The Ideal Bride (32 page)

 
“
No
!” She rounded on him, silver eyes ablaze. “Don’t you dare feel sorry for me! I just didn’t know—” Abruptly, she waved her hands and turned away. Dragged in a huge breath and straightened, lifted her head. “Anyway, it’s all in the past.”

 
He wanted to tell her that past hurts properly buried didn’t slice at one in the here and now. But he couldn’t find the words, any she would accept.

 
“I’m not usually so sensitive about it, but this business with you and
 
Elizabeth …” Her voice faded; she took in another breath, still looking away, into the trees. “So now you know. Are you happy?”

 
“No.” He stirred, stepped around the stone and closed the gap between them. “But at least I understand.”

 
She glanced over her shoulder as he slid his hands around her waist. Frowned at him. “I can’t see why you need to.”

 
He drew her around, closed his arms, and bent his head. “I know.”

 
But you will.

 
He heard the words in his mind as he set his lips to hers. Not hungrily, but temptingly, coaxingly. She followed, not at first with her usual tempestuous yearning, but yet she went with him. It was a slower, more considered, more deliberate progression into the flames; step by step he led, and she followed.

 
Until they were burning. Until the heat of their mouths, the pressure of body against body, was no longer enough, not for either of them.

 
Caught in the moment, wrapped in its promise, needing the heat of it to drive away the past’s chill, Caro resented even the moment he took to step back, shrug out of his coat, flick it out on the ground in the shade beneath a huge oak. When he reached for her and drew her down, she went eagerly, wanting, needing the contact, the wordless assurance that came with his kisses, with each increasingly bold caress.

 
As usual, he didn’t ask permission to open her bodice, strip away her chemise, and lay her breasts bare—he simply did. Then he feasted, pressing delight upon sensual delight upon her, until she was gasping, skin taut and tight, fevered and burning.

 
He didn’t ask, but simply reached for her skirt, tugged the front up between them and slid his hand beneath. His searching fingers found her knee, circled it, then traced upward, lingeringly caressing the inner faces of her thighs until the muscles flickered, until she shifted, pressed closer, wordlessly demanding…

 
She knew what she wanted, but when he touched her curls she nearly expired. Not just with delight, but anticipation. He boldly nudged her thighs apart, stroked through her curls, traced her soft flesh in a languid exploration that left her heated, slick, and throbbing. Then his touch firmed.

 
He released the breast he’d been tauntingly suckling; lifting his head, from under heavy lids he held her gaze as he slid one finger deep inside her.

 
Awareness gripped her, excruciatingly acute. She lost her breath, lost touch with her wits; every sense she possessed locked on that assured penetration, on the steady invasion as he pushed deeper, then reached deeper still.

 
Before she could catch her breath, he stroked, firmly, deliberately. Then he bent his head and covered her lips, kissed her as if she were a houri he owned.

 
She kissed him back as if she were, avid, greedy—demanding, commanding, even deliberately taunting. He responded in kind. Their mouths melded, tongues tangling as between her thighs he worked his hand, stroked, and drove her mindless.

 
Gripping his shoulders, she held him to the kiss, suddenly desperate on so many counts. Desperate for him to keep kissing her so he wouldn’t see, wouldn’t have a chance to see—so she wouldn’t have a chance to give herself away by revealing how novel, how indescribably exciting yet glitteringly, fascinatingly new the sensations he was pressing on her were.

 
Desperate that he wouldn’t stop.

 
Desperate to reach some sensual pinnacle, to shatter the tension growing and coiling and building within her.

 
She felt like screaming.

 
Even through the kiss, she sensed him swear, then between her thighs, his hand shifted.

 
She tried to pull back to protest; he refused to let her, followed her, holding her trapped in the kiss—then a second finger pressed in alongside the first, suddenly, startlingly, escalating the pressure. The tension racked up another notch; she could feel her body tightening against his.

 
He held her down, then his hand shifted again; his thumb touched her, stroked, searched, then settled—pressed in time with the stroking of his fingers.

 
She fractured like crystal in bright sunlight, shards of white-hot pleasure streaking through her, sharp, slicing, abruptly releasing the tension, letting it flow into a golden pool. The pool glowed, throbbed; its heat sank into her, pulsed beneath her skin, in her fingertips, in her heart.

 
The wonder held her, cradled her, ripped from the world for the very first time, afloat on the ecstasy of her senses.

 
Slowly, she returned—to the physical world, to comprehension. To the knowledge of what physical delight was, to some inkling of what she’d missed all these years—to a deeper knowledge of what she’d been waiting for, and what he’d brought her.

 
He’d raised his head; he’d been watching her and still was.

 
She smiled, slowly, lazily stretched, sensually sated for the first time in her life. Glorying in it.

