Like No Other Lover (17 page)

Wonderful. She’d been suppressing
hilarity
.

“For heaven’s sake, Redmond. You’re not a
spaniel
. And I’m not a bone, so you needn’t go at me with your tongue like—”

His tongue flicked out to touch, delicately, the lobe of her ear.

Which silenced her instantly.

He knew why: the promise inherent in
that
particular little caress made the point—he knew things about her body she’d never suspected, and how to make her feel things she’d never imagined. And because of the sensations one flick of his tongue against her ear had sent through her body, she was in thrall to possibility.

He followed through on the promise.

He dipped his tongue into her little ear. Delicately. Once, twice. His breath soft and warm there, too. He took her lobe lightly between his lips. Cynthia exhaled a soft breath, sucked in a deeper one, and her body shifted on the settee, her fingers slowly curling and uncurling in the plump velvet in an attempt to accommodate the current of new pleasure he was sending through her body.

He left her ear to blow softly over the path his tongue had traced.

“Oh…
oh.
”

One “oh” for comprehension, the last one—the fractured whisper—for arousal.

Cynthia’s hand stirred indecisively then on the settee. And then it took slow flight, and came to rest softly on the back of his neck. Her fingers knit up through his hair.

And with this act she was fully complicit.

It also reminded him that he’d been keeping his own hands knotted against his thighs, as if in solidarity with the ax handle cock imprisoned in his trousers. Ridiculously delighted to recall he possessed hands, he freed them to do what he’d intended to do all along: lower that bodice.

Miles devoted himself to kissing her throat now, kisses involving lips and tongue and teeth, the variety intended to dazzle her senses and distract her from the fact that his hands were now peeling the dress away from her shoulders and would have her breasts out in seconds. Her neck arced to abet his kisses; her fingertips glided over the nape of his neck, her nails lightly, lightly scoring his skin, sending threads of lightning through his veins.
Sweet merciful
—

And then at last the dress slipped the rest of the way of its own gravity with a silken sigh of its own. Cynthia Brightly was nude from the waist up, and Miles abruptly stopped kissing, to admire. Her breasts were saucy and luscious and vulnerable, and before the woman who possessed them could become fully aware of how exposed she was, he cupped his fingers beneath the silky curve of one and bent his head to apply his tongue with wonder and skill.

Cynthia made a sound, something between a gasp and a whimper.

The velvety wet heat of his mouth shocked her. The sensation unbearably exquisite in a way she was tempted to battle. It was too much, and too good, and too foreign, and she was frightened.

And she’d told herself she would be
good
.

And still his tongue did slow deliberate things to the stiff peak of her nipple as his fingers feathered along the tender skin beneath her breast, and hot ribbons of sensation unfurled through her body.

“Miles.”

She wanted him to stop.

She couldn’t bear it if he stopped.

He did stop.

But only long enough to rise up from the floor and in a fluid motion stretch his long body alongside her on the settee. He gently and expertly folded her into his arms as though anticipating no protest or struggle, as if it to cover and protect her, though he was the one who’d exposed her. She offered no protest or struggle. He sought her mouth with his; she gave it to him with hunger and relief.

Her lips parted for him, and his tongue found hers, and she took it greedily. She was new to this sort of kissing, this sort of kissing that led places and meant things, but she didn’t care: it became a battling kiss, a hot and graceless tangle, deep and invading, dark and drugging. She learned and refined as she kissed him; she gave back what he took and wanted more.

So it was this she needed: his tongue in her mouth, and now, just now; and then to feel the low moan in his throat vibrating through her.

I did this to him
.

But as his tongue plunged and tasted, drove her to depths she didn’t know she possessed, dissolved the supports of the world from beneath her, his fingers were gliding so very, very lightly, reverently, over the surface of her bare back. Skimming the blades of her shoulders, following the line of her spine up to the fine hairs at the nape of her neck, leaving a trail of sparks on her skin. The sensation was like being simultaneously devoured and cherished.

Her eyes felt hot with something nearly like tears.

She broke the kiss abruptly, placed a hand hard against his chest.

“I don’t—” she whispered urgently, her voice shredded and frightened.

His hands froze on her; he stared down at her, his dark eyes glittering even in the shadows, nearly obscured by the fall of his hair. What had he done with his spectacles? He must have deftly removed them. His vast shoulders beneath her hands rose and fell hard.

