Night Fire (22 page)

“Would you remain celibate forever if I didn't wish you to touch me?”

He looked at her then. One brow arched upward a good inch. “Forever? Merciful heavens, you do know how to strip away the layers of things, don't you?”

“Well, there was Laura What's-her-name in London.”

“That was before we were married.”

“Well?”

“Probably not. Probably I would try everything in a man's repertoire to seduce you. Wine, brandy, perhaps opium, diamonds, rubies, maybe even a puppy—”

She laughed. “Do stop that. You know I don't want things like diamonds and rubies. As for opium, that's awful. If I were drunk or drugged, I wouldn't know what I was doing. I can't imagine that would be any fun for you.”

He gave her a look so filled with hunger that she swallowed and quickly looked away at the small cluster of bluebells beside the path. She said, her eyes fixed on the toes of her shoes, “It's very warm today.”

“Yes, but there is a light breeze.”

“Yes, there is. You know I am ugly.”

That drew him up. “What?”

“Ugly.” She looked up at him, straightly. “You've seen me without my clothes enough times to know how I look.”

He was tempted to pretend ignorance, to assure her that he thought her the most beautiful and perfectly made of women, which was indeed what he did think, but that wasn't the point now. He had to go very carefully and, he knew, very honestly. “You mean the faint white lines from all the beatings Cochrane gave you?”

“Yes. You can see the—the marks if you look
closely
.”

“It's difficult for me,” he said. “I see you naked and I see those marks and I feel such rage toward that old bastard that I would like to search him out in hell and kill him again. Then I look at you and I see the years of pain in your eyes, I see how deeply he hurt you, and I want to hold you and tell you no one will ever hurt you again, that you're mine now, you belong to me. I want you to believe that the past is just that—in the past—and that you and I are together and we are the present and the future and it will be what we make it. That's what I think about your so-called ugliness.”

“Why,” she said very quietly, her voice low and somehow distant, “didn't you take me away with you when I was fifteen?”

He brought her tightly against him. “God, I wish I had, Arielle. I've thought it so many times, regretted so many times acting the noble and, I believed, honorable man. But I simply assumed that you would be here, a woman instead of a girl, yet still miraculously the same as you were at fifteen, and I would smile at you and we would wed and that would be that.” He shook his head at himself. “But it didn't happen that way, and we cannot change the past. But we can look at it, then firmly put it where it belongs—behind us, and if not forgotten, at least no longer important.”

He kissed her then, a very gentle kiss.

He felt her breasts soft against his chest. He felt her arms go around his back. Then, to his besotted delight, he felt her lips part very slightly. He didn't deepen his kiss, nor did he thrust his tongue into her mouth. Very slowly, he ran his tongue along her lower lip. Her taste was sweet, seductive, and he was hard and trembling with need for her. But he was a man, not an uncontrolled boy.

He felt the instant she responded. He felt her body change. It was as if something deep inside her loosened, opened, and he knew in that precious moment that she was no longer wary of him, that she no longer feared any part of him. Her lips parted more fully, and he nearly moaned with the pleasure of it when her tongue tentatively touched his.

“Arielle,” he said, his voice warm and deep.

Her arms tightened around his back. She rose onto her tiptoes to fit herself better against him. He felt her soft belly pressing against his sex, now hard and straining against his breeches. And he thought: She trusts me, at last she trusts me. And his kiss deepened and grew more possessive. She took his passion, his vibrant and urgent need, and gave herself over to it, giving him not only her own need but the suppressed feelings of that young girl so long ago.

Arielle had never before known that a kiss could be like this. Changing and deepening, teasing for a while, then so sweet she wanted to cry from the wonder of it. She felt the power of it in her heart, making her want to know him—his taste, the planes and angles of his body, the softness of his flesh, the hard muscles of his belly, all of him—and mixed with those elusive feelings were the stark, pounding sensations burgeoning in the pit of her stomach. It was a kind of ache, a strange compulsion to press herself against him, not to just know him but also to feel all of him, his maleness, to bring him into herself. And there was no fear, no hesitancy, only her sense of wanting and of discovery.

