Yours Until Dawn (26 page)

But Samantha was no harbor prostitute. She deserved more than a rough-and-tumble coupling. She clutched at his shoulders and moaned in protest when he dragged his mouth away from hers and rolled to her side. There was barely enough room for both of them in the narrow bedstead, but that suited Gabriel just fine. The cozy confines made it that much easier for him to throw one leg over her thigh, to nuzzle her throat while his hand cupped the fullness of one breast. Her nipple was already as ripe as a succulent berry begging to be taken into his mouth.

Eager to please, he did just that—tugging and teasing, suckling and soothing, with his lips and tongue and teeth, until she was arching beneath him, her hands tugging at his hair. A familiar exultation quickened in his veins. He didn’t need his sight for this. Making love to a woman in the dark had always come as naturally to him as breathing.

“I can feel that,” she whispered between panting breaths, sounding both disconcerted and scandalized.

“I should hope so,” he replied, reluctantly lifting his head from her breast. “I wouldn’t want to waste your time.”

“No. I mean…”

Gabriel had the keen sensation that if he could see her face in that moment, it would have been tinted with an adorable blush.

“…
down there,
” she finished.

He shook his head, a helpless laugh escaping him. “I can promise you that you’re going to feel a lot more than that
down there
before I’m through with you.”

As if to make good on his promise, he sent his hand gliding over the satin-soft skin of her abdomen. She shivered with anticipation beneath his touch, but he prolonged both the pleasure and the torment by taking his own sweet time exploring the slight curve of her belly, the sensitive hollows just above her hipbones.

By the time his fingers grazed the softness of her nether curls, it took little more than a nudge of his thigh to coax her legs apart, to allow him unfettered access to what lay between them.

“You make me feel like such a wanton,” she confessed, her every breath a sigh of delight. “As if I would do anything for you …with you.”

Gabriel hadn’t believed it possible for him to get any harder than he already was, but as a dizzying array of erotic images flashed through his mind, he realized he was wrong. “I’ll be more than glad to give you a lifetime to prove that.”

“What if we didn’t have a lifetime?” She wrapped her arms around him in a grip that was surprisingly fierce. “What if we only had this moment?”

“Then I wouldn’t squander a single opportunity to do this,” he said, claiming her mouth for an achingly tender kiss. “Or this.” He lowered his lips to her breast, swirling his tongue around her distended nipple. “Or this.” His voice deepened to a groan as he sifted his fingers through her curls, stroking the sleek flesh beneath.

She moaned beneath his touch, a throaty song of welcome. Her body was already moistening to receive him, flowering like a bloom beneath the kiss of the sun. He used the pad of his thumb to smear its sweet dew over the secret bud nestled between those velvety petals. He wanted her to burn for him, to ache for that moment when she would take him deep inside of her and make him her own.

“Please, Gabriel…” She arched against his hand, her voice a ragged whisper in his ear. “I can’t wait any longer.”

As her thighs fell apart, she reached over to caress his throbbing length, extending to him the one invitation no man could resist.

As her fingers encircled him like velvet ribbons, he gritted his teeth against a primal frisson of ecstasy. “Well, since you asked so nicely.”

He rolled on top of her. His erection nudged those damp curls, poised at the very gates of heaven.

“Gabriel, there’s something I have to tell you.” She clutched at his back, the note of panic in her voice unmistakable.

His fingertips found her lips, stilling them with a tender caress. “It’s all right, Samantha. There’s nothing more I need to know. I realize you haven’t been entirely forthcoming with me. A woman like you never would have sought a post like this if you hadn’t been running from your past. But I don’t care. I don’t care if there was another man before me. I don’t care if there were a dozen men. The only thing I care about is that you’re in my arms, right here, right now.”

To prove that he was a man of his word, Gabriel drew back his hips and thrust himself deep inside of her. Through a fog of mindless pleasure, he heard her broken cry, felt something fragile and irreplaceable give way before his body’s insistent demand.

He lay buried to the hilt in her, afraid to move, afraid to breathe. “Samantha?”

“Hmmmm?” she replied in a hoarse squeak.

Gabriel fought to hold himself still even as her body squeezed him in a vise of raw pleasure. “Just what was it you were going to tell me?”

He heard her swallow. “That I’ve never done this before.”

He collapsed against her throat, biting off a reverent oath. “Do you want me to stop?” Even as he offered, Gabriel didn’t know if he could.

She shook her head violently. “No.” Tangling her fingers in his hair, she dragged his mouth back to her lips. “Never.”

As their tongues tangled in a dark dance of delight, she arched against him, that simple motion gloving him in rapture. Gabriel had always prided himself on his sophistication. He was shocked to learn that he was still barbarian enough to want to beat his chest and roar with triumph, all because he was the first man to have her—the only man. He began to move, gliding in and out of her with long, deep strokes deliberately designed to melt her whimpers of pain to moans of pleasure.

With Samantha to share it with him, the darkness was no longer an enemy, but a lover. Everything was texture and sensation, friction and contrast. She was soft. He was hard. She was smooth. He was rough. She gave. He took.

Believing she deserved some extra indulgence for the pain he had caused her, something to make it all worthwhile, Gabriel reached between them. Without missing a stroke with his tongue or his cock, he gently fingered her until she convulsed around him with a husky cry that was nearly his undoing.

Drawing her arms over her head and lacing his fingers through hers until they were palm to palm, heart to heart, he whispered fiercely, “Hold on, angel. Don’t ever let go.”

Samantha obeyed, wrapping her slender legs around him. Then there was no more holding back, no more resisting the driving rhythm that beat like tribal drums through his blood. Gabriel rode her, hard and fast and deep, until they were both mindless with pleasure, until he felt those dark shivers of rapture begin to ripple out from her womb once again.

