Swept Away By a Kiss (27 page)

“Because I—”

He dipped his head, brushing his cheek against hers.

“Because you want this?” He pressed his fingers between her legs. She moaned, clutching at his shirt.

“Yes.”

He cupped her, stroking her through the thin gown and shift, sending pleasure skittering everywhere inside her. “Yes,” she sighed. She tilted her face up, leaning toward his mouth.

He did not kiss her.

Valerie needed to be closer, needed the tenderness he had shown her aboard ship and in the woods for that brief moment. Her hands sought his waist, grasping his shirttail and pulling up the garment. He shrugged out of it.

Her limbs went weak. His body was breathtaking, raw male from taut belly to the sheer power of lean muscle in his chest and shoulders, even more beautiful than she remembered. Her gaze slipped to the scar curving up his ribs. She reached to touch it.

Steven gripped her wrists with a strong hand and pulled them behind her. Frustrated sound rose from her throat as her sensitized breasts pressed against his bare skin.

“You are a wanton, Valerie Monroe.”

“I said don’t speak to me like that,” she whispered as his palm covered her again. His thumb passed firmly over her nipple, and rich shivers seized her deep inside.

“I speak only the truth.” He caressed her and it was madness, but she wanted to be naked beneath his hands again, forever.

“You mean to hurt me,” she breathed. “But I won’t be hurt again. I know what this is.”

His fist tightened around her wrists at the small of her back, pinning her to him. He moved against her and her body sank into his, her lashes fluttering.

“What is it?” His voice was low, unsteady. Valerie’s heart constricted.

“Nothing I have ever felt before,” she whispered. “Nothing you have ever felt.”

He did not deny it. His tawny gaze fixed hard upon her mouth. Valerie willed him to meet her gaze, to admit to the truth. If he admitted to this, he must admit to more, to what he felt beyond the primal heat between them. To the longing that burned so deep.

He swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. His hands worked quickly, unfastening the tiny buttons down her back, the lacing on her corset, the ribbons of her shift. He pulled the garments to her waist, pressed her down, and without hesitation took the peak of one breast into his mouth.

Valerie’s back sprang off the mattress. She moaned, struggling to free her arms trapped within the sleeves of her gown.

Steven grabbed her hands, stilling them as he leaned to her face.

“Do not fight it.” His breath feathered across her lips. “The moment you touch me, Valerie, this will end, I promise you.”

Valerie’s mouth fell open. But he was already drawing away, his hands still tight around hers. Panic, strange and coarse, scuttled through her. Wide-eyed, she nodded.

Holding her gaze, he grasped her skirt and drew it up her legs. His hand came around her calf, slipping slowly toward the junction of her thighs. She trembled, aching everywhere he touched her, and where she knew he intended to touch her. She held her breath, willing him not to stop, wanting so badly to feel him, it hurt to hold her hands flat against the mattress.

He was still looking into her eyes when his fingertips grazed her damp, aching flesh. She arched her neck, sucking in breaths as he caressed her. He was gentle at first, teasing, drawing out her pleasure. But it was not enough. She lifted her hips, urging him to stroke her harder, astounded by the violence of her need. She wanted more than even this delirium. She wanted all of him.

She choked. “Please, Steven—”

His finger came inside her. Her hips bucked off the bed, ecstasy swamping her as his mouth again found her breast, his tongue flickering against the nipple, his teeth teasing. She groaned, pushing against his caress, moving her body frantically, feeling herself close around him and still wanting more.

She was heaven in his embrace, beautiful, pliant woman answering his caresses as though created for them. From the moment she had first touched him, Steven had known it and tried to deny it. This time he could not, but he could not allow her to touch him now. If she did he would be lost, and he would drag her along with him, into the black danger of his life.

Instead he touched her, served her with his mouth and hands, giving her what she most needed. She moaned, her eyes half closed in primitive rapture, her satin-dark hair spilling over white linen. He traced a fingertip around the taut, dusky peak of her breast, and she whimpered, thrusting her hips against his hand, urging him deeper.

“More?” he murmured, disguising the need in his voice with tight control.

“Yes.” She tossed her head. “Yes.”

He pressed a second finger into her. She was exquisite, wet and so tight, better than his memories and infinitely better than his countless fantasies.

“More,” she begged. “Now.”

He nudged her soft, supple thighs apart, bent, and tasted her.

She gasped, digging her hips into the mattress, then lifting to meet him, her hands clutching the sheet. He took her fully, gripping her hips and holding her as he slipped his tongue along her swelling womanhood, dipping into her, filling his senses with her musky beauty. He caressed her firmly and steadily, knowing no man had ever been here before. In this, she was his alone. Her gasps grew faster, higher as she strained against his hold, her body shaking, her voice whispering his name over and over.

“Now. Oh, please.” She writhed, on the cusp of ecstasy. Her hips left the bed and he thrust his fingers into her again, fast and deep. She cried out, jerking against him, her breaths faltering as pleasure took her.

Steven’s body pounded with hard need, aching to be inside her, to feel her encompassing him. He had never known such satisfaction, watching her face, her lips parted as release shuddered through her to her soft, high cries.

