Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue (21 page)

Could only prop there, brace his senses, and let her have her way.

She met his eyes only briefly, but sensing his acquiescence, her lips lightly curving she embarked on an exploration, touching, tracing, learning each and every line of muscle, circling his flat nipples, then pushing her hands wide over the heavy muscles defining his upper chest, then sliding her palms higher to stroke the firm muscles and heavy bones of his shoulders.

He watched her face. She was enthralled—there was no other word for it. And while more women than he could count had looked on him with even greater lasciviousness, her appreciation was infinitely sweeter.

Ultimately she used her weight to push him fully onto his back. He told himself he allowed it because he was burning with a sensual curiosity he’d never before experienced—wondering what a virgin might think to do next. Luckily the rucked sheet still separated their lower bodies; if it hadn’t, he doubted she would have been so successful in keeping her concentration so clearly fixed on returning the pleasure he’d given her . . .

Her intent was novel enough to capture him.

To have him let her come over him and take his mouth—to have him lie back and let her kiss him as she would, as deeply as she dared, as tauntingly, as challengingly.

Even while his senses purred and gorged themselves on her promise, on the unstated acknowledgment of the surrender her kiss declared would soon be his to claim, while he held her steady above him and let her kiss him with fiery abandon, some part of his mind was noting, registering, storing away the observation that few women he could recall had ever been as bold as she, as insistent.

Most had lain back and let him love them; few had exerted themselves to freely love him back. And to take delight in that loving; as she drew back from the kiss, her sensuously sultry expression declared she was definitely delighting.

Admittedly she was a virgin, but he doubted all virgins were this giving.

In mimicry of his loving of her, she skated her lips over his jaw, then down his throat to its base. From there she licked and laved her way to the flat disc of one nipple, licked, lapped, sucked—then nipped. The strange little pain shot fire to his groin; as she switched to his other nipple, he raised a hand to cup her head.

Before he could stop her she nipped again, and he jerked, pulled taut by the lancing sensation. The short exhalation of her near breathless laugh, redolent of pleasure and delight, turned him harder than iron.

He hauled her head up to his, kissed her with enough heat and fire to wrench the reins once more from her grasp. With the hand cupping her head, he held her to the kiss; his other hand he sent skating down the svelte planes of her naked back, slipping under the barely there chemise, down to the curve of her derriere.

Caressing the sweet globes, then kneading evocatively, he waited until she was panting, gasping, close to demanding, then he stripped the crushed chemise down, baring her hips, her bottom, then her sleek thighs, baring her to his touch if not his gaze.

He tipped and rolled her over as he stripped the flimsy garment down her calves, then slipped it from her feet. Left it lying somewhere amid the rumpled sheets. All with the kiss unbroken.

Then he gathered her to him, let her breasts, peaked and aching, brush against the hair on his chest, then drew her closer yet, crushed her to him, feeling the soft mounds flatten against his harder flesh as he increasingly evocatively plundered her mouth.

As her hand rose, uncertain now, to touch, then gently stroke his cheek.

That touch nearly undid him, filled with a simple, innocent longing, one the experienced rake within him recognized and thirsted for.

Hungered for.

But he had his plans, his necessary goals.

He pushed her down into the bed, ignored the increasingly urgent impulse to simply strip the sheet from between them and sink his throbbing member into the slick, scalding softness between her thighs. Instead, he abruptly broke the kiss, slid back and down in the bed, with hard hands gripped her thighs and spread them wide, ducked his head as he wedged his shoulders between, and set his lips first to her curls, then at her strangled gasp, one filled with shocked realization, traced lower. Put out his tongue and lapped delicately.

Heather felt her heart pound, thought she might die. Sensation sharp as shards streaked down every nerve; heat shot along every vein. She couldn’t breathe, but no longer seemed to need to; her hands blindly clenched in the sheets in a vain effort to anchor her whirling senses. She could barely believe that he would do such a thing . . . yet some part of her was eager to feel it, know it, experience whatever he would show her.