She moaned, softly, and both of them started. He raised his head just a bit and smiled down at her. “That is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard in my life.”

He kissed her again. She felt his hands sweep down her back, drawing her even closer. She felt his hands cup her and lift her and rub himself against her. It left her feeling hollow with near frantic urgency. She drew in her breath and moaned again.

He was kneading her hips, pressing and moving her against his sex, and she jerked, unable to help herself, and dug her fingers into his back.

“Burke.” Her voice was thin and excited.

He kissed her chin, her eyes, her lips, then lifted her into his arms. “It's time I had my way with you,” he said, and she laughed and hugged her arms around his shoulders. He felt her head on his shoulder. He felt her trust flowing over him. He felt like a god, a king, and better than even that, he felt like a man and her husband.

He walked deep into the maple grove. It was silent and the leaves were so thick overhead that the sun could only penetrate in thin, glittering slices, cutting the still air in silver arcs.

He stopped finally and eased them both down, letting her feel the length of his body, his hardness, his size. “It is your decision. Do you want me, Arielle?”

She said nothing. He felt her fingers on the buttons of his shirt, then on his bare chest, gliding over him, learning him. She smiled up at him. “Just a moment,” he said and nearly ripped his coat jerking it off. He spread it on the soft mossy ground. “Clothes,” he said. “So many wretched layers.”

They undressed each other, or at least they tried to, with awkward movements and clumsy attempts that made them laugh. Burke thought, as he fought with some buttons on her gown, that he was a fool not to wait until they were in bed. He was still wearing his breeches, his boots tossed haphazardly atop her petticoat when she was naked. He stopped cold. He looked at her, all of her. Slowly, he reached out his hand and gently cupped her breast. He closed his eyes a moment, lifting her breast, feeling her. “So lovely,” he said. Then he cupped both breasts, smiling at her, his thumbs lightly caressing her.

He held her tightly against one arm, his other hand moving downward, searching, and he found her, and she was hot and soft and he groaned.

“I feel funny,” Arielle said, clutching his shoulder. “I feel very funny.”

She raised her face for his kiss and he obliged her. He tasted her rising desire as his fingers stroked and caressed her. He felt her move against his fingers, and it was natural and giving. When he was breathing so heavily he couldn't bear it, he removed himself from her. She looked at him, her eyes slightly glazed, her lips parted, her breath coming in short gasps. He wanted her to know that he would still stop if she wished it. She stared at his face, saw the tenderness in his eyes, his urgent, naked desire for her. “Burke,” she said very quietly and opened her arms to him.

“You won't ever fear me,” he said, leaning over to kiss her. As his tongue gently slipped between her lips, his fingers again began to caress her, and she cried out, her hips jerking upward.

He knew then that no matter how urgent his own need, he would control himself. He kissed her breasts and felt her response. “You like that,” he said, his breath hot against her flesh.

“Just a little bit,” she gasped. Then he took her nipple and suckled, and she thought she couldn't bear it. The feelings were too much, too strong, too intense. She cried out yet again into his mouth. His fingers were now rhythmically stroking her and she found herself moving naturally against them, pressing upward, showing him what she wanted. When her body bowed, arching desperately, when the sensations were nearly painful, she cried out his name, lost in the pleasure of her body and the pleasure that was in him as well.

He watched her as she climaxed, watched every reaction, felt her release flow through him. She'd looked so surprised. So wondering. She was his now. Forever.

When she quieted, he lifted himself over her and without a word, without warning, came into her in one powerful stroke. As he broke through her maidenhead he kissed her, clasped her tightly against him, and absorbed her cry of surprised pain. When he was deep inside her, when she sheathed him, held him tight and warm, he eased down on his elbows above her. Her skin was slick with perspiration and he breathed in the air, feeling it swirl through him, the smell of the sweet mossy ground, the smell of the maple leaves, the smell of their sweat, and the smell of sex.

“Look at me,” he said.

She opened her eyes.

“No more pain.”

Arielle raised her hand and lightly traced her fingertips over his face. “No, there isn't any. You're beautiful, Burke.”

He quivered, his eyes closing against the incredible feelings she roused in him. She was so tight and small and—He gritted his teeth. “Don't move. Please, don't move.”

