That Scandalous Summer (35 page)

His eyes narrowed, and he gathered himself as though to rise—but she sprang up from her seat and took a step back.

“But it is
wrong,
Michael.” The words rushed from her; she barely knew what she meant to say; she listened to herself as though from a distance as she quickly continued. “It is so terribly wrong. For it is not just you and your hospital—people depend on me as well. So
many
people, and I cannot disappoint them. I know my duty! And still, despite it, I want . . .” His eyes were devouring her. She felt as though she could not breathe. Did not want to. She would drown in his eyes and relish the death. “I think only of wanting you.” That was truth.

“Then come here,” he said quietly. “And take me.”

For a single, suspended moment she hesitated. His
eyes were all that bound her. And then, as if in a dream, she watched herself step forward. Her better sense slipped away like the tethers of gravity. She floated the two paces across the carpet. His hands closed on her hips, and she lowered herself into his lap.

He leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her throat. Her palms on his back felt the hard pull of his indrawn breath, and all along her chest she felt the burning warmth of his fierce exhalation.

“Listen to me,” he said into her skin. “I have been a liar to you, but I won’t lie about this. I know what love is, after all. And for all the people who would suffer for it, for the shame I would bear and the guilt that would keep me awake at night, I still think I would dismantle the hospital and sell it stone by stone if that would give me what I needed to have you for my own.”

She closed her eyes to stop the prick of tears. “But I wouldn’t let you,” she said miserably.

“No.” Softly he kissed her collarbone. “And I love you all the more for it, Elizabeth.”

Shock prickled over her skin—wonder and fear chasing after it. “Stop,” she whispered. He was saying things that could not be unsaid. Things she would have to live with, to remember forever.

“Why not say it? We both know—”

She covered his mouth with hers. From her position atop him it required an awkward angle of her neck, but what matter? Let her bend, let her break; she needed to have this kiss from him. She cupped his cheek in her palm and showed him with her lips what she felt:
I love you,
she thought, and
I love this,
and,
I cannot have this again,
but it felt so right, so glorious in this moment. When his lips parted and he suckled her tongue into
his mouth, she moaned with a pleasure that felt almost vicious.

He twisted beneath her, sinking down lengthwise on the sofa and carrying her down atop him. Their kiss grew more feverish; they would devour each other, or melt into each other. One or the other,
now.
His hands swept down her back, palming her buttocks through her skirts, but it was not enough. She threw her calf over his legs, wanting to surround him; to feel him against every part of her. He was warm, strong, so solid beneath her, his bones as dependable as stone, cradling and supporting her. She felt the points of his hipbones pressing through her petticoats, digging into the soft flesh of her thighs.
Not hard enough.
She bit at his lower lip, and then froze, shocked by herself—by how suddenly and violently her need had mounted.

His laugh was soft and strange. “Again,” he whispered, and ran his hand up her nape, his fingers sliding through her hair and closing so hard that she felt a twinge of pain—at first startling, and then, all at once, terribly right.

For they were going to hurt each other beyond repair. That was their fate. It might have been written in the scriptures, so certain she was of it. She would never again have him—never lick his lower lip, very gently now, to trace its firm shape, so pliable and so perfect. She pulled back a little to smooth it with her thumb, to admire the sight of it, to see her own hand against it, and to know, at least for this moment, that this was her right.

Never again after tonight would she feel the edge of his teeth as he took her thumb into his mouth. He sucked it slowly, his eyes on hers, pale and beautiful
as the light through stained glass. His tongue curled around her and a sound caught in her throat, animal with need. She pulled her hand free and bent her head to his throat to smell him, to inhale that scent, wholesome and hot, as though his body were her medicine, the cure she’d been hungering for her entire life. She would never again know the taste of his neck, his skin smooth-grained and hot beneath her open mouth.

So much to memorize. So little time. She shoved off his coat, almost resentful that she must let him help her, cursing his waistcoat as she ripped it open, loathing the recalcitrance of the buttons on his shirt. She ripped them apart, and there,
ah,
was more of him, his skin taut and pale over the rippled musculature of his belly. She put her mouth to his navel and felt him shudder. Other women would do the same; they would share this same memory that she was making, and she detested them for it. She wanted to claw out their eyes, and
his,
for letting them have this precious sight, another that would not be hers again.

She moved lower yet, following the thin trail of hair that led into his waistband. His hands found her hair again, stopping her descent as he breathed, “My God—”

She caught his wrists and set them to either side of his body. He had said his piece already; she would have hers before they were done.

The buttons on his trousers knew their place; they yielded without a fight. His erection sprang free, long and thick and straight, the veins prominent in the light. She ran her tongue up his length, and tasted the pearl of liquid at the tip.

A curse came from him, low and fervent. “Elizabeth—”

“Yes.” Her voice was fierce. He would always remember
her. She closed her mouth over him and he gasped. With her tongue she laved him, and felt a hot bolt of triumph when his hips bucked beneath her.
Remember this.

“Elizabeth . . .”

She looked up his body. He wore a look of stunned amazement as he stared back at her, his breathing ragged. And then he blinked, sense slowly returning to his features.

“Be still,” she said, and then lowered her mouth again. It was a kiss unlike any she had ever given, beyond intimate, fraught with the curious pleasure of knowing how vulnerable he was. With her teeth, she might have punished him. Instead she sucked, gently and then harder, and he writhed under her, uttering a broken moan before he caught her hands. His fingers braided through hers. “Wait,” he said hoarsely. “I can’t—”

She ignored him, moving her head rhythmically now, wanting to destroy him, to make him incoherent. He was close to surrendering himself; she could hear it in the small noises he made. But then his grip tightened further yet, and he pulled her up his body in one brute move.