What was he thinking? What was he feeling? She didn’t dare ask.

At last she shook her head roughly, unable to say anything or even remember what she’d meant to say. She found her hands on either side of his face, pulling him down to her mouth again.

She was afraid of herself.

She stopped kissing him to reach for his shirt buttons, and she stared at her ten fingers dumbly, as though she could not be held responsible for their actions as they worked open the first one. She felt Miles Redmond’s eyes on her face; she ignored him and frowned with concentration, until four of his buttons were open. She gently spread his collar, arced up and until her breasts met his skin.

She felt his belly shift over her as he drew in a sharp breath. His eyes closed. He exhaled at length.

“This,” she whispered to herself, surprised and satisfied, as though she’d solved a puzzle.

How did her body know what it wanted? How could she allow it to rule her?

She slipped her hands inside his shirt and pressed them against the sticky heat of his skin, marveling; she found a thudding heartbeat beneath the silky net of hair, beneath that shockingly masculine muscle. The heartbeat proved definitively that Miles was a
man
beneath his scientist’s clothes.

And as if to underscore entirely
this
particular point, he seized her wrist.

He placed his hand over his cock. And then dragged her hand slowly, roughly down the length of him. “Like this.”

The coarse demand frightened and thrilled her. She obeyed, just as he’d shown her, and he hissed in a breath that was pure pleasure.

Good God, but he was astonishingly hard. Wonder and curiosity took over: Cynthia’s hand instinctively sought out the full and alarming contours of him, marveling.

“Again.” His raw whisper shook with tension. “Again.”

She did, and he shifted, his thighs falling apart to allow her hand to roam freely.

“Mother of
God
.” The words were a groan. His hands slid hard down her back to her buttocks and cupped them to lift her roughly against him, and he was so rigid he hurt her, hurt the soft join of her legs. But she wanted him there, and pressed herself closer to him, and she gasped at an unfamiliar bliss. She suddenly felt the air of the room on her calves as he began to furl her dress up in his fingers. Quickly. Her body was bowstring tense, shaking with a need she didn’t understand, her limbs stiff and awkward with it. She only knew she needed him closer, closer. She widened her legs, pulled him closer.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “
Please,”
she said, her voice shaking.

She didn’t know why, or what she meant, or what she really wanted. It was the voice of her body, not of her mind.

His fingers were touching the backs of her calves now, stroking up.

“Cynthia…” His voice was low and dark. He made her name sound both like a warning and a hosanna. “Cynthia…”

Her own breath had become a storm in her ears.

His fingers were now on her thighs, above the tops of her stockings. Slipping beneath them to slide over the cool bare skin of her thighs. Closer, closer, to the source of her need.

“God,” he groaned. He pulled her more tightly against him. He lifted her thigh to wrap his leg, and he pushed his groin against her.

“Miles…” Her voice shook. “I…”

“Christ…” he murmured. He rocked with her, his arms trembling as he propped himself over her, as he pressed against her, and she clung, whimpering. He reached for his trouser buttons, had two of them open. Stopped.

“Cynthia…you can’t…we can’t…”

And suddenly with an oath Miles tore himself from her.

They were so entwined, it felt as though her own limbs were being ripped from her when he abruptly sat up and flattened his hands on his thighs. His broad back imitated bellows.

He sat for a moment like that. Breathing in and out, raggedly. Then tipped his forehead on his hand. She watched him struggle with himself, struggle to regain sense, as she lay sprawled, bare, disheveled, bereft. She wanted to touch him. She didn’t dare touch him.

He’d done the very right thing.

At last he turned toward her. Stiffly; painfully, nearly. Even in the dark she could see that his expression was amazed and tense with a peculiar anger they seemed to inspire in each other.

“There’s more, Miss Brightly.”

His words returned sobriety to her as surely as a slap.

He’d known how desperately she wanted; he’d known
what
she wanted, even as she wasn’t entirely certain. And he confirmed what she’d suspected.

And left her wanting more. Wondering about more. When they could never, ever, ever have more from each other.

And with sobriety came shame.

She crossed her arms over her breasts, fumbled with awkward hands for the edges of her bodice to tug it up again, as she watched a man apparently do battle with his confusion, and lash out at her because of it.

And she couldn’t feel as angry as she wanted to. Because she felt his suffering as surely as her own.

She found his spectacles on the table before the fire. She leaned over, and he was still as she slid them onto his face, a gesture so instinctive, so natural, it surprised both of them.

