Winter Blockbuster 2012 (65 page)

She stared into them now, with Rob. And she had to admit it was frightening, but also so very enlivening. For once he did not hide from her. He trusted her.

Could she trust him? Did she dare to come out of hiding at last?

Then Rob’s own mask slid neatly back into place, and he smiled at her. ‘Always beware, fairest Anna, of all men,’ he said. ‘For we are the basest deceivers.’

His hands slid into her hair, loosening its pins until it fell free over her shoulders. He wrapped long strands of it around his fists, using them to tie her to him, and drew her slowly towards him. He stared at her mouth as if fascinated by it, drawn to it.

She closed her eyes just as his lips brushed hers softly, lightly, once and then again. She felt the echo of his moan against her, the tightening of his touch in her hair, and the kiss deepened. His tongue swept past her parted lips to taste her fully, and she opened to him in welcome. She couldn’t hide from him as she could from everyone else.

She remembered his taste, the way he felt, from the garden, and she had thought she remembered how his kiss made her feel and thus could be prepared for it. But that drowning, flying, exultant sensation swept over her all over again, and she was lost in it.

For so long she had been alone in life cold and afraid of feeling again, afraid of the terrible danger of vulnerable emotions.
In his arms she didn’t feel alone any longer. She wasn’t even afraid, even as she knew he was probably the most dangerous man in her world. She just felt alive and warm—and free. The cold fell away at last.

She wanted to be alive, even if it was only for a moment. A moment couldn’t hurt her. A moment was nothing.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders to bring him closer to her. She slid off the chair and knelt before him, until their bodies were pressed together and nothing could come between them at all. His hands fell free from her hair to unfasten the front of her jacket and push it away from her shoulders.

There was no smooth deftness to his movements, as Anna would have expected from a man so experienced at removing women’s garments. He was rough and quick, as if desperate to remove that one barrier—as desperate as Anna was to have it gone.

He tossed it away and his mouth slid from hers to kiss her neck, the soft curve where it met her shoulder just above her gathered chemise. His teeth nipped at her skin lightly, making her gasp, and then he traced the spot with his tongue. Anna’s head fell back to give his kisses greater access, and she closed her eyes to let the feelings wash over her.

For once she revelled in them, and did not push them away. After all, this was a fleeting moment in the sea of her life and she had to hold on to it before it ebbed away.

Blindly, she reached out to unfasten his doublet. The buttons stuck in the stiff velvet, making her groan with frustration, but at last they gave way and she peeled the cloth away from his body. She pulled off his shirt, as well, and tossed the garments away.

She ran her palms over his bare chest, the skin smooth and warm, slightly damp under her touch. She felt the roughness
of the bandage on his shoulder—a stark reminder of just how dangerous his secrets were. How dangerous it was to be here with him. She bent her head and pressed an open-mouthed kiss below the bandage, near where his heart beat so strongly.

‘Anna,’ he growled, and he lifted her up in his arms as he rose to his feet. He spun round to the bed and laid her down amid the rumpled blankets that still smelled of him.

She opened her eyes to stare up at him as he stood before her, his magnificent body, honed by swordcraft and stage acrobatics, bare to her. He studied her, as well, his blue eyes almost a burning black.

She held out her arms to him and he fell to the bed beside her, kissing her again. There was no artful seduction to their embrace, no fine poetry or pastoral gentleness. There was only a fire, a raw longing that burned away all else.

He caught the hem of her skirt in his fist and dragged it up until she felt the cool air of the room rush over the bare flesh above her stocking. It was quickly turned to warmth as he touched her through the thin knit silk of the stocking, his finger dipping behind the velvet ribbon of her garter.

‘Such fine underthings you hide from the world, Mistress Barrett,’ he whispered teasingly. ‘So shocking.’

And he was the first to see them in a very long time—definitely the first to appreciate them. Anna tugged his lips back down to hers for another kiss, their tongues touching and tangling. He parted her legs and fell between them as she tilted her hips to cradle him against her. She felt the heavy, rigid press of his erection through his breeches, and it sent a tingling thrill through her.

He wanted her, too—just as she wanted him.

