Between the Devil and Ian Eversea (22 page)

“And enjoy your picnic.”

Chapter 22

“H
AS ANYONE EVER TOLD
you that your eyes are the most singular color?”

They were walking along, side by side, across parklands that seemed never to end. Green as far as the eye could see. Once, when she was a little girl, she’d thought Heaven might look like this, but now she hoped it didn’t. It was rather dull, all told. A bit safe.

And the fact that it seemed endless suddenly made her nervous. A bit like a marriage. The endless part. The “until death parts us” part.

She was somehow suddenly less certain about the safe part with regards to marriage.

“Not in so many words, no.”

“They are. And when you smile . . . they’re like stars.”

Stars.

Seeing stars.

He
would
have to say stars.

Would Lord Stanhope make her see stars? Could he? She glanced down at his hands surreptitiously. Beautifully groomed hands. Had he ever hammered a nail with them? Defended anyone with a weapon? Had they ever trembled when he touched a woman? Did he listen to a woman’s breathing in order to ascertain the kind of pleasure he could give her, and . . .

He interpreted her silence and her sudden pink color as bashfulness. “I do apologize, Miss Danforth. I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward.”

“Not at all. How could I object to such a thoughtful observation?”

She slid a sidelong look at the well-made young man. No lines at the corners of his eyes from squinting down a rifle or riding into the sun. His laugh was surprisingly hearty, and just a trifle irritating. Perhaps because it seemed too easily won, which seemed a very unfair thing to think. He laughed a good deal, too. Life was good to him; why shouldn’t he laugh?

He’d shown himself to have a rather literal sense of humor. Better than none, she supposed. But it had thus far been difficult for her to strike a spark from it when he was so very amiable. It was only in walking and talking with him that she realized how the past few years had shaped her, carving out unexpected nooks and crevices in her character. Surprisingly, she wasn’t as easy to navigate now. She wasn’t as easy to persuade.

One really only discovers one’s true self in contrast to other people, she realized.

Which is the only way one discovers one’s true needs.

She was tempted to ask Lord Stanhope if he had any scars that told the story of his life.

Scars. Which, coincidentally, rhymed with “stars.”

She drew in a sharp breath, remembering how she’d drawn a finger along the hard torso of a man, tracing a bit of his history, an event carved into his soul, while his fingers combed through her hair almost reverently, as though it was made of rare silk.

Have you ever put yourself in harm’s way for another person without thought for your own safety
,
Lord Stanhope?
She was tempted to ask him.

“Where did you go, just then, Miss Danforth?”

Blast. Lord Stanhope might be a bit tedious, but he was observant.

Which she supposed spoke well of him.

And
he was going to be a duke.

The word definitely still held its glamour. Fanning out from it was a world of possibility beyond this stretch of banal, tamed greenery.

“I was imagining my eyes as stars. Such a lovely thing to say.”

“You must hear that sort of thing all the time.”

She smiled enigmatically. “Not as prettily, I assure you.”

“Speaking of pretty, I have had the good fortune of purchasing a very fine gray mare. I think you and she would be beautifully matched.”

He was matching her to a horse?

Was he about to
give
her a horse?

God help her, she wouldn’t mind having her own horse here in Sussex.

Was he looking for a
wife
who would match this horse? This was a bit more troubling.

“Would you care to go riding some morning very soon?” he asked.

“I would love to, thank you. I enjoy it very much.”

She peered over her shoulder. In the distance, Genevieve had kicked off her slippers and appeared to be reading to her husband, who had removed his hat and was playing, idly, with the ends of a long ribbon that circled her dress just below her breasts. Catching it, releasing it, as the breeze fluttered it.

She smiled, but felt a sharp stab of envy. Genevieve was married and she was in love with a man many people probably considered unknowable.

Then again, one might describe Ian Eversea in just that way, too.

But he possessed the key to her senses. He was waging a campaign to have her that included no promises and no future. He was likely, as the duke had implied, broken in a way.

And as she smiled up at the future Duke of de Neauville, she wondered why it didn’t matter as much as it should.

O
NCE AT HOME
again, she sorted through the bouquets sent to her—five, this time!

