Whispers of Heaven (36 page)

She shook her head, her throat working as she swallowed, her fingers sliding away from his. She felt confused and ashamed of herself, for asking him to do this and then stopping him without any conscious thought. "No. I'm sorry. I don't even know why I did that."

"Shh," he whispered, ducking his head to nuzzle her neck. "'Don't be sorry. It's all right. We'll just take it slower."

He kissed her nose, her eyelids, her neck, his breath moist and warm against her skin, his hands sliding up her sides to close with familiar delight over her breasts. She clutched at his shoulders, her back arching to bring her body closer to the sweet agony of his touch, the fire of his wandering kisses. His head dipped lower and she sucked in a quick breath, filling her head with the scent of him, warm and pleasant in the afternoon sun. She closed her eyes, lost in a tumult of glorious sensations. The wet roughness of his tongue, flicking her nipple. The deep, erotic tug that clenched low in her belly when he closed his mouth over the tip of her breast and sucked. The rough kneading pressure of his hands, cupping her breasts, whirling her away on a dark tide of desire.

She tore at his shirt, opened the ties, tugged it loose from his trousers, bunched it up in a desperate need to run her spread hands over the smooth bare flesh of his chest. "Take it off," she said, her voice a husky gasp against his sun-warmed skin as she buried her face in the curve of his shoulder and neck.

Rearing back, he tore the shirt over his head and flung it aside, his face taut, almost savage now with arousal as he lowered himself over her again. And this time, when he sought the ties at her waist, all she did was make a soft pleading sound and whisper, "Yes. Oh, yes. Please," her hips lifting with a wantonness that surprised her.

She heard him say something harsh under his breath, something lost in his haste to strip away her finely embroidered drawers and expose her to the hot sun and his hotter gaze. He sank back on his heels, his breath hissing out slowly between his clenched teeth as he slid his hands with agonizing softness up her inner thighs, parting her legs for him. He moved subtly, positioning himself between her thighs, nudging them farther apart. It occurred to her that she should have felt shy, to have him looking at her like this, but all she knew was an aching need, deep within her. She was losing her focus, her world narrowing to sunlight and this man and the coiling need so deep within her. And then he touched her, there, and the sensation was so unexpected, so divine that her breath left her in a startled rush, her shoulders curling up, her fingers clenching at the hard curve of his upper arms. "Lucas," she said on a gasp, her eyes wide with wonder and delight.

He stared up at her, his face fiercely intent as he touched her there again. His fingers were magic. She hadn't known her body was so sensitive, that the simple touch of the man she loved could send her soaring. She fell back, her neck arching, her eyes half closing, so that she was only dimly aware of his head dipping, his hair sliding across her naked belly, lower. She hadn't thought that a man might kiss a woman there. He knew things about her body she didn't know herself, knew how to touch her, how to set her afire with a desperate need she barely understood. Yet he must have understood, for his hand was at the flap of his trousers and he was moving, sliding up to take her mouth in a rough kiss of hunger, the unfamiliar weight of his warm, hard body beguiling her as he positioned himself above her. She felt him settle high up between her legs, felt him against her, unexpectedly smooth and hot and hard, seeking, pressing, there, where she wanted him so badly. She dug her fingers into his hips, clutched him to her, arched up against him. She wanted, wanted... And he knew what she wanted, for he was pressing himself inside her, pressing, pushing into her, the pain of it lost in the wondrous delight of knowing that this,
this
was what she had needed, wanted, burned for.

He thrust again, a cry of mingling pain and pleasure slipping from her, his lips drawing back from his gritted teeth, his nostrils flaring with his ragged breathing as he rose above her, his weight on his braced arms. She stared up at him, at the smooth, sweat-sheened strength of his leanly muscled chest, at his dark shadowed eyes and fine-boned, fallen angel features. He was so beautiful. So beautiful and fierce, and she loved him so much she ached with it.

"Lucas," she whispered.

He lowered himself to his elbows, his hands tangling in her hair, his head dipping as he ran his tongue across her mouth, his hips moving in a slow, even rhythm that had her breath coming in panting little gasps. "I've wanted you since I first saw you," he whispered, his breath a warm rush against her face. "God, how I have wanted you."

