Always a Temptress (30 page)

He was panting, his body screaming for release. He was desperate to press himself against her, for his cock to acquaint itself with her contours. To torment himself with the rasp of those delicious curls that veiled the ultimate prize. He was shaking as he struggled to remain in control.
Finish
. He couldn’t agree more.

“Please,” she panted, undulating like a nautch girl against him. “Please…”

He took that as a command and nudged her knees apart, tracing the sleek line of her leg from calf to knee to soft white thigh, all the while knowing that her breaths were becoming as short and ragged as his. He swore he could already feel her juices on his fingers long before he slipped inside of her. Ah, there, hot as fire, slick as sin, already trembling with arousal. And her clitoris, that deliciously responsive bud that felt like hot satin against his fingers. Relentlessly he circled it with the pad of his thumb, his fingers deep inside of her, inciting her to explosion, the sharp scent of her arousal rising like smoke between them. She was gasping and whimpering, her body in constant motion, her hands frantically mapping his body, until she finally laid claim to his cock.

His instinct was to rise, to shove her knees wide and plunge deep, to pull a climax from her, mouth-to-mouth, chest-to-chest, taking her like a marauding berserker until he exploded into her, planting his seed so deep that none other could claim her.

It took every ounce of control he’d ever known, more energy than he thought he yet had, and the will to ignore the shafts of pain that had begun to gather at his back, but he held back, claiming her only with his mouth, plunging his tongue deep, sucking hers into his mouth where he tormented it, stoking her with his fingers, with his body, with words that seemed to pour out of him in between kisses.

“Yes, sweetheart, yes, come on, you’re almost there, enjoy it, take it, take it now…” His voice was a counterpart to her growing cries, the contractions that were beginning to sweep through her muscles, the trembling heat of her skin. “Come on.”

“Harry,
please
,” she begged, all but bowed right out of his arms. “Finish this.”

He should have waited. She should feel her own satisfaction first. But maybe if she was this distracted, she wouldn’t let the fear find her.

“I can’t move,” he panted, his own body screaming in protest. “I can’t support myself, Kate. I want you to climb on top.”

She almost seized to a complete stop. “You want me to
what
?”

He grinned, his hands already on her hips. “It’s easy. And, I understand, quite fun.”

Before she could think to protest, he easily lifted her, hoping she didn’t call out his lie about weakness. “Take me in your hands, Kate,” he panted. “Guide me.”

If there was one thing he could say about his Kate, she was quick to learn. “Like this?” she asked, wrapping her fingers around him and positioning him at her entrance.

“God yes.” He could barely breathe. “Now ride me.”

“Wha—?”

Before she could get the words out, he grabbed her hips and pulled her down. He almost came right then. Every muscle in his body seized with the sudden heat of her capturing him. His cock shuddered and filled. He swore he almost passed out from pleasure. And then he looked up to see the astonishment in her eyes.

“Ride,” he instructed. “Just like a horse.”

She dipped her head, briefly catching his gaze as if she was still too uncertain to share the sensations that were obviously set loose in her body. Harry thought he saw tears glint in her eyes before she dropped her head and let her hair brush against his chest. He wasn’t going to be able to take much more.

“Kate,” he begged. “Please.”

And then he saw it: that smile. Surprised, delighted, bemused, as if she’d never experienced anything like it before. Which, Harry realized, she hadn’t. Wonder appeared and grew, like a fire that spread inside her, and suddenly she began to move. Tentatively at first, her hands balanced on his chest. Back and forth, measuring him inside of her, testing the pleasure of friction. Gaining confidence, her movements evening out, until Harry thought he would just die right there of the pleasure. Finally she looked up, met his eyes with a rapturous smile.

“Would you like to taste my breasts?” she asked, her eyes coy and mischievous.

She didn’t even wait for his answer, just leaned forward until the long tip of her nipple settled right against Harry’s mouth. He wrapped his hands around her shoulders and brought her closer. And as he began to move in rhythm with her, he suckled, deep and long, pleasuring her with his tongue as she pleasured him with her gathering cries and the contractions that were even now beginning to squeeze his cock into oblivion.

