Julie Anne Long (19 page)

Rebecca sighed, perhaps the sweetest sound he had ever heard. He felt her go boneless against his rigid, fevered body; her astonishment had dissolved into yearning. Her hands rose to touch him.

And suddenly this terrified him.

In perhaps the greatest act of will of his entire life, Connor abruptly stepped away from Rebecca.

Rebecca stumbled forward a little, startled.

And then she slowly, hesitantly, lifted her gaze up to him. Her eyes were clouded with wonder. She touched her fingertips lightly, absently, to her lips.

Connor stared back at her, breathing as though he’d run the length of the river. His hands were curled into fists at his sides.

“I am sorry, Rebecca. It seems I am just a man, after all,” he said with a bitter sort of irony.

Rebecca watched Connor gather their things, his motions stiff and almost angry, then stride purposefully to his horse and mount. He stared down at her with a sort of inward-turned wildness in his eyes.

Rebecca stared back at him, still dazed. She’d forgotten how to speak; it seemed an unimportant skill, anyhow, when such kisses were to be had, when a whole world could be made from a kiss. She could not imagine ever moving from where she stood. She would happily stay rooted forever to the spot to commemorate the moment.

Desire
. She knew that this was the thing that had burned and pulsed in her for days, the thing that wanted release. Tiny white-hot flames of it licked at her; the remains of a conflagration fanned and then abruptly denied air.

Connor had walked away.

You don’t just light a fire and walk away from it.

Connor’s stare finally penetrated the haze around her brain; he was looking at her as if she were a stranger who made him wary. She could think of nothing appropriate to say. Her perspective on life had just been dramatically shifted; she felt as though she now understood absolutely everything and yet absolutely nothing, and she was now being pulled like a wishbone between the two poles.

Rebecca shook herself free from her reverie, and then, because it seemed to be what Connor wanted her to do, she trudged over to her brown mare and mounted. Connor nudged his horse into a walk. He did not look at her, he did not speak, and his back was a wall that seemed to forbid conversation. And so they rode back to the hunting box in silence.

Chapter Fourteen

A
fter several days of sleeping in boy’s clothing, the soft nightdress felt like the purest form of decadence. But tonight, its very looseness somehow made Rebecca too aware of her body. The gown slid and settled sensually over her skin with every toss and turn, infecting her with a peculiar alertness that had everything to do with a bone-melting, life-changing kiss and the suddenly taciturn man sleeping in the next room.

The snare had done its job and the resulting roasted hare had been a triumph, but Connor had been monosyllabic for most of the evening, and Rebecca’s attempts at conversation fell so awkwardly on her own ears she finally abandoned the effort. Once she had glanced up to find him watching her with an intent, somewhat abashed, almost accusing expression on his face. But he would not meet her eyes for any length of time, and this was excruciating, because she wanted to look into them to find answers to questions she did not know how to ask.

Perhaps she had done it incorrectly; perhaps he was disappointed. She’d never before had a proper kiss, after all; Edelston’s midnight surprise notwithstanding. But surely with a little practice . . .

Rebecca listened for the sound of Connor’s breathing in the next room, something that would tell her he was asleep. But she heard nothing except the occasional snap of the fire and a stick of wood shifting as it burned down.

Finally she could bear it no longer. She threw off her blanket and padded into the main room.

Connor was sitting at the table, staring into the fire. He started when he saw her, but when she stepped in front of the fire he covered his eyes as though shielding them from the sun.

“Connor . . .”

“Go to bed, Rebecca, please.”

“Your arm . . . is it your arm? Is it bothering you?”

He kept his eyes shaded. “No.” A single curt syllable.

The fire popped, sending sparks up the flue. It was the only sound in the room for almost longer than Rebecca could endure.

“Connor . . . did I . . . have I . . . done something wrong?”

It was a moment before he answered. “No, Rebecca.” That strange, bitter tone again. “
You
have done nothing wrong.”

The fire leaped and snapped, marking off more long seconds of silence.

She tried again. “Connor, this afternoon . . . when you . . . when you . . .” Rebecca fumbled, mustering her courage. “When you kissed me . . .”

Connor went utterly still.

“. . . well, I thought perhaps I upset you. Or perhaps I didn’t do it correctly. I’ve very little experience, you see, but—”

“Good
God
, Rebecca. Let me put your mind at ease. You kiss like . . .” His voice broke. “. . . like a dream.”

Rebecca’s heart began to thud wildly.
I kiss like a dream.

“Connor, then
please
talk to me. Tell me what is wrong.”

The swift belligerence of his answer startled her. “When you stand in front of the fire, I can see your body through your nightdress.”

Rebecca went hot to the roots of her hair with embarrassment. But there was a hint of small frightened boy in Connor’s tone, she’d heard it. Suddenly she understood that Connor was as much at sea here as she was, and the realization was both frightening and exhilarating.