She opened her mouth to ask the footmen to take a few of them down to the churchyard so the Ladies of the Society to Protect the Sussex Poor could distribute the bouquets again over naked graves.

But then she paused. And she thought about Olivia and Lyon Redmond and the loss of him, and she knew, suddenly, that the Olivia she now saw wasn’t the Olivia she’d been before he’d disappeared.

And that was what Ian had been trying to tell her. Ian loved his sister, and Ian knew what “gone” felt like and he’d trusted her with that information because he’d known she would understand. And oh, how she did.

She carefully removed all of the cards from the bouquets.

“Would you please tell Olivia Eversea that all of these have come for her?”

The footman nodded as if this were an ordinary request.

She made her way up the marble staircase, thoughtfully.

And then she settled in at the little writing desk and retrieved her list of requirements, which was beginning to look a trifle worn and dirty at the edges from all the handling it had endured. Then again, she’d learned a good deal in a short amount of time.

On the surface of things, Lord Stanhope seemed to meet many of the requirements.

Funny how each day revealed a few more that seemed absolutely critical.

But the quill called to her, so she picked it up, and twiddled it between her fingers, before carefully adding two new, quite essential points.

Must have a few interesting scars.

Makes me feel more alive than anyone ever before has.

And it was this last, above all, that was significant. She’d valued very little in the past year, but Ian Eversea had both brought her down to earth abruptly as well as shown her the stars.

On the surface of things what she was about to do couldn’t be more reckless. It was hardly the act of someone who had both feet planted firmly on the ground.

But it was one of the more reasoned decisions she’d made in a very long time.

Chapter 23

I
AN DIPPED IN AND
out of sleep like a bit of flotsam tossed on a shallow stream.

She should not come to him.

He
prayed
she wouldn’t come.

He woke again. Lay there in the silent dark. And felt like a bastard. An utterly worthless, lustful bastard. Who wanted what he wanted and had applied every trick of persuasion to get it.

The night stretched on.

And now he feared she wouldn’t come.

He hadn’t any right to do that to her. To use her own sensuality as a weapon to seduce, to persuade. To instill doubt in her future when he did, truly did, want her to be happy and to have what she wanted.

Surely he wished her a lifetime of happiness more than he wanted to make love to her.

He wasn’t certain.

But if he could have one night with her. Just one night. He would have a lifetime to repent his methods. From across the sea, of course.

And the irony was that this could very possibly be the duke’s revenge. To want beyond reason the one woman he shouldn’t, and couldn’t, and might never, have.

And as one of the longest nights he’d experienced since the war inched glacially by and she didn’t come, the heaviness of disappointment finally carried him off to sleep like a stone hurled into the deep.

Sometime later—it was still dark—he awoke again and stirred. He tilted his head to the side; the wick of his lantern had burned low.

He turned his head again toward the window and froze.

She was sitting on the foot of his bed.

They stared at each other a good long time in silence.

“Am I dreaming?” he asked.

An eternity, which was likely only a few seconds, passed before she spoke.

“No.” In a whisper. Hesitant. A trifle fearful. A trifle amazed.

She was there.

Wordlessly, very slowly, he pushed the blankets away from his body. He moved to her, silently. And without preamble reached for her night rail and slowly lifted it off over her head.

Her arms went up, assisting him, fell again.

She sat nude before him, her heart beating so loud the blood whooshed in her ears.

And he eased her backward, slowly, to the bed.

Her arms went around his neck. And oh, the glory of his skin touching hers. Of the heat and strength and weight of his body. She clung to him, savored the chafe of her nipples against the coarse hair scattered over his chest. He buried his face in her throat and sighed, placed a soft, hot kiss beneath her ear, and she felt herself begin to melt, to surrender utterly. And then he moved his lips to the delicate bones at the base of it, and she arched back and threaded her fingers through his incongruously soft, fine hair. She found his ears and traced them, trailed her fingers over the immense hard curve of his shoulder. Rejoicing in the fact that there was so much of him to discover.

And a sort of wildness overcame the two of them, as if nudity had turned them into the first man and woman and sex was their very first discovery.

There was to be no narration, no finesse, no coddling. He covered her as if she were a longtime lover, and she surrendered, as if in a dream, not knowing where it would lead, only that she would go wherever he wanted to take her. And in the dark silence it only seemed right, to make sense.

