Winter Blockbuster 2012 (73 page)

‘Enough, fairest Anna,’ he said, and his voice was deep,
rough and shaking. He pulled her to her feet and reeled her body in close to his again, his arms wrapping hard around her waist. ‘Or this night will be over before it even begins.’

Anna took his face between her hands and found that she was also shaking. They were both trembling from the terrible storm of their need for each other.

‘I want to please you,’ she whispered. Just as he had pleased her. She wanted no debt outstanding between them.

‘You please me more than I could ever have dreamed possible,’ he said, and kissed the tip of her nose, the curve of her cheekbone. ‘But I do want this night to last.’

He lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the waiting bed. He laid her down amid the soft, rose-scented bedclothes, and Anna reached out for him to pull him down with her. But he evaded her arms and slid his touch slowly down the length of her body. He touched the flare of her waist, the soft curve of her hip, her outstretched leg where her skirts fell back in a froth of lace and linen and velvet.

He kissed her ankle, his mouth hot through the fine silk stocking, and slid her velvet shoe from her foot. Anna raised herself on her elbows to watch him, breathless as she waited to see what he would do—what he would kiss next. He tossed the shoe away, like her ruff, and slowly kissed a path up her leg, biting at the soft spot behind her knee, the angle of her thigh, until he came to the bare skin above her garter.

He untied the scrap of satin and carefully unrolled the stocking until it drifted away from her foot.

She felt his hot, open-mouthed kiss on the slight indentation where her garter had been tied, so close to the curls between her thighs. He tasted it, soothed it with his tongue, and lightly blew on those wet curls.

Anna fell back to the bed, sinking deeper into the soft feather mattress, the decadent fine sheets. Rob dispensed
with her other shoe and stocking and bit at the tender inside of her thigh. He pressed a kiss to her damp seam, but he didn’t plunge deeper there, as she longed for him to do. Instead, he eased himself up along her body and nuzzled at the side of her neck as he untied her sleeves and undid her bodice.

He was most adept at divesting a woman of elaborate clothes, Anna thought hazily. Soon she wore only her thin linen chemise.

But he was much too overdressed. She sat up and pushed him back to the bed, straddling him as she unbuttoned his doublet and stripped it away from him. She tugged his shirt over his head and it drifted down to tangle with the blankets.

She studied his bare chest, the hard planes of fine, glistening bronzed skin over powerful muscles, the faint sprinkling of dark, curling hair that arrowed down to his loosened breeches. He was so wonderfully beautiful, with his broad shoulders and narrow hips, his skin glistening with the sweat of their active exertions. She could hardly believe that he was hers, even for this night.

She laid her hands lightly on his shoulders, feeling the heat and vitality of him against her, seeping into her, until it thawed that hard knot of ice she had carried with her ever since her marriage. She let her touch drift over him wonderingly, feeling every inch of him, the roughness of his hair, the hard, pebbled flat nipple that puckered under her hand, the flat hardness of his stomach.

His hands closed over her hips and he swung her down to the bed, his body covering hers as their mouths met hungrily.

He stripped away her chemise and left her completely bare to him. No one had ever seen her entire body naked before, and she suddenly felt ridiculously shy. She tore her lips from his and tried to turn away, but he wouldn’t let her. His fingers were gentle, caressing, but inescapable as he held her still for his study.

‘You are so beautiful, Anna,’ he said, kissing the curve of her shoulder. ‘Like a goddess of the night.’

And suddenly she felt beautiful. She felt free and light, totally wanton. She wrapped her legs around his waist and tugged him closer for another eager kiss. The hot brush of his roughened, ink-stained fingers on her sensitive flesh made her cry out at the flood of sensation.

Rob covered her mouth with his and caught her cry as he gave a deft twist of his hips and slid inside her, deep and slow. It had been a long while since she had coupled with a man, and at first the stretching, tight sensation of fullness felt very strange. As if he sensed this, he went very still for a moment. He braced himself above her and let her body adjust to his invasion, his breath harsh and alluring against her ear.