She tried to break free—and then forgot herself, for her hands found his wrists, thick and solid, and then his forearms, so tightly knit, and then the points of his elbows, and the bunching of muscle in his upper arm, all these precious places that she had to chart, to commit to memory. His biceps flexed; his hands closed on her hips; but she could not focus on that, for now she had discovered his shoulders, which she squeezed without mercy. His body had been designed with such elegant, tightly muscled economy; there was no give to him.
And he’d said he loved her, and she would never unhear those words.

The thought spurred her to turn her nails into his shoulders, digging savagely as her mouth found his again. Her anger confused her, but it blended into her hunger as he kissed her back, feverishly, his palm sliding up her nape, gripping her to hold her in place. She rolled her hips against him and he hissed into her mouth, then began to sit up.

She tried to back away on her knees to make room for him, but her dress was too ornate, and her frustration escaped her in a snarling syllable. “Be still,” he whispered, and slipped an arm beneath her, around the back of her knees, before lifting her bodily off the sofa. For a moment the room rocked wildly, and then he was sitting again, and now she was squarely atop him. His erection pressed against the juncture of her thighs, and her entire body went still for a moment, everything in her focusing on that spot.

He paused, too, and for a strange, fraught second, they stared at one another. In that moment, fear bloomed through her, cold and delicate as strands of ice.

Never again.

He cupped her face in his palms. Very gently, he kissed her lips.

And the strands of ice snapped, and what came out of her mouth was, “You will never forget?”

He exhaled against her mouth. “I would wear you like a suit,” he said hoarsely. “I would never let you go.”

She reached for her skirts at the same time he did. Their hands collided, and she almost laughed, only the look on his face—hard, concentrated—dried up the laughter in her throat, and made her bones dissolve.
Together they gathered up the slippery silk, handful by handful, and then he reached between them and fitted the head of his cock against her and she sank down onto him, seating herself until it seemed she could take no more—and then his hips flexed beneath her, and she gasped as his full length penetrated her so deeply that for a moment she feared she could not bear it.

In the next breath, he lifted her by the hips and fear turned to panicked need, to feel him so deep within her again. Slowly, her skirts rustling around him, she moved. With his lips against her cheek, and then her temple, he whispered to her: “Yes, like that,” and, “Ah, the feel of you . . .” Soft, hot words, explicit words, that she had never heard anybody speak. “You like that,” he said into her mouth as he swallowed her gasp; he flexed again, the angle just so, and her body shuddered like a plucked string. “Moan for me,” he said, “aloud,” and she did; she had no choice in it. His words wound through her and took command of her as his body did. Against her ear, his voice low and rough, he said, “I mean to make you scream.”

And he would. His hands were hot and ungentle and they seemed to move according to her own thoughts, finding every inch of flesh that craved him. “Harder,” she whispered, and his laugh was broken and soundless. Into the hair at her temple he breathed, “I love you.”

No. She stopped his mouth again with hers.
Not that.
She begged it of him with her tongue deep inside him.
No promises. Only this.

But when his grip directed her to grind against him, her concern evaporated, for his promise to make her scream began to come true, the whimper in her throat building toward something louder. Hot darts of pleasure
began to coalesce. He ripped free of her mouth and his tongue found her ear and swirled a hot message there before he whispered, “Come for me, Liza.”

And she did, with a cry that she could not have smothered had her life depended on it.

Never,
she thought, and the thought opened inside her like an oncoming night, dark and full of loss.
Never again.

A soft knock came at her bedroom door. Liza rolled away, hoisting the blanket higher around her shoulders. The light slipping beneath the curtains had reached the fringe of the carpet. Probably it was past noon. At one time in her life, she’d been quite skilled at sleeping the day away. But now it took an effort.

Too many things of late took an undue effort. Flirtations. Laughter. Denying herself, ignoring her own longings. Hadn’t she acquired that skill during her marriage? Hadn’t she perfected it when enduring Nello’s poor treatment? Why should she forget the way of it now?

You cannot have him!

The door creaked open. Irritation brought her up to a sitting position. “What—”

“Viscount Sanburne,” said her maid miserably, stepping aside to reveal James.

Hands in pockets, he rolled up on the balls of his feet and gave her a lopsided grin. “So here’s where you’ve been hiding all day.”

Liza threw off the blanket. “Go away! I have a headache!”

Instead he came strolling toward her—then paused quite suddenly. Eyebrow cocking, he made a sardonic survey of the room. “Oh, this is charming,” he said. “No wonder you’ve been neglecting us.”

As she followed his look, the warmth of a blush only spiked her temper higher. A discarded tea tray, two books lying facedown on the carpet where she’d flung them, an empty wine bottle, and a cold compress still dripping water on the side table. Had a theater director required a set that screamed of self-pity, this might have been the model for it.

She took a breath to speak some devastatingly sharp set-down—but her wit failed her. Her brain felt as soggy as the compress, a useless mush. Last night, she had ripped herself off Michael’s body and walked away without a backward glance. And he had known better than to try to stop her, because he knew what her stupid brain must accept:

You can’t have him.

She had made terrible decisions before. But this was different. Walking away from him had felt like stepping on knives, like dragging her heart over glass. She had become enamored of the wrong men before; she had erred in so many ways. But never before had she deliberately and knowingly betrayed
herself.