He made a short sound. Almost a laugh.

They sat in silence; together and apart.

And then suddenly he reached for a cheroot in the humidor, leaned forward and held it coaxingly out to the fire, as if offering a morsel to her kitten. The fire licked it alight.

He held it out to her. “I thought you might need to relax.”

She stared at the cheroot dumbly. Then she took it with shaking hands and stared at it as though she’d forgotten the English word for it.

“And it’s much more relaxing if you actually
inhale
, Miss Brightly.”

She whipped her head toward him. The bloody man had known all along.

He was smiling a little, faintly. Struggling to restore his sanity and hers with lightness.

But did he know
everything
? It struck her suddenly as grossly unfair, the advantage he had over her. This perceptive, probing man.

But then again, she wasn’t the only person at the mercy of whatever it was between them.

She wanted to drop her head into her hands, too. To surrender to the impulse to be weak for once. But she wouldn’t allow him to see it. Instead her head did the opposite: her chin jerked up. She stared at him.

And after a moment he stood, swiftly and deftly buttoned his shirt, shoving the miles of it down into his trousers, flattening his palms over his hair, which was in astounding disarray.

Fine hair, so soft, and too much of it, she thought, watching him. Her thumb and forefinger slid together absently, as though she could feel it between her fingers.

Miles waited there a moment indecisively. Opened his mouth to say something, shook his head roughly.

And of all things, bowed.

And left her.

Jonathan wagged his eyebrows. “I b’lieve Miles will be leg-shackled ere long.”

No one took up this comment. Violet gave a little grunt, as last night’s sherry had not been kind to her, and Argosy slid Cynthia a look full of mysterious portent.

Cynthia was boarded into the carriage in the morning, quiet and desolate and utterly absorbed, and doing her best to disguise it, because Argosy was clearly full of admiration for her and enthusiasm for their escapade.

Pennyroyal Green in daylight was charming: the pub named for a farm animal and a weed and the little stone church sat across from each other, as though cheerfully resigned to the fact they shared the same customers. Two enormous trees grew closely together at the very center of the village, and off in the distance, up on a hill, a stately building rose: Miss Endicott’s Academy for Young Ladies, not too secretly referred to as the “School for Recalcitrant Girls” by the townspeople. A swath of brilliant, fragile red poppies lead up to it.

“We should have put Violet there many years ago,” Jonathan told Cynthia.

“I should have organized a mutiny,” Violet said easily. “It would not have been
sensible
to put me there.”

“Doubtless you are right,” Jonathan agreed, yawning. He’d been awake very, very late over billiards with Milthorpe and Argosy, and he’d had rather more to drink than his sister or Cynthia.

Violet, pale from far too many glasses of sherry during last night’s drinking game, had only cast her accounts once, she’d confided proudly to Cynthia. Cynthia’s head felt a little woolly, but she was quite accustomed to fast living and had been equal to the sherry. She was subdued for an entirely different reason.

“Well, I’m certain I’ll learn from the Gypsies that I shall take a long ocean journey and meet a tall, dark stranger,” Violet said.

Jonathan laughed. “I only
wish
you’d take a long ocean journey.”

She gave him a little kick.

“Children,” Cynthia said.

Still, it fascinated her, and sometimes taunted her to the point of restlessness: this easiness, this playfulness, this taken-for-granted affection and history and money. She wanted it. She wanted it for
her
children.

She
wanted
children. She wanted a family.

Argosy smiled at her warmly. His thigh was but three inches from hers.

She saw her own thighs in an entirely different light now, since she’d had them wide open and dangerously wrapped with Miles Redmond’s last night. Her hands curled tightly into her dress to steady herself as the memory washed through her body and made her weak with want.

“
Miles
took a long ocean journey. But he returned,” Jonathan said.

“Miles will always return,” Violet said contentedly. “No matter what he does. He’s quite reliable.”

Cynthia had left the quite reliable Miles’s arms in a fog of banked desire, said good night to Susan the Spider and Spider the cat, and expected to lie awake in a torment of confusion and desire both banked and thwarted; to doze fitfully, be torn from sleep by her nightmare, and doze off again until the maid arrived to build the fire.

Instead, oddly, there was something protected now about her room, despite Miles. No:
because
of Miles. Because he’d given her a small cat, which vibrated, alternately, on her stomach, her knees, and finally—at least when she awoke—on her head.