“All right. Burke?”

“Yes?”

“You are so deep inside me. This intimacy business is a very strange thing.”

“Oh, God,” he said, trying desperately to control himself, but it was too late, far too late. He'd wanted to try to bring her with him again, to give her more pleasure, to give her more of himself, but he felt himself heaving and jerking in his need, felt himself shattering over her and into her, pouring his seed deep inside her and giving her all that he was, promising her all that he would ever be.

And she took him and held him and welcomed him.

“B
urke?”

He tried to gain control of his breathing and managed to grunt.

“What happened to me?”

He came up on his elbows, relieving her of his weight. Her hair was tangled about her face, her eyes were luminous and vague, and her mouth looked so tender he leaned down and kissed her. He tried to ignore the very real fact that he was deep inside her and he wanted her again.

He saw her brow furrow.

“What happened to you? Now, that's an easy question to answer. You seduced me.”

She smiled at that and moved just a bit to accommodate him more easily.

“Don't.” He sucked in his breath. “Don't move like that, Arielle. It does things to me.”

She tightened her arms around his back. “And that would mean, then, that you would do more things to me.”

“Exactly.”

“Burke, what happened? It was like pain, only it wasn't, and I wanted more and more and then I felt like everything inside me just blew up, and I wasn't really me anymore but you were there and with me and part of me, and it was, well, it was wonderful.”

He couldn't speak for a moment. Finally, as he stroked her hair from her forehead, he said, “That is what lovemaking is supposed to be like between a man and a woman.” He thought of the succession of women whose beds and bodies he'd visited, and shook his head. “No, not really like that, not really so very intense. But that is what it is supposed to be like between us, Arielle, because there is love. Never pain or humiliation or dominance or any of those things. Just giving and taking pleasure and more pleasure, like some sort of magical bonding. Now, I don't want to squash you into the moss.” He eased out of her, feeling her flinch slightly.

She raised her hand and pressed it against his chest. “Even sweaty you feel marvelous.” She breathed in deeply. “And the smells. The smell of man, the smell of Burke—”

“And the smell of Arielle, lavender and sweet and sweaty and earthy and covered and filled with the smell of me.”

“Yes,” she said. She missed him, the fullness, the sweet pressure. Then she felt sticky and wet, and she brought her thighs together.

“Hold still, sweetheart.” He reached over and pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He wiped his seed from her, holding himself back with all the inner strength he possessed. He had to wait; he had to give her time. She'd responded so wonderfully to him. He hadn't expected it, at least not before he'd begun kissing her, and after he'd begun, he simply hadn't thought about it, which was probably just as well. If he had thought about it, he would probably have been so worried about hurting her that he would have frozen up and been anything but natural. But they'd both been natural. He thought of the fantasies he'd had of her for three long years, those sometimes stark images that were replete with the intense sexual pleasure she would give him, and now, now that she was his, it had happened and it was so. But what he hadn't imagined was the searing, nearly violent need deep inside himself, the core of himself that he hadn't known was lacking until she filled it with her real self, not with the girl of his fantasies and dreams who had merely sustained him for those three years.

He said, his voice deep, so deep and tender that it filled her, “Will you stay with me now?”

She looked away from him, over his head, at the glittering spears of sunlight. She told him one truth, one that neither of them could deny. “I would have no place to go to. Nesta and Alec are no longer in Boston.”

“True, but they will be traveling soon to Northumberland, to Carrick Grange.”

“No, I wouldn't go with them. I shouldn't like to be a poor relation, and since I have no money, that is what I would be.”

He waited. She looked up at him finally, and her eyes were questioning. Of herself, of him he didn't know. “I think,” she said at last, “I think I want to stay with you.”

He reached over, his fingertips lightly touching her breast. Soft, she was so soft. Slowly, he lowered his head and tested her. He suckled and caressed until he felt the answering response in her. He smiled and blew gently on her heated skin.