She’d initiated this new journey; contrary to her expectations, from the moment she’d kissed him, finally pressed her lips to his, she hadn’t felt the slightest qualm. The slightest fear, nor any real modesty; on every level this—him and her together like this, naked and heated in a bed, his hard hands and hot mouth roaming her body, claiming her, his body hers to delight in and pleasure—seemed utterly right.

Grappling with the unstoppable cascade of sensations he artfully, expertly, sent crashing through her, she shook her head, gasped, tried to reach him, but could only clench her fingers in his hair and hang on. The tip of his tongue swirled about the sensitive bud tucked beneath her curls, and her world quaked; she tensed, tried to pull away, but he shifted before she could, set one heavy arm across her waist and held her immobile while he ever more blatantly tasted her, licked and traced until she was mindless, until she felt flames licking over every inch of her skin, set alight and racing by the abrasion of his beard against her inner thighs, intensified by the echoing rasp of his wicked tongue over flesh that grew only more sensitive with every deliberate stroke.

The flames flared, roared, and sank into her flesh, claimed that, too, cindering every inhibition along the way, until she was waiting for his next touch, panting and so damningly eager for the next sliding lap of his tongue, wanting and needy and hungry for something—for one last critical touch . . .

He kept her there, on the cusp of some cataclysmic revelation, sipping and tasting, even as the heated tension within her built, even as it coalesced into a solid knot at her core. Until she was writhing beneath his arm, all but fighting him, but for what she didn’t know . . .

Breckenridge pushed her as hard as he dared, as far as he judged she could bear. In the instant that instinct told him the time had come, he felt a sharp surge of elation. He pushed her thighs wider, pressed nearer, and slid his tongue past her entrance into the heated channel beyond—

She shattered; he only just remembered to reach up and muffle her keening cry.

Her body bowed, caught in the throes of ecstasy for the very first time.

He licked, lapped, then licked one last time, savored her tart ambrosia on his tongue for one last, lingering moment, then he pushed first one finger, then worked a second as well, into her still rippling sheath, pumped his hand, his fist pressed against her swollen flesh as he rose over her, as he settled his hips where his shoulders had been.

Lowering his head, removing his hand from her mouth, he replaced it with his lips. With a kiss so unadulteratedly passionate that she gasped, then, small hands clinging, grasping wildly, she rose to him again.

Desperate and hungry, eager and yearning, frantically reaching for him.

He drew back from the heated exchange. Worked his fingers in her sheath, stretching her, readying her.

His own head was spinning. He rested his jaw against her hair, registered her sobbing breaths. “Sssh, sweetheart. Soon.”

She gasped, “
Now
!”

And reached for him, found him hard and throbbing, filled her palm with the heavy head. Small fingers reached and stroked, traced the flaring rim.

He cursed, seized her hand and drew it up. Pressed deeper between her thighs and, drawing his fingers from her scalding sheath, guided his erection into her snug entrance.

Pressed in. Just an inch.

Felt her catch her breath. Start to tense.

Swallowing a curse, with his free hand he seized her nape and hauled her to him, back into a kiss that was ravenous beyond belief.

Felt his reins fray as he pushed her deeper into the bed, trapping her beneath him; holding her to the flagrantly passionate, near-violent exchange, he gripped her hip, anchored her, pushed deeper, then, caught in a haze of erotically charged, passionate need, driven by wracked urgency, he withdrew, thrust powerfully through her maidenhead, and sank heavily home.

Pressed deeper still, forced her to take every last inch.

And felt his reins snap. Felt control fall away as she cried into his mouth, froze for barely a heartbeat, then clamped, tight as a glove, all along his length.

Need, desire, and passion beat at him with fiery wings, tore at him with talons tipped with raging hunger.

He wanted to go slowly, wanted to show her every small facet of the glory, but she moved beneath him, undulating, urging, and any hope of regaining control vaporized.

