Season For Desire (10 page)

“We were never talking about stars,” she sighed.

They lay on the woven surface, simply looking at the moon. Now that he had seen it through the telescope, to Giles it seemed closer, the shape of a grin tipped sideways. Hanging just out of reach, as though if he stretched out his hand he could capture the whole of it. Appearing so much smoother and brighter from a distance than it did when one looked at it closely.

Well. A lot of things were like that.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Audrina shiver. “Are you cold?” he asked.

“I am fine.”

“Liar. Your sleeves are like little puffy flowers. They can’t possibly be warm, especially when you’re lying on a library floor.”

He rolled to a seated position and began the tedious process of easing off his coat. The snug cut made it difficult to accomplish on his own, but he succeeded by working one sleeve down over the heel of his hand, then sitting on sleeve and hand alike to pin them in place as he eased out of the rest.

Throughout, Audrina watched him from her reclining position atop the shawl. The set of her mouth was grave—as though Giles was something to be looked at through a telescope, considered, then turned away from again.

“Here you go.” He shook the coat out, ready to lay it over her like a blanket.

But somehow, in reaching over to cover her, he forgot to draw back again. Somehow his eyes caught hers, dark in the low golden firelight, and he forgot to do anything at all.

Poised on one elbow, his other arm spanning her body, he drank her with his eyes, with his breath, with a soft sigh of wanting.

After a few long seconds during which he couldn’t quite seem to get himself to move, the solemn line of her mouth curved into a smile. And then she captured his face between her palms, pulling it to hers.

Before Giles could think better of it, he had brushed his lips over hers, and they sank together to the floor, his coat trapped between their bodies in a rough bundle.

Think better of it? What could be better than this?

Resting his weight on one elbow, he devoted his full attention to her mouth. A taste, rubbing his lips over hers until her tongue brushed against them, until her teeth nipped at him lightly.
Yes
.

A deeper kiss, then; one with mouth on mouth, opening for tongues to touch. She tasted of sugar and tea and—and who the hell cared, because he was kissing her, finally, finally. Hot as starlight, and her hair smelled so good, and that sound she made in the back of her throat—
mmm
, as if kissing him was delicious— was enough to make him instantly hard. Oh, he could kiss her for days.

In a way, he had been. With every movement of his hands over the puzzle box, he’d wanted to trace the lines of her face and stroke his hands over her body. Every time she had made a note of a new attempt, then looked up at him with questioning brows, he’d wanted to shove aside the small table between them and wrap his arms around her. And the flecks of ink that spattered her hand as she wrote; he had envied the flecks of ink, for God’s sake.

The hands that had cradled his face slid back to catch in his short hair, then down to grip at his shoulders. She tugged him until he was twisted, his torso atop her, his legs balancing at her side. Bracing himself with one boot against the legs of the Pembroke table—not hard enough to jostle it, for he owed this telescope a great deal of gratitude—he scooted closer, careful not to let his hard length brush against her body. Through his loose trousers, she could probably feel it. Would, if he pressed closer. And that would be so much more than a kiss, a quick burst of mutual passion.

Except: “This is already more than a kiss,” he murmured. Her throat was smooth, and she shivered when he kissed her there, down, down, to her collarbone.

“Yes.” She stroked the cords of his neck, making him quiver with pent-up tension. That damned coat; it had turned into a wall separating them.

She must have shared his eagerness to be rid of it. Skating her hands between them, she tugged the coat free and pushed it away. And then her hands slipped over him again, trailing down his back, then beneath the suspenders at his shoulders to claw him with delicious sensation.

That blessed coat, to have been removed from his body.

She arched upward, brushing her breasts against his chest. “You can . . .”

“I can . . . ?” He could no longer count on his ears to hear anything but what they wanted to. One elbow supported his weight, leaving one hand completely free to roam her curves. When he laid his palm over one of her breasts, a tender sigh slipped from her lips.

“Yes, whatever you like,” she murmured. Her hand covered his, guiding it beneath the edge of her bodice. Slipping beneath stays, the tight lacing eased by their prone position, to find the satin curve of her breast, the firm nub of her nipple. He caught it, pinching lightly between two fingers, until it hardened yet further and she moaned. Then with his thumb, he rubbed just the tip, that sensitive tip that made her twist under him. To still her, he hitched one leg over her hips, catching her in a cage of his own limbs. An embrace. Again he kissed her, his thumb teasing at one nipple, then the other. Her hips began to rock, to push against his leg.