“Oh, Harry,” she whimpered, pulling her breast free only to replace it with her own mouth, so Harry could taste her excitement, her amazement, her pleasure.

He held out just long enough, just until she threw her head back, the moonlight washing down her neck, and cried out again and again, shuddering around him, flying apart, her eyes wide to the night, her voice astonished and laughing. She had barely begun to relax when Harry followed, his body disintegrating in mindless pleasure, pumping into her, against the very edge of her womb, emptying himself until there was nothing left, nothing. Not energy or frustration or hunger. And for a very long time, he lay there, still inside of her, with Kate resting against his chest and his arms around her so that he could feel her heartbeat ease against his.

“So
that
,” she murmured, “is what all the fuss is about.”

He wanted to tell her how sorry he was that it had taken so long to get to this point, but he didn’t want to spoil this perfect moment of communion. He wanted to tell her that the mature Kate was infinitely more compelling than the fifteen-year-old Kate, vastly more complex and fascinating, so brave that she humbled him. He wanted to tell her that he would stay in England just for her and raise tulips. He didn’t know, though, whether he could. He didn’t even know whether that was what she wanted. And after what she’d been through, she deserved to have what she wanted. So he held her quietly, tucked next to his heart, her head against his shoulder, and he listened to her breathe.

“Where do we go from here?” she asked, proving herself more courageous than he.

“Where do you want to go?”

She chuckled, and he felt it in his chest. “I want to do that again.”

He smiled. His cock was already signaling its enthusiastic agreement. “Would you like to try it in a chair?”

She lifted her head, her eyes wide. “Really?”

He smiled and reached up to brush her hair back. “Aren’t you the one who read
Ars Amatoria
? ‘There’s a thousand ways to do it.’”

Her eyes grew even wider, and once again she was that young girl, poised on the brink of discovery. “Is that what he meant? Good heavens.”

Harry couldn’t help laughing. “Just wait till I show you some of the books I brought back from India.”

They made love three more times that night, once in a chair, once on the rug, and once in the bath. Harry felt triumphant; he felt thankful. Mostly, he felt tender for his wife, who, after suffering the kind of abuse that could have crippled her forever, had finally learned what pleasure there was between a man and a woman. She was coming, he thought, to trust him. It wasn’t everything, Harry knew. But it was finally a beginning, and he wanted to spend every minute with her discovering together what could lie ahead.

Just before dawn came, Kate confirmed her growing trust by letting him blow out the candles. As the last darkness of night slipped into the bedroom, Kate, nestled against Harry’s chest, whispered, “I love you.” Harry, more stunned than he wanted to admit, fell asleep wondering how he should respond.

Kate never slept that night. Not after she gathered up her courage, there in the darkness and spoke. Harry had given her a miracle; she could at least have the courage to give him the truth.

“I love you,” she’d whispered.

She pretended that the reason he didn’t answer was that he’d fallen asleep before she’d spoken. She knew, though, that it wasn’t true. She’d felt the instinctive stiffening of Harry’s body at her words. She could only imagine what he was thinking.
Good Lord. Give a girl a good rogering and she thinks you’re devoted for life.

She should have known better. If Harry hadn’t loved her enough ten years ago to challenge her father, how could he suddenly love her more now? He was kind and patient and more generous than Kate could have imagined. He had freed her from one of her worst prisons, and she would always love him for that. It didn’t mean he suddenly wanted to put his slippers by the Eastcourt hearth.

She basked in the sweet afterglow of pleasure that hummed through her body. She cherished the memories Harry had given her to supplant the old; exquisitely tender caresses, luscious kisses, the stunning sense of fullness. Not pain, but possession, passion, wide-eyed wonder. She wanted to sing, to spin around with the sheer joy of freedom. It truly had been lovemaking, even if Harry wasn’t
in
love with her.

For now, it was enough. It had to be. After what Harry had given her, the least she could do was give him his freedom. She could step back as he walked those long, silent miles he thought would banish his nightmares. But she would always wish he had chosen her instead.

When Harry slipped out of bed the next morning, Kate savored the beauty of his strong, sleek body. She allowed herself to remember the feel of it in her hands, between her thighs, inside of her. She spent a few moments battling tears, furious with herself that she was suddenly having trouble controlling her emotions. And then, because she didn’t know how else to manage, she got up and began her day.