Primal need roared; he withdrew and thrust again, hard, heavily, taking and claiming.

Gone was any glimmer of sophistication. Gone was any mask; there was no way to hide. Not from this.

Not from the passion, the need, and the want that rose through him and answered her primitive call.

Not from this elemental claiming.

And she was with him, writhing beneath him, hips lifting to take all he would give her.

Heather was caught in the passionate fury, ensorcelled, enslaved, by the driving urgency. Captured, trapped, by the shattering intimacy.

By the sheer feel of him, hot, hard, and heavy at her core, with each powerful thrust filling her, completing her, with each relentlessly deep penetration claiming her, her senses, her body, her heart.

That driving rhythm was all she knew, the compulsive beat her all, her everything. In that moment, nothing mattered beyond having him, holding him, knowing him like this.

Being with him—his—like this.

Locked in their kiss, she could no longer breathe, breathed through him. Didn’t care. Breathless, dizzy, with pleasure and passion spiraling ever higher, she clung and rode with him, delighted, desperate, needing, wanting . . .

Desire dampened their skins; slick and heated, they shifted and slid. Fingers gripped, tightened. Held on. Held together.

Breckenridge was blind. Lost. For the first time in his life, fully victim to the spell. Then beneath him she rose, peaked again, sobbed again, and softly keened his name. Her nails raked and scored his back, her sheath contracted, rippling powerfully along his length, drawing him on, urging him on, milking and stroking . . . desperately breaking from the kiss, head lifting, tipping back, teeth gritted he fought to stifle his roar as his climax surged over and through him, as it shattered him, wracked him, razed him.

And left him drowning beneath a wave of completion so intense he couldn’t breathe.

He collapsed half on top of her, too wrung out to move, his lungs working like bellows, his heart thundering, pounding.

Gradually, it slowed. Sensation, muted awareness returned, enough to register the gentle stroking of her hand, the soothing touch calming, strangely claiming.

He wanted to find his sophisticated armor and put it back on—before he faced her, before she saw . . .

Before he could move, she did; turning her head to his, pushing back the damp hair from the side of his face, she touched her lips to his jaw, then, her lips curving sleepily, touched those swollen lips to the corner of his.

“Thank you.” The words were a sigh, the softest of feminine exhalations. “That was . . . thrilling. And . . . so very fine.”

He nearly humphed. Fine? The intensity had damned near killed him, and she labelled the moment “fine?”

She fell back, fully relaxed on her back in the bed.

After a moment, he turned his head and looked at her. Studied the madonnalike expression that had claimed her face, the bliss that infused her features.

He filled his lungs, then managed to summon sufficient strength to disengage and lift from her. Slumping on his back alongside her, he stared up at the ceiling, but there were no hints or clues written there.

For the first time in his extensive career, he didn’t feel, even now, in control. He felt . . . exposed. Uncertain. Not his usual polished, urbane, somewhat boredly smug self.

Yet he was the one who was supposedly used to this, accustomed to all the nuances. Who knew all the appropriate moves to make, and when to make them.

She . . . he glanced at her again, at her face.

Hesitated, then gave into impulse and reached for her. Drawing her to him, he pulled the covers over them, then settled her against him, cradled within his arm, her head pillowed on his chest.

She made a humming sound, then her limbs eased against him.

He dipped his head, placed a kiss on her forehead. “Sleep.”

He felt her lips curve, but she didn’t reply.

Instead she slid her hand up, curled her fingers against the side of his throat, and relaxed into his arms.

Inexplicably satisfied now as well as sated, he closed his eyes. And found slumber waiting, dreamless and deep.

Chapter Eleven

T
he following morning, Heather woke to find Breckenridge already up and gone from the bed, and the tiny room. Blinking awake, she yawned, stretched . . . felt the pull of muscles unaccustomed to the, for her, novel activities of the night.

