Clandestine (31 page)

At last she slipped into sleep.

Guy watched her steady breathing for a few moments.

In spite of his grief for her, for himself, for Rachel, he still desired Sarah with a bone-deep passion. Everything about her was lovely to him. The pretty curl at the corner of her reddened nostrils. The shading of color in her lashes, from chocolate to sand with amber at the center, like the coat of a tabby cat. Her fair, frail skin, even when blotched by tears. The dusting of freckles marked her cheeks like shreds of leaf shadow.

What the hell was beauty, anyway? The porcelain doll he had been obsessed with in Hampstead? Or this passionate, sensuous woman, all cream and warm amber? A woman whose face betrayed every impulse of her heart: clever and caring and witty?

She sighed in her sleep and snuggled into the pillows. Her hair was glorious, rich and soft, a copper mass rippling across the pillows like red sand just abandoned by a wave.

All ladies combed out their hair at night, then braided it again into one long, loose plait.

Guy found her brush lying on the washstand, but he didn't see a ribbon and he would not go through her bags without permission. So he tore a thin strip from the edge of his handkerchief. With infinite care, his heart bruised and open, he brushed her hair until it lay even and smooth, then he wove a single plait and tied it with his makeshift ribbon.

Because he had thought it simpler to appear to the world as man and wife, Guy had reserved adjoining rooms. The door between them could be locked, and he had made sure earlier that the key was on her side. To remove her shoes and brush out her hair was improper enough. To undress her further was quite out of the question.

Guy pulled the coverlet up to her chin and closed the shutters over the window to plunge her room into darkness. No doubt Sarah would wake again later, so he left a single candle burning beside the bed before he strode into the adjoining chamber, where his own bed waited.

How the hell had he ever thought for one moment that he might be in love with Rachel? He pulled off his cravat and opened his shirt collar, then stood for a long time at the window as the summer night slowly stole color from the day.

Beyond the port buildings, a thin web of masts and rigging, where the tall ships rode at anchor out in the deep water, wrote their mysteries across the sunset.

G
UY
woke to a glimmer of starlight, a slight rustle, and the click of a latch. Instantly he was fully alert. He reached out silently to the table beside the bed, where his pistol lay next to the unlit candle. He froze, his heart thundering.

His pulse launched into a quite different rhythm of alarm as his eyes began to focus.

Something white wavered in front of the open doorway of the adjoining bedroom.

His nostrils opened on a faint hint of green apples.

He pushed up in the bed, keeping the covers wrapped about his waist. He was naked. He always slept naked.

Ivory silk fell in long drapes to her ankles. The single, fat plait hung over one shoulder. She stepped forward, her bare feet soft on the rug, and closed the door behind her.

As the White Lady had moved over the waters of the lake, Sarah walked up to his bedside.

The lion roared.

Her breath came fast and light. The nightgown rose and fell over her breasts. Her gaze locked onto his bare shoulders, and her eyes opened like a tiger's in the dark.

“Guy?” she asked softly. “You're awake?”

He thrust tousled hair back from his forehead with one hand and sprawled back against the pillows, desire and shock coalescing into one white-hot center.

“More than awake.”

“Ah,” she said. “You realize, then, that I did not come to talk?”

Choked by the question, he reached out to seize the tinderbox. The darkness was too dangerous. Her fingers closed about his wrist. Impetuous, his penis throbbed into life, flooding him with rash desire.

“No,” she said. “The dark is better.”

He lay still for a moment, all of his senses concentrated on her touch. His tendons and bones jutted harshly against the yielding flesh of her palm. Hot blood pumped through his veins.

“Sarah.”

He heard her name as if someone else spoke it: a stranger, a man standing on the edge of a precipice. Yet his shoulders sprouted wings, and power coursed through his limbs with the strength to fly him straight into the fiery core of the sun.

For another split second she stood without moving, her breath ragged on the night air, her fingers cool on his wrist. He brought them to his lips. She surrendered her hand softly as he unfolded her fingers, one by one, to kiss the palm. Softly, softly—though his pulse thundered—he tasted the sweetly resilient inside of her wrist.

Green apples and woman.

Her breath caught. She closed her eyes and dropped her head back. He cupped her hand against his cheek, and she spread her fingers to push them back into his hair, the tips tingling across his scalp.

His erection tented the covers over his lap, and his heart soared.

She had come to him. She loved him. She would marry him.

He could scarcely believe it.

“This means yes?” he asked.

Her smile ghosted in the dark. Her breasts moved softly beneath the loose nightgown.

She slid her palm over his bare shoulder and down his arm to clasp his right hand. She, in her turn, brought his hand to her mouth. Her lips pressed into the center of his palm, finding the one vulnerable, miraculously tender spot in any human hand.

Her tongue touched. Wet and warm, erotic as hell.

“Yes,” she whispered against his palm. “Of course this means yes.”

She released his fingers. Starlight glimmered over the white gown as she grasped it in both hands and slowly pulled it up over her head.

Small white feet, the arch erotic and shadowed. Neatly turned ankles and smoothly curved calves. A passionate swell of female thighs and perfect female belly. An arch of ribs and the profile of a breast that rose and fell, white and round and tipped with a nipple that puckered in the cool air. His gaze riveted there in an explosion of desire as she dropped the gown to the floor.

Guy thought he might climax on the spot. He heard himself draw in a harsh breath, as if wounded.

She was lovely, lovely, lovelier than orchids in starlight, yet just as ephemeral, just as voluptuous, and he had wanted her for such a very long time.

Her braid swung as she sat down on the edge of the bed. A pearly sheen of starlight caressed her naked shoulders and arms.