As exultation thundered through him, spilling out in a hot torrent, Gabriel slammed his mouth down over hers, afraid their mingled cries would rouse the entire household.

Samantha awoke in Gabriel’s arms. The bedstead was so narrow that there was only room for them to lie side by side with her back nestled against his chest like two spoons in a drawer.

She glanced toward the window, grateful to discover that the night sky was still dark without a single pink streak to herald the dawn. She would have been content to lie there forever with Gabriel’s muscular arm wrapped around her waist, his breath stirring her hair, her bare bottom snuggled against his hips. She could feel his heart beating against her back in the sweetest of lullabies.

Before last night, she’d had a vague idea of what transpired between a man and woman in the bedchamber. But nothing could have prepared her for the reality. For the first time, she understood why one deceptively simple act drove women to court ruin and men to risk everything. She understood why sonnets were written and duels were fought and lives were lost, all for the sake of the magic that was made when a man and woman came together, moving as one in the shadows of the night.

There was a new tenderness between her thighs, a fresh ache to match the one in her heart. Yet it was a sweet ache and a small price to pay for the miracle of holding Gabriel deep inside of her.

Almost as if he could sense the direction of her thoughts, Gabriel stirred. His arm tightened around her waist as he drew her even deeper into the cup of his body.

Something nudged the softness of her bottom. Something hard and insistent. Samantha could not resist giving her rump an experimental wiggle.

Gabriel let out a sleepy grunt before muttering, “Don’t bait the dragon, angel, unless you wish to be eaten alive.” He eased the tumbled strands of her hair aside, brushing his lips against her nape with a tenderness that made her shiver with yearning. “I shouldn’t have been so rough and greedy with you before. You need time to recover.”

Knowing that time was the one luxury she did not have, she arched against him, pressing the softness of her bottom against the heavy weight of his arousal. “All I need is you.”

Gabriel groaned in her ear. “You’re not playing fair, woman. You know that’s the one thing I could never deny you.”

But he could deny himself while he pleasured her. One of his hands took turns gently teasing her distended nipples between thumb and forefinger, while the other slipped between her legs, soothing the swollen flesh he found there with exquisite care. Before long, Samantha felt herself melting in a breathless rush of pleasure. She had to bite the pillow to keep from crying out loud.

Only then did he fill his hands with the softness of her breasts and slide deep inside of her from behind. She wanted nothing more than to move against him, to urge him to move, but he held both her and himself utterly still until her body began to pulse around him, its insistent beat echoing the rhythm of her heart.

“Please…” she moaned, near to swooning in his arms. “Oh, Gabriel,
please
…”

Her incoherent plea was not wasted on him. She had never dreamed it was possible to be ravished so tenderly and yet so thoroughly. By the time he was through with her, she could not have said where his body ended and hers began. She only knew that her heart felt as if it were breaking and her cheeks were wet with tears.

“You’re crying,” he accused, gently urging her to her back.

She sniffed back a sob. “No, I’m not.”

He touched a finger to her cheek, then to his lips, proving her a liar. “It’s just as I always suspected,” he said sternly. “You needn’t try to hide the truth any longer.”

Drawing in a ragged breath, Samantha blinked up at him.

He gently cupped one hand over her thundering heart. “Beneath that practical façade of yours beats the sentimental heart of a true romantic. Don’t worry, Miss Wickersham. Your secret is safe with me.” He leered down at her, the devilish slash of his scar only making him look like more of a libertine. “As long as you make it worth my while, of course.”

“You can depend upon it, my lord.” Drawing his mouth down to hers, Samantha sealed her vow with a fierce kiss.

Samantha slid the last pin into her hair, securing the heavy mass at the nape of her neck. She wore the same brown skirt and traveling spencer she had worn upon her arrival at Fairchild Park. To the casual observer, it might have appeared she was exactly the same woman. Such an observer wouldn’t have noticed the rosy hue in her cheeks, the patch of beard-burn on her throat, the puffy tenderness of lips still swollen from her lover’s kisses.

Drawing on her straw bonnet, she turned to face the bed.

Gabriel was sprawled on his stomach in the pearly dawn light, his imposing frame taking up most of the mattress. His head was pillowed on his arms, his right knee cocked to the side, nearly dragging the sheet off of his lean hips. A thick fall of tawny hair veiled his face.

Her golden giant
.

Her hands ached to touch him one last time, but she knew she couldn’t risk waking him. In a vain attempt to take the edge off of the temptation, she drew on a pair of black gloves.

She had no choice but to leave her trunk behind. She’d already eased the half-packed portmanteau out from under the bed. She had only one task left to complete.

She approached the bed, her every step measured as if it would be her last. As she knelt, only inches from his face, Gabriel stirred and mumbled something in his sleep. Samantha held her breath, believing for one shattering moment that he would open his eyes, that instead of looking through her, he would look right into the depths of her soul.

Instead, he uttered a deep sigh and rolled away from her, his big hand patting the tumbled bedclothes as if searching for something.

Sliding her hand beneath the mattress, she retrieved the stack of letters she’d shoved there so carelessly the night before. Without taking the time to secure them in their ribbon, she tucked the bundle into the portmanteau, then buckled the latches of the traveling bag.

She drew a folded piece of paper from the pocket of her skirt. Her hand trembled ever so slightly as she rested it on the pillow next to Gabriel’s head.

The next thing Samantha knew, she was standing by the door, portmanteau in hand.

She allowed herself one last look at Gabriel. She had thought to atone for her sins by coming here, but it seemed she had only compounded one sin with another, even more unforgivable one. But perhaps her greatest sin of all had been falling so deeply in love with him.

Tearing her gaze away from the bed, she slipped from the room, gently drawing the door shut behind her.