Those activities . . . had surpassed her wildest dreams, her most exotic fantasies.

A smile unfurled across her face; warmth still flowed through her, unexpected yet welcome.

Then she remembered, lifted the sheet, and looked . . . “Thank heaven.” She had bled a little, but her crumpled chemise had been trapped beneath her and had caught the few drops.

Relieved, she climbed out of the cocoon of the covers, hurriedly dressed, sans chemise. Peeking out of the door, she saw only Mrs. Cartwright making pikelets on the griddle; her back was to Heather, and the sizzling masked most sounds. Peering around the jamb, Heather saw the doors to the back porch and the bathing chamber beyond standing ajar. She slipped out of the bedroom, whisked out and into the bathing chamber, shut and latched the door, then she relaxed, grinned, and set about her ablutions.

Her mood remained sunny through breakfast, taken with the Cartwrights and Breckenridge, who’d appeared from outside when Mrs. Cartwright had called. Apparently he’d been chopping wood to help the old couple. With the extra coins he insisted they take on top of payment for room and board, Heather felt they were leaving the old couple happier and better off for their stay.

They left the cottage with the sun climbing higher into the morning sky, walking out of Gribton hand in hand, their satchels on their shoulders. When they regained the lane, their route to Dunscore and Kirkland beyond, Breckenridge, whose face had remained unreadable throughout the morning, halted and pulled out his fob watch.

He consulted it, grunted, then tucked it back in his pocket. “Just nine o’clock.” Looking ahead, he grasped her hand more firmly and started walking. “I had another look at the map. We might reach the Vale, or at least be close enough to it by nightfall to risk going on without halting, but, more likely, the way will become more mountainous the further we go, which will slow us considerably.” He glanced at her. “We’ll probably have to find somewhere to spend one more night.”

Still smiling, she blithely nodded. “There’ll be somewhere—a hamlet or a farmhouse. Just like last night.”
Just
like last night.

His only reply was another grunt.

Her smile deepened. They walked on in companionable silence as the sun slowly rose and beamed down upon them. It was a glorious spring day, with birds singing and bees buzzing in the undergrowth bordering the lane. The sky gradually lightened to a cerulean blue. Everything seemed fresh, dew-sparkling, filled with intrinsic promise. She drank it all in, felt her heart swell and overflow with a similar brightness.

She felt like skipping or dancing along, but in deference to the grunter beside her, kept striding evenly by his side. He’d long ago mastered the need to adjust his pace to hers. They progressed toward the hills rising ahead of them at a steady rate.

It was impossible, of course, to keep her mind from revisiting the events of the night. The feelings, the physical sensations. The intimacy, that indefinable heart-to-heart, body-to-body connection, the power of the moment, the bliss-filled aftermath.

Thanks to him, her eyes had been well and truly opened. She couldn’t believe she’d been willingly avoiding, and therefore missing the benefits of, the activity for all these years.

Then again, she seriously doubted any other man would have lived, or could now live, up to her expectations, not those she’d previously had, and even less those she now possessed.

The truth was, if she’d known how it would be, she would have waylaid Breckenridge years ago.

The notion made her smile, yet brought her thoughts circling back to them, to the inevitable. Despite the indescribable pleasure, she knew to her bones that her path hadn’t changed. She would never accept a socially coerced husband, no matter how incredible a lover he was. The events of the night might have further shaded her evolving view of him, and she could but hope that he’d revised his view of her, yet in terms of their separate future paths nothing had truly changed.

What had perhaps altered was their immediate future. Their next days.

She glanced at him. Quite aside from her losing her virginity, something between them had subtly shifted. Perhaps it was a change that always happened when a man and a woman were intimate. She couldn’t tell, but she did feel both closer to Breckenridge and a lot more easy in his company. On many levels.

What exactly that might lead to . . . she considered the prospects as they marched on.

