Enemy of Mine (26 page)

“Lord, you’re beautiful, Erva.”

“So are you.”

“I’m glad I told you before, for I’m going to say it repeatedly in the next few moments, but I love you. I love you so much.”

She would have never thought her heart could expand more, but it did. In poured intense warmth and light, and she’d never felt more lovely in all her life. Leaning down she kissed him, at the same time she tilted her body just so, letting him enter her.

“I love you, my darling,” he said against her lips.

“I love you.”

She slid down his shaft, feeling him stretch her, fill her. His breath caught, and he held her still with his hands. Their mouths met yet were still as they felt each other’s body. For a long moment, Erva remained motionless. Nothing had ever felt this good before. There was nothing to compare this to, and that thought alone shocked her, making her realize that she truly did love him.

Taking her time, she slowly lifted enough to feel him move inside her. Then, she descended. He kissed her. His tongue slid into her mouth, exploring and at the same time devouring her control. She found a rhythm and soon she couldn’t go fast enough for what she wanted. Reaching up, he cupped one of her breasts, caressing, then rolling over her nipple. It only added more fuel to the fire.

Sex before Will had been a performance. It had been about trying to make the man Erva had thought she’d loved, love her in return. She hadn’t meant it to be manipulative, but it hadn’t been about her own needs and desires. Maybe that was why she’d never felt as good as she did now. Uninhibited, she found her rhythm escalate and escalate. After kissing him longingly, she sat up, balancing against his strong chest. She felt beautiful and graceful, and reached for her own hair, feeling the soft waves roll over her shoulders and bounce around her. Will smiled and fisted her tresses, forcing her back down to kiss him. It was a long kiss, and she couldn’t help but pull away again, sitting up on him. Her body was beginning to demand attention to one area, one need.

As if he knew, he placed his hand low against his stomach and rubbed her clitoris with his fingers. Her body reacted immediately and tensed, yet her hips kept moving of their own accord. He accelerated.

“Oh, my darling,” he said, but his voice was strained.

She looked down and realized he gritted his teeth. His whole body was so tense, every single sinew and muscle fiber stood out. Something about his control over his body, how he was trying so hard to please her, made her snap.

Her orgasm rushed over her as she yelled, “William,” to the ceiling. Her body convulsed over and over again. The whole time he never stopped circling her nub where their bodies met. Until at last, he clutched at her hips, thrusting himself into her. Within four strokes, he found his own orgasm and pulled her down as he groaned and spasmed into her body. He kissed her as he came, his lips clumsy but so endearing.

“I love you, Minerva,” he whispered.

She collapsed on his sweaty chest, giggling. “I love you.” Kissing him along his neck, she adored how he wrapped his arms around her, as if, even though they’d just made love, he still needed her, needed her close. “I don’t want to move.”

“Please don’t,” he said.

Tears, yet again, rushed to her eyes, but she staved them off, not wanting to ruin the moment. He was such gift for her. He had chased away her fear that men would only use her. Use her for her money, use her for her kindness, or use her for her sex. It had been something her mother had screamed at her, almost as soon as her father had died. Until that moment, it had never occurred to Erva how she’d internalized that message. But with Will, she didn’t feel that he would leave her or use her.

She looked up at him as he tenderly caressed her hair. Her chin against his chest, she said, “You know you’re wrong.”

He glanced down into her eyes sleepily. “Hmm? What about?”

“You are a knight. You did save me.”

He smiled slowly, then reached down and kissed her again.

Chapter 23

W
aking up partially inside Erva, Will couldn’t decipher if he was dreaming or if this was reality. He was hard and still under his love. She’d slept on him, and it made him delirious that she felt comfortable enough to do so. Mayhap his erection hadn’t truly waned after he’d made love to Erva, which might have been uncomfortable for her. It was for him, but only because he wanted to dive deeper inside of her, feel her warmth and wetness contract around him.

He slid his hand down her back, but was snagged by something close to her derriere. Sensing with his fingers, he felt a small, flat square stuck to her. Lifting his head, he peered over her shoulder to see, indeed, a skin-colored rectangle attached close to her pert bottom.

