Cheryl Holt (9 page)

His lips were warm, his breath sweet, and he tasted of the brandy he’d been drinking. Though he was tense, and seemed to be angry, he was cradling her gently, prudently, as if she were made of fine porcelain and should be handled delicately.

Her hands rose to slip around his neck, her fingers going to the queue that bound his hair so that she could explore the lush, dark locks. Shiny and luxurious, it descended past his shoulders, and she reveled in the palpable delight of sifting through the strands. The simple gesture was decadent, thrilling.

His own hands were never stationary. They were everywhere—her shoulders, arms, back, thighs—running up and down, stroking in languid circles.

A zealous pupil, she followed his lead, wanting and needing to caress him as he was caressing her. Tentative, then bolder, she investigated, letting her palms rove over muscle and bone.

Their lips parted, and he kissed across her cheek, her brow.

“I’ve been longing to do this since I first laid eyes on you,” he claimed.

“You couldn’t have.”

“There’s something about you, something that I . . .” He couldn’t complete the sentence. Did he not wish to tell her what it was? Did he not know? Was he incapable of describing his feelings?

She hoped his sentiments matched her own, that he was grappling with an impression of unreality, as if they’d leapt through a magical window to a place where no one had ever gone before, that they had found the perfect opportunity to wallow in felicity and bliss.

She wanted him bothered and perplexed, just as she was, herself.

“I saw you today,” she blurted. “From out in the garden. You were behind the stables, rinsing in the trough.”

“You minx! You were spying on me through the hedges!”

“Yes,” she admitted.

“Were you shocked?”

“I’d never seen a man without his shirt before,” she confessed. “But I wasn’t shocked!”

He chuckled and fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, undoing it to the waistband of his trousers, then he yanked the lapels aside. The curly matting of hair tempted and amazed her.

“Touch me,” he directed. “Touch me all over.”

Nervous and puzzled, she sat motionless, so he clasped her hands and rested them—palms down—on the center
of his chest, guiding her until she joined in, then he left her to her own devices.

With great relish, she learned his shape and build. Throughout, he watched her, his discomfiture increasing.

Inhaling, she exulted in his smell, his heat, as she pressed her ear over where his racing heart pounded. It was the most extraordinary, most enchanting sound she’d ever heard, and she could have lain there all night, listening to the steady tempo.

He was kissing her once more, her forehead, her cheek, her nose, moving downward to her mouth. Ardor flared anew, his tongue flicking out to trace across her bottom lip.

“Open for me,” he coaxed. Asking. Asking again.

Eagerly, she submitted, and the sensations were so exhilarating, so mesmerizing, that she could only hang on, as if clinging to a raft in a violent storm.

She was swept away, by emotion, by stimulation. She hadn’t realized that the human anatomy could experience such tumult, that the mind could be so overwhelmed. An invading army could have rushed into the room, and she wouldn’t have noticed, would have had no power to desist.

Without her being aware, they’d changed positions. She was prone on the sofa, and he was on top of her, his torso pushing her down, his weight crushing her, yet he didn’t feel heavy. He felt gloriously welcome.

His hips flexed into hers in a magnetic rhythm, one that she intuitively recognized and needed to emulate. Of their own accord, her legs spread, the fabric of her skirt bunched up, providing him with a buffer against which he could thrust. There was an unusual ridge in his trousers; she didn’t know what it was or why it was there, but she accepted its presence and battled to be nearer to it.

Again and again, he drove into her, becoming more intense, more demanding. He began petting her breasts through the material of her gown. As she was wearing only a thin chemise under it, it seemed as if he were fondling her bare skin.

Molding and sculpting the two mounds, he trifled and played. The action aroused her nipples, and they were peaked into taut buds. Pinching them, he squeezed in a way that made her writhe and moan, and she was rising on a tide of unfamiliar desire, seeking a goal that was just beyond her. She was desperate to attain it, and she labored toward it.

Somehow, he’d unbuttoned her dress, and the chilly air washed across her nipples. In some far-off section of her brain, she understood that she shouldn’t permit the liberty, that she should grab for her bodice and conceal herself, but her arms were inert. She couldn’t hinder him, nor did she want to.