From the corner of his eye, Breckenridge watched her. Took in her serene, yet pensive, expression. He would give a great deal to know what she was thinking. Experienced as he was with women, he’d long ago learned not to try to predict how their minds might work; they inevitably surprised him, and he was sure she’d be no different in that respect.

She might even be worse, God help him.

Worse because he actually wanted—possibly needed—to know what she thought.

To his mind, seducing her had shored up his right to, once they reached the end of this journey, claim her hand. Even if she hadn’t yet realized it, being intimate had tipped the scales between them. Irreversibly.

It had changed other things, too. Just the thought was enough to stir one of those other things.

Fighting not to grip her hand tighter, he willed the possessiveness that after the night had only grown more powerful to subside. To lie quiet and not unnecessarily attract her attention.

She was a Cynster female; if she got a clear view of how he now regarded her, she would guess his plan and cease cooperating. Keeping his true feelings for her—feelings and emotions he found unsettlingly intense—concealed, at least from her, was therefore essential.

He walked along, steady and sure, a part of his awareness constantly scanning their surroundings, watching for any danger, while inside he grappled with the changes the night had wrought.

In opening the door and stepping over the threshold into intimacy, he hadn’t expected anything he hadn’t encountered a thousand times before. Instead . . . all he could remember, all that was blazoned on his mind, was the shocking intensity, the unsettling vibrancy, of the moment. And the wave of emotions that had crashed through him in its wake.

Powerful emotions connected to sexual congress were an entirely novel experience for him.

Unsettling enough, but the not-so-subtle vulnerability that now ran beneath all else made him . . . nervous. That was the only word that adequately described what he now felt.

Regardless, last night had set his path in stone; she was the lady he would have as his wife . . . and if joining with her was an experience beyond anything he’d experienced with any of his previous many lovers, that might well be because in his mind he’d already decided she was his.

She was special; she was to be his wife. Understandable if he now saw her as more precious to him, and that the need to wed her now possessed a very sharp, very definite edge. Having her as his bride was now, to him, an absolute imperative; after last night, there was no other possible way forward.

They came to a section where the lane had been almost washed away by a gushing streamlet. Logs had been placed to one side of the lane to help those on foot cross the quagmire. He stepped up first, balancing, then holding Heather’s hand more tightly, sidestepped along. Holding up her skirts with her other hand, she shuffled after him. He seized the moment while she was concentrating on her feet to search her face, her expression.

Stepping off the logs onto firm ground once more, he steadied her, then assisted her off and onto the thick, damp grass. Looked again at her face, briefly met her eyes.

Then he turned, and, her hand still comfortably locked in one of his, they set out walking once more.

He couldn’t guess what, exactly, she was thinking, but that little smile that flirted about her lips, the still pleasured, pleasant, encouraging light he’d glimpsed when her eyes had met his . . . all suggested that she wouldn’t be averse to a repeat of their previous night’s engagement.

Given he was committed to having her as his wife, and as he seriously doubted she’d yet changed her mind about the future direction of her life, then patently he had more ground to make up, more work to do on that front. Clearly it behooved him to do everything possible, to use every opportunity that came his way, to both change her stubborn mind and to tie her to him as securely as he could with passion, pleasure, and desire.

The prospect was intriguing, challenging, and, given their past history, held considerable appeal.

Considering his possible options, he walked steadily on.

I
n the fullness of the morning, the man calling himself McKinsey rode out of Dumfries and headed north up the Glasgow Road.

He was confident of finding the Cynster chit and her escort; within a few hours at most, he should have them in his sights. Once he did . . .

He’d spent a good few hours of the night considering the best way to proceed. Given that he was increasingly sure that the man with her was no solicitor’s clerk, nor had ever been one, he’d decided that observation first would be the wisest course.

The road contained many long, open stretches; once he located them, watching them from a distance while they remained unaware of him would be easy enough.

