Beloved (39 page)

She was silent.

He covered her.

Saber lighted a small lamp on a marquetry teapoy near the fireplace. A few added coals and a puff or two of the bellows brought
the fire to crackling life.

A glance at Ella showed she had not moved. Her breathing was soft and regular.

Exhaustion. Amazingly, she had already fallen into an exhausted sleep. By the heavens, he would find out who was responsible
for whatever had been done to her this night. They should be punished.

He loosened his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. His stock joined his jacket and he undid the neck of his shirt. For now he
would let her sleep. When she awoke, they would talk.

Saber moved a chair where he could see her clearly, and sat down.

A speedy marriage and then they would remove to the country. Not to Shillingdown, which was too easily accessed, but to some
remote place he would secure. Perhaps in Ella’s beloved Scotland.

She turned onto her back and tossed aside the covers.

Frowning, he rose and went to cover her again.

While he stood over her, her arms rose, stretched above her head.

Saber drew back. He flexed his hands and made fists. He might be damaged, but he was, nevertheless, a man. Only a man. And
he wanted this woman.

With gritted teeth, he left the room, crossed the hall to the study. With the door open, even if someone were to gain entrance
to this part of the house, they could not enter the bed-chamber unnoticed.

He lighted a lamp and seated himself at the extraordinary Italian rococo desk he’d found abandoned there. He would set about
some business that shouldn’t wait, and try not to think of the girl who lay so near, so vulnerable…

He’d been right. Anyone who came or went from the bed-chamber would be visible from the desk in the study.

On bare feet that made no sound, Ella crossed to the study. “What are you doing?” She stood on the threshold of the room,
the light behind making her shift transparent. “I felt you leave.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was pretending.”

“Why?”

She rested her weight on one leg. “Because I wanted to see what you would do.”

He could not look away.

“I wanted you to come to me, and hold me.”

“I”—he let his gaze travel over her—“I didn’t trust myself to hold you, Ella.”

“Why?”

He threw down his pen. “So full of questions. Don’t you understand that I want you? I want you as a man wants a woman. I have
already taken too many liberties, taken too much of you that was not mine to take.”

Ella put her hands behind her back and strolled slowly toward him. “Surely anything I choose to give you is yours?”

He spread his hands flat on the desk. Did she know what she did? They had spoken of having no secrets, yet there were so many
between them.

“I choose to give myself to you, Saber. If the liberties you speak of are those things we have shared, then please take them
again. It is all we shall have.”

Saber frowned. He gripped the arms of his chair. “I will find out what happened last evening, you know.”

“It doesn’t matter. In a way, it’s appropriate. There are things we must accept because they cannot be changed. I was reminded
of things in my life that cannot be changed—nothing more.”

“Please tell me what has troubled you so, Ella.”

“Who are you writing to?”

He glanced at the desk, at the paper he’d drawn out. “To Struan. To tell him I wish to marry you quickly. At once, in fact.”

“So that you can save me?”

Save her?
“Come here. Come where I can … touch you.”

Ella came, hesitantly at first, but she came. Once at his side, she faced him with her back to the desk.

The soft fabric of her shift settled on her breasts, her belly, her thighs. She might as well have been naked. He could not
have been more aroused.

Her nipples hardened beneath his gaze.

She pushed back her hair and he saw that her hands shook.

“There is nothing practiced about you, my love.”

“Practiced? What do you mean?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just a passing thought.” He must lead her carefully, gently. What he felt in her was beyond price—natural
purity, and faith, faith in him.

“I feel…I feel wobbly! Isn’t that silly?” She fumbled behind her for support.

Saber gripped her waist, smiled at her startled shriek, and lifted her to sit on the desk. “There. Oh, yes, I like you there.
I believe I shall save my letter writing until later.” He brought one of her feet to rest on his thigh, followed the slight
bones from her toes to her ankles with a forefinger, trailed a path behind her calf to the back of her knee.

Ella jumped, and leaned to brace herself on his shoulders. “That tickles. And I know I shouldn’t allow you to touch me so.”

