Veiled in Blue (28 page)

Julius set his jaw and gave her everything she needed, giving himself up to her. His wife. He could do nothing else, especially when she cried out and froze above him.

Her inner passage gripped him, clenching his cock in an iron grip, spasms racking her. Her breasts quivered with the impact. Julius wanted more, but he could hold on no longer. She worked on him like the most potent of drugs, the best French brandy, intoxicating him, drawing him in. He went willingly.

Then it was his turn. He cried out, giving her all he could, his seed jetting into her. She had worked for it; the least he could do was give it to her. Not that he had any choice.

When she fell forward, he let her, unable to help himself or hold her off. She collapsed on to him, a hot, damp blanket, her weight surrounding him, the most desired of coverings. Her hair fell over his face, covering them in a swathe of dark, silky beauty. Julius didn’t care that he was almost smothered by it. A small price to pay.

She moved her head to one side, resting it on his shoulder. He cupped the back of her head, preventing her from hurting herself or falling awkwardly. Now it was his turn to care for her. She was exhausted, sated, for now at least. Gently, he moved to one side so she slid off him. Keeping her close, he crooned her name, and kissed her forehead.

Eve opened her eyes. Warm velvety brown met his gaze as he smiled. “That was so good, my love. So wonderful.”

“I will learn.”

“As far as pleasing me is concerned, you don’t need to learn. But the next time I want you to come at least twice before I do. I want you limp and happy.”

“Oh, I think that is taken care of.”

He chuckled and claimed a kiss from her warm, full lips. She opened to him, licking his lips and his tongue, and he gave her the same in return.

“Together now,” he murmured as they parted. “Sleep, my love. God knows you deserve it.”

* * * *

Eve awoke wrapped in her husband’s arms. She opened her eyes and there he was, looking back at her. Close up she could discern the different shades of that blue made up the startling color of his eyes, the gradations from cobalt to sky blue, the subtleties adding up to an intensity that astonished her.

The corners of his eyes were lightly creased, because he was smiling. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, and kissed her.

He plunged her right back into ecstasy, one hand around her rib cage, under her breast, the other smoothing her back and teasing her shoulder blades.

He touched his lips to her ear and then her throat, giving her no time to protest. “Did you let me sleep on your shoulder all night?”

“No, love,” he answered, between feathering kisses on her collarbone and licking under it. Heavens, was there anywhere she wasn’t sensitive to him? “I woke in the early hours, my muscles numb. I nearly woke you when I eased you away and the feeling came back.” He urged her to roll on her back and continued with his attentions, talking to her between kisses. He cupped her breast in one hand, stroking his thumb across her nipple until she gasped with renewed sensation.

“I seem to have married a weighty woman,” he said thoughtfully as he studied the result of his handiwork. “I can see I have my work cut out with you.”

She loved this playful Julius, the flirtatious man who was both the man she had married and something else. But now she had recovered from her shock, she was discovering more and more about him, factors and depths she had previously not known. His air of command never left him, but he had it well in hand, as he did her body.

Yet he had given her complete control over him last night, letting her make love to him until they were both exhausted. She bore some of the results this morning, small pink marks where his kisses had grown more passionate, a slight soreness between her legs. Not that she would have admitted to it for one moment. Otherwise he might stop, the last thing she wanted him to do. This morning she would let him guide her to pleasure.

“Are you seducing me into forgiving you?” She twined her fingers into his hair, tousling it for the pleasure of smoothing it out again. The bright locks had a definite wave to them.

“Am I succeeding?” He lifted his head and met her gaze. He was still smiling.

She smiled back. “You’ll have to try harder than that.”

“I intend to.” With a deep chuckle, he continued his self-imposed task, kissing his way down her body.

She thought he would stop at her waist, but he did not. He nuzzled lower, and lower still. When she tried to flinch away, he placed his hands on her hips, firmly holding her still.

“Open your legs, sweetheart.”

