A Love That Never Tires (41 page)

They clung to each other, demanding. Urgent. Insistent. Full of weeks worth of pent up frustrations, longing, and heedless desperation.

Linley clasped his bare buttocks, raking her nails across them, grabbing entire handfuls of the soft, white skin. She clutched him tight between her legs, grinding him against her.

But that wasn’t good enough.

She pulled her nightgown over her head, not caring if he saw her bones jutting out of her parchment skin. Or the bruises. He had seen it all before, no doubt, and she wanted to be as close to him as two people could get.

Common sense told them to keep their clothes on—especially with nothing but a screened door separating them from anyone who happened to pass by—but Patrick shucked himself out of the thin, cotton pajamas without a second thought.

He came back to her, grabbing her ankles and placing them up on his shoulders. Leaning down, he pressed Linley’s knees far, far back. She lay folded up beneath him, and Patrick drove himself into her. He withdrew once again, and then drove in.

He pushed his weight down upon her. He pounded her so hard the bed pitched, and rolled, and slapped against the wall. Really, he ought to have been more gentle, but he could not control himself.

Linley didn’t seem to mind. She threaded her fingers through his hair, clawed his scalp. Moaned every time he went in up to the hilt. Cooed, and purred, and bit down hard against his shoulder.

They were lovers. She hadn’t made it up, after all. She hadn’t imagined it in a fit of feverish longing. Patrick was hers for as long as she would have him. And she would have him, and have him, and have him.

“Oh, God, Patrick.” She kissed him all over his face, tasting the beads of sweat that gathered at his temples and ran down his jawline. He ground into her, bucking his hips and sending her head smacking into the headboard. Linley clawed at the metal bars, grasping them between her hands. She thought he would tear her apart. “Oh, God, Patrick. Oh, God. Oh, God.”

“Hush. Be quiet,” he gasped against her neck. “If you don’t, I’m going to stop.”

“No. No. No! I’ll be good! I’ll be—”

She bit her lips to keep her mouth shut. Between the bed creaking and their sweaty bodies slapping, she knew they were too loud. Anyone could hear them. And through the screened door, anyone could see them.

But no one walked by.

Patrick thrust on, grunting and incoherent. Linley lay folded beneath him, her head thrashing. Her eyes were clamped shut. Her face twisted with pleasure.

“I’m going to…” She moaned. “I’m definitely going to…”

And then she came. Her entire body rocked, nearly throwing Patrick off of her. He held on tight, fisting the bed sheets, letting her have every bit of the pleasure she deserved.

He lay still until her pulsing eased and her eyelashes fluttered open. Her wide eyes swam in their sockets, and as she blinked, tears gathered in their corners. Linley pried her fingers from around the metal headboard rails and ran them up and down Patrick’s back.

Every muscle was taught, strung as tight as bowstrings while he held himself back for her. His arms shook. His jaw trembled. He needed his release just as badly as Linley had needed hers.

Slowly, he began to move inside her.

She was slick and wet after her climax, and Patrick glided in and out of her body with little effort. Linley purred in his ear. Moaned. Whispered inaudible words to him as his body sailed within hers.

She lived for this, he knew.

And Patrick lived for it, too.

He had been so afraid for so long—afraid to have her, afraid to lose her. But there was no fear now, only an almost unrecognizable joy.

Patrick plunged into her with a slow, steady rhythm. Their bodies slid easily against one another. Gentle. Soft. Unrushed. He nuzzled his forehead against hers, both damp with sweat from their lovemaking. Their eyes never left each other. Not even as Patrick drew closer and closer to his release, and every part of his body screamed for him to let go, to lose control.

His hips began to move of their own accord, jerking, bouncing, and thrusting as they saw fit. His movements quickened, grew stronger, deeper. More urgent than before. He pumped against her, feeling his release building and building until he could not hold back any longer. And as he finally reached his own climax, he sobbed, crying out her name as it overtook him.

Patrick poured himself into her, unashamed for the first time in his life of the intensity of his orgasm, of the vulnerability of his wet, spent, shuddering body.