“How the lady does change her mind about such things,” he told her. His heartbeat grew faster. “She wants to be touched. She
doesn’t want to be touched.”

“I want to be touched.”

He looked into her eyes. Muscles in his jaw tensed. His body ached with his need for her, and with the effort it took to restrain
that need.

“What do you mean, Ella? You want to be touched?”

She reached for his hand and took it to her breast. “You have made me feel things I didn’t know existed.”

Slowly, she spread his fingers, pressed his palm to her budding flesh, and sighed as her eyes squeezed shut.

“I have remembered this,” she told him. “Over and over, I remembered your hands upon me. But I know there is much more. I
had thought to find Mama’s book and read what I must know.”

“You do not need Justine’s book,” he said. Blood pounded in his ears. His gut contracted. Other parts of him did anything
but contract.

Saber held her thighs and leaned to press his lips to her throat.

She raised her chin.

Each inch of her skin inflamed him more, each inch that he explored with his mouth, with the tip of his tongue.

She tasted sweet, smelled of flowers, felt so soft.

Saber tilted his head to kiss her collarbone, the little dip above, the top of her shoulder, the side of her neck. He heard
her moan, and smiled. He wanted to know all of her, and he would.

“Saber.”

“Mmm?” He found the fragile spot beneath an ear.

“Saber!”

“Mmm?”

The folds within her ear fascinated him. He blew there, lightly.

“Saber!”

“Yes, my love?” The hollow beneath her cheekbone invited close attention, and the tip of her chin, the corner of her mouth—and
the other corner of her mouth.

“It is extraordinary.”

“I know.” To kiss her brow he had to rise a little from his seat. “All extraordinary. Every bit of you. Everything that I
feel with you.”

He felt her hands inside his shirt, curling over his shoulders, and smiled afresh. His Ella was a delight wrapped in gossamer
and so ready to be unwrapped. He would delight in unfolding her all the way to her center.

Saber settled his mouth on hers and her sweetness overwhelmed him. He stood between her legs and framed her face in hands
that were none too steady. For a long time he was content to brush their lips together. Her fingers found the scar on his
shoulder and smoothed the puckered skin. He hesitated only an instant before giving her mouth his full attention again.

Her sweetness could draw him out of darkness.

Her trust could banish doubt.

Her acceptance of every part of him could send the rest of the world away.

He sank back to his chair, drawing her face down to his. Her eyes closed and her lips parted. Saber tasted the soft moistness
of her, felt the sharp edges of her teeth, the hesitant touch of her tongue.

To possess this creature was all he asked of life. To possess and protect and keep her close. With Ella there was no pain,
no screams, no hate, no fear.

Carefully, he moved his mouth across hers, turning her face with each caress of lips upon lips. He felt the firmer thrust
of her tongue, and warm pleasure spread within him. Her fingers dug into his shoulders. If he let her go she would fall against
him.

Restraint
.

Bracing herself, panting, she raised her head and looked at him. Her dark eyes were almost black, black and slumberous, the
lashes like thick lace that cast shadows into obsidian depths. Her parted lips were wet and showed the evidence of his kisses.
She held the tip of her tongue between her teeth and sucked in a breath.

Tapes at the front of her shift were all but untied. With one finger, Saber hooked them entirely undone—one by one— until
the front of the scanty gown gaped.

Saber swallowed. So close he need not move to touch them, her breasts were revealed. Pointed, pink-tipped, small, yet not
too small to fill a large man’s hands. And onward, downward, the rest of her body was small. Her rib cage beneath the firm
jut of her breasts tapered to a waist he’d have little trouble spanning.

She pulled the shift aside and stroked her breast as if absorbed. “You put your mouth here,” she told him, looking up, taking
one of his hands from her face, holding it beneath the softly heavy flesh. “I’d like you to do that again.”

His rod grew unbearably full. Obediently, willing his urges to wait, he touched his tongue to the tip of her nipple—and absorbed
the scouring of her fingernails on his back, and her sudden pressure against his face.