“Julius, I—”

“Do as I bid you.” The command did not sound in the least demanding, only persuasive, but she did it anyway. He kissed her at the apex of her legs and touched his tongue to the tip of the sensitive bundle of nerves at the top of her feminine crease. “Beautiful,” he murmured, but his tones were indistinct, muffled when he dived deeper.

She would have jerked away when he sucked her, except for his hands holding her steady. She had no choice but to accept what he was doing to her. Reacting on instinct as the thrills turned to lightning strikes arcing from her femininity to her head and the tips of her toes, encompassing her completely. She belonged to him, utterly helpless, but she thrilled to the knowledge as she did when she realized he only wished to bring her pleasure. He would not hurt her. He would hurt himself first.

The sounds of his activity brought forbidden delights. Never would she had thought Julius, even in his Julius Vernon guise, would have allowed himself such joyous activity at the expense of personal dignity.

Yet the evidence was here. He made love to her with total intensity and a complete abandonment of his own considerations.

How could she not love that?

His untrammeled enjoyment drove her to do follow his example, to throw herself into the experience. Whatever came after did not matter. How they had got here did not matter. Only this.

Sharp, hard spasms of delight sent her soaring, and she cried out, panting his name. Her mind went blank and her sight blurred over. When she had regained a measure of her senses, he was over her and in her, her legs propped on his shoulders.

The fierce intensity in his eyes reflected the sensations rioting through her body. Clutching the sheet under her, a reminder of reality, but a fleeting one, Eve arched up, pressed against him.

She could not come again, not in the same way she had before. Her sensitivity was like nothing she had experienced before. Every time he touched her, even looked at her, she soared a little higher. This could not be right. Eve fought to regain control.

Without effort, he found the point inside her that sent her crazy. How could this happen again? He slammed his shaft inside her, the wet slaps echoing through the room.

He smiled, bared his teeth. “No, Eve, don’t think. Stop trying to reason and go there. I’ll join you, I promise.”

How did she not think? What was the key?

All at once, the task became shockingly easy. His pace quickened, but he penetrated her as deeply every time he slammed into her. Then he changed the rhythm to something unpredictable, driving deep inside and then, giving a few shallow jabs, barely grazing her, and then deeply.

Eve lost all her sense. She would give him everything she had. “Don’t stop.”

His answer came in a rough laugh. “As if I could.”

She came in a series of hard shots, pulsing around him. Becoming aware of his cries, reactions to his own senses rather than answering hers, she deliberately tightened inside and then released, pulling him in, trying to grip his shaft so hard he couldn’t leave her.

They tipped over the edge simultaneously, his seed gushing into her as she jerked uncontrollably like some kind of madwoman. She lost her breath, her mind and her heart, all in the same instant.

If she concentrated she could try to remember this moment. Something profound had happened, but she could process nothing. Not until she went limp, completely spent.

Covered in sweat, his hair clinging to his head in damp strands, his eyes still wild, still fixed on her, Julius stared at her as if nobody else existed. His chest heaving when he gasped for air, he watched her. She still had her legs over his shoulders, but warmth and sense returned to his eyes, and his mouth moved in the smile now so familiar to her. Moving slowly, he withdrew from her. An immediate sense of emptiness, followed by anticipation of the next time crept over her.

He let her slide her legs down, and helped her straighten them, returning to take her in his arms.

He said, “I love you. I do.”

She blinked hard several times. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I know. I misjudged you. I went about everything the wrong way.” He went up on one elbow and tenderly smoothed the tousled hair off her cheeks. “Can you forgive me so easily?”

“You call that easy?”

When he joined in her shaky laughter, she swallowed, and the tension that had invaded her ever since her discovery of his true identity relaxed. After all, this was still Julius. That was the heart of him. Everything else came after. That was what he had tried to tell her, but her shock when she discovered whom she had married so blithely had blocked any understanding of that.

Now the clouds had cleared and she saw it. An innate sense told her she would lose that sense or fight to recall it, but she vowed never to let it leave her. If she did, she could lose him, the essential reality of him.