He abandoned her mouth, and kissed down her neck, her chest, and before she knew what he was about, he’d wrapped his lips around her nipple and was sucking at it.

The maneuver evoked such agitation that the core of her body started to weep. She felt as if she were dying, as if her heart might quit beating.

It couldn’t be healthy to undergo such torment!

He nipped at the rigid nub, licking, laving, and torturing it, till it was inflamed and raw. Just when she could tolerate no more, he shifted to the other, giving it the same fierce attention.

With each titillation, she perished a little more. She wanted to order him to halt; she wanted him to continue on forever.

He pulled away so that he could scrutinize her exposed breasts, and the cessation of contact allowed
her a pause to wrestle with her equilibrium, to reassert some smidgen of control.

She’d never dreamed that she could behave so wickedly. The encounter was depraved and dangerous. While in the throes of passion, she’d neither noted nor heeded the dissolution, but the delay was excruciating because it offered her a chance to reflect.

“So pretty, Livvie,” he murmured, “and all mine. I can’t let anyone else have you. Not after this.”

He laughed, and there was a hidden meaning to his words that she didn’t like or comprehend. He was arrogant and possessive in a manner he hadn’t been previously.

Seizing her hands, he pinned them over her head, and she wanted them free, her bosom covered, but he wouldn’t oblige. She commenced tussling with him, her hips thrashing and squirming, but he enjoyed the enhanced commotion.

They had vaulted to a higher level, and she had landed herself in a perilous situation. Whatever destination he planned was exactly where she shouldn’t go.

Decades of lectures, about men and their nefarious aims, were cascading through her. She had to arrest their forward progress, had to slow him down, but the physical acts he was committing against her person were so stupendous that she couldn’t reason clearly.

He was inching up her dress, the hem already past her knees. She was about to be nudely displayed, but it was unfolding too fast, and she couldn’t brazen it out.

She struggled in earnest, slapping at his shoulders, and scuffling with her legs, trying to loosen her skirt from where it was tangled beneath him.

“Phillip, please.” Her voice was breathy, weak, and nothing like her customary, confident self. “Phillip!” she repeated more forcefully.

Frowning, he hesitated. Bewildered, reeling, he peered
down at her as though he couldn’t quite identify her or grasp why they were sequestered in the isolated room.

“What is it?” he queried. “What’s wrong?”

“I . . . I need a moment.” To her mortification, tears flooded her eyes. She was confounded, and worried that she might collapse into a weeping ball of misery. She swallowed. “You’re scaring me.”

Glaring at her, he studied her features, then he slid off so she had the space to escape. She wedged out from under him and took several steps away.

Showing him her back, she floundered to arrange herself so that her modesty was restored. Behind her, she could feel his regard, hot and potent, but he didn’t approach, and she was relieved.

“I thought I could do this,” she explained, gazing at the far wall, “but I was mistaken.”

“What were you expecting?” he bitterly retorted. “Flowers and candy? Bad poetry and vacuous compliments?”

“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

“Obviously.”

His tone made it apparent that she had no skill at love games, and she was humiliated that he would comment upon her dearth of ability.

“I shouldn’t have come,” she said, more to herself than to him.

“Foolish girl.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Go to your room,
Lady
Olivia.”

His use of her title cut like a sharp blade, and she winced. She heard him stand, and she spun to face him.

As she’d straightened her attire, so had he. His shirt was buttoned and tucked, his trousers adjusted. He looked cool and detached, evincing no hint of what
they’d been doing, and they pondered each other across an expanse as vast as an ocean.

He was a stranger, and his indifference flustered her, and stupidly, she begged, “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” he barked. “Just leave. And don’t return. I won’t be here waiting for you.” He strolled to the rear of the salon, tossing a final, demeaning glance at her over his shoulder. “I don’t need the complication you’d bring to my life. I’ve plenty without adding you.”

