Twice Tempted (28 page)

He caught an odd shudder, as if she were struggling to hold still. As if…

“Are you crying?” he demanded, taking hold of her and turning her around.

And in that moment he lost his heart.

He had seen women cry. He was surrounded by them, after all. Amabelle had been a genius at tears, instinctively orchestrating them for the best effect. Mistresses had used them for money, and his sister’s absolution from petty family crimes. But Fiona was like none of them. It seemed, he thought, seeing the rigid control she attempted to hold over herself, that she resented them. Resented herself for being even this vulnerable, as if it were a betrayal, an unforgivable weakness.

She was not even a pretty weeper. Tears tracked down her cheeks and along her neck. Her hair straggled like a bird’s nest. Her eyes were puffy, and he suspected her nose was red. And she was trying so very hard to hold the flood back, as if once breached, the waters trapped behind that dam would destroy her. He wasn’t certain she wasn’t right.

“Oh, Fee,” he murmured and pulled her into his arms. “What have we done to you?”

For a long moment, she didn’t react, her body unbending, her hands clenched against his chest. He foundered for something to say, something to do that would ease her distress.

“Didn’t you hear Lady Bea?” he asked, resting his cheek against the silk of her hair. “All will be well.”

“I’m not…so sure…it…will.…” Finally her will seemed to falter a bit, and she eased against him, her face tucked against his shoulder. She shuddered, and shuddered again, her defenses beginning to crumble.

“Tell me,” he demanded, his own heart battering at his chest. He couldn’t bear this Fiona, lost and vulnerable and shaky.

“I can’t see…a way forward,” she admitted, her voice unbearably small, her hands still clenched into fists. “I heard you speak to Chuffy, you see.”

Alex reached down to cup her chin and lift it until she could not avoid him. “I’m sorry. It was unfair of your grandfather to do that to you both.”

Her eyes looked preternaturally bright, swollen with tears she refused to let fall. “You have to realize,” she insisted. “Mae couldn’t have understood. She would never have helped if I hadn’t coaxed her into it.” She shrugged, her eyes wandering. “She needed something to do. Something to keep her challenged. I thought…”

“You thought these games would be perfect. And you thought that it was a lovely surprise that your grandfather would actually share something with you.”

Her smile was grim. “Not me. He couldn’t abide me. I could never seem to be sufficiently grateful for his largesse. But sometimes…sometimes he would send Mae little gifts. He let her have her telescope, and these…well, these games. And she kept them hidden away, like a dirty little secret, because she didn’t want to hurt me, because…because…”

She kept shaking her head, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clenched. Alex felt her distress in his chest, in his gut and heart.

“I had…one job,” she protested. “Only one. Mae. See her safe…happy…I…I failed so badly.…”

Surprised by his own vehemence, Alex pushed her away until he held her by her arms. “Are you
mad
? You failed her?
You?
How dare you believe that? You kept her alive. You kept her safe. You let her dream, for God’s sake! If you made any mistakes, you made them out of love for her.”

She glared up at him, pulling away. “Didn’t you see her in there? She was so ashamed. How could I have made her feel ashamed because she wanted a family like everyone else, even if she had to construct it from paper and yarn? How do I make that up to her?” She looked away as if it were too difficult to face him. “How do I atone?”

He frowned. “Atone? For what? Certainly not your sister. And not the messages. You aren’t the one who committed treason.”

Her smile was a pale thing. “But I was. And I think people died because of it.”

Alex was sure of it. But this wasn’t the time to discuss it. Fiona didn’t need explanations. She needed expiation. Comfort. Support. She needed his arms around her, and he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more.

It had nothing to do with the comfort he felt in return, of how the sensation of her arms around him felt like a haven, a shelter against his own unbearable future. How the thrum of her heart against his chest stirred him in ways few things ever had.

There were so many things he should be doing. He couldn’t think of one he wanted to, except be here with this fascinating, infuriating, endearing woman.

“Whatever else you believe,” he said, cupping her face in his hands, “believe this. Your grandfather is responsible for any treason in that house. And Mae is just fine. You did an amazing job raising your little sister.”

