Rebel Dreams (21 page)

“You have nothing to fear, love. All good things come with
time.” He soothed her with words as he took the kiss he had been denying her.

No gentle teasing was necessary now. The need between them
was strong and immediate, and she parted her lips and clung to him desperately
as his tongue possessed her mouth. Everywhere he touched her there was fire,
and she flung herself into the flames.

Alex set her on the edge of the bed. She protested when his
kiss licked harmlessly at her ear. Then he lifted her legs to remove her
half-boots, sliding his strong hands up her calves to remove garters and
stockings, and the fire found new fuel. When his caress slid further to the
sensitive flesh of her inner thigh, Evelyn gave a strangled cry.

Standing between her legs, Alex challenged her with his gaze
as he removed his own shirt. In fascination she watched the material fall away
to reveal the amazing ripple of muscle. Tentatively she touched the hard naked
planes revealed. Clothing gone, he was just a man. Titles and wealth had no
meaning.

Alex caught her hand, pressing it to his lips and kissing
the fingers before returning it to press her palm against the thud of his heart.
Holding her gaze, he moved her hand downward, letting her explore the feel of
him, the soft mat of hair disguising the hard ripple of tissue, the taut band
of muscle over his waist—slowly guiding her toward the buttons of his breeches.
She flushed scarlet when she encountered the doeskin, but obediently she helped
unfasten him as he had her, until he halted her. She looked up questioningly.

He sat down, pulling his hand through her hair, pressing a
brief kiss to her lips. “I want to pleasure you first, but I fear I will burst
with wanting you if we go too quickly.”

Evelyn satisfied her curiosity by rubbing his wide back when
he leaned over to pull off his boots. If she were his wife, they would do this
every night, and she would grow accustomed to the sight of those broad
shoulders, the texture of his smooth skin beneath her fingers. Evelyn flushed
again.

He didn’t give her time to be afraid. Throwing his last boot
to the floor, he took her in his arms and greedily captured her mouth.

Before Evelyn knew how they came there, she was lying across
the sheets with Alex half on top of her, and the flames had become an inferno
from which escape had become impossible. His hand captured her breast, pushing
it up to fill his palm and caressing until she was swollen with a need she did
not understand—until he pushed the chemise aside and took her in his mouth. She
cried out with bliss, felt the need spread to the place between her thighs, and
knew she was lost.

She helped him remove the last of her garments, grateful she
had worn no corset to hinder their pleasure. She lifted her shoulders from the
pillows so he could push the untied chemise off and down her arms. Keeping her
trapped with the garment half on and half off, Alex continued to feast on her
breasts until she moaned.

His broad hands slid up her thighs, pulling the chemise with
them. As she struggled to free her arms, Alex touched the part of her that
burned the most. Shocked, she whimpered and fell back against the pillows,
flooded with shame. The shame disappeared, becoming a powerful tension as he
stroked and played.

“I want you, little tyrant. I want you here.” His finger
probed tender flesh, making her writhe with the need for more. “Do you
understand what I will do to you?”

Evelyn had difficulty recognizing the question. She
didn’t
understand, but she didn’t care
either. “I don’t know,” she murmured, tossing her head as his lips sucked at
the base of her throat. “Will you show me?”

The words were rhetorical. She knew he would. But she sensed
his need to be asked. He had been right. He didn’t need to force her. She
surrendered willingly.

His finger thrust deeper, and she buried her face against
his shoulder. Flames of embarrassment and desire set her ablaze, but she felt
no relief when he removed his hand to caress her breast.

“I’ll show you, love,” he whispered near her ear. “But I
cannot give it back once I take it from you. There will be no other after me. I’m
claiming you as mine. Your children will be my children. Don’t think it will
ever be otherwise.”

In this instant his words made sense. She desperately wanted
his children. His promises inflamed her desire, and her hips rose to seek his. Alex’s
hand returned to assuage her need, but it wasn’t enough. Evelyn bit her lip to
keep from crying out her frustration. Alex increased the distance between them,
ceasing his kisses. Not even realizing she had closed her eyes, she opened them
again.