“Giles.” His name was a gasp on her lips as she broke the kiss. “More.” She worked her arms around his body, clutching tight first at his sides, then digging her nails into his buttocks. Unmistakable invitation. Instinct told him to cover her body with his, to push her down and grind his erection into her hip until her thighs parted.

Good plan, that. Shifting his weight, he raised himself up over her. The tiny bones in his wrists popped and burned, but he ignored them. He notched one thigh between her legs, her long skirts a new barrier between them—but that hardly mattered, because good God, this woman could kiss. More than kiss. Oh, a mouth such as Audrina’s—one that uttered bitter truths, heated hopes, sharp desires—could fascinate a man forever.

Yes.
He would kiss her for days, for all the days until Christmas, until the calendar turned from the old year to the new. And she would kiss him back. Rub against him, just like this. Make sweet moaning sounds as he sipped at her lips . . .

. . . but his wrists began to scream, blunting the pleasure of the moment. He tried sinking to his forearms, hoping the pain would fall silent. No, his arms had gone nerveless, biceps in a spasm. They shook, he teetered, and instead of holding up his weight they gave way, and he collapsed across Audrina.

He went still, body at war with itself. Heaving for air, quaking with lust. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I—need to stop.” Wincing, he rolled off her. Flat. Ironed to the floor, his arms a mass of fire as he looked up into the dark heights of the ceiling.

He had no right to touch her. He was a man without a future.

“But why must you stop?” She curled upward, the smooth line of her throat corded with tension. “I am not a virgin. You guessed, surely, after gathering the tale of my past relationship with Llewellyn.”

He squeezed his eyes closed, praying that the pressure of his squinting eyelids would distract him from her trailing fingers, from the delicate cadence of her voice. Her lips almost touching the lobe of his ear. “Are you thinking to watch out for my honor, Giles? There is no need.”

Her hands, sliding, questing, stroking . . . oh, he could have surrendered to her. He wanted to.

But he was not as improper as he pretended to be. He owed her the truth.

Wrists still twingeing, he caught her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “As a matter of fact, princess, no. You’re a grown woman, so you’ll have to see to your own honor. I’m busy enough seeing to mine.”

Sliding his free hand over his jaw, he considered. Such a familiar shape, for now. One day his hands would not be able to follow the form. “Look. Audrina. I’ve got nothing to offer you.”

“Indeed?” She guided their linked hands to his erection, still stiff and needy.

His face heated; good thing it was dark in the library. “All right, one thing. But if that’s all I can give you, that’s almost worse than nothing.”

“You do not advocate well for your skill.”

He smiled, and a bit of the terrible tension eased. “No? Well, I’m not trying to.” He lowered their linked hands between their bodies. Side by side, like chess pieces put away in a box. “I have arthritis, Audrina. It came on while I was at university, while my mother was dying each day from the pain of it. For now it’s in my wrists and hands, but one day it’ll spread.”

Her hand clasped his more tightly. “Are you certain?”

“Certain as I can be. I’ve been lucky so far. It hasn’t gotten worse for a while, but it’s only a matter of time.” His own future had vanished with the terrible knowledge: The pain that racked his mother would one day lay him to waste, too. Better, then, to save himself any other pain. Anything else that might one day be lost. “So you see, there’s no point in my having dreams or stars or whatever we called them. There’s no purpose to pleasure.”

Her thumb stroked his. “What about pleasure for its own sake?”

“It’s done too soon, and it brings too much pain with it.”

“You really are
not
advocating well for your skill.”

“I’m not talking about sex. But thank you. Very kind.” Almost impossible not to kiss her again at such a moment, for making him smile. “While I’m able, I’m trying to help my family with their dreams instead. And if I meet any beautiful princesses along the way, I’ll be as good to them as I can.”

“How nice for you to know what to do.” She looked away. “I’m sorry. About your mother. About your hands. I—hope it’s not true.”

“I wish it weren’t.” He sat up and shook out his wrists. “I’m not looking for pity. If you try to give me pity, I’m taking my coat right back and I don’t care how cold you get.”

Her smile was watery, but she snatched at the discarded coat as he’d hoped she would. “You can try to take it back, but I will pit my weak little feminine wrists against yours.”

“If it helps,” Giles added, “I am physically uncomfortable and hate every scruple and better feeling that is telling me I mustn’t keep touching you.”

“It probably should not help, but it does.” She paused. “Why did you kiss me, then, if you are so set against pleasure?”