Her first step was to don her brightest day dress, a wonderfully flowy poppy red sarcenet with gold embroidering. Then, after sending Harry off on his mission to return her uncle’s boxes, she breakfasted with Bea and returned to the library to check the last of the books for the verse.

It took no more than an hour to admit defeat. “Not here,” she said, plumping down on a chair, William Blake’s
Songs of Innocence
in her hand. “What next?”

Bea looked up from perusing Shakespeare’s sonnets. “Hatchards.”

Kate sighed. “I can’t believe Hatchards has any book I don’t.” She nodded to include the room. “These are the poets I read.”

“Always?”

“Of…” Kate looked up, startled by a new thought. She looked around, but she was no longer seeing this library. She was thinking back. “These are the poets I collected over the last five years,” she mused. “But before that…”

She closed her eyes to better call up her memories. Oddly, that was what did it. The dark. She saw it, suddenly, as clearly as if she’d just set it down, hidden away in a little niche she’d fashioned in the corner of the priest hole, her purloined candle probably still tucked in beside it.

“I know,” she said, stunned. She should have known all along. She should have recognized those words. “I know where it is.”

Bea didn’t seem surprised. “Moorhaven?”

Kate nodded, still back in the dark, tucked over her purloined treasure. She had felt such a rebel, keeping such forbidden fruit in her cell. Could the book still be there? Surely other children had found her niche.

“I used to sneak books into the priest hole,” she told Bea. “I found this one way up on the shelves tucked behind…oh, Gassendi’s
Life of Epicurus
.” She chuckled. “Nobody read Latin history but me, which was why I guess somebody thought it was safe there. It was a book of poetry by one of my ancestors, all bound in very pretty maroon leather with gold embossing. William Marshall Hilliard. There were three copies tucked up where they would be out of sight of women and children.”

“Radical?”

“Heavens, no. Lewd. Let me think. “ She tilted her head, trying to recall the forbidden text. “It was titled something like
Virtue’s Grave
, after a line in a Marvell poem. I think the Marvell line was, ‘Seest that unfrequented cave? That den? Love’s shrine. Virtue’s grave.’ Very wicked stuff for a thirteen-year-old girl. Execrable poetry, but very titillating.” She grinned. “My ancestor’s. Not Marvell’s. His was marvelous
and
titillating.”

“Meaning?”

“Now?” Kate shook her head. “I don’t know.” For a moment, she sat still, memories crowding her, the attar of fear and loss, daring and secret triumph. That book had helped liberate her. It had been her testament to survival, her proof that no matter what was done to her, she could still win. “I can’t think the book exists anywhere else, except in a Hilliard domain. Uncle Hilliard must have found it. As obscure as it is, it’s probably the perfect code template.”

“Arcane,” Bea said.

“Exactly. Who else is going to recognize it but another Hilliard so bored she’s read every book in the library? And there simply weren’t that many Hilliards who fit the description.”

“Town crier?”

“Well, we’ll need to share the news, certainly. We need Diccan to look for a copy down at his estate. I might as well go tell him. Harry won’t miss me.”

Kate must have given something away. Bea quirked an eyebrow. “Falling-out?”

Kate blinked. “With whom? Harry? Heavens no. Blissfully contented.”

Bea snorted like a horse. Kate got to her feet and replaced
Songs of Innocence
. Didn’t it just figure? She wouldn’t get back to Eastcourt anytime soon, but she would probably end up back at Moorhaven, the last place on earth she wanted to be.

That was when it struck her. If she was right, if this was, indeed, the answer to their puzzle, then the investigation was over. The verse they’d been looking for was found, which mean that the Lions would have no more reason to kill her. She would be safe. And Harry would be free to go.

She couldn’t move. She squeezed her eyes shut, a hand up to her chest, as if she could ease the anguish that sheared through her. He
couldn’t
go. Not yet. She’d just found him. She loved him. She needed him.

It changed nothing. He needed to go, and she had no right to stop him. It would be unfair, and she simply couldn’t do that to him. But oh, suddenly she wasn’t so sure she would survive this.