Yankee Earl (37 page)

      
She was lost in the wonder of discovery, glad of the small golden pool of candlelight augmenting the moon so that she could see the outline of his body as it moved with such sinuous grace. His hands covered hers, guiding her ever so slightly for a moment, but then his grip tightened over her wrists.

      
“You must stop else I'll not be able to control myself, love,” he gasped.

      
Rachel was uncertain if she had done something wrong, but before she could speak, he knelt facing her on the bed. His hands glided over her body, peeling the rumpled night rail lower, pausing to caress and kiss each inch of silky skin. He drew her into his arms after sliding the night rail over the curve of her hips until it pooled around her legs.

      
When his hands cupped her buttocks and gently squeezed, molding her lower body to his, she could feel the hardness of his staff. It felt so hot, so wonderful that she could hardly wait as they exchanged fierce kisses. Rachel knew the dueling and plunging of their tongues was but an intimation of what was to come.

      
Jason took time to recover his control, which this passionate woman had nearly shattered. How long had he wanted her? Seemingly endless months had fed this madness…a ravening madness that he was powerless to resist. “Lie back,” he whispered raggedly, still raining kisses on her throat and shoulders as he pressed her down into the softness of the mattress. Moonlight and candlelight bathed her body in silver and gold. Its curves and hollows were shadowed and mysterious, beckoning his eager hands as he pulled the silk night rail from her legs and sent it floating to the floor.

      
He traced tiny circles about her nipples with his fingertips, praising the way they tightened into sweet dark rosebuds, begging for his mouth. He obliged, suckling them once more as she buried her fingers in his hair, urging him to continue. A soft keening rose from deep in her throat as he moved from her breasts to her navel, using his tongue and lips to delight her. Then he moved lower yet into the lush dark curls at the apex of her thighs. His mouth was hot and seeking, nuzzling her mound as his fingers found her pearly moisture.

      
“Your nectar is sweet,” he murmured as he touched his index finger to his lips. “I would taste more.”

      
She had never imagined this! When his lips brushed the soft, wet petals, her hips arched. He gave a low growl of satisfaction, settling in between her thighs. Rachel whimpered as his tongue touched the very center of her desire, then began to stroke and draw on it with utmost gentleness. The sweetness was fierce beyond her ability to describe. He continued his magic, drawing her to greater and greater heights of pleasure.

      
Her fingers dug into the bed sheets, clutching linens, kneading in frantic counterpoint to the pulsing joy of his ministrations. Before she realized it, her hands were once again buried in his hair, cradling his head, urging him onward. Gradually the pleasure grew so keen that it was almost pain. An urge for some unnamed yet desperately needed surcease spiraled up in her. She cried out his name as the splendor burst, sending her hurtling through time and space for this one perfect moment.

      
He could feel her crest, hear her cries and taste the heady richness of her body as he raised himself up over her, positioning her for his entry. Her head thrashed from side to side, tangling her hair in a great silken skein across the pillows while he was poised at the brink of her welcoming heat. She was slick and swollen, still pulsing from her release. The pleasure of giving her this gift was even greater than that of being the one to breach her maidenhead.

      
Rachel felt the heat of his staff as it slowly began to penetrate her body. The slowly subsiding contractions pulled him deeper, welcoming him into her most secret place, a place that seemed to ache with emptiness, needing to be filled with him. She felt a great stretching, then a small twinge of pain. So this, then, was the culmination of their marriage vows, the mystery revealed when two became one flesh. She arched into his first slow, careful stroke, encircling him with her arms, wanting to hold them joined like this forever, never having to face tomorrow.

      
Give me your child, Jason
.

      
The plea was quickly overpowered by renewed hunger as his big, muscular body labored over hers, fanning the gently cooling embers into flame once again. With each strong thrust her hunger grew. He murmured endearments to her, instructing her to wrap her legs around his hips. She did so, arching up to meet him. Her fingers dug into his back, pulling his chest to flatten her tender breasts and press her deeper into the mattress. This time as the ache grew, Rachel knew why the pressure was building inside her and how it would be released in glorious explosion. She urged him on.

      
Jason could sense her renewed desire and let slip some of the careful control holding his own passion in check. His strokes grew longer, harder, swifter as the ecstasy spiraled out in ever widening circles. Where did he stop and she begin? He could no longer tell. All was such intense desperation, such intense pleasure, that he gave in and murmured her name against her throat over and over as they rode to the crest together.

      
He held off at the very last moment, waiting for her body's signal, which mercifully came quickly. Then the culmination began and continued, longer than he had ever experienced it before. Not even after months at sea had he felt this searing, all-powerful release while he spilled his seed deep into her womb, shuddering in fulfillment.

      
His staff, already so large and hard inside her, seemed to swell even more as he cried out and began to shake like a patient with the ague. It would have startled her if she had not been so caught up in a second shattering climax of her own, this time gloriously melding with his.

      
Slowly they descended from the heights of that ethereal place only lovers can know, sweat-soaked in the still coolness of the night. His weight pressed her into the soft mattress, yet she would not relinquish her hold on him. Her arms and legs were wrapped securely around his. Her fingers contentedly kneaded in the slick muscles of his back as his lips nuzzled her throat. She slipped one hand up to cradle his head against her on the pillows, then dropped off to sleep, too satiated and exhausted to think of the morrow.

      
Jason, too, felt a deep sense of peace and lethargy overtake him. Rather than face the consequences of this irrevocable act, he gave in to unconsciousness. Did he perchance murmur her name once again as he was falling asleep?