She initiated the kiss, leaning up and touching his chin, his overnight stubble abrading her finger as she urged him closer until their lips met. Their kiss took on the nature of a vow, the oath they should have made to each other on their wedding day.

Instead, they did it now, the personal vow that should have accompanied the public ones. “For richer and poorer?” he said when they parted, a trace of anxiety in his tones.

“Sickness and health.” Smiling, she kissed him again, no longer afraid to show him how she felt. If he hurt her, so be it. He would, because couples often did. Julius was not an easy man to know. Although he had given her his heart, he had other concerns, things that might take him away from her.

He startled her with his response. “It won’t be easy, will it?”

The sentiment was so close to what she was feeling. “No, but we can do it.”

Their marriage would take work, as well as love. Their gazes clung and held. This time he kissed her, a sweet, almost worshipful salute. “We can. We will.”

“Tell me about your first wife.” She couldn’t wait to know everything about him, and that included what he did before they met.

He blinked. “Now?”

“Yes. How did you feel about her?” Noting his uncertainty, she smiled, nothing tentative about her now. “You love me. I believe you. Nothing can change that, can it?”

After gazing at her without speaking for a moment, he nodded. “You’re right. We need to understand each other, do we not?” He sighed, but it wasn’t for her. “Caroline was pretty and lively, completely enchanting, with an energy that matched mine. In those days I wanted everything now, that moment, an impulsiveness that led me into a multitude of problems. She was impulsive, too. We were completely wrong for each other, but Caro was the most damaged.”

Her heart went out to him. He had been young in more than years. Young at heart, probably not ready to marry. Eve remained silent and let him talk. Was this the first time he had told anyone? He would certainly not have confided in his parents, that was for sure.

“We fell in love, or we thought we did. But it had none of the—” He shrugged and gave her a wry smile. “I can’t explain fully. With you I feel more than myself. You make me want to work harder, to make myself worthy of you. I felt none of that with Caroline. She was a companion, someone to encourage my excesses. My love, we did indulge in some excesses that make me blush to recall them.”

His cheekbones displayed the evidence, a line of darker color making him appear even more effetely aesthetic. Now she understood the real man, those two words did not fit him at all.

“I won’t ask,” she said, “But you have made me curious now.”

“I have the strong urge to keep you to myself,” he said, “To hold you and care for you. With Caroline, I wanted to share her.”

Shock pierced her but she refused to show it. He needed to tell somebody. He needed to tell her. “You were debauched?”

“That’s one word for it. If we heard of something, we indulged ourselves.”

“Everything?”

“Naked and clothed. Everything.”

She shook her head and closed her eyes tightly, an involuntary reaction, but she forced herself to open her eyes. He was watching her warily. “Should I stop there?”

“No.” She wanted to hear it all. His disclosures did not alter how she felt about him, only deepened her understanding of how he had reached this point.

His mouth tightened. “Very well. I did not notice how wild Caroline was becoming until after the birth of our daughter. Caro insisted on calling the baby after herself, and I had no objections. I had two Carolines in my life now. The birth of the baby brought me back to earth. I could not continue in my present life, could not risk our daughter’s reputation or her sense of security. I had grown up in the conventional way, surrounded by attendants. I had little contact with my parents. My only friend was Augustus. Lucinda is younger than we are, so we were almost parents to her.”

The muscles in his shoulders relaxed. He was not so concerned talking about his early life. “But while I settled down, made sure our daughter was part of our lives, my wife became wilder. She was rarely in the house, and her moods had grown volatile. Eventually I discerned a pattern. A wild period of joy and frantic activity came before a time when she closed her bedroom door and refused to let anyone in. I tried a few times, but she threw things at me, and I seemed to make her worse. She denied me her bed. I thought she would recover, and since we had always gone into adventures together, we would settle down together. It never happened.” He paused, his face settling into the stillness she recognized now. He was drawing away. “I will tell you something now that I have never told anyone else. Her last lover was the second son of the Duke of Northwich, William Dankworth.”