“Do you know something, Arielle? If I had taken you when you were fifteen, married you—doubtless against your father's wishes, and you can be certain you would have felt very guilty about that—and brought you with me to the Continent to be an officer's wife, you and I would have been vastly different with each other. You would have been open and loving and sweet and very, very young, and I probably would have acted something like a benevolent parent, loving you certainly, yet seeing myself as responsible for raising you and thus ordering you about and treating you more like a child than a woman and a wife.

“I can't imagine that you would have liked that very much, at least after a while. Who knows? Perhaps you would have kicked me out, taken my horse, and left me with just the tent and Joshua.”

She laughed, once again appreciating how he could mix lightness and humor with the most serious thoughts.

“No,” she said, her eyes luminous upon his face, “I shouldn't have left you. Deborah—she would have been our little girl, you know—and you and I would have stayed in your officer's tent, and I would have continued cooking and mending for you and fending off the other officers, who, of course, would have fallen in love with me.”

“And they would have. And I would have been obnoxiously possessive and jealous, and you would have rapped me on my head, thrown your delicious cooking in my face, and doubtless left my shirts unamended and tattered.”

“I wish you weren't right so much of the time. And yes, she would have felt overwhelming guilt about leaving her father.”

He heard the bitterness in her voice. “Her?”

“I occasionally think about that silly, stupid, guileless little fool.”

“No. Dammit, Arielle, she is you, part of you, and whenever you laugh, it is her laughter, your laughter. That very sweet, innocent young girl is still there, but you're a woman now and you've tempered her, made her grow and become someone special, someone I love with all my being.”

He leaned over and kissed her. He wanted to kiss her until he had banished all the pain in her, all the bitterness and hurt. “You are my wife,” he said. “You are mine.”

“Yes,” she said and cupped his face between her hands.

He kissed her again, feeling the heat of the sun on his back and the heat of her against his heart.

 

Burke watched Arielle closely when she walked into the drawing room that evening. He wasn't entirely successful in keeping the amusement from his face. As Arielle's bad luck would have it, only Nesta and Alec were there. She was embarrassed, he knew it, but she managed to smile at Nesta and make an easy enough greeting. As for Alec Carrick, she couldn't meet his eyes.

Alec, on the other hand, wasn't at all leveled by embarrassment. He said in the blandest voice Burke had ever heard, “Lovely day, wasn't it, Arielle?”

“Yes,” Arielle said, her eyes on Burke's boots now instead of on her own slippers.

“And it was a lovely, quite memorable morning as well, don't you agree, little one?”

That brought her head up, and she opened her mouth only to shut it again when she saw the wicked expression of Alec's impossibly handsome face.

“What's this?” Percy said, coming into the drawing room, Lannie beside him. “Trouble in this paradise of couples?”

“Alec is being a cad,” said Nesta. “He occasionally does it very well.”

“A common ailment among gentlemen,” said Arielle.

Lannie giggled. “Since Percy isn't yet a husband, I shan't put him properly in his place.”

Percy groaned. “I was going to propose soon, fall at your dainty feet, and offer you my hand and my house and my carriage. Now I am not so certain. What do you think, Burke? Would you marry Arielle again?”

“Unfair,” said Alec before Burke could respond. “He's been leg-shackled but a very short time. He's still existing in a fog of marital and sexu—well, never mind that. You should be asking an old married man like me. Merciful heavens, nearly five years now. I teeter near the grave. There was a gray hair in my head this morning, and I have yet to see twenty-seven.”

Arielle said, “But you are still existing in that—well, you've been married a very long time, and evidently that fog doesn't go away—at least it hasn't with you and Nesta and—” Arielle's voice broke off, and she felt herself hugged very tightly by a laughing husband.

“Celibacy is just around the corner,” Alec said, and looked ready to burst into tears.

“What is all this?” Knight asked from the doorway. He looked immaculate and fit and, Burke thought, eyeing him more closely, immensely pleased with himself.

“Nothing of import,” Burke said. “What's going on, Knight? You look like a wicked tomcat.”

“Well, my dear fellow, the gentlemen will be off to a little town called Chiddingstone on Friday morning. There's a mill, and I've bespoken rooms for us at the The Gooseneck Inn. I ran into Rafael Carstairs and Lyon Ashton, and we decided to make a party of it.” He beamed at everyone.