In the lamplight his skin gleamed a golden bronze. She
watched in fascination as he unfastened the remaining buttons of his breeches,
including the ones at his knee, before removing the last garment between them.
It seemed to take an interminable time, but through eyes glazed with desire,
Evelyn thought his motions to be perfection. She would never grow tired of
watching the play of muscles across his broad back or admiring the way they
narrowed to lean and masculine hips. When he stood to pull off the garment,
Evelyn sighed in awe.

He was more magnificent than she had imagined, and more
terrifying. As Alex threw the breeches aside, she had a fleeting look at a
black pelt of hair narrowing to a jutting staff. Then he returned to the bed,
and long muscular legs covered hers.

His heaviness weighed against her, his legs caressed hers,
and the fires of his kiss returned.

“You feel so good, my love, I want to touch you all over.”
And he did, caressing her in places she turned pale to think about, stroking
the fire into spreading everywhere his fingers touched.

It took no daring to wrap her arms around Alex’s neck or
spread her legs at a pressure from his knees. He bent to suckle at her breast
again, and she buried her hands in his thick hair, holding him there.

***

Watching Evelyn’s desire-flushed face, Alex felt a
protective tenderness that he had never experienced before. He had a healthy
appetite and enjoyed giving pleasure to women, although their pleasure had
never been his main concern. But he didn’t want to fail this one. He wanted her
to feel what he was feeling, to want him as much as he wanted her— want it
enough to ask for more.

Seducing virgins was more complicated than he had imagined. Evelyn
looked at him so trustingly, expectantly, not having any understanding of the
pain he could induce. He was thrumming with his need to plunge and take what he
wanted, to have her at last. But he had to pave the way for a future of
pleasure.

He brushed her cheek with his kisses, found her mouth, and
drank deeply of her passion, using his tongue to show her the intimacy to come.
She welcomed him eagerly, with no sign of fear. There was nothing for it, but
he must breach the last remaining barrier that severed their freedom and joined
them irrevocably.

“I don’t want to hurt you, little tyrant, but sometimes it
does. Make me stop if I go too fast.”

Her hands slid across his chest and encircled his neck, and
that sultry, husky voice of hers responded with a sensuousness that shivered
his spine. “I can do anything you can do,” she promised with a wicked smile
that relieved all fears. This was Evelyn, not some weeping, vaporish miss. And
she was his.

He cupped her buttocks, lifting and spreading her legs to
receive him.

Evelyn gasped as a thickness probed and pushed where his
fingers had stroked before. She closed her eyes, fighting panic. Alex’s words
whispered, soothing her, reminding her it was he and not some invisible monster
forcing her. Forcing her. He must not think he forced her. She had told him she
could do this, and she would.

She relaxed, letting his murmurs wash around her, and the
flames danced again. She rubbed tentatively against him and his moan escalated
her pleasure. He pushed deeper, causing pain and pressure, but also an increasing
excitement.

He pulled back, preparing her with his fingers until she
writhed with the need for more. When she lifted her legs around his hips, he groaned
and plunged all the way.

Evelyn cried out, fighting the sensation of having him full
inside of her. He stopped, giving her time to adjust. She opened her eyes to
find him watching her. In that moment he revealed more of himself than she had
ever seen, and her heart twisted. There was vulnerability and tenderness as he
watched for her reaction. She wanted to love him, to hold him, to tell him
everything would be all right. All she could do was hold out her arms and bring
him down for her kiss. Her body would have to say what her words could not.

She shuddered with renewed eagerness. Her hips rose,
bringing him deeper.

Alex’s thrust warned that his patience had come to an end.
Evelyn bit back a cry as he withdrew and thrust again, but he carried her with
him, making her feel his need, teaching her the rhythm of his pleasure until it
became hers too.

He not only possessed her, they possessed each other, until
they became one. The pleasure rose to an exquisite torment. Alex smothered her
groans with his mouth as the explosion came, quaking their bodies and melding
them with the heat of his seed.