This was no mindless coupling. No breathless act between two desperate, love-starved individuals. This was a consummation. A pledging of one body to the other, that from that day forward, they would belong to each other. Through sickness or health, wealth or poverty, they would be together.

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

Linley lay in Patrick’s narrow metal bed, listening to the rain splatter in the mud just outside the screen door. They held hands beneath the thin cotton sheets, drifting in and out of sleep as the afternoon passed. But as wonderful as their reunion had been, she could not shake the one undeniable truth keeping her from happiness.

“Patrick, you need that money.”

He shook his head. “I don’t care about the money.”

If he had any sense at all, he would realize what a fortune he was giving away. A hardworking man could toil six days a week and still only hope to earn fifty or sixty pounds a year. At that rate, Patrick could live for the next seventy years without ever having to lift a finger. But the more Linley prodded him, the more she realized he truly did not care about the money—which could only mean one thing…

“Are you in love with me?”

Patrick didn’t even blink at the question. “Isn’t it obvious?”

How far they had come since that day in Rabat, only six months before. How different their lives were now, all because of one chance meeting in a hotel garden. A brushing of shoulders had set off a chain of events leading Patrick half way around the world, and Linley right into his arms.

Life was funny like that—using one seemingly inconsequential event to create the turning point of two very different lives.

But Patrick hoped their lives would not be different for much longer.

“Linley,” he said. “It is true that I am in love with you. And I will continue to love you for the rest of my life, but I’m not the same man who consented to be your lover a few weeks ago.”

Linley turned in the bed to face him, to look him eye to eye. Her heart beat in her chest as she struggled to keep her breathing slow and steady.

“And I cannot, being the man I am now,” he continued. “Agree to be your lover.”

Her breathing stopped altogether. Why was he doing this to her? How could he, after all they’d been through?

But with all they had been through, could he no longer stomach her? Wasn’t it true that Patrick had seen her at her absolute worst, reduced to no more than an infant, needing to be bathed, and changed, and fed?

“No!” she cried. “Patrick, what are you saying? I don’t under—”

He held up his hands. “Wait. Let me finish, please.” There was a pause. He reached for her hand and held it tight in his. “While you were sick, while I sat every night by your bedside, believing you were dying right before my eyes…I felt so helpless.”

“But you weren’t helpless! You saved me!”

“I stole you away like a petty thief. I had no more right to take you from your father than a common burglar has to pinch the family silver,” he explained. “And while I risked my life, and your life, and Schoville’s life, I realized there was one thing I could give you. One thing I had that was worth giving—my name.”

Linley’s mouth fell open.

“You see, knowing that, I cannot be your lover,” Patrick said. “I cannot agree to be anything less than your husband. I love you, Linley. And it’s all or nothing.”

She could not utter one single word to him. She simply stared, struck dumb.

“I know how you feel about marriage,” Patrick said. “I know you want to be free to come and go as you please. And I know we both have obligations on opposite sides of the world, but I want to know that, wherever you may be, you are safe and provided for.” Patrick hardly stopped to take a breath, afraid if he slowed down she would stop him. He had to get it out. He’d been waiting weeks to tell her. “I can do that for you. I can give you my title, and my money, and whatever else you want from me. Name it, and it’s yours.”

“Patrick, I will not marry you,” Linley told him. “You said it yourself that you wouldn’t wish your title on your worst enemy. Yet, you would sentence me to a lifetime of trying to live up to your good name.”

Patrick felt as if he’d been slapped, but still, Linley barreled on.

“Save your titles and your money for your heiress,” she said. “And love me for me.
As I am
.” Linley’s chest heaved. She knew her words hurt him, but she could not let Patrick make a mistake he would regret for the rest of his life. “For once, stop thinking of everyone else’s well-being and start thinking of your own.”

