Lessons of Desire (14 page)

Their last conversation had disarmed her. She could not think of him except kindly right now. He had understood more than she did herself. He had not gloated either, but instead expressed true concern for the less perfect side of the life she lived.

She had lied a little lo spare Artemis this man's censure, but from his reactions that may have been unnecessary. The truth was that Artemis had been correct in her beliefs but not always so in her methods. Being cut loose at sixteen had been devastating and frightening, much more than she admitted to him. It had felt like her mother had thrown her overboard into the ocean and simply expected her to figure out how to swim.

She had forgiven her mother that miscalculation years ago, but she doubted others would if they knew about that tenuous year so fraught with big mistakes. The truth would be one more proof to the world that Artemis Blair had not been a good mother, or even a normal woman.

Elliot no longer made sounds down below, but she could swear she heard his breathing. Nor was he asleep so early. She just knew that too. She paced quietly, trying to relieve the way her body tormented her. She tried to reconcile how the desire was not only physical now, but also a yearning to explore the closeness she had felt with him today as they shared danger and confidences.

She laid her hands on her breasts. The stimulations collected, increased, and flowed down her body. She closed her eyes to try to tame them, and heard her mother's lessons about desire.

Carnal pleasure is as much a woman's need as a man's. Do not deny your desires, but beware whom you choose as a partner most men are conquerors at heart. Seek out the enlightened few who have risen above this
primitive
curse. If you choose to take your pleasure with a conqueror, make sure you cede only your body and only temporarily. And never, ever succumb to the delusion that you can change such a man.

Phaedra pictured the man down below. He had left even though this chamber had all but howled with the way they wanted each other. He might be one of the conquerors, but he was not stupid. He would understand that she ceded nothing except what she chose. She would make sure that part was clear.

Elliot settled in for a night with nothing but his thoughts for company. With any luck he would soon cease picturing the woman above stairs.

He forced his mind inward lo the world of the histories he wrote. He did not need his papers to journey there. The notes and preliminary drafts existed as records, not as reminders. All the information lived in his head, accessible al any lime. He had spent many a party escaping to that world for spells of relief if the conversation bored him.

His brothers, Christian and Hayden, possessed similar secret chambers in their heads. When they ventured inside theirs they closed the doors behind them and lost hold on reality. Only he had been blessed with the ability to slip in and out at will, as if the door remained forever ajar. His connection to the real world always remained within reach.

Right now that was less a boon than normal. The world wanting to intrude consisted of physical frustration that refused to quiet itself. Speculations regarding the movements above poked at him. His bad blood calculated the cost to honor and pride of taking first and rectifying later.

Somehow he managed to keep most of that just outside the door, not completely interfering. He turned his concentration to synthesizing the information on funerary practices gleaned from the old Roman histories.

"Elliot."

He opened his eyes. Every part of him snapped alert. She might have stood a few feet from him, he heard her so clearly. The stones of walls and stairs had carried her voice down. She had not even had to raise her tone.

She did not speak again. She just assumed he had heard. Or maybe she knew he would come to her even if she only spoke the summons in her head.

She might merely need help with the candle. Or perhaps she saw some movement from one of her windows and anticipated trouble from their gaolers. He could just call up and ask, but he wouldn't, even though walking away again would be nigh impossible.

Trusting that Phaedra was too smart to play with fire, he climbed the staircase.

Vague lights and dark shadows danced across the stones of the upper chamber's walls and vault. The hanging blanket sliced away a corner with its dark drop. The lone, big candle smoked gently, its fat flame adding golden glows amidst the moonlight's cool ones.

All the dim illuminations gathered and intensified in one place. A pale statue absorbed them to enhance its sensual display of fiery copper and white porcelain.

Phaedra knelt on the straw pallet, sitting back on her heels. She faced the stairs and him. He stopped when he saw her momentarily awed by her beauty and boldness.

She was naked. Her tresses streamed over bare skin. They looked like strips of silken drapery that parted to display glimpses of creamy shoulders, soft arms, round breasts, and curving hips.

She let him look a good while, acknowledging with her gaze the way the storm gathered in him, admitting with her eyes that she was with him in the desire.

She parted her hair and pushed it to her back, exposing her body completely. Her breasts rose high and full, their dark pink tips erect and tight.