With that, he crawled out a large window and evaporated in an instant, vanishing so quickly that it seemed as if he’d never been there at all. She blinked and blinked, trying to draw him into focus, but he was well and truly gone, and the sole clue he’d been there was the ribbon she’d removed from his hair.

It dangled on the sofa cushion, and she picked it up and wove it through her fingers.

An immense silence descended, and it occurred to her that their tryst might be the only exciting, exotic thing that would ever happen to her. The notion was so depressing that she couldn’t bear to contemplate it, and she felt more lonely and more discouraged than she’d been in a very, very long time.

She whirled away and sneaked to her bedchamber.

Edward Paxton walked through the stable and out the rear door. The sun was bright, blinding after having strolled through the darkened barn, and he blinked to clear his vision.

Phillip was across the yard, leaning against a fence and laughing with several of the men who helped him care for the horses. Edward paused, as he always did, and watched, delighted and pleased, but also unsettled.

He could never get used to the notion that Phillip was his son. He could go for hours, for days, without recollecting, so he was thrown off guard whenever they were abruptly brought together. Even now, when he’d sought out Phillip, the reality was discomfiting.

Phillip was distrusting and hostile, and Edward was confused and abashed, so they couldn’t establish a rhythm to their relationship.

Were they friends? He didn’t think so, but he wanted to be. He would hate to spend the remainder of his life unable to leap beyond the strained status of employer and employee. It was dismal to consider that too much had happened—or not happened—over the years, and they would never progress beyond where they were entrenched.

Looking at the past through wiser eyes, it was embarrassing to evoke that period three decades earlier when he’d been so enamored of Phillip’s mother. She’d been comely, spirited, and alluring, while he’d been spoiled,
selfish, and with too much leisure time and not many ways to occupy it.

Juvenile and foolish, he hadn’t found anything wrong with his affair. His randiness had prevailed, and neither morals nor integrity could dissuade him from his course.

When his father had learned of their liaison, he’d ranted and raved, had warned of impending doom, and how Edward’s irresponsible conduct would inflict catastrophe on all concerned. But he’d been obsessed with the woman and couldn’t desist.

In his immaturity, Edward hadn’t comprehended how dire the consequences could be. He’d been scant more than a child, himself, and she’d been his first love, so he’d indulged in their fervent amour.

While he’d known that children could result from what he was doing, they had been a nebulous concept. After Phillip and his sister, Anne, had been born, Edward’s lust for their mother had waned, and shamefully, he’d never felt much of a connection to them, had never viewed them as a part of himself to whom he owed loyalty and commitment.

Though it was mortifying to admit it, when his betrothal had approached, and his father had suggested moving the children and their mother off the estate, Edward had been relieved to be shed of them.

But of late, the tragedy of that era weighed heavily upon him. Maybe advancing age was making him maudlin, but he couldn’t stop ruminating on his mistakes, on the paths he might have chosen.

Many a depressing morning, he stared at himself in the mirror, trying to locate remnants of that heartless boy. Had he really been that cruel? That frivolous? That ruthless? How could he have imagined the children to be a burden? How had he convinced himself that they hadn’t needed him?

They’d been toddlers, barely two and three, when they’d gone, and Edward could distinctly remember that afternoon. Coward that he’d been, he’d hidden in his room, following the proceedings by peeking out the window until their carriage had disappeared down the road. The children had been prettily dressed, so well behaved, their mother stoic and brave as they traveled off to an uncertain future.

He still flushed with guilt when he recollected his father’s biting words, advising him that Phillip’s mother would not accept a stipend from the Paxton family. That she’d claimed she would work, and work hard to support them. That they could
get on
just fine without Edward’s dubious charity. And apparently they had.

He’d never again communicated with Anne, though he knew she was a spinster, residing in a house in the country outside Bath.

With Phillip, he’d been granted the chance to repair some of the damage he’d wrought, though too much water had flowed under the bridge, and he’d never had much success. When Phillip had shown up at the estate, fourteen and brimming with mischief and energy, Edward had been stunned. Phillip had been so handsome, so smart and clever, a boy of which any father could have been proud.