“Good. Then look at me. It is what you want to do, is it not?”

Connor gave a humorless laugh. “Wee Becca . . . please. Go back to bed. Perhaps we can talk tomorrow.”

“It’s what I want, as well. I want you to look at me.”

Connor was silent. She could see his shoulders rising and falling with his quickening breath.

Rebecca inhaled deeply.

“I should like it if you made love to me, Connor.”

Connor gave a short laugh. “And how on earth would you know that, wee Becca?”

The words and the short laugh stung.

“I am eighteen years old, Connor. I am not a child,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. “I am a woman. I see you with a woman’s eyes. Perhaps it makes you feel less
afraid
of me to treat me as a child, but I know for certain—I know for
certain
—you do not see me as one. I know what it is to
want
, Connor. And I am not afraid to tell you that I . . . that I want you. And I suspect that you want me, too.”

I know what it is to want
. Connor looked up at her then, helplessly. The firelight illuminated her through her nightdress, the heart-stopping curve of her breasts and hips, the long shadows of her legs. Something caught in his throat.

“You do not know who I am . . .” He faltered, in torment. He did not know what to say, or how to put his thoughts into words, but now he could not stop looking at her. He had held these feelings at bay for days, but she was ever in his senses, the way she moved, the scent of her, her laughter, the light in her eyes when she was thinking, formulating yet another question, certain to disarm or challenge or delight him. The kiss today . . . it had simply
possessed
him . . . and it had shaken him to the bone. He took her in now, the loveliness of all that she was, and he knew all of his banked longing burned in his eyes. He hoped his expression did not frighten her.

Rebecca took another deep breath, and he watched in tortured fascination as her breasts lifted against the thin fabric of her nightdress.

“Connor, I know you are something other . . . or something more . . . than you claim to be. You are Irish one moment and English as Wellington the next . . . but it matters little. I think I know the man you are, perhaps better than anyone. And you are . . .” She hesitated, sounding unutterably shy suddenly. “You are . . . very dear to me.”

Dear to me
. Gentle words, but staggering, somehow, in import. Connor felt as though he was teetering on the edge of a precipice, but he still did not understand why. So here he was, retreating into silence and petulance like a callow boy, while Rebecca, with her usual courage, sought out the heart of things with tentative words.

And she was right, Connor realized. Rebecca had always seen the truest him. Perhaps this was what terrified him so completely. He could not merely seduce, or fence, or strategize, or hide.

“Connor?” she said softly.

It was devastating. He closed his eyes again, briefly, against the onslaught of feeling. What kind of man would he be if he made love to this young woman who trusted him, a young virgin who relied on him for safety? A young woman he intended to leave behind in Scotland? What kind of man would let a woman like Rebecca plead with him to make love to her?

If not him, then someday it would be someone else, and this thought, he found, he could not bear.

“Wee Becca, I—” he said, and stopped, when he heard a rustle; Rebecca had moved away from the hearth and was now standing next to him. It was her nearness that allowed the wisdom of his body to finally overcome the flailings of his mind. His arms, as if of their own accord, reached up for her and pulled her across his lap.

For a moment he merely held her, loosely, breathlessly. They were both silent, absorbing the sweet shock of the meeting of their bodies, their quickening breathing, the crackling fire the only sounds. Rebecca looked down at her lap. Her hand was resting there; Connor covered it with his own hand, and the rough warmth of it against her soft skin, and what it now meant to them, stole his breath. Rebecca turned her face up to him, questioning, and Connor met her eyes.

Oh, the terrain was so familiar, and so very dear, the slant of her brows, the dimple in her chin, the arc of her cheekbones. Connor traced them with a single finger, first one brow and then the other, then her cheek, her chin, like a sculptor bringing her into being. Rebecca watched his face, her eyes lulled and soft, fascinated by the fierce tenderness she saw there. He drew his fingertips up the length of her throat and then rubbed his thumb across the plump curve of her lower lip, a mere ghost of a touch, remembering. Rebecca’s mouth lifted in a soft smile, and Connor gave a shaky laugh; he felt like a green lad, nearly shivering at the feast before him.

“Aye, I want you, too, Rebecca.”

And then Connor took her face between his hands and moved his mouth to cover hers, intending at first a mere brush of a kiss, but her mouth parted for him as though she had known the shape of his mouth all her life, and what could he do but drink her in.

Never before like this
, Connor thought.
Never before this endless languorous falling, falling
. Tentatively at first, and then recklessly, his tongue delved deeper into her mouth, testing all the textures within it; he delved deeper still, and yet somehow it never seemed deep enough. He pushed his fingers up through the silky tangle of her hair to tilt her head back, and he moved his mouth beneath her jaw; he found her pulse and pressed his lips against the swift beat of it.