"We can share pleasure tonight, if you want," she said.

He shed his coat and walked over to her. "If I want? I have wanted to have you since the first lime I saw you."

She relaxed her body and stretched her naked beauty at his feet. She watched while he stripped off his shirt. "It will not be quite like that. We will have each other."

"Whatever you wish, I am beyond caring about the terms of this surrender." He was beyond caring about anything except the desire getting tauter and more compelling by the instant. He dropped to his knees beside her.

"It is no surrender. Elliot. It is a truce. One night when we enjoy our friendship." She reached up to help release the buttons on his trousers.

Her hands made his arousal savage. He gazed down at her naked body, so vulnerable and welcoming. Images entered his head and urges fired his blood. If she thought this was about friendship, she did not know men very well.

"Certainly, Phaedra. Of course."

He did not mean it. Her soul knew that but she did not care at the moment.

He looked sensual and beautiful. Even kneeling he was tall. His naked torso and shoulders towered above the straw pallet and her, making her feel small and . . . vulnerable. That sensation was a new one. She had never experienced it before meeting this man. It was not unpleasant. She allowed herself pleasure in its effect because she knew he represented no real danger.

The light turned his skin to bronze and drew dark lines along the edges of his muscles. There was nothing soft to see. Not in his body and not in his face. Passion turned the Rothwell features hard even in this most amiable son. His dark hair, mussed and free from the day's adventures, left loose locks skimming his brow and face. His eyes became black crystals when she reached to help him undress.

His own hands fell away, leaving her to do it. He just looked down, perhaps daring her to go on, testing to see if she would retreat from boldness.

She took her time while their gazes remained locked. Wonderful sensations enlivened her body. The titillation was more intense because she knew what was coming. Anticipation pulled between them so wonderfully that it became one of the best pleasures that she had ever experienced.

Her service done, she trailed her palm up his stomach, savoring the touch of his skin and that masculine combination of soft surface and hard support. She loved the way desire intensified all the senses, even the intuitive one that told her how much he liked that touch and how the rest of reality was disappearing for him too.

When she could reach no further she glossed down again. Her hand hit the loose lower garments. With slow caresses she coaxed them down, freeing him until the fabric puddled at his knees. Her fingertips learned his body inch by inch. She slid and pressed them over the hard swells of his hips and thighs. She feathered up the length of his erection to its lip and circled softly, then caressed more aggressively.

He tried to contain what it did to him, but she could see the sensual fury taking control. It made all of him harder. His face and gaze, his entire body, became more taut.

"You are in danger of being ravished without courtesy or ceremony, Phaedra."

She assessed the threat and her body's physical arousal. "I do not mind. I am more than ready myself."

He joined her on the blanket and kicked off his clothes. He settled his naked body over hers, resting on forearms that flanked her shoulders.

A kiss. A deep, intimate one so slow and luring that an odd, sweet longing conquered her impatience. She parted her legs so he nestled closer, instinctively inviting him to join her now so that maybe the entire night would be so touching.

He looked down at her. "You are a very generous woman."

"Not generous. If a woman is honest in these pleasures, she gains too."

"That is an admirable, democratic view. Only you are not being honest and you invite me to be a bad lover because of it."

"I acknowledged my carnal condition most honestly." So honestly that this delay maddened her. She shifted her hips a bit to encourage him.

His response was slight, subtle, and devastating. He pressed, but not enough. She felt him down there, barely touching her, a horrible, wonderful tease.

He pressed kisses to her neck and shoulders. "You said you were more than ready," he said between administering hot excitements. "That was not true, but perhaps you spoke in ignorance."

Indignation spiked through her preoccupation with the marvelous tingles in her blood. "I am
not
ignorant. I would think that is obvious."

He shifted his tipper body so he could caress her. He watched his fingertips trail lightly around the base and swell of her breast, much as her own had recently moved over his hip and thighs. "A woman more than ready is not so composed as you still are. You are not nearly as ready as you can be. If you are not ignorant you know that. But perhaps you fear the abandon."

He brushed her nipple. A deep tremble shuddered, resonating from her jaw to her toes. Her body ached to pull him inside her so she might escape the sensual torture, no matter how delicious it might be.