He found her lips, and the kiss was savage and hungry and deep, almost punishing, as if he’d waited a lifetime for this very kiss, as if she’d deprived him of the very thing he needed to survive. She cupped the back of his head with her hands and yielded to the heady dark sweetness of his mouth, stroked his hair, to soothe, to gentle him, and the kiss eased into something more languorous, more penetrating, more profound. Somehow she felt it everywhere in her body, stealing into her veins like opium. Slow, slow. As if in slowing it they could make time itself their slave, and it would stop for as long as they wanted this moment to last.

He gently pulled his mouth away and rested his forehead against hers. His breath rushed out hot and hoarse. She felt the rise and fall of shoulders.

“How I’ve wanted you.” Half whisper, half groan, against her mouth.

He slid his lips down along the arch of her throat, lower, lower, until his mouth found her nipple and circled it hard, with a sinewy tongue.

She gasped and arched, and he did it again, then closed his mouth over it and sucked.

“Oh, God, Ian.”
A ragged whisper.

He did it again, moving to her other breast, and then his mouth went traveling, down, down, down the seam that divided her ribs, his lips and tongue and breath stopping just long enough to set every cell in its path on fire.

He was shockingly skilled. Every bit of the swift, sensual assault was deliberate, new, devastating. With his tongue, his fingertips, the slide of his palm, sensation built upon sensation, buffeting her, ensnaring her, turning her into a creature whose only purpose was to accept pleasure. She writhed beneath him, moaning softly.

He dipped his tongue into her navel, slid his hands over the soft curve of her belly, lifted her up and then parted her thighs with his hands and touched his tongue to the silky hot wetness between her legs.

She jerked at the sensation; a glorious shock.

But he didn’t stop. His fingers played lightly, lightly, on the delicate skin inside her thighs as his tongue delved and stroked and circled, quickly and lightly, then slowly and hard.

She whimpered. Dear God, it was like no pleasure she’d ever before imagined. She rocked her hips in time to the thrusts of his tongue. And she could feel herself hurtling headlong into the unknown. Her words came in raw desperate sobbing shreds.

“I can’t bear it . . . oh please . . . I need . . .”

She shattered in a hoarse cry, bowing upward from the force of it, and she nearly blacked out as her body bucked in the throes of it.

He raised himself over her with his arms, and with one hand guided his cock into her.

The shock of him filling her threw her head back on a gasp. He pulled her thigh up around his waist and thrust again, slowly. He dipped to kiss her, gently; he licked her nipple as he thrust and dove, almost languidly.

He withdrew. And then filled her again. The rhythm built, and with it that indefinable insistent, delicious pressure, beginning on the periphery of her senses. And with each thrust it gathered, banking, into something so almost unendurably blissful she knew it could only be released in a scream.

And then their bodies collided hard as his hips drove his cock swiftly, deeply, into her, the rhythm of his thrusts swift and pounding, his hoarse breathing and muttered oaths and her own soft cries mingling as she dug into his shoulders with her nails and their bodies raced toward release.

She threw her head back. “Please, Ian . . . please . . . I’m . . .”

He went rigid over her, and she heard his ragged cry of something almost like triumph as his release rocked his body.

H
E LOWERED HIMSELF
carefully. Rolled to the side of her, then collected her in the crook of his arm. Her skin, its silkiness, undid him.

“You are beautiful,” he murmured.

“A compliment,” she murmured. “Wonders never do cease.”

He breathed into the sweetness of her hair. He pushed the silky mass of it aside and kissed her neck, and she sighed. He wrapped his arms around her body, and for a time they lay quietly. He savored the rise and fall, rise and fall, of her rib cage beneath his hands. They said not a word.

Inevitably, his hands began to wander. A leisurely journey, sliding over the soft mound of her belly, then delicately up her rib cage to her breasts. He cupped them in his hands and feathered strokes over them. Again, and again. Like a man fanning flames. Reveling in the satiny texture of her skin. Reveling in the tension he felt in her spine as desire tightened her muscles, shortened her breath, then made tatters of it. Reveling in the way she arched like a cat into his hands. She was devastatingly sensual and abandoned; she took to receiving pleasure with the instinct of a beautiful animal, and it only made him want to give her more and more and still more, and to take her every way he could.