Ringing with a bright, wild joy, he flipped back the edge of the covers.

“You'll get cold,” he said.

“No,” she replied. “Somehow I don't think so.”

His soul resounded with craving as his body thundered its eager demands.

Yet as she slipped beneath the covers, her chill skin burned his hot flesh, so Guy caught her in his arms to cradle her head on his shoulder. She draped one leg over his. He trawled his fingers down the long curve of her flank, over the enticing swell of her hip.

Words fled, thought fled, to be replaced only by this stunning indulgence, the single-minded male delight in softness and woman and curves, everything perfect, everything right.

She ran her palm across his chest and over his arms, as if she marveled at his body. She trailed her fingertips down the centerline of his belly, as if she wanted only to intensify his pleasure.

In an agony of desire he caught her head in both hands and kissed her: rolled her onto her back, her head nestled in pillows, and kissed her hot, open mouth. Her breasts pressed beneath his chest. Her legs sprawled beneath his. His erection thrust, hot and firm, against her belly, seeking an almost unbearable pleasure.

Desperate that he might yet fail her, he tried to make himself wait, breaking the kiss while he filled his hands with her breasts, heavy and full. Like pebbles, her nipples rolled beneath his seeking fingertips. On the edge of control, he lowered his head to suckle them: sweet, sweet, rough beneath his tongue, all puckered feminine resilience.

She sighed and writhed and cried out, her fingers gripping his hair. Her breathing broke, laboring for air, as she gasped.

“Yes, yes, yes…”

His mind blank, his ears filled with the roar of the pride, he found her moisture. She opened to his plunge and encompassed him.

She was honeyed and swollen and slippery. In every sweet spot where flesh touched flesh, flames burned, scorching him. His skin on fire, Guy tossed back the covers and reared up on his knees, lifting her hips to meet his.

Her plait had unraveled, spilling her hair over the pillows. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed, her mouth open in the slightest of snarls as she panted in rhythm with his thrusts. Never, never, had he seen anything so lovely.

He had desired her for so long. He wanted it to be perfect. Yet she moaned and lifted her hips to grind against his body, and—as his lungs emptied and his head fell back—his pleasure culminated in an intense rush of ecstasy, and it was over.

Damnation! Damnation! Like a callow boy, he had finished too soon and left his lover behind: his lover, his affianced wife, his Sarah.

Guy felt like laughing and fighting, bawling and cursing. Bliss and disappointment and mortification all concentrated into one wildly imperfect delight.

Sarah sighed and pulled him down to lie on top of her with her arms tight about his back, her head turned sideways on the pillow. She still held him deep inside her body, slick now on their combined moisture. Her breath puffed fast and hot in his ear.

“I'm sorry,” he whispered, bracing himself on both elbows so that he wouldn't crush her. “I wanted that to be the most memorable—”

She wriggled and smiled up at him, her face hazy in the starlight.

“Yes,” she said. “It was. It still is. Don't stop now!”

He dropped his head forward onto her shoulder and laughed.

He was still hard.

His desire still flamed, unabated. In spite of that humiliatingly fast climax, he wanted her so much that he was still hard.

Without withdrawing, he began to thrust again. This time every moment dawdled and danced. Every exquisite sensation lingered to be savored. Guy was a god of potency. A man-bird soaring on waxen wings to the sun.

She trembled and gasped, hot breath, hot flesh, as she climaxed.

And though he felt the intensity of her pleasure, he was still hard: a lion roaring his triumph across the hot plains of a secret, dark country, filled with rapture.

He was still hard.

Guy rolled her on top to let her ride him, his hands on her hips to help guide her movements. She dropped her head back and worked for her own pleasure as he caught her breasts in both hands, supporting their weight, flicking his thumbs over the hard tips, until she cried out and climaxed again.

She fell forward to press herself against him and kissed him, open-mouthed. Her body burned against his, sliding where slick flesh met slick flesh. Her nipples rubbed against the hair on his chest. And he was still hard.

He felt like shouting at the top of his lungs. He ached with bliss—sweat ran down his spine—yet sweetly, sweetly, she began to move against him again, drawing him even deeper into her body.

This time, just before his climax started to build its impetuous demand, he pulled out and turned her over. Her hair rioted across the pillows, the mutiny of crinkled waves glinting faintly in the starlight. Yet she glanced shyly up at him over her shoulder, a faint puzzlement in her eyes. Her obvious confusion only fired his desire.

He leaned forward to whisper against her damp hair. “Trust me. You'll like it.”

“Like what?”

“Kneel here,” he said gently. “Like this.”

He nested the pillows and positioned her. She hesitated for only a moment before she did as he asked. Then, cupped against her back, his belly against her buttocks like two spoons in a drawer, he slid into her again, once again seeking the mouth of her womb.

Lovely. Lovely. Lovely. Carnal and wicked and passionate. Her erotic intensity stunned him. He feasted on the sight of her round woman's bottom curved like the waist of a violin as it sloped up into her slim back. Her pretty spine and shoulders and arms, white beneath her mass of tangled hair.

Guy leaned forward and lifted her, supporting her in his arms. He whispered his ardor and love—a jumble of meaningless syllables, broken by his roaring breath—into her ears.

And this time he was too late to stop himself. Pleasure spilled in a concentration so great that he shouted. And she was there with him, convulsing and convulsing deep inside. Dark sensations rippled up and down the length of his shaft. He had taken her with him to ecstasy.

Slick with sweat, they collapsed together to the bed.

Guy pulled up the covers and gathered her softness against his own body. Wonder filled him so deeply that he didn't know if he could ever be coherent again.