Burke almost shook his head, but he paused when Arielle said, “A mill is fighting, isn't it? Between two men? With their fists?”

“Yes, ma'am,” said Percy. “I say, Knight, well done.”

“Ugh,” Lannie said.

“You will enjoy that, will you not?” Arielle asked Burke.

“I, well, yes, I guess so. But I don't want to leave you.”

She smiled at him. “I am not your mother to tie you to my skirts. Nor am I an invalid, Burke.”

“No, what you are is a bride and—”

She heard Alec laugh from behind her and quickly placed her fingertips over Burke's mouth. “You will survive it, I am certain, my lord, as will I. I, also, you will notice, have two ladies to keep me company. We will enjoy ourselves immensely, I promise you.”

He caught her hands in his. “You're certain?”

“Another symptom,” said Alec. “He's in such a fog he can't see the world outside his bedcham—”

“That is quite enough,” said Nesta.

“Who are the fighters?” Burke asked.

“The champion, Cribb, and Molyneux. Molyneux's the heavier, I heard—and his arms, Lord, they're a good two inches longer than Cribb's—but neither of them is over fourteen stone. I'm for Cribb, of course, but Molyneux isn't to be dismissed lightly.”

“Why would you be for Cribb when Molyneux has such long arms he could hit Cribb and not be hit?” asked Arielle.

“A matter of science,” said Knight. “Experience and intelligence and cunning and ruthlessness.”

“That about covers it,” said Burke.

Lannie shot a comic look at Arielle and Nesta, heaved a martyr's sigh, and asked, “What do you think would happen if ladies became fighters?”

“I don't know,” Arielle said, “but I think we are endowed with goodly amounts of this science Knight was talking about.”

Montague cleared his throat in the doorway. “Dinner is served, my lady.”

“An important part of science is good and regular eating habits,” said Percy and offered his arm to Lannie.

“Another important part of science is a sweet kiss before every meal,” said Burke, kissed his wife, then lightly tapped her chin. “It's good for the digestion.”

“The final important part of all this science,” said Knight, his tone one of amused tolerance, “Is the ability to keep oneself sane when surrounded by all these very tedious mating rituals.”

“Your day will come, Knight,” said Alec.

“Never,” said Knight with a goodly amount of vehemence. “Not I. Not a chance. Never in a million eons. I'm starving.”

 

“In bed at last, where we belong. Do you realize I've never made love to you in a bed?”

Arielle thought of the sweet smell of the leaves and grass and moss, and the tingling shafts of sunlight that had struck her bare flesh. She thought of the hardness of his body over hers, and she knew she would remember until the day she died the feelings he'd ignited in her that first time.

“It was nice,” she said with great inadequacy, “in the maple grove.”

“Oh, yes,” said Burke, his voice very deep. He slowly drew down the sheet and bared her breasts.

“Burke, I hadn't expected things to be like this.”

He'd been studying her breasts, but now he looked at her face. “You mean pleasure, with me, a man?”

“That, I suppose, and feeling good about being me, and not being afraid anymore.”

Again he experienced that wrenching feeling deep inside him that made him nearly frantic with need and love for her. He stroked his open palm over her breasts, slowly, back and forth. He said, wanting to be honest with her, “But it is still a very fragile feeling, isn't it, Arielle?”

“I don't know.” Her breathing was a bit jerky and he smiled, knowing what she was feeling.

“You are so very soft,” he said and bent his head to her breast.

He felt her fingers tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. “Very nice,” he said. “Very nice indeed.”

“You're nicer,” she said and tugged at his ear. He kissed her mouth then, as she wanted, deeply and thoroughly, giving and giving, offering her everything that he was, willing her to accept him and to understand him.

She felt his finger slide into her just as his tongue eased into her mouth, and she cried out with the explosion of feeling it caused and the images it created in her mind. Her hands were all over him then, feeling him, kneading him, pulling him closer, hugging him to her with all her strength.

He felt her legs part for him, and that simple gesture from her, her giving, her openness, made him tremble. He couldn't slow now. He was between her spread thighs, looking down at her, his fingers urgent as they stroked and parted her, and then he came into her, one full, deep thrust, and she cried out.