They collapsed in a tangle of limbs, not moving. Alex’s
weight pushed Evelyn into the mattress, but she wanted it that way. She wrapped
her arms around his neck, loving the intimacy of his broad shoulders beneath
her fingertips. There was pain where they joined, but she didn’t want him to
leave.

It couldn’t last, of course. Alex finally stirred, rolling
to one side so as not to crush her. Cool air rushed between them, and she turned
into the circle of his arms, aware of their nakedness.

He watched her warily, and she smiled and caressed his newly
shaved jaw. “Did I go too fast for you?” she asked.

Alex grinned then, a heart-stopping grin that tickled Evelyn
to her toes and made her want to kiss him until he took her again. Why couldn’t
he look like that more often?

“You can go as fast as you like with me, my dear. I’ll keep
up somehow.” Alex smoothed his hand down her back. He kissed the top of her
head as she snuggled against his shoulder, and pulled the quilt higher around
her. “We have the rest of our lives to learn different paces. I’m in no hurry.”

He drove the first crack into Evelyn’s comfort. She wanted
to sleep. She wanted time to absorb the myriad sensations to which he had
introduced her. She was insane to let his words disturb her. But she couldn’t
let them go unanswered.

“I’ll still not marry you, Alex,” she murmured cruelly
against his shoulder.

He stopped his stroking to grip her shoulder and push her
back against the pillow where he could see her face. “You have no choice. I
told you that. You could be carrying my child already. I’ll not lose this one
too.”

It was evidence of the extent of his desperation that he let
this slip out, and the scowl between his eyes grew.

Evelyn ignored the scowl, seeing only the pain she had
caused. “You had a child?”

***

His intrepid Evelyn always succeeded in entering where
angels feared to tread. Alex flung himself back against the pillow, fighting
long-denied memories. But he must put that long-ago pain to use to protect his
future happiness, and hers. Alex struggled for the right words.

It had been the spring of his sixteenth year. He had
outgrown his tutor, but the man had no other position and did not reveal his
uselessness. Alex wanted to go to Oxford, but his mother would use fainting
spells to keep him terrified and tied to the house. He was restless, with no
outlet for his energy.

He had been aware for some time that Sir Hugh had been
calling, but the man was soft and old and of no interest to a headstrong
sixteen-year-old. So when Alex’s mother called for him while Sir Hugh was with
her, he had thought nothing of it. She liked to parade him before her friends.
All Alex’s clothes were tailor-made in the latest fashions to suit her taste,
and she would have the vapors should he ever appear with a tie or a button out
of place. Since she was the only family he knew, Alex tried to please her.

When his mother announced that Sir Hugh had asked her to
marry him, she might as well have announced that the moon was made of
blancmange. For most of his life she had been telling him how wicked his father
was, and that she would never allow another man into her home again. He had
taken it for granted that he would be the only man in her life.

But as Alex noticed the way the old man looked at his petite
blond mother, he wanted to smash his fist into the randy old goat’s face. When
they asked for his approval, he gave a curt “Fine. Why not?” and walked out.

He hadn’t believed she would do it, but within the month
they were married and on their wedding trip. Alex had never felt so alone in
his life.

Until the day he found sweet Bess. She was a plump armful,
all sunshine smiles and golden curls. They were much of an age, but she had
more experience than he, and he had considerably more wit than she. It didn’t
matter when they discovered the pleasures of their youthful bodies in the
summer heat of the hayloft. The scent of new-mown grass still filled his
nostrils as he remembered it.

She was lovely, and they learned their pleasures together.
Without a hint of shame, she described how her father used her when he felt the
need. She assured him she had felt no pleasure until Alex came along. Jealous,
Alex had ordered her to start spending her nights at the house instead of returning
to the village.

He wasn’t certain she obeyed. The servants’ rooms were in
the attic, and he didn’t have the courage to run the gauntlet of footmen and
maids to find her bed. He just felt confident that she was happy to be safe
with him, and thought no more about it.