But once she was accustomed to the feeling it was far, far better than she remembered, and a deep, growing sensation of tingling delight grew where his body was joined to hers. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he drew back slowly, slowly, inch by inch, until she feared he would leave her. Then he thrust forward again, deeper and faster.

Anna rocked against him, drawing him even deeper, even closer. So close it seemed as if, for one vivid instant, their souls touched and she could
see
him. See his damaged, lonely, seeking self that was so much like her own secret self.

Then he drew back and thrust forward again, and that glimpse was lost in a burning sun shower of light. Anna cried out and he moved faster, harder, thrusting against her as they both desperately sought the relief they craved so very much and that they knew could only be found together. She wrapped herself close around him, meeting his every movement, his every stroke, until that climax broke inside her and she almost screamed with the burning force of it.

Rob caught her scream with his mouth, taking it deep inside
him and answering it with his own ecstatic shout. She felt the warmth of his release in her, and the way his back arched like a taut bowstring under her hands. His head fell back, his neck muscles corded with the force of his pleasure.

‘Anna, Anna,’ he groaned. Then he fell to the bed beside her, their arms and legs still tangled, their breath laboured in the humid, perfumed air around them.

He lay on his stomach, his face hidden from her along with his emotions. Anna struggled to catch her breath, to catch
herself
as she tumbled back down from the sun. Her whole body trembled and the force of her feelings almost frightened her. She wanted to laugh and weep all at the same time.

Beside her, Rob’s breath slowly grew steadier, his legs heavy on hers, and she thought he slept. She knew she should sleep, too—dawn would come soon enough, and the party would resume. Something had been said about riding out to go hawking, and she needed energy for such exercise. Yet even though she felt heavy with exhaustion, spent with passion, her mind soared and fizzed, and she knew she would not sleep yet.

She slowly sat up on the edge of the bed, careful not to wake Rob. If he woke, if he spoke to her, she would hardly know what to say to him. Her feelings were so tangled and knotted inside her that she didn’t know what she felt. She no longer knew how to protect herself.

She caught up her chemise from the floor and took it with her to the half-open window. The night breeze felt wondrously cool on her bare, heated skin, and she let it wash over her like a cleansing tide. The moon glowed down on the slumbering garden, turning it into a shimmering, silent fairyland.

She liked the silence—the way it blanketed everything in a mysterious peace. It was never quiet in Southwark, and almost never peaceful. It slowly calmed her heart, and she
breathed it all in deeply. She closed her eyes and let the peace inside.

She heard the rustle of bedclothes behind her, and the soft sound of Rob’s bare feet as he crossed the floor, but she didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t dare, for fear the silent spell would shatter.

He gently swept her hair from her back and let it fall over her shoulder as he kissed the nape of her neck and wrapped his arms around her waist. He drew her back against his body, the two of them naked as the night curled around them.

‘Can’t you sleep?’ he asked softly, as if he also feared to shatter the spell.

‘Not yet. I wanted to look at the moon again. It always seems to hide behind the clouds and dirt in Southwark—unless you are with me to coax it to appear.’

‘Hart Castle is a pretty place.’

‘Very pretty, indeed. Edward and Elizabeth are fortunate.’

‘Have you ever wanted a home like this?’

Anna laughed. ‘Of course I have. But that would be like wishing to possess that moon. A house like this—it is not for a woman such as me: a poor widow, the daughter of a man whose coin comes from theatres and bawdy houses.’

‘Nor for a poor, wandering actor like me,’ Rob said ruefully. ‘Yet surely it’s good to have aspirations and dreams, no matter how moon-mad? To have something to desire? Don’t you think?’

Anna shivered as she felt his warm mouth nibble at her neck and drift lower, over her shoulder and her naked back. His hands crept up to caress the soft underside of her breasts and her eyes drifted closed. Just as she started to fall back against him she felt his whole body stiffen and his head came up.

‘Anna, what is this?’ he said roughly.

And she remembered. The scars—the marks no one had
ever seen. How could she have forgotten long enough for him to find them? It was as if a sudden cold rain doused the dreamlike night.