And soon she was rippling beneath his touch, her buttocks circling hard against his hard cock. He slid his hand down over her spine and slipped it between her thighs, and his fingers slid into her silky wetness. She groaned with the pleasure of it and parted her thighs a little more, begging for more.

His hunger for her seemed fathomless. The more he took, the more he wanted.

He nipped the back of her neck and moved gently away from her, tipping her onto her stomach.

He dragged his palms down her back, then raised her hips, and unquestioningly she moved with him, trusting. He pressed a kiss at the sweet dip of skin at the base of her spine and slid his hands over her arse. He nipped one cheek gently, as if it were a peach.

And then he rose up and slid his cock between her legs, teasing her, teasing himself.

“You feel . . . so good, Tansy.”

She moaned softly, and he could feel her flesh throb against him.

He did it again, sliding slowly, gently. Another tease.

She jerked from the pleasure, her fingers curling into the counterpane.

“Ian, I will
die
if you don’t . . . please . . . more . . .
faster . . .”

And then he slid into her, quickly and deeply, and he could feel her gasp, and tense. And then he withdrew, slowly, so slowly, allowing her to feel every inch of him.

She moaned, and hissed in a breath, and swore something softly.

“Beg me, Tansy,” he whispered.

“
Please
, Ian. Please.
Faster
, please.”

He drove himself into her, pulling her hips up hard against him, burying himself to the hilt, then sliding slowly from her.

“Please . . .” She rocked her hips against him. Nearly sobbing from the pleasure, from the sensual torture. “I’m so
close . . .”

He did it again. Slowly. A sensual sadist.

And again.

And then he could no longer tease her, because desire had him in its teeth now. He was rigid and shaking and perspiring from the effort of control.

And so he freed them both.

He drove into her, swiftly, his hips rocking hard as he pulled her hips up against him, burying himself deeply in her faster and faster still, a relentless pounding, a mad, greedy hunger.

“Oh God . . . Oh God . . .”

She screamed her release into the counterpane, thumping it with her fists as he drove himself toward his. His release ripped him from his body, nearly blacked his consciousness. He heard his own guttural cry as if from another planet. He thought he may have said her name.

“
I
F
I
HAD
known . . .” she whispered, tangling her fingers in the fine hair scattered over his chest. Then trailing her fingers toward the hollow of his armpit. He had one arm thrown over his head.

“If you had known . . . ?” he prompted softly.

Her cheek was against his chest, and she could feel the steady thump, thump, thump of his heart beneath her cheek. An oddly precious, intimate sound. And there was the scar, the reminder that he was human and vulnerable and someone had nearly killed him.

She tensed at this, and tightened her grip a little, pulling a few of his hairs.

“Ow,” he said softly.

“Sorry.”

“Finish your sentence.”

“How good this was . . .”

“You might have skipped being a well-bred heiress and gone straight onto being a scarlet woman?”

“Then again, perhaps not. I have it on good authority that not every man is as good at this sort of thing.”

“A lot of men just climb on top and go at it.”

“What a waste of so many marvelous body parts.”

He laughed softly.

She kissed him on his chest. On his
beautiful torso
.

“That feels good,” he murmured. Encouraging.

She drew her tongue down the seam that divided his ribs, and let her hands trail after, remembering how he’d done it to her, and how it had lit her every cell on fire.

He stirred and sighed, his fingers stroking through her hair.

“That’s good,” he confirmed on a murmur. “Don’t stop.”

She continued her progress to his flat stomach, stroking over it with delicate fingers. Lingering. Teasing. Watching, as he did, for the tension of his muscles, for the change in his breathing, in order to know exactly how to pleasure him.

She dipped her tongue into his navel, tasted salt.

His breathing was beginning to come short. His cock stirred and leaped a little as it grew harder.

And so she moved her mouth there, and drew her tongue hard and slowly down along it.

“Christ . . .”
and then he swore something considerably more filthy than that.

She circled the head of it with her tongue and drew his cock into her mouth. And sucked.

He moaned softly, and his hands went down to tangle in her hair.

And the power to give him pleasure stirred again the desire in her. It seemed fathomless. Insatiable.