Once he’d studied how they interacted and gained some notion of the nature of their connection, he would know what to do. It might be possible to use what had happened to his advantage; the situation might yet advance his cause, or be rejigged, redefined, to do so.

His mind awhirl with possibilities, he rode steadily on, the sun warming his back, the regular tattoo of Hercules’ hooves filling his ears. His expression, however, remained set, his lips a straight, uncompromising line.

No matter what transpired, regardless of all else, regardless of his and his people’s needs, courtesy of the disruption of his plan, his principal imperative now had to be saving Heather Cynster.

He had to make sure she was unharmed, that her future—whether with him or another—was certain, assured, and held the degree of comfort she would otherwise have had, had he not been forced to kidnap her.

A twist indeed; that certainly hadn’t been his original aim. But as matters now stood, his conscience wouldn’t allow him to follow any other course.

Swallowing a frustrated sigh, he rode steadily on.

H
eather and Breckenridge were nearing Kirkland when, with the sun shining high overhead, they stopped by the banks of a stream to eat some of the provisions they’d bought the day before in Dumfries.

Sitting on an outcrop of sun-warmed stones above the burbling water, they ate and looked back at the rolling hills through which the lane had slowly ascended. Even though they’d been climbing for some time, the folds of green blocked their view to the south. From all they could see, they might have been the only people in the world. Yet all around them nature bustled, rich and vibrant. Hedgerows were budding and the bare branches of trees were softening in the first flush of leaf.

Heather reached into one of the satchels and pulled out an apple. Recalled the old woman she’d bought it from, in the market at Dumfries. Now, Dumfries seemed far away, much further in her past than a mere twenty-four hours. Between then and now . . . it was as if plunging into intimacy with Breckenridge had divided her life into a “then” and a “now.”

She glanced at him and couldn’t help grinning. He was wolfing down some bread and a piece of hard cheese, his gaze scanning the fields below them. With his beard darkening his cheeks and concealing the austere, arrogant, distinctly aristocratic lines of his face, he appeared rumpled and disreputable, and oddly more human, his godlike handsomeness dimmed, veiled.

It was still there, of course. Every time she met his eyes, she saw him as he truly was. As she’d seen him last night, with the moonlight gilding every powerful line of his naked torso. His current incarnation as just another man was merely a temporary aberration. Once they were back in civilization, he would shave off the beard, revert to his usual clothes, and once again become Breckenridge, the ton’s foremost and favorite rake.

Until then, however, he was as he was . . . and what he was, was, to her mind, hers. She was the only one who would ever see him like this, in this moment. Only she would ever know how he’d behaved toward her during this journey. Quite aside from introducing her to the pleasures of the flesh, he’d behaved so very differently toward her than when in London.

Facing forward, she lifted her face to the sun, felt it combine with a wisp of breeze to caress her cheeks. She closed her eyes. Drank in the small pleasures.

She would always remember this moment, the gentle zephyr of warm wind washing past her. The London rake in clerk’s disguise sitting beside her.

Her lips curved. Her mind ranged irresistibly on.

She’d already made up her mind about tonight. They would definitely have to stop at some cottage or find shelter in a barn. Either way, she was determined to reexperience the pleasures she’d enjoyed last night, and if possible press him to extend her horizons.

Once they regained civilization, their liaison would end, if not immediately, then very soon afterward. She didn’t have any firm idea how long it might last—how long she could stretch it out, how long she might hold his interest, widely acknowledged as peripatetic when it came to his lovers—so it was plainly in her best interests to ensure she gained as much out of the short time she would have with him.

During the short time in which he was hers.

She sat in the sun, with him beside her, and gave herself up to imagining.

Breckenridge glanced at her, took in the delight that showed in her face, then looked back down the lane—and reluctantly concluded that even if they appeared to be all alone in the landscape, they weren’t. In another place, another time, in a safer situation he would have been tempted to use the moment, seize it to further his new agenda, but her safety trumped his compulsion to do all that he could to tie her to him.