* * * *

      
Rachel awoke in the early-morning chill, alone in Jason's big bed. A sheet partially covered her. She flung it aside and sat up groggily, feeling a sudden twinge between her legs. Untried muscles cried out in protest as she slipped her legs over the side of the mattress and stared down at the smears of blood on the snowy linens of her husband's well rumpled bed. The marriage was accomplished, indissoluble by her father or the old marquess without an act of Parliament.

      
And only the absent Jason Beaumont could initiate such an act.

      
She had done what she'd set out to do. Why, then, did she feel so unutterably sad? So guilty? She was every bit as manipulative, as scheming as those two old men. Was that what her husband now realized? Surely it must be the reason he had fled the scene of her deflowering.

      
“Oh, Jason, my love, please do not hate me,” she whispered brokenly as she slipped on her silk robe.

      
Before she could fasten the belt, the door to her room opened and her maid called out a cheery greeting, then gingerly approached the open door to the earl's adjoining quarters. “Oh, Gretchen, please draw me a bath,” Rachel instructed in as level a voice as she could muster.

      
The servant approached the doorway, her eyes huge as she peered nervously into the room as if expecting his lordship to leap out from behind the armoire with a cutlass in his fist like the privateer he had once been. “Very good, m'lady,” she murmured with a bobbed curtsy, starting to back away, then hesitating. “If you wish, I'll send the upstairs maid to change the linens.” Her face was as scarlet as the sunrise.

      
Well, was this not what Rachel required? Before noon every servant in the city house would know the marriage had been consummated. Woodenly the Countess of Falconridge nodded, but just then the door to the hallway opened and Jason entered, clad in a pair of old britches and an open shirt, his “country uniform,” as Rachel had come to think of it. Her knees grew weak, and she struggled to stand upright and face him in the bright morning light.

      
The maid vanished, leaving the earl and his lady alone.

      
“Good morning, Countess.”

      
His expression was unreadable. He had used her Christian name last night. Somehow she forced her vocal cords to work. “You were gone when I awakened.” That was not what she'd intended to say. What had made her blurt out an accusation as if she wanted him to stay by her side? But she did, Rachel realized with a sinking feeling. It was too late to undo what had happened. If he regretted it, he must share at least a part of the blame…no, that was not strictly true.

      
Until she had knocked on his door, he had been content with their agreement. She had seduced him for her own devious ends, and now she would have to pay the price.

      
“I had a deal to think about,” Jason replied neutrally to her remark. He observed her tight expression, the guilty way she met his eyes, then let her gaze quickly slide past him. This was not virginal vaporing after doing one's duty for England. While he tried to gather his scattered thoughts, he moved closer to her. Damn, even the scent of her intoxicated him! She smelled of feminine musk, that soft honeysuckle perfume she wore…and now, of him.

      
“You can still sail home to America, Jason,” she said softly, unable to keep her eyes from a fleeting glance at the tangled bedcovers before she willed herself to meet his gaze once more.

      
“If you are so eager to be rid of me, why did you come to me last night?” he asked before considering the rashness of the question. The instant he asked it, the answer became apparent as his eyes followed the course of hers to the bed and its incriminating evidence. She had used him. But he admitted to himself that she had scarcely forced him to perform against his will.

      
He'd awakened with her clinging softly to him, still deep in sleep. She had looked so innocent and lovely in the morning light that he had almost succumbed to the overpowering urge to make love to her again. No woman had ever had such a hold on him, and it had frightened him into a swift retreat. He'd ridden across the city without finding any answer but to return to Rachel…his wife.

      
Before she could say anything in response to his remark, two footmen carrying pails of hot water followed his valet into the dressing room on the other side of his quarters, creating a commotion. Damn Gentry's efficiency!

      
Then her maid returned, calling out that the countess' bath awaited in her quarters. Stammering, Rachel said only, “We'll speak later,” then beat a hasty retreat to soak her aching limbs in heavenly warm water.

      
As she lay against the fan back of the tub, Rachel reviewed the events of the preceding night. Everything had gone according to plan…as long as that plan only included proof that theirs was a valid marriage. So much for Harry's silly fantasy about his being in love with her and wishing to remain by her side! He'd hied himself away from her before the sun even peeked over the horizon, leaving her alone in his bed, the rotter!

      
Now he would be angry with her. And truly, she could not blame him. She had broken their agreement by seducing him last night. Well, she supposed if he were ever inclined to wed a sturdy American woman, they could divorce. The thought of him in another woman's arms, murmuring another woman's name, made her heart ache. She rubbed her fingers in tiny circles on her temples, trying to soothe the matching ache in her head. How could he ever think to share with any other woman what they had experienced last night? How could he dare?

      
But Jason Beaumont had been a sailor. No doubt a womanizer with a willing wench in every port from Baltimore to Bali. His considerable skill in making love certainly attested to a surfeit of practice. She'd overheard enough whispered conversations among country wives and ladies of the ton to know that they often went miserably unfulfilled in the marriage bed. Until last night she had no idea of what that fulfillment was. Ignorance had indeed been bliss. Once initiated, how could she live without his touch?

      
“Well, I shall simply have to,” she murmured to herself, trying to be practical as she ran a soapy sponge down her leg. Even the soft brush of the sponge made her skin tingle. Damn the man, she wanted him again in spite of her soreness. Well, there were still several days before they parted company. Could she lure him again in route to Bristol? Perhaps with his freedom in sight, he might feel assured enough to dally a time or two.