Once in a Blue Moon (36 page)

The wood caught with a lick of flame and curl of smoke. He straightened and came toward her, where she stood in the middle of the room. It was ridiculous, but she had to tighten her muscles to keep from running away. There was a roaring in her ears, as if they were still being battered by the rain and the sea. He stopped when only a hand space separated them. So close she could smell his shaving soap and the wet starch in his shirt. And a hot male smell that went with what he had done to her on the beach.

"Take off your clothes," he said. Commanded.

"M-my clothes?" She had not thought about this, that he would want her to undress. She had never bared her body to a man before. Not even Becka had seen her out of her shift. Yet there was a wet stickiness between her legs to remind her of the intimacy she'd already shared with this man.

His fingers spanned her chin, tilting her head to meet his eyes. They caught the light of the fire, glowing like hurricane lamps in the stormy passion of his dark face. "I want to see you naked, Jessalyn."

Her hands trembled as she reached behind her back, working at the hidden laces that fastened her bodice. She was afraid he wouldn't like her body. She was so thin and bony.

She had trouble working loose the tight long sleeves, the wet muslin seemed to cling to her arms. But then the dress slid into a dripping pool around her ankles. She wasn't wearing stays, only a shift and drawers. Drawers that were ripped from front to back so that she could feel cool air bathing those most intimate parts of her body.

His breathing had changed, coming in quick, shallow gasps. "Everything," he said, the word a coarse whisper.

She swallowed hard around the dryness in her throat. She untied the drawstring to her drawers, and they joined her dress on the floor. She pulled the shift over her head, letting it fall from her outstretched lingers. Her wet hair hung in clumps over her shoulders, water running in rivulets over her breasts and belly. The water was cold, yet her skin sizzled. She couldn't look at him.

"I've wanted you since you were sixteen," he said, the words hoarse. "When you were all legs and no tits and with a sunburnt nose and freckles on your cheekbones."

He was staring at her breasts, and she felt a rush of tingling heat spread through her, like swallowing brandy. She looked down. Her nipples stood out hard and round and dark like two pebbles. "They still aren't much to look at."

He breathed a laugh. "Oh, no, there you are most wrong, Miss Letty." His hand trembled slightly as he combed the hair away from her face, following the length of one thick curl where it curved beneath a smooth, upthrust breast, sticking to her wet skin, skin that seemed suddenly to have caught on fire. "As an acknowledged rake I happen to be a connoisseur of women's breasts." He cupped one in his palm, lifting it, and she stifled a moan behind her teeth. "And yours are splendid. All round and golden, as if sprinkled with cinnamon." Together they watched his long, hard fingers, dark against the whiteness of her skin, trace the contours of her pliant, aching flesh, gently teasing the nipple until it seemed to throb and quiver. "I've dreamed about what it would be like to try and lick every cinnamon fleck off with my tongue, one by one."

Her body felt weighted, her skin too hot and tight. Her legs trembled, wanting to sink to the floor. She had to touch him as well. She laid her palms flat against his chest, rubbing them over his wet shirt, marveling at the way his muscles tightened and expanded with his heavy breaths. The way he felt, rugged as the cliffs, yet yielding, too, beneath her hands like the soft black earth. "You are so strong," she said. "So hard."

His head fell forward, and he groaned her name against her hair. He swung her up into his arms and carried her to the bed.

The old rope springs moaned beneath them. The army blanket was rough under her back; every inch of her skin felt flayed, too sensitive to bear so much as a breath. He lay beside her, partially covering her, and his shirt brushed against her breasts, tormenting her nipples. His hand stroked the length of her, and his gaze followed, fire scorching along the path of fire.

"I knew the hair between your legs would be this color," he said. "Like a burning torch." His fingers lightly, lightly touched her there, and she gasped and arched up off the bed, as if he'd lit a fuse, setting off a rocket inside her.

