Slightly Sinful (29 page)

They had to make amends for that night in Brussels.

She was gazing at him, wide-eyed, her head turned back over her shoulder.

"Are you mad?" she asked him.

"To believe that two wrongs will make a right?" he asked her. "Perhaps. But although liking was all mixed up with the lust on that last occasion, basically I was a man consorting with a whore. I hate even thinking about that, but it is true. It says terrible things about me morally. And then I resented you after discovering the truth because you had not told me. And this was after I had disappointed you. It was your first time and I made it a ghastly experience for you."

"You were not entirely to blame," she said. "You did not seduce me. If anything, it was the other way around. I let you believe that I worked there and that I was available that night. And then I was so gauche that . . . Well, never mind."

It struck him suddenly, looking at her, that she was the perfect lady of breeding, dressed daintily and fashionably in muslin, her hair neat and shining beneath a small-brimmed straw bonnet, her frilly parasol on the grass beside the basket. He ought to be paying gentle court to her, not inviting her to lie with him here on the grass. But her life had not developed along typical lines. Neither had his since the fifteenth of June.

She continued to look back at him across the space of perhaps twenty feet that separated them. But the thread of their conversation had broken, and there were several moments of silence during which he felt a heightened awareness of the sun beating down on them, the water sparkling below them, insects whirring in the long grass, and a single unseen bird trilling from one of the trees.

Her gaze slipped to somewhere on the grass between them.

"I will not touch you without your permission," he told her. "If you would prefer, we will forget everything that has just been spoken and sit down on this blanket to eat the picnic tea Phyllis has prepared for us before I row you back to the house. We will go back to the pretense and make the best of the situation until the time comes when we can part and try to forget we ever met. The last thing I wanted to do was make things worse between us."

She opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again and looked down at her hands, which she spread at waist level, palms down. Her face was lost to view beneath the brim of her straw bonnet.

"I do not know anything about . . . making love," she said. "I lived a very sheltered existence with my father and a restricted life with Lady Flatley-until I met Nigel Crawley. But even he never so much as kissed my hand. I did not know what I was doing that night in Brussels with you. I do not know how to make it . . . pleasant."

He closed his eyes briefly as it struck him that his feelings were perhaps more deeply engaged with Rachel York than he cared to admit to himself.

"You do not need to know," he said. "I do know. I want to leave you with happier memories of me. I want to take away with me happier memories of you. Just tell me something, Rachel. Have there been consequences of that night? It was a month ago. You must know by now."

That brought her eyes up to his again and turned her cheeks rosy.

"No," she said.

"And there will not today either," he said. "I promise you that. Let me make love to you."

She lifted her chin slightly and kept her eyes on his.

"Very well, then," she said.

She came toward him then. She did not stop when she reached the other side of the blanket but walked right across it to stop a foot away from him. He untied the ribbon bow beneath her chin and tossed her bonnet to the ground, cupped her face with both hands, and set his mouth to hers.

This was, of course, no clinical, dispassionate exercise to set matters right between them. There had been an attraction between Rachel York and himself from the first moment, and it had not weakened with time even though their relationship had taken a wrong turn. It was more than an attraction, in fact-and always had been. It was a deep need, a raging passion.

On both sides-he was instantly aware of that.

They wanted each other, and now that they had mutually decided to have each other, there was no barrier of manners or propriety to cool the heat that flared between them and had nothing to do with the sun beaming down on their heads. She twined her arms about his neck and leaned into him. He wrapped one arm tightly about her waist and spread the other hand over her buttocks, drawing her even more firmly against him.

The kiss deepened. He ravished her mouth with his tongue, and she sucked on it, driving him close to distraction. But he wanted more than urgent, mindless lust between them.

He drew back his head and gazed into her eyes, his own squinted against the sunlight and her nearness. She gazed back at him, her lips moist and parted, her eyelids heavy with a desire that matched his own. She was Rachel. She was his golden angel.

He smiled at her, and she smiled back.

He kissed her forehead and then her eyelids one at a time, her temples, her cheeks. He gentled their passion. When he returned his attention to her mouth, he kissed her more softly, tasting her lips with his tongue, nipping them lightly with his teeth. She did the same to him with soft, untutored sensuality.

He burned for her.

Lovemaking should always be done in the outdoors, he thought, feeling the coolness of the breeze and the warmth of the sun, seeing its brightness through his closed eyelids, hearing the droning and chirping of insects in the grass, aware of it soft and green beneath his feet. And holding a golden woman in his arms.

But he remembered suddenly that from where they now stood he had been able to see the house. That meant that anyone looking across here from the house would be able to see them. It would not matter-they were believed to be husband and wife, after all. On the other hand, when he had knelt on the grass a few minutes ago, both the lake and the house had been hidden from view by bushes and trees.

"We had better lie down," he said against her lips.

"Yes."

She lay down on the blanket, arranging her skirts neatly about her as if to preserve her modesty, and looking a little self-conscious again. He went down on one knee beside her and leaned over her to kiss her softly on the lips. He touched one of her breasts through her dress, cupped it in his hand, ran his thumb over the nipple until he could feel it harden beneath his touch and could see it press against the thin muslin that covered it. He moved his hand to the other breast and then down her body, over her flat, softly feminine abdomen to pause at the apex of her thighs. He curled his fingers between to cup her and kissed her again before raising his head far enough to watch her face.

She smiled at him-a slow, almost lazy, utterly sensual smile.