She swept her hands up his back, felt the rough ridges and dips of the old scars beneath her fingertips. "I wanted you, too. I just didn't understand it."

He licked her chin, sucked at her neck, smiled into her eyes. "You understand it now, do you?"

"Yes," she said, her breath hissing out of her, her hands tightening again on his hips as he thrust into her harder, deeper, "Oh, yes."

He was moving faster now, a sweetly erotic thrust and drag that stoked the throbbing heat, deep within her. She clung to him, her legs coming up to wrap around him, draw him into her, deeper, deeper, urging him on faster, faster, as she reached, reached for something she didn't understand, knew only that she wanted, needed, or she would die.

And then she was dying, her world dissolving in a liquid rush of wild, weightless, mindless pleasure that swept over her in endless spasms of delight. She was only dimly aware of him, tensing above her, his head thrown back, his eyes squeezing shut, his face contorting as if in pain. He gave one last, fierce thrust, plunging deep. Then he jerked out of her with an abruptness that made her cry out at the loss, her hands digging into his sweat-slicked shoulders to hold him as he shuddered above her, his warm seed spilling high on her quivering, empty belly.

She lay in the curving shelter of his arm, the sun warm on her naked body, one hand resting on his chest.

"I never got to take off all your clothes," she said, her hand running in light circles over his bare skin. She wanted to touch him all over. Touch him and hold him, forever and ever.

He smiled and brought his leg up to slide it down her stockinged calf, to her riding boot. "I missed a few bits of yours."

She rolled forward, half onto his chest, so that she could look down into his sunlit face. She had never seen him looking so relaxed, so at ease, and she thought this must have been what he looked like before—before his life dissolved in pain and murder and the slowly grinding retribution of British justice. "We could do it again," she suggested naughtily, her fingers walking down to the open waistband of his convict trousers.

Laughing, he swept his hands to cup her buttocks and pull her completely on top of him. "Why, Miss Corbett, what an excellent suggestion."

She felt the ridge of his erection hard against her, her own laugh a breathy sigh of wonder and expectation as he cradled her face between his hands, his lips meeting hers in a kiss that ended all too quickly.

"What is it?" she asked, seeing the shadows that shifted deep in his eyes.

" 'Tis dangerous, what we do. You know that, don't you?"

She sat back, straddling him, her knees on either side of his hips. "You're afraid we'll be caught."

"Aye. That, too.
I
'm also sore afraid of giving you a babe." He spread his dark workman's hand against her naked belly. "Here."

Her head jerked once, in denial and swift consternation. "You pulled out."

"Aye. But it doesn't always work."

"So what does?"

The ease and contentment she'd seen earlier in his face was gone now, his eyes narrowed, his mouth set in a hard line. "There are things men can wear, but I've no way of getting any. Women know tricks—or rather, some women do. I don't."

"Genevieve might."

She stared down at him, a heavy lock of her hair sliding forward over her shoulder. He reached up to catch it and wrap it thoughtfully around his fist. "Would it be wise, you think, to ask her?"

"She wouldn't betray me, if that's what you mean."

He raised his dark eyebrows. "Not even if she thought it was for your own good?"

Jessie shook her head. "She's always considered it a form of arrogance for someone to think she knows what's better for another person than the person herself."

He opened his fist to release her hair. It fell against her breast, his hand following, her breath hitching as his palm closed around her breast. He smiled, both hands now gently stroking her breasts with a deceptive laziness that turned her insides into fire. Her gaze locked with his, she brought her own hands up to cup his and hold them to her breasts, increasing the pressure of his touch. "I'll ride over to the Point tomorrow and talk to her."

"Ah, lass." He let his hands slide around her back to urge her down to him, his lips moving against hers in a kiss as languidly purposeful as his touch. "I shouldn't be talking to you about preventing babies. I should be telling you we're mad, the both of us, to risk doing this again. We keep this up, and we're bound to get caught."

She followed the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheek with her eyes. It came to her that she could look at him forever... only, they didn't have forever. "I can't stay away from you," she said softly. "Not anymore. I'm not that strong."

"Neither am I." His head came up, his lips finding hers again as he caught her to him and rolled her onto her back, trapping her naked and beneath him.