That actually got a small grin out of her. “Actually,” she admitted, “Mae is the elder.” Her focus drifted, as if she saw her sister there instead of Alex. “I think Chuffy really does love her,” she whispered, and Alex thought he had never heard a more heartbroken sound.

“I think he does,” he answered because it was the truth. “Will you survive that?”

Her head came up again, and she peered up at him. “I don’t know.”

“There can be another future for you than merely to care for Mairead,” he insisted.

Her smile carried the sadness of time. “No, there can’t.”

His own smile wasn’t as assured as it might have been a few days ago. “Oh, I think there can. Even after what you survived in Edinburgh.”

Ask her, you fool
, he heard in his head. In his heart. He couldn’t because he was the unworthy one. He didn’t deserve her; not until he cleared his name.

She blinked and tried to draw away. He wouldn’t allow it. “You know?” she asked. “About Edinburgh? I didn’t think anyone knew.”

“Your grandfather does. He shared the information with me.”

Alex might as well have taken the stuffings out of her. She didn’t slump, exactly. She sighed, a long, weary sound that sent a shaft of pain through him. He had heard capitulation before. He had never held it.

“Fiona,” he said, “it doesn’t make a difference.”

She didn’t lift her head. “Of course it does. My grandfather will make sure of it.”

“Not after I get through with him.”

That got her head up, but her smile was unbearably sad. “Blackmail, now? Don’t you think I have enough sins to atone for?”

He rested his forehead against hers, his gaze never leaving hers. “I keep telling you. You have no sins to atone for.”

She closed her eyes and shuddered. “You know perfectly well that I do.”

He couldn’t bear the feeling that even though she was still in his arms, she was separating herself from him. Tangling his hands into her hair, he pulled her head back again and met her mouth with his.

He could smell the soft soap in her hair. He could taste vanilla and coffee on her tongue. He could feel her stiffen, only a moment, before melting against him. Before opening to him, inviting him in, meeting him with her own tongue.

He thought his body would explode. He knew his heart somersaulted and his gut clenched. He knew his cock went rock hard. He arched against her, desperate to feel the soft curve of her belly against it. He pulled her closer and tilted his head, needing to plunge deeper, and she met him, tongue to tongue in a frantic dance of need. She arched against him, suddenly as aggressive as he, the hard feel of him obviously not frightening her. She tangled her hands in his hair and held on, as if they weren’t close enough.

Alex’s brain disintegrated. All he could think was that he wanted her. He wanted her naked and spread before him, he wanted her around him, hot and wet and tight. He wanted the comfort of her silken skin beneath his fingers.

His hands were moving before he even thought about it, sweeping down her back, measuring the sweet swell of her bottom, the hollow of her waist, the plump temptation of her breast. He nibbled at her lips as if they were sweets and savored the sensual slide of tongue against tongue. He gasped for air and knew nothing except that he needed her like oxygen, like sunlight and rain.

It was the slam of a door that brought him to his senses. Suddenly he remembered that he was standing outside, where anyone could see him, and in the cold. He lifted his head and gazed down at Fiona, who was breathing as hard as he.

“I’m sorry,” he said, trapped by the depths of those luminous eyes. He lifted a hand to brush back a strand of dark copper hair. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

For a long moment she didn’t answer. She just stood in his embrace, her arms around his waist, her body trembling. He had to close his eyes for a moment, as if that could help yank his randy body back from the edge of disaster.

“Alex?” he heard, her voice breathy and uncertain.

He didn’t move. “Yes.”

Her voice was unbearably fragile. “Will you do something for me?”

“Anything.”

He heard a gasping laugh and opened his eyes. She lifted back her head and looked up at him. “Don’t stop.”

Chapter 17

A
lex knew his heart simply seized to a halt. “Fiona…”

She met his gaze, unflinching. “Chuffy and Mae are out with the telescope. Bea has retired. And you and I are—”

“Alone.” In so many ways.

His body leapt back to life. His hands began to shake. “Are you sure?”

She didn’t nod. She didn’t have to. There was not merely invitation in her eyes. There was need, a need that called to his. A need he understood. A need for solace, for intimacy, for absolution. For respite from an uncertain sea.

