At Your Pleasure (27 page)

She spread her arms across the span of the mattress, lifting herself, inviting him to do as he would.

He kept utter silence as his mouth moved down her body, but the ferocity of his kisses, the feverish sweep
of his hands over her calves and thighs, lent the hush a charged, intent quality. Her thighs fell apart at his urging.

He put his mouth between her legs.

A rasping noise escaped her. She bit down on her knuckles as his tongue penetrated her, then retreated. He found the small, aching spot where her desire pulsed and licked her there, again and again. She looked down her body, saw him crouched between her legs, holding her thighs apart, and the pleasure that rolled through her seemed to lift away the top of her skull.

It frightened her. She twisted beneath him. “Enough—” she managed, but when she would have closed her thighs, he sent a hot, intent look up her body that made her freeze. His face looked deadly serious.

He gripped her thighs and opened them wider.

Gasping, she lay back, bucking beneath him now, sensation darting through her and building in jolts, concentrating into an aching throb. She was too empty; she found the smooth curve of his muscled shoulders and squeezed, demanding, urging him up her body.

“Please,” she gasped, pulling at this cloth that kept him from her, wanting the hot press of his skin along hers. She yanked harder, and now he heeded her; he sat up and threw off his clothing, divesting himself in quick order, his eyes moving along her again and again, as though she might vanish from him; and then he was back above her, and she hissed out a breath at the branding heat of his flesh against hers. She wriggled beneath him, adjusting herself, wanting his weight to crush her harder; there was nothing, no satisfaction, to be had like
his solidity, the tension in his corded neck, the biting kiss he gave her as he adjusted his hips and his cock came up against her.

She lifted her hips and felt the blunt, nudging pressure of his penetration. As he pressed into her, the discomfort grew sharper, and then, suddenly, eased into a burning almost pleasurable—and then entirely so as he began to move.

Her hands slipped to his buttocks, urging him as he pushed into her; she turned her throat to his mouth, and used her nails to encourage the pressure of his teeth. He sucked on her neck, and then took her mouth again. Hunger gained on her and took direction of her hips, so she rose and fell with him, filled, conquered, wilder yet than he; in a mad moment she tried to turn him so she could mount him and take this slow, steady rhythm into a faster, harsher pace. But his hands caught her wrists and brought her arms over her head, pinning her in place as he took her.

She opened her eyes and found his fixed on her, his face a harsh mask. He leaned down to take her mouth and she bit his lip. The kiss turned savage and his restraint finally broke. He thrust into her faster and faster, and finally the delicious tension in her belly coalesced; she seized around him, crying out into his shoulder. His hips rolled once more against her, and then again, and then he, too, shuddered and fell still, his hand slipping from her wrists to cup her face as he exhaled into her throat.

He rolled to one side, taking her with him, his arms
wrapped around her, his mouth on her ear, and now on her shoulder, lazy, now interested, charting the course of her collarbone.

She felt herself trembling. His hand stroked her back now as though to calm her, then closed on her nape, clasping her firmly. His heavy thigh lay over hers.

“Sleep,” he said. “You are weary.”

She was the last thing from weary. Even now something low in her belly stretched and yawned. The breadth of his muscled thigh, the feel of the sparse hair there beneath her wandering hand, the density of his chest, were enough to renew the echoes of her climax.

The flame within her had not been quenched. In giving it full license to burn, she had also fed it fresh fuel.

My God,
she thought.
What have I done?

15

I
t was Adrian’s wont to rise before dawn, and rarely had he such good cause for it as now: he had ordered his men to save for him the pleasure of expelling Cosmo Colville from the house.

But though his eyes opened before the light had begun to edge through the window, the prospect of Cosmo Colville’s reaction could not entice him to bestir himself. Not when he had, next to him on the bed, her hand laid lightly over his chest, a wonder.

She slept deeply. Her hand was small where it curled atop his chest. He placed his own over it, covering it more tightly when he felt how the coolness of the room had settled into her skin. Her fingers were slim but not soft; her ragged cuticles betrayed how quickly she had left behind the soft routines of court life. Her body beneath the embroidered quilt lent it more beauty than it deserved, shaping it with the slopes and valleys of her curving flesh.

Last night he had been struck dumb by her. What he
had not felt in the chapel, the breath of grace too pure for earthly corruption, had fallen across him in this bed. For the briefest moment, beholding her naked, he had wondered at himself, feeling almost unmanned—reluctant even to touch her, lest the history collected in his skin, the dark deeds in his bones, somehow bring her to ruin.

But he was only a man, not a saint; and even divinity could not restrain for too long the baser hunger in him, the need to possess her rearing so ferociously that only her eyes, fastened wide and luminous on his, had recalled to him the strain of sanity required not to crush her; to use her thoroughly but not forcefully; to ensure that her sleep now remained undisturbed by the bruising of his grip.

He looked upon her for long minutes, seeing more and more to wonder at: the shades of her hair, changing from purest night to the shadows of evening, cobalt to inky black, and the faint tracery of veins beneath her pale skin. He felt as Saul must have done when a great light burned the scales from his eyes—newly exalted by the sight of the world, liberated again to true vision. Her wrists were slim as saplings’ branches. The curve of her arm might have taught grace to birds in flight. But her calf over his weighed solidly, a sweet provocation, and the plush give of her thigh was the sweetest submission he had ever known.

The fear stole over him like the first breath of night, at first a subtle chill on his nape, and then a spreading, sharpening cold that made his gut contract and his breath come short.