She stared up into his shadowed face, saw the shadows lift, his mouth curling into a smile that made her feel weak and warm with expectation. "Now, about these clothes ..."

That night, after she finished dressing for dinner, Jessie dismissed her convict woman and went to stand in front of her dressing table mirror. A wind had come up outside, rustling the leaves and branches of the trees in the park and making the flames of the candles in their wall sconces leap and dance.

The flickering light showed her a golden-haired woman in a demure gown of old-rose
peau de soie,
brocaded in blue flowers and trimmed with ecru lace. Her face seemed slightly more flushed than normal, her eyes wide and still, but otherwise she looked much the same as always. She thought it ought to reassure her, but it did not. She felt so very different, inside of herself, that she was afraid someone else would notice and
know.
Know that she had lain naked in a sunlit meadow and taken a man between her legs, a wild rogue of a lover, whose rebellious soul called to the wildness within her, the woman in her.

If he had been anyone else, she would have proclaimed her love of him to the world, without hesitation and gladly. But he was an Irish convict, and the hopelessness of their love, the impossible tragedy of it, tore through her suddenly on a deadly wave of despair that battered her heart with fierce pain.

She tightened her face against the threatened weakness, one clenched fist coming up to press against her lips. She took a deep breath, then turned to extinguish her candles and cross the hall to speak to her mother. For while Jessie might need to hug the secret of her love to herself, she had also decided to end her betrothal to Harrison, and she thought Beatrice deserved to know that.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Beatrice's room lay at the front of the house, across the wide central hall from Jessie's.

It had always been Beatrice's room, even in the days before Anselm Corbett's death. For as long as Jessie could remember, her parents had kept separate rooms. When she grew old enough to consider such things, Jessie had thought they must both be private, naturally unaffectionate people, or that their marriage had become a source of disappointment to them both. Now, she wondered if Warrick was right, if they had never cared for each other at all.

Her knock on her mother's door elicited Beatrice's crisp, "Come in." She was dressed for dinner, in an austere gown of black watered silk, and sat on the burgundy satin-covered stool facing her dressing table while a convict woman carefully placed pins in the flawlessly upswept coil of Beatrice's graying hair. She did not look around.

Jessie paused just inside the door, her hands laced together, her heart pounding. She had been brought up to honor the wishes of her parents, and it was the wish of both Beatrice and Anselm that Jessie marry Harrison Tate. She felt as if a terrible weight had settled on her chest, crushing her. She had disappointed her mother so many times in the past, and she was about to do it again. "Mother?" she said quietly. "I wonder if I might speak with you."

Beatrice met Jessie's gaze in the mirror, then dismissed her woman with a wave of her hand. "What is it, Jesmond?"

Jessie walked to the long front windows where the heavy

burgundy velvet drapes stirred in a draft. This room had always vaguely surprised Jessie, with its dark tones and heavy mahogany furniture and sensuously rich fabrics. It hinted at a dramatic, almost masculine side to her mother that didn't seem to fit. Odd, Jessie thought, that it had never occurred to her that Beatrice might keep parts of herself hidden, as well.

"There is something I must tell you," Jessie said, turning to face the dressing table. She drew in a deep breath, as if gathering courage with it. "I have decided that I cannot marry Harrison."

If she had been expecting a dramatic reaction to her pronouncement, there was none. Opening her jewelry box, Beatrice calmly selected a large pearl ring and slipped it over her finger before saying, "I am sorry, Jesmond, but that is impossible. You are betrothed, and the wedding is scheduled for the beginning of December. The arrangements have all been made."

Jessie took a hasty step forward, then stopped. "
Mother.
This is not something you can simply dismiss. I cannot marry Harrison. I don't love him in the way a woman should love the man she marries."

Beatrice closed her jewel box with a snap, her eyes hard and narrowed as her gaze met Jessie's in the mirror. In spite of herself, Jessie felt her stomach turn sickly. Inside, she might have been a disgraced six-year-old again, facing the prospect of endless, terrifying hours locked away in the haunted darkness of the tower room. "What nonsense is this?" Beatrice demanded, her diction precise and very, very English. "Your marriage to Harrison was decided upon years ago, by your father. You never objected."