“Tell me to stop, Rebecca, I will stop,” he murmured against her neck. He was not at all certain that this was true, but it needed to be said.

She did not reply.

“Rebecca?”

“Please do not think of stopping.” Her voice was thick, bemused.

He smiled. Rebecca shifted a little on his lap.

“Oof,” Connor said.

“Oh, sorry. Am I heavy?”

“You
are
rather a great girl. Correction, a great
woman
.” He slid his hands down over her shoulder blades, hard as two unsprouted little wings beneath her gown.

Rebecca smiled, and put her hands on either side of his face, cupping the strong planes of it. “You are nothing at all like Edelston,” she murmured.

“I should hope not,” Connor murmured in reply. He covered her smile with another kiss.

Rebecca cupped her hands around the back of his head and opened herself to him instinctively, gave and took with him, matched his searching hunger and urgency, melted against him. And lost in the incomparable sleekness of her mouth, Connor could feel himself spiraling dangerously toward some place where control had no use or meaning, toward an almost unendurable unanchored bliss. He pulled her body tightly against him with one arm; his other hand, trembling, hardly daring, slid down to skim across her breast. Her nipple was stiff beneath his palm; he could feel the heat of her skin beneath the fine fabric of her nightdress. The totality of his desire was almost terrifying; it humbled him, it owned him completely.

It might have been centuries, or moments; at last, Connor pulled away to breathe. He turned his head from her, shaken. Beneath his hands, Rebecca’s body rose and fell with ragged breathing.

“What happens next?” she whispered.

Connor turned to her and smiled faintly. Always a question, that was Rebecca.

“There’s
more
?” he said in mock wonderment.

Rebecca dimpled.

“You know very well there is more.”

“Tell me all about it,” he encouraged.

“In Papa’s book—”

“Tell me all about it without mentioning your papa.”

“I think next we must lie on the bed,” she said speculatively.

Once again, for perhaps the hundredth time in her life, Rebecca Tremaine had rendered Connor Riordan speechless.

In truth, Connor could barely remember what happened next; tonight, with Rebecca in his arms, felt entirely new.

“Aye, I think the bed sounds right,” he managed to say hoarsely. “Why don’t you lead me there?”

She slid from his lap and stood, extending her hand, and he obediently took it. She led him like a child to the bed where he’d slept the evening before, and they knelt on it across from each other, smiling.

“Aye, there’s more.” Connor tugged at the tie at the throat of Rebecca’s nightgown. “An infinity of things.” He hoped he could remember at least two or three of them.

Like an archaeologist unearthing a rare treasure, his eyes never leaving her face, Connor slowly, slowly nudged the nightgown away from Rebecca’s shoulders, stopping once to place a tender kiss at the base of her throat. Inch by devastating inch, with trembling fingers, he revealed skin that glowed amber and pearl in the firelight, until at last her nightdress pooled at her waist.

Rebecca’s forearms came up reflexively, shielding her bareness from his gaze. He could see a question, as well as apprehension, move across her clear gray-green eyes, those eyes that hid nothing. And then, as if gathering her courage, she took a deep breath and slowly lowered her arms.

Connor flinched as though he’d been struck.

For a moment, he felt a strange disconnect, as though the exquisite arcing white-and-rose breasts before him could not possibly belong to the Rebecca he had known for years, the one who could shoot an apple off a fence post at fifty paces and who incessantly peppered him with questions. Mesmerized, he gawked long enough for the moment to become awkward, and then, with some difficulty he slowly lifted his eyes to her face.

The apprehension had left Rebecca’s eyes. They were now warm with amusement and a hint of very feminine triumph, for the taut wonder in his face had just given her the first taste of her own power.

With hands gone a little clumsy with nerves and eagerness, Connor drew his fingertips up the length of her rib cage, feeling Rebecca’s muscles contract, her breath draw in, at his touch; his own breath caught when he cupped the satiny weight of her breasts in his palms and dragged his thumbs across her nipples. And when Rebecca closed her eyes and said “Oh” very softly he felt like the Emperor of the Universe.

“Connor?” Her voice came to him faintly, as if from a distance. The wanting of her nearly buckled him.

“Aye?”

“I’d like to touch you, too.”

“Ye’ll get no objection from me.”

She opened her eyes and gave him a dreamy smile, and his heart bucked.

“Will you show me how?”

“Aye,” he said huskily. “I will show you how.”

“Your arm—”

“—I feel only you, wee Becca.”

He lowered his head and touched his tongue to one of her rosy nipples; then drew it delicately into his mouth, twined his tongue around it, savoring it as though it were a rare cognac.

“
Oh
.” It was more a breath than a word. Rebecca’s fingers combed up through his hair to hold him against her breast.