She’d slept the night through. Another miracle.

There’s more, Miss Brightly.
Desire at once arrowed through her, and her breathing hitched.

Argosy smiled secretly, just for her. Why didn’t
his
very nearness, his fine features, make her weak? Why didn’t she picture melting against his slim body and wrapping her thighs around—

“The Gypsies are here every year?” Cynthia said instantly, to get the word “Miles” out of the carriage and out of the conversation and out of her thoughts.

“Oh, yes. Since I can remember,” Jonathan said. “I’ve known the Heron family for years. We were sometimes allowed to see their entertainments as children. And I like them well enough, thieves and rascals though they are. I wouldn’t call them a
bad
sort. But the fortune telling is pure nonsense.”

He yawned again.

Cynthia exchanged an indulgent glance with Argosy: we know better, it said.

The carriage horses were pulled to a halt at the edge of a meadow that rolled softly, like a blanket carelessly tossed aside on a bed. There was a rise over which they couldn’t see, but intriguing masculine laughter, hoofbeats, and shouted Rom—the Gypsy language—floated from the other side of it.

In the midst of it they heard the word “Samuel” sharply said. And more laughter.

A good dozen or so tents were concentrically pitched about a central campfire that had burned low, now half ash, half glow. A cooking pot swung over it; something savory scented the air. A smooth yellow dog sleeping outside the tent lifted his head questioningly and lowered it again, deciding they were nothing to become excited over. Perhaps it had seen the
gadji
come and go for weeks now, hoping to be told their destinies in their palms.

Curious about the noise, they turned in a sort of idle, tacit agreement to scale the small rise before entering the camp. They looked down.

Cynthia froze, breathless.

A copper-colored horse was stretched out in an easy gallop across the meadow, and this was lovely but hardly shocking. The slim man standing—
standing
—on the back of it was, however. Like a bird riding a current of air, his arms were outstretched and he tipped them now subtly, now deeply, like wings, in rhythm to the horses’ rippling muscles and easy gait.

It was as disorienting as if they’d been plunged into a collective dream.

Then they heard deep laughter, and swiveled their heads, noticing the other man: shorter and broader at the shoulder, holding by the halter a restive brown horse sporting four handsome white stockings. He called something to the balancing man in delighted Rom; they heard him say “Samuel” again. It all sounded like approbation. And that the young man’s name was Samuel.

Then the broader man swung himself up onto the brown horse and nudged and clucked it into a gallop.

“They’re horse acrobats,” Jonathan murmured. “They travel the country. They make most of their money at the Cambridge Horse Fair.”

The man atop the brown horse man levered himself into a standing position, and the two horses, nudged by the feet, the muscles, the Rom commands of the men, carried their cargoes toward each other at a determined canter.

Violet gripped Cynthia’s arm. “What are they
doing
? I can’t look!”

But she was, of course, not only looking, but
feasting
on the spectacle. Excitement crackled from her. And Jonathan and Argosy, being men—riveted by anything that appeared dangerous or could kill them, or so it seemed to Cynthia—were motionless, too.

The animals drew abreast, and the men leaped from the horses in unison.

The quartet gasped, and Violet clutched Cynthia’s arm.

There was an airborne eternity that in truth lasted only a second as the men sailed past each other. The stocky man landed neatly on the back of Samuel’s mount, strong thighs flexing to a crouch, then pushing upward to stand.

The slim man crashed into the side of the brown horse, scrabbled futilely for a grip, then slid ignominiously to land in a heap on the ground.

A burst of laughter escaped Violet before she could clap her hands over her mouth.

The sleeping yellow dog leaped to life, wagging furiously and dashing to lick the prone Gypsy, as if he’d just been waiting for such an opportunity. Samuel struggled to an upright position as the brown horse trotted nonchalantly off. Riderless. Looking for all the world resigned.

The Gypsy called Samuel looked up, shading his eyes, and scowled in Violet’s general direction, where the peals of laughter were coming from.

“I am glad I can amuse you,
Gadji.
”

“I am glad, too,” Violet called cheerfully.

Her brother shot her a warning look—Redmonds did not flirt with Gypsies—which she of course ignored.

“I could have been hurt.”

“But you are not,” Violet said pragmatically. “Or not very, anyway. Are you?”

“No,” he conceded after a moment. He sounded good natured about it.