He seized her mouth in a long, fierce kiss, then pulled away from her and sat up. He tugged at his boots, cursing them when they resisted. He yanked his shirt over his head, popping buttons that clattered and rolled on the floor. He stood up. He hadn't bothered with refastening his pantaloons; they gaped open at the waist, revealing a dense triangle of dark curling hair. He stood sideways to her, and she could see plainly how the tight wet doeskin cradled the heavy bulge of his sex. He peeled the wet cloth down over his hips, baring to her fascinated gaze the curved, muscular moon of one buttock... and his swollen member, bursting free. It was thick and ridged with veins, purple-red, almost glistening. Her breath escaped through her parted lips in a tiny, whistling sound.

"Is that a gasp of fear or awe?" He stood, grinning, before her. Blatantly virile and arrogantly aware of it.

Laughter bubbled up and poured out of her, raucous and squeaky as a rusty gate—and dying when she noticed the purple-red weal that curved around his thigh. She reached up and ran her finger along the length of the hard, puckered ridge. "You could have been killed," she said. The thought terrified her. That life was so precarious. That she could lose him. Even the little of him that she had could be lost to her forever.

He removed her hand and brought it to his lips as he eased down onto the bed beside her. He stared at her, and the skin across his cheekbones seemed to tauten, his lips to tighten, as if he were in pain. "Laugh again," he said.

"Why?" He grinned at her, and she giggled. "No one—" She giggled again. "No one can laugh on command. It isn't—" A hooting snort burst out of her, sounding like a dull saw going through wood.

He laughed along with her, smothering his face between her breasts. "God, I love the way you laugh," he said. "I get hard sometimes just hearing you laugh."

She looked down the length of their two bodies, lying side by side: his hard and sun-browned, hers cream pale and softer. At his manhood, lying thick and heavy against her hip. "You're hard right now."

He rose up and rubbed his sex over her belly. "Feel it. This is what you do to me, Jessalyn. Are you pleased with yourself?"

She was rather pleased with herself. And curious about him. She touched his hard length lightly with her fingertips, surprised at the silky slickness of his skin and the burning heat. She felt him shudder, heard his sharp intake of breath.

He took her hand and wrapped it around him. "Hold me. Grip me tight."

He filled her hand. She squeezed him gently, instinctively making a fist and stroking his thick length to the root. He made a harsh sobbing sound, like an animal in pain.

She let go of him. "Did I hurt you? I didn't mean to hurt you."

He laughed, nuzzling her neck. "Ah, Christ, no, you didn't hurt me. That felt so good, so good...."

For one long suspended breath out of time, he stared at her, as if etching her face into his memory. Then he lowered his head and licked the curve of her breast where it swelled beneath her arm. His tongue traced the shape of it, stroking underneath, following the gentle upward slope to the quivering peak and he sucked it deep into his mouth.

Dear life...

She had never felt anything like this before. Oh, God, he had her nipple in her mouth, suckling on it like a babe. She didn't know men did this; it was wicked, it was wonderful, Fireworks shot off in dizzying whirls inside her, falling and dying into a throbbing heat low in her womb.

He lathed slick, hot kisses all over her breasts and down her belly, sucking at places she didn't even know she had. His long hair brushed her skin, tickling, igniting little gorse fires. His breath bathed her in fiery gusts. His back trembled and grew taut and slick with sweat beneath her roaming hands.

She almost screamed when he palmed her mound. His fingers tangled in the red nest of hair, tracing the grooves of her body where her legs joined. He pushed a finger deep inside her, then pulled it out, in and out, in and out, in long, rhythmic thrusts that seemed to match the wild pumping of her heart. With the pad of his thumb he stroked the lips of her sex, pushing upward, touching some exquisitely sensitive place deep inside her that stopped her heart. Her hands clawed at the blanket; her head thrashed. She undulated her hips, pumping them against his stroking, probing fingers as the most terrible pressure built inside her. She opened her mouth to tell him to stop and whimpered instead. Dear life... she was going to die if he didn't stop. She arched her back, bucking hard against his hand, begging for, begging for, begging...