“Ah, ah,” he whispered. “Too quick, my love. That way too much is missed, perhaps lost.” With his thumb, he circled the center
of her breast. She made ineffectual grabs at him, and he laughed. “A moment longer, sweet. The waiting heightens pleasure.”
It also tested restraint.

“I want…”

“I know what you want. I also know what I want. Let me lead us both there.” He watched her face, her eyes squeezed tightly
shut, her lips drawn back from her teeth—and circled the nipple again, and again, drawing a little closer each time.

“Saber! It burns.”

“A beautiful burning. I burn too.”

She abandoned his hand to work at the buttons on his shirt. He sighed when it fell open, and longed to feel her tender flesh
pressed to his. Ella raked the pads of her fingers through the hair on his chest.

Saber attended to her other breast and her eyes flew open. A flush had mounted her cheeks, and a similar rosy hue painted
her pretty breasts. And around and around the nipple he passed his thumb.

“I … cannot bear it.”

“You cannot bear not to bear it,” he told her. “Neither can
I. We shall often suffer together like this. Should you like that?”

“Yes,” she said on a noisy breath. “Kiss … Take… Take… it…Saber.”

Take it
. A passionate female who would, unless he was much mistaken, be experiencing a taking of quite another nature shortly, one
she had never known. He thinned his lips. How could he have doubted her innocence? And would it have mattered if she were
not so?

No. No, he would trade his life and everything he had just to spend what time he could with her, like this.

Saber cupped her breasts while he kissed each of her tightly closed eyelids. He kissed her lips until she opened her mouth
wide and kissed him back, fiercely demanding, echoing the cries of her body for release.

The path to her waist was silken. The wide opening of her shift allowed him to spread his hands on her belly, to slide his
fingers around her bottom, to separate and lift her—and to absorb her gasp into his mouth. Saber breathed in her shocked excitement
and smiled secretly.

Ella pushed his shirt from his shoulders.

Saber bent and took a nipple gently between his teeth.

Her fingers drove into his hair.

He flicked the tip of his tongue over the stiffly budded flesh.

Ella arched her back.

Holding her hips, willing his own restraint, he suckled, aware of his pounding pulse, of each dragging breath.

Perfection.

Passion laced with power.

He drew perfection into his mouth, held passionate power within his hands.

He was only a man.

Saber dropped to sit again. He pulled her feet, one each side of him, onto the seat of his chair—and he slipped her wisp of
a gown up long, smoothly golden limbs. Bending his head, he kissed the inside of a slender thigh, laughed, and winced away
from her pinching grip on his hair.

“Oh, Saber,” she moaned. “What are you doing?”

He kissed and nuzzled his way up her other thigh, nipping at tender skin, holding her still when she would have jerked.

“Saber?”

“You don’t approve?”

“It’s…I…Ye-es. Oh!”

In one swift move, Saber brought her knees over his shoulders and buried his face in the dark hair between her thighs. The
tender mound beneath thrust helplessly at him. His tongue found the hidden place, found and curled around and beneath, and
in forays into her passage.

His rod leaped. Soon. He must join with her soon, or die of his own need.

“Saber!” she all but screamed.

His need could wait. Tiny tugs with teeth and lips convulsed her supple frame, drew her closer and closer until she gripped
his head with her thighs, held his neck rather than fall to her back.

Her taste made him drunk. Sheer sexuality, sheer womanly essence. Over and over he lapped at the ignited bud, and when she
convulsed, he almost failed to catch and hold her. Ripples passed along her muscles. Her cries were small and incoherent—and
amazed.

Saber stood over Ella, staring down at her, his vision blurred. Her head hung back, her black hair brushing the elegant desk
and spreading over the paper upon which he intended to ask for her hand.

The shift was an alluring rag, tattered, torn completely from one arm, held about the other elbow by threads, a flimsy drape
at her hips.

He eased her up to sit on the edge of the desk and held her against his chest while he shed his shirt entirely.

Ella reached up to smooth his face, pulled him down until she could claim his mouth in a searing kiss that bore only a lingering
trace of uncertainty.