She wrapped her legs around his waist and held on to him as their kiss slid deeper and deeper. Through that blurry, hot mist of desire she felt him tug the loose edge of her chemise
lower to reveal her pale breast. He slid down her body to kiss the soft swell of it.

The tip of his tongue circled her aching nipple, only lightly caressing and teasing. Anna arched her back, trying to bring him closer, but he laughed and kissed the other breast, the soft, vulnerable curve of it just above the angle of her ribs.

‘Such pretty bosoms you have, Anna,’ he said, blowing ever so gently on a nipple as she trembled. ‘It’s a shame you hide them away as you do, for they are rare beauties.’

‘Teasing wretch,’ she moaned.

‘Oh? Is this what you want, then?’ He kissed her again, just at the hollow between her ‘pretty bosoms.’ ‘Or—this?’

At last he drew her pouting nipple deep into his mouth to suckle it, wet and hot and hungry.

Anna wound her fingers into his hair, holding him against her. He was so
good
at that—too good, for she couldn’t see straight when he touched her like that.

Rob slid even lower down her arched body, his mouth open against her skin. He kissed every freckle, every soft, sensitive spot, until he knelt between her legs. As Anna watched, breathless, he rose up on his knees before her and reached for her leg.

Through the thin silk of her stocking he kissed the curve of her foot, nipped lightly at her ankle, the vulnerable spot just behind it. His lips traced a warm path up the back of her calf, the turn of her knee—the angle of her thigh. His tongue dipped behind her garter, as his finger had earlier, and touched her naked, hot skin.

‘What are you doing?’ she gasped as he knelt lower on the bed, looping her legs over his shoulders. She was open to him, completely bare—not even her husband had ever seen her thus.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, about such vulnerability, but Rob held on to her when she tried to close her legs.

‘Let me, Anna, please,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You are so beautiful. I have to taste you, feel you …’

And then he did just that. His fingers spread her hidden folds open to him and his tongue delved into her in the most intimate of kisses.

Anna’s head fell back to the pillow and her eyes fluttered closed. Slowly she let her whole body relax into the bed, let her thoughts and fears float away, and just—
felt
. Felt every touch, every sensation. Once she did it was as if she flew free into the sunlit sky.

A burning pleasure built up deep inside her, expanding and growing until it exploded and covered her in its sparkling light.

She had heard women at the bawdy houses and taverns laugh about such things, but she had never felt it before. It was wondrous. Dizzying.

Rob lowered her legs back to the bed and drew her skirts over her bare skin. He pulled himself up to lie beside her on the pillows and took her gently into his arms.

Anna felt him kiss her closed eyelids, her forehead, the pulse that beat in her temples. He smelled of mint and the clean salt of sweat—and of her own body.

‘Did I please you, fairest Anna?’ he whispered.

Anna opened her eyes and turned her head on the pillow to study him. His hair fell in tangled waves over his brow and his eyes were shadowed with—could it be worry? Concern? Did he actually think of her feelings now? A tiny fragment of worry and hope touched her deep inside, but she dared not explore that further.

She reached up and traced his cheek with the tips of her fingers. ‘I am overwhelmed,’ she said truthfully. He had
swept over her careful life like a summer rain, exposing hopes she had thought long buried.

Rob laughed, and turned his head to kiss her palm. ‘Then I’m honoured to have overwhelmed you.’

She raised herself up on her elbow to study him. His face against the white pillow seemed dark and drawn, the elegant angles of his features tight, as if he was in some sort of pain.

‘You have not taken your pleasure,’ she said. She laid her hand flat on his naked chest and felt the erratic pounding of his heart, the thrum of his need. His penis was a hard ridge under his breeches.

‘I’m fine,’ he said brusquely.

‘And I know you are not,’ she argued. ‘I am no fine miss in an ivory castle. I know what happens to a man when he is unsatisfied.’ She slid her hand lower, over his lean waist, the hard plain of his hip. ‘Let me …’

Rob caught her wrist in a hard grasp before she could brush against his erection.

‘I’m quite well,’ he said. His voice sounded rough, and his hold on her was tight. Something about him told Anna she shouldn’t argue, even as she longed to with every fibre of her being.