Samuel rubbed the yellow dog’s ears and said something to it in Rom that made it wag all the more vigorously. He said something else that was apparently much less polite to his partner, who threw up his hands and responded with a stream of amused-sounding Rom. His partner was laughing at him, too.

“The
first
part was very nice,” Violet called, in an attempt to mollify.

Cynthia gave Violet’s arm a squeeze. She wasn’t certain whether Violet would interpret it as encouragement or warning.

“Was it,
Gadji
? Perhaps you’d like to give it a try?” It was elegantly sarcastic.

“Could I?”

“Violet,” Jonathan warned again. This time the warning had an edge. “Miles will
kill
you.”

Samuel whistled to the wandering horse, which was now docilely nipping at meadow grasses. The horse ambled over, and Samuel reached up for its halter and used it to pull himself to his feet.

He led his mount over to the group.

His eyes were remarkable: brilliant, alder-leaf green. An extraordinarily pure color, as though no one in his lineage had ever mated with anyone with eyes of a different color. His nose was narrow with a bit of a hook, and his lips were full, the upper one arching over the bottom to form very nearly the shape of a heart. He’d tucked copper-streaked brown hair behind his ears. His skin was the burnished shade of a copper kettle, a degree lighter than the coat of his horse.

Handsome devil, in other words. Young, slim, exotic.

Cynthia immediately understood the appeal of the exotic. And she was not at all immune to handsome devils.

But he seemed to have eyes only for Violet. Who, to the consternation of her brother, was not at all displeased at being the subject of Gypsy attention and was returning it measure for measure.

“Your have almost Gypsy eyes,
Gadji,
” he said to Violet, as though answering a question she had posed. “Nearly as beautiful.”

Violet’s eyes widened at the boldness. Jonathan and Argosy moved in closer, to sandwich her between them.

The stocky Gypsy said something to Samuel in Rom. It had the distinctive tone of a warning. Samuel gave a start and seemed to take his first very close look at the men.

“It is Mr. Jonathan Redmond!” He bowed low to Jonathan. “Forgive me. I didna recognize you. ’Twas yer ’at, ye see. ’id yer face.” He smiled, touched his hand to his forehead, to make it a jest.

Jonathan relaxed his brotherly protective stance somewhat. “How goes it, Samuel? I have not seen you…”

“Since two years. I have traveled with my uncle”—he gestured behind him to the stocky man—“to learn the horses.”

Silence.

And then all in a rush Jonathan said, “Will you show me how to ride the horses like—”

“Good God, no,
Gadji
, I am not mad, and you are not a Gypsy. We do it for money, not for fun,” he said, matter-of-factly. He was amused. “Ye’ll break bones. Yer brother will kill me then.”

“Gypsies do
everything
for money,” Argosy said. He was bristling with jealous fascination.

“Your friend is correct,” Samuel said cheerfully. He turned curiously to Lord Argosy.

“Anthony Cordell, Lord Argosy.” Jonathan provided the introduction, and Argosy provided the bow, which was a thing of majesty.

Samuel bowed low, too, though his bow looked theatrical and almost mocking.

“And this is my sister, Miss Violet Redmond, and our friend, Miss Cynthia Brightly.” Jonathan gave the word “sister” a bit of a warning inflection.

Samuel the Gypsy’s eyes widened briefly, and he gave a quick nod. “I’ve not yet ’ad the pleasure of meeting yer sister.” His voice had gone formal. “And ’tis a pleasure indeed…Why ’ave you come for a visit, friends? We leave tomorrow.” He gestured at the camp, which still looked intact.

“We’d hoped to have our fortunes told,” Cynthia told him.

He gave her a dazzling smile, and lingered on her face speculatively. “Ah! Ye’d like someone to dukker for ye,
Gadji
?”

A lethal flirt, this one. Cynthia enjoyed lethal flirts. Argosy stirred beside her, like a young bird of prey ruffling its feathers in warning.

Ah, this was good. But she must be very careful.

Violet was a bit too quiet. She was watching the Gypsy boy raptly. But he seemed to have forgotten her after his initial burst of flirtation, or he was carefully not flirting with the daughter of a Redmond, because he did not want to be skewered on a Redmond pike.

“Very well.” Samuel said. “Follow me. It’s of a certainty me auntie will dukker—tell your fortune—for ye, if ye’ve coin fer it.”

The four English guests followed the slightly limping Gypsy, who led the brown horse and was followed by the yellow dog.