He touched her breast more purposefully, rubbing the tip, deliberately making the shudder repeat with growing intensity. She had begun this seduction confident and bold. Now the tide of that alluring vulnerability washed away her secure hold on herself.

She could not resist the current. He seemed lo sense her attempts to try. He moved off her body as if to announce that he not she, would decide when she was ready. Stretched alongside her, his upper body rising on one taut arm, he caressed her with long, sure strokes, carrying the possessive touch to all her skin and limbs.

Her breasts ached for his hand to return. The other pleasure and arousals that he incited made it worse. Frustration had her halfway to madness. She could not even embrace him while he hovered like this. His position forced her to lie open and submissive to his gaze and wicked hand.

She could not embrace, but she could touch. Not all of him was out of reach. She sought his inner thigh with her right hand. She caressed upward and made sure she would not drown alone.

He responded as she hoped, the way her essence cried for. He caressed her breasts so fully, so perfectly, that insanity threatened to claim her. The unbearable pleasure got wonderfully worse and the hunger for more filled her awareness.

He lowered his head so he could use his mouth on her breast. A new sensation rang through the rest. One sweet and intense and so powerful it ripped her grasp from reality. She grabbed his shoulders in a fierce embrace so she would not be adrift alone. The vaguest perceptions entered the dark, focused place her mind had become. Sounds echoed the pleas in her thoughts and the needs wracking her. Hard holds and violent kisses pulled her deeper into pure sensation.

A new touch. One welcomed and feared and so necessary that she thought she would faint with relief. Her consciousness screamed. She parted her legs more so he would not stop. Profound shivers collected there and spread increasing the torture until she wanted to beg for relief.

Then he was with her again, nestled between her thighs the way this had started, pressing slightly in that infuriating, incomplete way. He kissed her with savage command while he entered her, swallowing her groan of relief.

Hard thrusts, deep and full, took her to fulfillment. The exquisite explosion of pleasure drenched her with peace and perfect sensation. She floated in it, awed by the violence of the climax and the physicality of the ecstasy.

She emerged from the holy darkness slowly. Her arms felt the shoulders she embraced and her legs the hips they circled. He remained hard and large in her.

She gazed through his damp locks at eyes still hot and hard with sensual sternness.

"You seem well contented. Phaedra."

So well contented that she thought she could never be ill contented again. "Most certainly so."

He moved slowly, creating a long stroke on flesh still intensely alive with the aftermaths of her climax. "I do not think I have ever met a woman so adept at taking her pleasure." He placed a firm kiss on her lips. Deep inside her the contentment became less so. New needs trembled subtly but distinctly.

He made it happen again. He gazed down, too composed; too sure of what he was doing with these slow, deep thrusts. "I do not think I have ever been so thoroughly had by a woman before."

"Do not blame me if you did not share the satisfaction. Normally, there is unity in such things."

"I doubt there has ever been unity with you. Your friends find their own pleasure while they service you in finding yours, but that is different."

She heard an insult in his quiet observations. If she were not so aware of the masculine power pouring out of him, if the shivers of new excitement were not preoccupying her, she might find the words lo castigate him for his presumption.

Only, her body's contentment was dimming fast. Deep, resonating needs awoke, colored by confusion and teeth-gritting desperation.

Oblivion beckoned again, but remained tantalizingly out of reach. She remained too much in the world, too aware of the man taking too much lime, too conscious that he did not lose sight of her either.

She shifted her hips to encourage more. Faster. He caressed with one hand to her right hip and pressed, slopping her. "You said we would have each oilier, and I want lo have you slowly."

"It was very impolite of you to not be done with this when I was." She had not even been aware that a man could control matters to this extent.

She got the barest smile as a response. His hand left her hip. She thought he had capitulated. Instead he reached back and released her leg's hold on his hip.

He moved the other leg too. He pushed her thighs together beneath him. When he moved in her again the pleasure focused and spiraled so sharply that she gasped.

The sensations stunned her. Conquered her. She could not deny them and she surrendered to the abandon. But her first climax meant this was different. She never totally lost hold on the world. She heard her own cries. His aura saturated her. The vulnerability returned, more nuanced this time, still exciting but vaguely frightening.