“Why did you kiss me first?”

“Why did you kiss me back?”

They eyed each other. “We could do this all night,” Giles said.
I wish
. “Answer on the count of three,” he suggested. “One—two—three—”

“I wanted to,” they both said at once.

Giles scrubbed a hand over his face. Stubble abraded his palm; he hoped it had not scraped her face. Throat. Collarbone. The hollow at the top of her breasts, just before the firm line of her chest went soft and rounded and . . . “Princess. Good God. If I could be paid according to how much I want to kiss you, I would have a fortune and my father and I would be able to leave England right away.”

She sat up to face him. In her lap, she held his coat in tight-clamped fists. “I know you will leave. But if I want you to kiss me before you go, why will you not?”

Her eyes were fathomless. Giles had stared into the bottomless blue-green ocean during his Atlantic crossing, but he could not remember feeling this sense of sinking into unknown depths.

“Because I wouldn’t—I don’t—want to stop at just a kiss. And anything more would be . . .”
Too much to want. Too much to take.
He cleared his throat. “Done for the wrong reasons. Rightly, an ocean and about three hundred ranks of society belong between us.”

She clutched his coat like a shield. “That might be a slight exaggeration. Remember, I am ruined. What is the value of a ruined earl’s daughter? Is she worth more or less than an obedient commoner?”

“She’s worth precisely one human being, just as an obedient commoner is. And neither of them should be talked about as if they are disposable.” His shoulders felt bare under only the light fabric of his shirt. “Audrina, I don’t grant much weight to your father’s earldom or those three hundred ranks between us, or however many there are. But I know that people in England do. And I can imagine what I look like from your viewpoint: a foreign-born commoner with a few skills I never use, a modest income, and a brick wall of a body and face. Even before you subtract a pair of reliable hands from the equation, I don’t amount to much for an earl’s daughter.”

Her hands fluttered on the collar of his coat, then let it fall to her lap. “Are we to have an argument about who is worth less?”

“Not worth less. Worth—different.” Twisting around, he retrieved a sheet of the gridded paper and the pencil that Audrina had laid on the telescope table. It was a stall, a distraction to give them both time to think. “Unless I’ve misinterpreted your hints—and if I have, let me apologize right now—you were implying that you’d give yourself to me.”

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“Yourself? Your true, whole self? Or some part of yourself that you think isn’t worth anything because someone told you it wasn’t?”

“My virtue was worth everything, or so I have been told.” Her tone was lusterless. “Without it, I have little value.”

Frustration boiled up within Giles. “Oh. So you’re offering to give me something you don’t care about? Or something you don’t have anymore? I’m confused.” The pencil skated over the paper, a dark slash of graphite. “Are you using me, or asking me to use you?”

He thought she might be offended by this question. He
wanted
her to be offended. But she only stared at him with those fathomless eyes. “Does the answer make a difference?”

Her voice was quiet, defeated, like the fall of a dry leaf. It abraded him; it wrung him. Frustration vanished, and all he could think of was how much he wanted her not to say the things she was saying. Not to feel the emotions that threaded tightly through her words. Yet it was done; she said and she felt, and the pain behind her words sounded like a lifelong bruise.

“It makes a difference to me.” He dropped the paper and pencil between them. Gingerly, he settled back again onto the shawl, taking care to keep his weight from his wrists. “If we choose to stop, surely that’s worth something. Surely that means we’re not using each other at all, if we stop because we think it’s right. Because we both deserve better than being used. We both deserve better than something meaningless.”

He wasn’t explaining himself well to his own ears—because never, never, had a kiss felt like it held more meaning. Never had a kiss felt like it mattered more.

It mattered too much. He had meant what he’d told her: With numbered days, he could not allow himself that sort of pleasure.

“Is that what you think?” Her question was quiet.

“That’s what I think, yes, but that’s not what matters. What matters is that you have to live with people who are preoccupied by rank and reputation, and you have to know and obey all the rules that go along with that.” He laughed, a low sound of disbelief. “You had to memorize the entire peerage, Audrina. You
are
an earl’s daughter. We both live in the world we were born to. We’re not better or worse, but we’re . . . different.”

Something about the night-quiet room unlocked this honesty. The usual rules had gone dark. The usual barriers were invisible.

All except the ones they carried within.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Audrina fold his jacket, then reach forward. Grabbing the paper and pencil, evidently, because the soft graphite began to shush over one of the gridded sheets. “So for you, honor is a test of control?”