Her chest heaved with the effort to breathe. His mouth was on hers, kissing her. He spoke into her. "Not yet, Jessa. Not yet..."

And then she felt his burning hardness probing at the wet, quivering place where his fingers had been.

His hands slid beneath her bottom, raising her hips. She felt a tiny tremor of fear now, for it had hurt so the last time. He entered her slowly, pushing into her inch by inch, until he was buried to the hilt.

"Don't move," he said though his clenched teeth. "Wait... a moment..." His head bowed, his hair lapping at her breasts, as he drew in short, panting breaths. "God, you are so tight. Wet and hot, like a mouth."

A deep, tearing moan escaped him as he settled deeper. Instinctively she wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him deeper still. He began to move within her. He flattened his palm against her stomach, his fingers inching down, finding her in the tight tangle of red curls, rubbing her in rhythm with his pounding thrusts. The pleasure was so exquisite it raised a scream in the back of her throat. The old rope springs squeaked and groaned, and the wooden bedstead knocked against the wall, pounding, pounding, and she couldn't bear it, couldn't bear it, couldn't—

She awoke to the smell of him. But when she stretched out her hand, the space beside her was empty and cold.

She pressed her face into the pillow, afraid to open her eyes and discover she was alone. But then she heard a soft sound, like a sigh, and slowly she turned her head.

The fire, too long ignored, had gone out. There was no light in the room except for a muted dawn filtering through the single window. He stood, a black silhouette before it, his back to her. McCady Trelawny, this dark-souled man, whom she loved with all the depth and power of her woman's heart.

She watched him, afraid to breathe. For one afternoon and a night he had been hers, his rough and tender touch, his hungry kisses, his man's sex buried deep inside her. She had always known that by giving him her body, she would be giving him the power to hurt her beyond measure. Yet she had never been able to change what was in her heart: She loved him so much. Beyond pride and shame and regret.

He must have felt her eyes on him, for he stiffened and turned. His dark angel's face looked fiercely beautiful in the diffused light and as remote as the stars.

He took a step toward her, then stopped. He was dressed, and she felt suddenly shy in her own nakedness, vulnerable. She pulled the sheet over her breasts. "I'm leaving for London this morning," he said.

Pain slammed into her like a fisted blow. She shut her eyes to hide the rush of tears and swallowed down rising sobs. She would not cry. Nor would she ask him why, but he answered her as if she had.

"Because I must make one last, useless, wasted effort at trying to save my railway company. Because I have business in London anyway that must be seen to before the August trials. And because"—his breath caught, and naked pain flashed across his face—"because I want you so bloody badly I can scarcely breathe when you're near me, so how could I possibly go on living in the same house without touching you?"

She straightened her legs and pushed herself up onto her elbows. There was a burning soreness between her thighs. And an odd pulsing deep within her belly, as if the shudders and tremors that he had wrenched from her again and again throughout the night lingered in her still, echoing.

"I shouldn't want to live at all if you weren't here to touch me."

"Jessalyn... you don't understand." There was a faintly bitter tilt to his mouth. Her chest tightened with panic, cutting off her breath. She was failing him, losing him, and she didn't know what to do to stop it, what it was that he wanted from her. "I'm done for, dished up, cut all to pieces," he went on, the words mocking, but the pain lingering in his eyes. "I don't know why it is that I have been able to bed other women and walk away from them without a moment's thought. But with you I've always... Ah, hell, Jessalyn, I keep trying not to hurt you, and all I seem to do is bring you pain. Within six weeks I'm likely to be carted off to debtor's prison. I cannot take you down into ruin with me."

Her voice was hoarse from the pain in her throat. "And if I don't care what becomes of me as long as we're together?"

He came to her. He stood above her, looking down at her, and his eyes seemed to penetrate through all the effort she was making not to weep, not to beg, penetrating into her soul.
"I
care," he said in a ragged voice.