“What do you think I was doing when I dragged you halfway across India?” Patrick said. “I wouldn’t let you die because I couldn’t face living without you. I would gladly give up everything I have, and watch my house crumble to the ground around me, but I will not be content with a life of loneliness.” It was his turn to pant and heave. “You told me once that you were lonely, and I told you I understood. But maybe I didn’t. When I looked you in the face that day on the beach, I had no idea what it meant to feel real loneliness because I had no idea how it felt to have someone. But I know how that feels now, and I don’t want to face one day—let alone the next fifty years—without you.”

Tears ran down Linley’s cheeks as she listened to the man she loved pour his heart out. What a perfect fool he was to give up everything for her sake.

“It won’t be easy,” she said. “We’re both too stubborn to give up our separate lives. We might only see each other three or four times a year. I could never ask such a sacrifice from you.”

“I would bear it. I would do it gladly,” he told her. “Just confess to me the one thing I’ve wanted to hear since that day on the beach in Morocco. Since our kiss in the British Museum. Since the night I first made love to you.” He searched her eyes with his. “Tell me you love me, and I can endure anything.”

“I love you,” she said. “You know I do.”

“Then marry me.” Patrick smiled and ran his fingertips along the tearstains on her freckled face. It had been those freckles that first drew him to her, but it would be her heart that would always keep him. “This could be one of those real moments you told me about,” he said, grinning at her from across the pillow. “I’d hate for you to look back and realize you missed your one chance at really living.”

EPILOGUE

Patrick closed his eyes against the glare of the sun and let the warm breeze play against his hair. He smiled at the sound of Linley’s voice as she strolled down one of the garden paths ahead of him.

He once told her if he ever came to Malta, it would not be for the views. She had blushed then, but when he showed up on her doorstep for a surprise visit a week ago, modesty appeared to be the furthest thing from her mind. They barely made it upstairs before they were both out of their clothes and sprawled across the floor.

It was harder to travel with the war on, but Patrick had been determined to see her before he went to the front.

The clicking of Linley’s little heels against the flagstones told him she’d grown tired of waiting at the end of the path and come back for him. Patrick wanted to prolong that moment—the sting of the sun and the salt air, and the smell of the flowers—for as long as he could.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked.

Patrick opened his eyes. He tried to imagine the harbor without the warships at anchor and their coal smoke blackening the sky.

“I’m sorry it isn’t Morocco,” he said. “I know you had your heart set on spending our anniversary there.”

She shook her head. “No, Patrick. This is perfect. I could not have asked for a better day.”

“Truly?”

“I know traveling to Rabat is an impossibility right now.” Linley reached up to run her fingers along the collar of his thick khaki uniform. “And with everything you had to do in Kyre, it’s a wonder you even made it at all.”

Patrick smiled and took her hand. He knew she was angry with him for joining up. They had argued about it at first, but in the end Linley had been a good sport.

“I’d be a terrible husband if I missed our first anniversary all because of some bally war.”

They both smiled.

It had been a good year. They had their share of ups and downs like any newly married couple, and it seemed like a lifetime ago since they said their vows in that tiny mission camp, but somewhere between his responsibilities and her career, they found time to make a life together.

Or they had, until everything changed.

“Promise me,” Linley whispered. “When all this is over, you’ll come back to me.” She forced her eyes to look up and meet his. “I don’t want this to be our only anniversary.”

“Linley…”

“No. Promise me.” She held his gaze. “I did not marry you just to become a widow.”

“I have every intention of coming back,” Patrick said. “Besides, I’ve already played the hero enough for one lifetime.” He tried to laugh at that, to keep his spirits up. He needed to be brave enough for the both of them. Brave enough to walk away from her and get on that ship, and to do what was right for his home and his country, even if Linley could not understand it.

“You’re going to be late,” she said, pulling on his lapel. “Time and tide won’t wait, not even for a marquess.”

“Why don’t you go to Kyre?” Patrick asked, covering her hand with his. “Wolford Abbey needs its marchioness.”

Linley shook her head. “You know I can’t leave Papa,” she said. “Not with Schoville gone, and Reginald and Archie leaving for Cairo any day now.”

“But Malta is too close to the fighting. I would feel better about it if I knew you were somewhere safe. And with the war on, there won’t be any more expeditions.”