either as a harmless amusement or a novelty to be indulged. Even his family…

The moment that his sheen had been stripped away, his parents had withdrawn from him with brutal speed. He’d been left alone to hurt or heal as he saw fit.

But he’d only been
fifteen.
A child. And that loneliness had nearly devoured him.

Watching Cynthia in the gray light, he dared to run a finger over the roundness of one naked shoulder. She frowned a little harder but didn’t wake.

Holding his breath, Lancaster gave in to temptation. He eased himself down and stretched out next to her, atop the blanket, not quite touching her body. Her eyes flickered beneath her lashes. When they stilled, he slowly released the breath he’d been holding and let his body sink into the feathers.

She looked a bit more angelic up close, her expression blurred a little by proximity. Her skin looked like the finest silk, though he felt clichéd even thinking such a thing. Hell, he was ashamed to admit even to himself that her lips looked like cherries, flushed a deep red in sleep. A strand of hair curved over her cheekbone and cupped her chin.

He didn’t dare brush it away. She might awaken and then he’d have to smile and make a joke and bounce up from the mattress with a jaunty air.

He didn’t want to get up. He’d never slept with a woman before, and wasn’t sure he ever could. If she reached for him in the middle of the night and brushed a hand down his back…Lancaster shuddered at the thought. At the very least, he might wake screaming. Worse, he might lash out.

It had seemed a simple problem to live with. He and his wife would have separate chambers. He knew now that Imogene would’ve welcomed such an arrangement, but he wasn’t sure about Cyn. And now he wasn’t sure about himself either.

This was peaceful. Here, watching the rise and fall of her chest, enjoying the faint jump of her pulse beneath the skin of her throat. His life felt suspended. He was underwater again, floating in a calm pool.

Minutes passed. How many, he couldn’t say. He may have even dozed off for a time. But eventually the gray light brightened to a dull white, and it was time to wake her. They had treasure to find and a future to plan.

After one last deep breath, Lancaster pushed carefully off the bed and tugged his coat back into place. He smoothed his hair down and rubbed the daze from his eyes.

“Cynthia.” He hoped to ease her awake, but his soft tone failed completely. She didn’t even twitch. “Cyn!”

Nothing.

Apparently he could’ve thrown himself into bed beside her and not worried a bit.

“Cynthia! Wake up!”

Finally, she stirred, but only to groan and turn away from his voice. Her hand emerged from the covers to pull the blankets over her head.

Sighing, Lancaster wandered toward her desk. “We need to get moving if we’re to get out before noon.”

“Mm,” she grunted.

“Sweet as morning dew,” he muttered back, idly pushing around a few blank papers strewn across the desk. “Out of bed, love. The—Good God above!”

The pile of papers had spilled forth a very interesting sketch. He squinted at it.

“What? What’s wrong?” Cynthia asked in a raspy voice.

Lancaster looked from the sketch in his hand to the stick of charcoal rolling slowly toward the edge of the desk. Then he looked back at the drawing.

A naked man, clearly aroused, who looked a bit like a malformed, slightly lumpy version of
him.

“Is this
me
?”

The sudden rustle of sheets drew his attention in time to watch Cyn’s eyes widen in his direction. When her gaze darted to the paper in his hand, she popped upright—the sheets clutched to her bosom, unfortunately.

“What are you doing?” she screeched.

“Waking you up. Cyn, you didn’t tell me these were
your
drawings.”

“Get out!”

“I’m sorry. I’d never have called them horrid and immature and—”

“You didn’t call them horrid,” she snapped. “Until now. Just get out! You’ve no right to be in my chambers. I’m not even decent.”

“Um, Cyn…”

“Completely outrageous!”

“You wouldn’t even
be
in your chambers if I hadn’t carried you in here in the middle of the night. And you weren’t decent then, I’ll remind you.”

“Oh!” she growled, her brow falling low as she looked frantically around the bed.

“Nothing to throw, dearest?”

He should have backed away when her eyes narrowed to slits, but in the end he was glad he didn’t. Cynthia rose up in all her warm and rosy glory and leapt at him.

There was only one brief moment to brace himself before her heat wrapped around him.

“Good aim,” he gasped as he spread his hands over her generous bottom. “Amazing, really.”

Now that she was plastered to him, Cynthia didn’t seem to know what to do with herself, so Lancaster decided to help out. He stepped to the bed, let her fall to her back, and helpfully followed her down to the mattress.

“Well then,” he murmured, pressing her hands down as he nestled between her hips.

“You have no…” She stumbled over her words when he nuzzled his open mouth against her neck. “…no right.”

He sucked gently at that spot before kissing a wet path down to one deliciously pink nipple.

“Oh, God,” she cried out, her back arching her harder into his mouth. He sucked and nibbled until she was whimpering, her hips pressing pleadingly into his.

“I’m not sure we have time for this, love.”
But what was time, really?
his brain countered helpfully. And if they
did
wait till later to leave, perhaps they’d avoid the curious stares of any late-returning fishermen who might spot them on the coast.

Her body was so unbelievably
hot
in the cool air of the room. Like a newly stoked fire.

Lancaster shook his head to dismiss his own misgivings, then reached one hand down to unbutton his breeches.

Breath held back by his tightly clenched teeth, he freed himself from his clothing and slid deep into her in one brutal thrust.

Cynthia opened her mouth in a wordless scream as he reared up to his feet. He tugged her toward him so that her bottom perched at the edge of the mattress.