“It’s birth control,” Erva murmured into his shoulder.

“Pardon, darling?”

She lifted her head, her warm brown eyes glassy. Smiling, she said, “It’s a patch. I have to keep it on my skin, so I take in the hormones to make my body think it’s pregnant. When my body thinks it’s pregnant, then I can’t really get pregnant. We call it birth control. I said pregnant a lot, didn’t I?”

He lifted his head and spied down at the little square again. “Are you scared of getting pregnant by me?”

She didn’t answer, which made him push the back of his head against his pillow and gaze down at her.

Blinking, she laid her head down on his chest again, gently playing with some of his chest hair.

“Darling?” he asked, suddenly panicked and not sure why.

After licking her lips, she said into his chest, “Honestly, I gave up that dream. I stopped hoping to have a husband and a family of my own.” Tears trickled down over her little nose and splashed onto him.

He wiped the moisture from her visage, feeling his heart rip at his ribs. He knew what it felt like to give up dreams, to have no hope.

She suddenly looked up, alarm clearly in her features. “I—I wear the patch, because back in my time, I’m so stressed. I work all the time. It’s a long story, but I teach my own classes as well as another professor’s, and I’m so tired, exhausted. I still try to write enough to publish something in a journal at least once a year. And—well, I’m stressed, thus, my menstrual cycle stopped. I didn’t have my period for months. My doctor got worried, so she put me on birth control to regulate my cycle. I don’t wear the patch because I have casual sex. I—I haven’t had sex in—it’s been a long time.”

He tried to make sense of what she’d said. He could guess what casual sex was and thought the term rather a fitting one. But something in him growled at the knowledge, couldn’t be helped, when he realized she had been intimate with another man before. She’d admitted she was divorced, and he knew what that meant. Still, it wasn’t rational what he felt, and he knew it, but he didn’t want to share her with anyone, although he’d had a handful of dalliances himself. He tried to calm himself, but it was difficult. Mayhap because he was still hard, and a little bit inside her.

“Okay,” was all he managed to say, making her smile.

“I know I’m not supposed to ask this, but...what are you thinking?”

“Why aren’t you supposed to ask that?”

She shrugged, a purely delicious feeling when she was lying on top of him. “I guess it’s a thing from my time, where men get annoyed when asked what they’re thinking.”

“That’s rather controlling and awful of men to do to women of your time.”

At that she embraced him firmly. “God, I love you.”

He noiselessly chuckled.

“But I did notice how you still haven’t answered my question.”

At that he laughed louder, and in one move rolled her over, so he lay on her, letting himself into her glorious body just a little more. She closed her eyes and moaned.

“Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head. “No, that feels ridiculously good.” Opening her eyes, she said, “And I noticed how you still haven’t answered my question.”

He smiled and slowly sank a little more into her, feeling her muscles tighten around him, making his desire augment until it roared through him. But he knew she wanted an answer, even if speaking was becoming impossible. “Mainly because my answer is barbaric. I was thinking how I want to make love to you right now, how I don’t want you to ever talk about making love to anyone else again. Lord, I sound like a” —he pushed further into her, feeling his erection harden even more— “I don’t know what. I can’t think of words right now.”

She chuckled, which was heaven as her internal muscles vibrated her laugh.

“And I was thinking of all your little doves on your body.” He pushed a little more into her.

“You saw them?” Her voice was breathy and sweet.

He lifted one of her arms over her head, where his lips met the inside of her wrist. There, a dove, almost the same color of her skin, just a little lighter, flew. Kissing the small bird, he realized he’d managed to dive just a little deeper into her. “You have one here, and—” he hovered over her, feeling with his fingers for the inside of her hip, the little valley between her hipbones. “You have one here.” He kissed her quickly, pressing just a miniscule bit more into her. Then he lifted her left leg, feeling for the inside of her knee. “Here, close to where your injury is, you have another one. That’s the first one I saw.” He planted her left leg high around his hip, then reached for her right leg and down to her foot. Just skimming along the bone on the outside of her ankle, he said, “And here’s another one. Have I missed any?”