She had spoken truly. He had sinned against her by
forcing her into wedlock. Did she know how easily she might punish him for it? Her slim, small hands held his future now, and with a single twist, they could shatter it.

A logical man—the man he’d supposed himself to be—never would have touched her, never would have given her such power over him. As his wife, her actions were his. Her treason would be counted his treason. Her mistakes could end his fortune—his family—everything he had fought to build and safeguard.

Yet . . . with her, he was no logical man, and so this was not the true source of his fear.

He had told himself that he could bear her hatred so long as she was safe. Yet it came to him now that her esteem was also . . . beyond price to him. If he had sacrificed the chance to recover her love—if she never found it in herself to forgive his crime, if her hatred was all that remained to him . . .

She would nevertheless be safe. For that alone, he could entertain no regrets. But as for himself . . . with all her hatred and none of her love, he could see no way to prosper. Truly, he would be destroyed.

At last, he removed himself from her side, moving slowly lest he wake her, pausing in his retreat to clear the hair that crossed her eyes, and to press his lips to hers—just once, for if this morning never started, then the night ahead would never come.

He was not a patient man. The urge to woo her, to begin the persuasion of reconciling her to this marriage, pressed him hard. But he would give her the span of the day. He would wait until darkness to seduce her again.

He marshaled his discipline, forcing his thoughts toward other matters as he dressed himself. But at the door, he could not help but turn back.

The first ray of sunrise had crossed her bare arm. As he watched it spread, coloring her like honey, his wonder condensed into a weight in his chest. He remembered now why men prayed; why earth-made miracles caused them to cast their eyes to heaven in search of reassurance that their great good fortune would not be snatched away.

On a long, shaken breath, he stepped out of the chamber.

Nora woke alone to a morning fractured by a nightingale’s distant melody and, closer at hand, the sharp slap of her maid’s slippers across the floor.

She pushed herself up on one elbow, turmoil rising instantly within her. He had forced her . . . He had said he loved her . . . He had seduced her despite herself. And she had been willing.

He was not here.

She was relieved.

She was . . . disappointed.

Dear God in heaven.
She could not bear to look into her own mind just yet. “Grizel,” she said.

The maid gasped and wheeled back from the far end of the room. “Oh, my lady—” She rushed forward, one hand clutching her cap to keep it in place, and fell to her knees beside the bed. With clammy fingers she enfolded
Nora’s hand and carried it to her breast. “Was he cruel to you?”

“No,” Nora said slowly. Or did she mean
yes
? His body, his attentions, had been the furthest thing from cruel. But the manner in which he had secured her—that had been cruel indeed.

As for the manner in which she had received his attentions—the ferocious, joyous, terrible hunger that had driven her, and that he had satisfied so expertly, again and again—what did that say of
her
?

She realized that Grizel’s speculative gaze was wandering the rumpled sheets. This bed loudly spoke that the night had not been chaste.

Blushing, Nora pulled free of the maid’s grasp. “How did you know to find me here?”

“But where else would you have been, after such words? I could hardly credit them—the whole house is on its ear. Mr. Colville lifted his voice; he threatened to cut his lordship’s throat; only his lordship invited him to do so, and then Mr. Colville got very quiet. But how did it happen, madam? When did he marry you?”

This breathless recital left Nora in a daze. “Mr. Colville? But how did he—and how did
you
learn of it?”

Grizel leapt back to her feet. “Oh! It is true, then! And as for how I know—why, he called us all to the great hall, he did, and pronounced the news—”

“All of you?” Nora slipped off the bed. “The whole household?”

Grizel hesitated. “Was he wrong to do so, my lady? I did grow worried when you made no appearance—”

Nora held up a hand for silence. These tidings unsettled her extremely. Calling her household to order while she had lain asleep upstairs—it was not simply highhanded, but part of his larger strategy. He had bedded her last night and made certain this morning that the entire house knew enough to testify to it.

Such cold-blooded calculation! How could she match it with the hot tenderness of his kisses?

She put her arms around herself, feeling suddenly cold. “I don’t . . .”

I don’t know what I should feel, or what I must do
.

This was not a sentiment to be shared with one’s maid.

“I need to bathe,” she said. “Arrange for it.”

“Aye, my lady. Here, or in your own—” Grizel stopped. “That is,” she said more cautiously, “will these be your chambers from now forward, my lady?”

“I don’t
know
!”

The words burst from her too sharply. “Forgive me,” she said. “I am—I have yet to decide on these matters. But I will bathe in my own chambers.”

At least, she thought blackly, he had spared her the right to make
that
decision for herself.

In the midst of her bath it came to her with a start that she had abandoned the cloak bag in the entresol. Her frantic inquiry of Grizel, who had helped her to pack it, yielded a quick reassurance: the contents had been returned to the steward for safekeeping.

But on such a day, Nora could not take assurance for
certainty. After dressing, she went to confirm for herself that Montrose had secured the deeds.

The door to her steward’s office stood ajar. She entered, expecting to find him at solitary work, but he had company: her new husband sat at the desk while Montrose hung about his elbow, solicitously attending Adrian’s inspection of some document.

Glancing up, Adrian offered her a lazy smile. “Good day, lady wife.”

While it was a proper greeting for a husband to offer, in the context of these strange events, it seemed as much a challenge as a welcome. “Good day,” she said, but felt too uncertain of herself to smile.

Moreover, her steward’s reaction puzzled her: as she stepped inside, he recoiled from Adrian’s side. Had he not heard news of the marriage? How had he avoided Adrian’s
announcement
?

She followed his glance downward.