He moved between her legs, seeking her breasts with his mouth again, sucking hard and kissing her tender peaks until she cried out a second time. She gripped her thighs around his hips, forcing him against her, moaning, a helpless sound of want and fulfillment at once.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, willing her eyes to open. Her lashes fanned out, sea-blue pools swimming with need, the same need that forced its way through every fiber of his body, through his very soul. He drank in the sight of her desire, the flush upon her cheeks and brow, the cascade of satiny hair. In moments it would be too late to turn back.

Her lips parted, her voice wondering and infinitely gentle. “Why won’t you kiss me?”

Steven jerked away. “
Chér Jésus
.”

He rolled off her onto his back, covering his face with his palms. “Go.” The word tore from his throat like skin from flesh.

Beside him, Valerie did not move.

Steven dragged in a breath and pulled his hands away from his eyes. With an effort beyond reckoning he turned to her. Her gown was bunched about her hips, her silken legs pressed hard together. Her glittering eyes swam with confusion.

He laid his forearm over his eyes. “I said go.”

“What?”

“Make yourself presentable and leave now, Valerie, before I pick you up and throw you into the corridor as you are.” Before he made love to her and never let her go again. Before he told her everything.

She sat up, dragging her gown around her legs and over her beautiful breasts.

“But I didn’t—I did what you required,” she stuttered, her voice low. “I followed orders, for possibly the first time in my life, mind you, and it was not easy.”

“Valerie—”

“You cannot do this, Steven! This will not simply go away.
I
will not. Who do you think you are?”

Steven stared. In her outrage, her face suffused with passion and eyes flashing, she stole his breath, his reason, his conviction. Good Lord, she
must
leave.

“I am the man telling you that if you do not leave now, you will come to be very sorry for it. Perhaps even sorrier than I will be.”

“And you think I am not already sorry?” she spat out. But her voice quavered.

“Undoubtedly.” Hopefully.

“Don’t try to—” She halted. Her gaze fixed upon his wrist at the brand etched into his skin. She slid off the bed backward. “Did you want to kill him?” Her voice was abruptly tight.

Steven’s heart raced but he remained perfectly still. “Which part of the threat I just offered didn’t you understand?”

“I don’t care about your threats. Did you want to kill him?”

He forced out an intolerant sigh. “Did I want to kill whom?” But he knew.

“Lord Hannsley, when you fought. You wanted to kill him, didn’t you?”

“Why on earth would I have wanted that? You have an extraordinarily vicious imagination, madam.”

She looked like she would strike him. Steven didn’t blame her. She had seen him kill a man, and he did want to kill Hannsley. If Steven had his wish, the villain would be at the bottom of the ocean with the hundreds of people he had caused to die that way. Yes, certainly he wanted Hannsley dead. But he would not be the one to do it.

Her gaze burned. “What crime did you commit? How did you earn that brand?”

“How quickly you assume I committed the crime and was not merely wrongly accused.”

“You haven’t given me any reason to imagine otherwise. What was it?”

“This conversation quickly grows tiresome.”

“What was the crime?”

“It hardly matters any longer,” he said, investing his tone with the hated measure of indifference. It was like pulling nails from his fingertips. No matter how hard he tried, he could never be indifferent to this woman. Not in truth. Only in lies.

Her voice dipped. “It matters to me.”

Dear God.
No.

Slowly, Steven pushed up onto his elbow, steeling himself for what he must do.

“Then you are a greater fool than I had already thought you to be.” Nothing stirred inside him now. No desire. No pain. Only emptiness. “Now go.”

The color drained from her face, but her eyes remained fonts of determined, willful feeling.

“And you, Steven Ashford, are an even greater liar than I had thought.” She crossed the chamber, unlocked the door, and with her garments gaping open at the back, disappeared into the corridor.

Chapter 26

C
hristmas Eve seemed to last for weeks to Valerie.

He did not speak to her throughout the interminable day. Valerie might have been content to sit in cozy conversation with Anna and Alethea as they wrapped gifts, to bedeck the castle with yet more greenery, to help prepare the spices for wassail, or to take part in any of the other diversions Lady and Lord March offered their guests. She might have even enjoyed the game of charades struck up in the drawing room after dinner, if Steven Ashford’s very existence did not make a mockery of that particular diversion.

She saw him, aching at the sight of his beautiful face and body, warmed by his voice across a room. But he avoided her. When she entered a place, he left it—graceful and charming as always with their fellow guests—but permanently. She tried to catch his gaze before he fled, but he would not allow it.

In the bedchamber firelight, that golden gaze had heated with desire but so much more, something deep and unfeigned and thrilling in its intensity. With his powerful body pressing her into the mattress, she had craved his mouth upon hers, needing to consummate their intimacy with that simple touch. Then the cruelness returned. But different, as though he had to make an effort to drive her away.

At midnight, Valerie bundled up in thick woolens for the ride into Highmarch. In church she sat with her hands folded, prayers the furthest thing from her mind. Even the candles’ glow and the hymns filling the sturdy Norman chapel failed to lull her into a suitably reverent state. She stared at Steven’s broad shoulders and straight back in the front pew, filled with the memory—so fresh, delectable, and wickedly right—of the pleasure he had given her.