By having her legs so high around him, he’d gotten himself that much deeper into her, almost to the hilt. But he was holding back, having fun with this game, with her, and hoping she was as ready as he to make love again.

“There’s another on my right shoulder blade.”

“Ah, I’ll have to flip you around and have a look at it.”

She giggled.

As he hovered over her, he asked, “Going to tell me the story behind the doves? Or does everyone from your time have them?”

She shook her head. “No, I think I’m the only one.” She moaned as he moved just a tad. “It’s hard for me to think of words right now.”

He laughed at her use of his phrase.

She took in a sip of breath—Lord, that was bliss. “It’s for all the times I wanted to fly free, free from whatever I was dealing with at the time.”

Her pain, her suffering, sobered him immediately. He held very still, worried what to do.

“Don’t stop.”

“Darling, are you sure you wouldn’t rather talk now?”

She shook her head with a wide smile. “Where did you come from? I mean, I doubt any man from any time would stop having sex just to talk.”

He leaned his forehead against hers. “Now I worry about what kind of men you’ve met in your past, but also I don’t want to know, don’t want to even think about it, and I’m fairly certain if I ever met a man you’d known intimately I’d kill him. I’m sorry. Just a little more barbarity from me. And” —he swallowed and lifted his head, making sure to look in her brown eyes— “I don’t like this use of the word sex. Not for us, at least. I love you, and I’m making love to you.”

She caressed his cheek with her hand and gave him a small smile, her eyes filling with tears.

“I’m sorry, I’ve—”

But she interrupted. “I was fourteen when my dad died, and my mom wasn’t easy to live with. Shortly after, I illegally got the first tattoo I have on my ankle. I asked for the white color, so she couldn’t see it, so I could have a little freedom with my own body. I wanted to fly free more times than my body records, but” —a tear fell to the side of her visage, where Will wiped it away— “I will never want to be free from you. Actually, scratch that. I
am
free with you. I love you too, and I’m making love to you too.”

He bowed his head beside hers, surprised his throat tightened and his own eyes filled from what she’d said. Smelling the clean floral scent of jasmine in her hair, he let her sentiment wash over him. Good Lord, he loved this woman. His woman. Mayhap it was barbaric, but it suited him to think of her as his, and his alone. His forever more.

She began to kiss along his neck, sweetly sucking his tender skin. It was more a reaction from her touch, but he bucked into her. She gasped, and he reeled back. But she caught him from pulling out.

“Don’t stop, baby.”

That was a new term of endearment, and later, hopefully much later, he’d ask more about it. But for now he slowly sank into her again, and she arched into him. He pulled slightly back, then found his way deep into her once more.

After that he couldn’t remember words anymore.

*

T
he noise that woke Erva was so loud it tore through her deep sleep. She sat up with a start, then searched the sunny lit room. Her body remembered very well that she and Will had made love through much of the night, even waking up once to find a large bathtub and take a lukewarm dip. Her hair was still damp. Smiling she gazed down at the bed, expecting Will.

On the pillow where his head should have rested, was a folded piece of parchment with her name on it. Another boom exploded somewhere close by, and she finally realized it was a cannon shot. She flinched, then snatched the parchment and opened it.

15 September in the Lord’s year of 1776

My darling,

It is my fault, for I forgot to request to retire from the Army yesterday. Something distracted me. Something wonderful.

I thought it my duty to obey my orders for today. There is no need to worry, since you know the outcome. I will approach General Howe with paying off my commission and retiring immediately. I have also asked Paul to place the announcements of our upcoming nuptials. I hope we can wed soon, and, upon your acceptance of this, Paul will find us a reverend for our wedding.

I will see you when the battle ends, which you never told me how long that will take, but I trust you know. When it ceases we will make plans for our future, either in England on my estate, or anywhere else.

I love you, my darling. You have made me the happiest of men.

Your devoted servant and fiancé,