His hand continued the journey downward, feeling the shapely outline of her legs. Then with both hands he raised her skirt until it was well above her knees but not so high that she might feel uncomfortably exposed. There was all the time in the world, he thought, for her to grow comfortable. He eased off her shoes and then rolled down her stockings one at a time before tossing them to the grass. He lowered his head to kiss her feet, her ankles, the insides of her knees, her inner thighs. He did not move higher. She was a woman of inexperience, and he was bound upon giving her pleasure-giving them both pleasure. He would not risk shocking her.

He eased the square-necked bodice of her dress off her shoulders and down her arms until she could slide her hands free of it. He suckled first one breast and then the other while her fingers stroked through his hair and then reached down to pull his shirt free of his pantaloons. Her hands came beneath it and roamed along the bare flesh of his back, raising goose bumps and catching at his breathing.

But it was almost languid foreplay in which they indulged, the heat of passion licking below the surface until the moment should come to unleash it. There was no hurry.

Passion and intense pleasure.

"Mmm," he said, covering her mouth with his own again.

"Mmm," she agreed.

He lifted her skirt higher and slipped his hand beneath to caress her as he kissed her. He rubbed her lightly, feeling her heat and growing moistness-hearing it and feeling the growing tautness of his erection. And then he felt her hand against it, lightly rubbing, though she made no attempt to unbutton his pantaloons. He parted folds with two fingers and slid them up inside her. She was slick with wetness, and he knew that the desire pulsing through him was no longer to be denied-and no longer needed to be denied. She was ready for him.

"Hot and wet," he said, nipping her lips with his teeth. "Do you know what a delicious combination that is for a man who has been invited to the feast?"

"It is not embarrassing?" she asked with a soft, breathless laugh.

He found her naïveté strangely touching. How could he have failed to detect it that other time? But that other time no longer mattered. This was all. This was everything.

He slid his fingers in and out.

"Infinitely enticing," he told her. "A woman's body ready for sex. Your body ready for mine."

"Oh," she said against his mouth as he lowered it to hers again.

He unbuttoned the flap of his pantaloons to release himself and then slid the blanket up beneath her as he lifted himself over her at last and lowered his weight onto her, pressing her legs wide with his knees as he did so.

"Rachel," he said against her mouth, sliding his hands beneath her and half lifting her from the ground as he positioned himself for his mount, "this is the intimacy with you that I will always remember and that I would have you remember. The other memory is healed and gone-forever."

Her lips curved into a smile beneath his.

He lifted his head as he entered her slowly but firmly, and watched the smile, though her teeth sank into her lower lip and her eyes drifted closed as he penetrated deep. He held still in her while she bent her knees and braced her feet against the ground and then tightened her inner muscles about him. He drew his hands free and lifted some of his weight onto his forearms.

Even now, when instinct urged him onward to climax and ease, he concentrated upon the pleasure of it. She was beautiful beyond belief-both his eyes and his body were fully aware of that. And the summer day was perfect, as were their surroundings. He was glad this was happening here and not on a bed somewhere indoors. He felt strangely as though they had nature's blessing, as though they were a part of it.

Part of its beauty and light and warmth. Part of its bounty.

He held still in her for as long as he could, reveling in the feel of her, the look of her, the smell of her. And reveling too in her opening eyes, heavy with desire, and her dreamy, sensual smile. They were long moments of pleasure that was very close to pain but made glorious by the knowledge that soon-very soon-it would bring them both to ease and to peace.

Maybe even to bliss.

And then her inner muscles closed slowly and tightly about him again and her eyes closed and he knew that for her there would be no more rest until he had driven her past pain.

He lowered his head to rest beside hers as he began to move in her, withdrawing to the brink of her and entering over and over again with slow, firm strokes, reading the responses of her body with his own while at the same time keeping his needs in careful check lest he finish too quickly and leave her unsatisfied and disappointed again.

She must be satisfied. Only so could he earn pardon and peace for himself.

It was warm work. After a few minutes they were both heated and damp and panting from the sun and their exertions. But she did not lie passive-not even at the beginning, when her movements were awkward and untutored. Strangely, her very lack of skill inflamed him more. But soon she used her inner muscles to match his rhythm and her feet to raise herself sufficiently from the ground that she could rock and rotate her hips to increase friction and pleasure.

Pleasuring her was sweet agony. In the end it was only agony.

But he waited for her until his body knew beyond any doubt that she was close to climaxing. He broke rhythm deliberately then, throwing her off stride before driving fast and hard into her. She gasped and moaned beneath him, tensed, strained upward against him, and then shuddered into release at the same moment as she cried out.

For all his continued pain, it was a blessed moment of redemption. He felt strangely as if he had been dirty and had suddenly been cleansed.

Her arms were tight about him as she shivered into relaxation. Female orgasms were rare, he knew. He did not know if he was normally a man who was careful of giving as well as receiving pleasure in sex, but if he had not been, then his new self had discovered a secret. Sex was an unsurpassable pleasure when it was an experience shared with his partner.

When she lay quiet beneath him, he took his own final pleasure of her, moving swift and hard and deep in her until he could hold back no longer and then withdrawing to spend his passion into the grass.

His redemption would have been of little value to him, after all, if he had impregnated her in the process.

He lay heavy on her for a few moments, savoring the pleasure, knowing from the total relaxation of her body that she was doing the same thing, and then he moved off her and lay at her side, one arm thrown over his eyes to protect them from the sunlight, his breathing and his heartbeat gradually returning to normal. The breeze felt blessedly cool against his face.