He had just given her such pleasure—had given her the most intimate moment she had ever known with another person. Why would he not let her do the same for him?

Why would he not be with her in every way?

But he was surely right to cut this—whatever it was—now.

Anna nodded and he slowly let go of her hand. ‘I should go,’ she said. ‘You seem to want to be solitary.’

‘Nay, Anna, don’t go yet,’ he said, his voice growing gentler. ‘I don’t want to be alone. Not right now. I just …’

She nodded. Sometimes she also had no words when unexpected emotions overwhelmed all her senses and she couldn’t
explain them even to herself. Moments just like this one. Lovemaking would only make that confusion a thousand times worse.

And what if there was a child? She had lost the one baby she’d conceived with her husband before it could even quicken, and had never had another, but with Rob who knew what could happen? She couldn’t have a babe now. She had to hide even as she longed for him to draw her out.

Still—her body did not know how to be sensible. It still wanted him, ached for him. She had to be stronger than her rebellious body.

Rob urged her to lie down on the pillows, and he eased her chemise back into place over her shoulders, re-tied the ribbons. As she closed her eyes, she felt him lie down beside her and take her into the circle of his arms. He smoothed her hair back from her brow and kissed her cheek in a soft, lingering touch.

‘Just sleep now, Anna,’ he whispered. ‘Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe here.’

Despite everything she had discovered today, against all odds, she
did
feel safe. Held there in his arms, she slowly drifted into dreams. Even if they were dreams that could never come true.

Rob gently smoothed the tangled waves of Anna’s hair as she slept in his arms, draping it like a silken cloak over his chest and shoulders as if he could use it to bind her to him. To make her his forever—even if she discovered the whole, terrible truth.

She slept peacefully, curled on her side against his chest, perfectly matched with him there as if they were made to be just so. Her breath was soft over his skin, and a tiny smile curled the corners of her dark pink lips in some secret dream.

She looked so young and soft in her sleep, her face free of the caution she usually carried with her, the hardness that reflected her life and the suspicion she bore so rightly for the people around her. As he lightly traced her cheekbone with the back of his hand, and watched as a pale pink blush suffused her skin, he had a sudden vision, as if in the pastoral romance of a poem.

He saw Anna sitting beneath a tree at the edge of a green meadow, the shade of its spreading leaves dappling her face and hair and casting patterns over her white dress. Her hair was loose, red-brown waves over her shoulders, and the silken strands were strewn with summer flowers. As she leaned back he could see the swell of her belly under the soft folds of her skirt—she was with child.

A brilliant smile lit up her whole face. A smile filled with such peace and joy. And she held out her hand to him in welcome …

Z’wounds
, he thought. Such peace would never be his, or hers, either. They had their lot in life, their place in the world, and he had learned long ago it wasn’t beneath some pretty country tree. Anna would never welcome him thus—and certainly would never grow round and glowing with his child—once she knew what he had to do.

He had certainly tried his damnedest to stay away from Anna Barrett, ever since he’d joined Lord Henshaw’s Men. He’d never thought to have a moment like this one, and he wanted to hold on to it—hold on to
her
—as long as he could. As long as he dared.

At least he had shown a trace of self-restraint, though his body certainly didn’t thank him for it. It ached and throbbed with sheer lust, with the strong urge to drive itself into her and lose itself in her softness and heat.

He gently brushed aside a lock of her hair and kissed the
curve of her neck. She smelled of roses still, a sweet antidote to the stinking world outside. She murmured in her sleep and burrowed under the blankets.

Rob drew them up over her shoulders and eased himself away from her to let her sleep in peace—and remove himself from temptation. Their clothes lay scattered on the floor, and he scooped them up to drape them over the chair.

‘Grey again,’ he muttered as he rubbed at the plain-cut sleeve of her jacket. Why did she hide herself behind its drabness like that? She should be arrayed in purples, blues and greens, satins and brocades that showed off her beauty.

Or perhaps that was the whole point—to disguise and conceal. Just as he did. Only he hid behind attention-getting antics that disguised his real purpose, and she shrank back behind a thick grey cloud. She deserved so much more than to hide herself that way. She deserved all the finest life could offer.