 
Her smile said it all; Michael drank it in—decided it was even better than the smile she’d gifted him with when he’d told her he was no longer considering Elizabeth as his bride.

 
This was a smile worthy of the efforts he fully intended to make— mentally renewed his vow to make—to see it wreathe her face every morning, and every night. It was a smile she deserved as much as he did.

 
He drew his fingers from her; she’d been tight, very tight, but Cam-den had been dead for two years and had been getting on in years before that. But as he pushed her skirts down, he caught the frown in her eyes, the sudden dulling of the silvery glory. He raised a brow in mute query.

 
Her frown grew definite. “What about you?” She turned toward him; her hand found him, rigid as granite and equally hard. Her light caress would have brought him to his knees if he’d been upright.

 
He caught her hand, had to search to find breath enough to say, “Not this time.”

 
“Why not?”

 
There was a hint of something beyond the obvious in her disappointment—a disappointment clear enough to lend an edge to his already intent glance. “Because I have plans.”

 
He did, indeed, and he wasn’t about to share them with her. Given her acknowledged propensity to erect hurdles, the less she knew, the better.

 
Her frown grew suspicious. “What?”

 
Flopping onto his back, he slid an arm around her and urged her over him. “You don’t need to know.” He drew her head down, caught her full lower lip between his teeth and gently tugged, then whispered, “But you’re welcome to try to find out.”

 
She chuckled; again he recalled she didn’t laugh often, resolved, even as her lips pressed to his and she gave herself up to her quest to persuade him, to make her laugh more. To push away the clouds that beneath all the glamour seemed to have dulled her life for too long.

 
Then she shifted more definitely over him, put her heart and soul into their kiss, and he forgot everything else and gave himself up to simply kissing her back.

 
Despite her efforts, Caro learned nothing of Michael’s plans. When they returned to Bramshaw House, her neglected duties claimed her; not until her head hit her pillow late that night did she get a chance to think of what had transpired in the clearing. Of what he had wanted, what he had learned, what he had made her feel.

 
Just the thought of that last made her flesh throb in remembered delight; her body still glowed faintly with the aftermath of pleasure. True, Camden had touched her in similar ways; the veils she’d drawn over those few nights when he’d come to her bed obscured the details, yet she’d never sensed in Camden what she sensed in Michael—and had never reacted, never felt with Camden any of the excitement let alone the glory she felt in Michael’s arms.

 
Despite the secret worry that still nagged—that something would yet go wrong, that at the end, when it came to the point, what she longed for simply wouldn’t happen—she felt a countering eagerness, an anticipation, a compulsion to go forward, to explore and experience as much as she could. As much as he would show her.

 
Whatever his plans were, she would follow him regardless.

 
Regardless of all else, there was one vital point she simply had to know.

 
Chapter 11

 
Michael rose early the next morning. He tried to immerse himself in catching up with the London news, reading the news sheets and letters from various correspondents, but time and again he caught himself sitting in his armchair, booted ankle propped on one knee, his gaze fixed before him—thinking of Caro.

 
She’d spoken of hurdles she didn’t mean to place before him, and then revealed one gigantic, triple-bar water jump that, unintended or not, he was going to have to find some way to clear.

 
Camden had married her for her talents, her undeniable skills. From what he knew of Camden, that came as no surprise; if any man had known which innate abilities were required to produce a topnotch hostess, and been able to recognize them in a raw young lady of seventeen, Camden had been that man. He’d already buried two highly talented wives.

 
That, however, wasn’t the problem. Caro hadn’t understood, had thought he’d been marrying her for other reasons, presumably the usual romantic reasons young ladies dreamed of, and Camden—

 
Michael gritted his teeth, but had no difficulty imagining the Camden he’d known and heard so much about deploying his charm and glittering, multifaceted personality to dazzle a young lady he’d wanted for his own. Oh, yes, he would have done it, knowingly led her up the garden path, let her think what she would—anything to gain what he’d wanted.

 
He’d wanted Caro, and got her.

 
But to her, it had all been under false pretenses.

 
That was what had wounded her, scarred
her;
the spot was still tender, even after all these years.

 
Just how tender, he’d seen for himself; he wouldn’t willingly prod that point anew. He didn’t, however, regret doing so. If he hadn’t… at least he now knew what he faced.

 
Given that she was fully cognizant of his own urgent and very real need for just such a wife as Camden had wanted, just the sort of talented female she herself was, getting her to agree to marry him was going to be an uphill slog.

 
And that’s where the gigantic, triple-bar water jump stood—not in the way of getting her into his bed, but between him and his ultimate goal.

 
He pondered that, then decided it lay too far ahead—who knew what might happen between then and now? Perhaps another, clearer route to marriage would open up, and he wouldn’t need to front that gigantic, triple-bar water jump after all.