Later he didn’t remember going in. He couldn’t quite say who made the decision or moved first. All he knew was that he resented having to let go of her hand. That they never spoke of a plan to avoid exposure, but that she went upstairs first, past the footmen, past the butler, as if she had finally given up on the day and simply wanted to sleep. He knew that, left behind, he counted heartbeats until he could follow. He knew he planned out her seduction as he waited, step by step, clothing article by clothing article. And he knew that when he opened the door to his room to find her standing limned by the firelight, he forgot all about his plan.

They came together as if they had been completing an action begun four years earlier, mouths melded, hands moving, clothing falling in piles across the floor. They didn’t speak. Speech was superfluous. What was needed was contact, communion, consummation. What was needed was proof that they weren’t alone anymore, that tears could be kissed away and despair held off, that the other person knew the fragility of control, the fallacy of independence. That fear and loneliness can be dispelled with a touch, a kiss, a caress, and that the union of two people would last beyond that moment of discovery.

Alex couldn’t get enough of her, the otherworldly satin of her skin, the silk of her hair, the sleek, strong sweep of her hips and legs, and the secret landscape of her spine, small, serial ridges made for nothing but the delight of a man’s fingers. He held her face in his hand only for a moment, only until he could remember how to remove a dress, a chemise, a pair of practical cotton stockings. Until he could set her to giggling as he stroked her heels and nibbled her toes.

The bed was soft as air, the room warm, the only sound the lazy crackle of a low fire and the wordless murmurs of discovery and delight. Alex felt as if his heart would explode with wanting her. His body was hard, so hard he was afraid of breaking her. Except Fiona was strong. Strong enough to carry the load of two hearts through the despair of slum streets. Strong enough to survive the worst of Edinburgh and still look at the sky.

He cherished her. He worshiped her body like a pagan, feasting on her as if she were riches withheld. Her long, swanlike throat, the small hollow at its base that tasted salty from her tears. Her shoulders and arms and hands and fingers, elegant, capable, clever fingers that were never still. That weren’t now as she sought her own discoveries and set off firestorms in him.

Her breasts. Sweet God, her breasts, as plush as pillows, with large nipples the color of spring roses that pebbled into tight buds with attention. He cupped them, stroked them, tweaked them with his finger and thumb, just to see them rise. To feel them swell beneath his hand, to test the pace of her heart beneath as she bucked off the bed in response to his touch. To taste the faint salt of her skin and suckle, drawing her back into a bow, bringing her hands to his head to hold him close, driving him mad with the little murmurs that purred against his mouth.

He had to be in her. He couldn’t wait. He couldn’t remember ever wanting a woman this badly, needing completion so desperately, hunger and wonder fusing into impulse that urged him to spread her legs, part the rich copper hair that curled at the apex of her thighs, discover the wet heat of her with his fingers and set her to gasping with his touch, torture himself with the heat and wetness and dark scent of arousal on her.

She was ready. He thought she had been before she’d lost her clothes. He wished he could have taken more time, eased her to climax and followed her down, savored the ripple of her body as it came apart beneath his fingers. He couldn’t. He slipped a knee between her legs and urged them wider. He bent down to her breast and suckled hard. And when she opened her mouth in a near-silent keen and arched, he met her with his mouth and ravaged her as he positioned himself between her thighs. And then, because he needed her, because he wanted her, because he knew she wanted the same, he plunged home.

And damn near came to a shuddering halt. He might have if she had flinched or pulled away or cried out. But she didn’t. She wrapped her legs around his back and her fingers in his hair, and she held on. She met him thrust for thrust, her body so tight around his that he almost exploded on his first thrust.

He couldn’t stop, couldn’t slow, couldn’t on his life be gentle anymore, not with her urging him on, and he plunged deep and deeper and deeper, the bed bumping the wall and her head thrown back, her eyes closed, her hands curling into claws, her body sweat-sheened and taut, her murmurs lifting to cries that he captured with his own mouth rather than be heard and stopped. He couldn’t allow it. Not now. Not, he thought, ever.