She drew away from him and tugged the chemise over her head, as if hiding them could make them vanish. ‘‘Tis nothing.’

Rob took her arm and turned her to face him. He wouldn’t let her turn away. ‘They are whip marks.’

‘Aye. A gift from my husband. But they are old.’ And the memories felt more distant with every minute. Robert made her feel new, reborn.

‘It does not matter how old they are,’ he said, and she heard the hard, sharp edge of anger glinting through his words like a sword. ‘He hurt you—he left scars on your skin.’

‘It is a wife’s lot,’ Anna said bitterly, repeating what everyone had told her when Charles had got drunk and beat her—even her father. Despite the sadness in his eyes then, he had sent her back to her husband. He’d said he had no choice.

Rob was the first person ever to show such anger over how she had once been treated, and it made her feel sad all over again—and heartened.

‘Nay, it is not,’ he said, that fury even harder and brighter. ‘How dare he do this to you? If I had been there …’

‘If you had been there?’

‘I would have killed him,’ he said, and there was the solid ring of truth to those stark, simple words.

‘I had no knight to ride to my rescue then,’ she said, her throat dry with the tears she had held back for years. ‘But I confess—I felt nothing but relief when he died.’

Rob drew her closer, slowly, gently, until she could rest her head against his chest and close her eyes. There in his arms, in his protective silence, she at last felt those bitter days of
the past drop away and free her from their hard talons. They were gone,
really
gone, and she was here now with Robert.

Rob Alden was a dangerous man in many ways. She knew that well. He served Walsingham, which meant great secrecy and peril, and he brawled and fought—she had seen the wounds of that. He also threatened to invade her guarded heart, to make her care about him, want him in ways beyond the bedchamber—ways he couldn’t be hers. But he was not cruel in the way Charles Barrett had been. He took not the slightest pleasure from her pain, and in that she could be safe with him.

Rob softly kissed the top of her head and she felt him smooth her hair. Gentle, soothing movements, so at odds with that cold fury in his voice—
I would have killed him
.

‘How could your father have married you to such a villain?’ he demanded.

‘My father could not have stopped such a headstrong, silly girl as I was,’ Anna said with a laugh. ‘Charles was handsome and charming—though not as charming as you, Rob Alden. And he promised to take me away from Southwark, give me a new life. I was foolishly certain I knew what I was doing. But when we married and I left my father’s house it all changed.’

Rob took her hand and led her to sit down on the edge of the bed. She shivered, though whether from the night breeze or the old memories she couldn’t tell. He wrapped his doublet around her shoulders and she drew it close to her. Its soft, fine folds still smelled of him—clean mint and dark spice.

Strangely, even that made her feel safer. Wrapped around with a new armour that kept the past away.

He sat down beside her. ‘He was not what you thought?’

Anna shook her head. ‘In London he was charming and full of good humour. He flattered me and I was silly enough
to let him. But once I was his wife he became so jealous and angry. He did not like me to leave the house, and when I had to go to market he made me bind my hair tight and leave off my London-style dresses.’

‘And wear grey,’ Rob said roughly.

‘Aye. I could never be perfect enough, modest enough for him, though. And then he would hit me.’ Anna pulled the doublet even closer over her shoulders. ‘Fortunately we were not so long married. When he was buried, I sold what I could and used the coin to return to Southwark for good. I told my father we wouldn’t speak of it, that our lives would go on as if I had never married. I’ve never talked about it—until now.’

‘Then you honour me with your secrets, Anna.’ Rob slid behind her on the bed and wrapped his arms and legs around her to hold her close. He gently urged her to lean back against him, to let him hold her.

At first she leaned away, still caught by the old memories, the thin bonds that still held her to the past. But then she sighed and relaxed into his arms, and it was as if those last bonds snapped and she was really free.

Rob gently rocked her in his embrace, soothing her, and she closed her eyes. She hadn’t felt so warm, so content, in a very long time—maybe never. She knew very well Rob could never be truly hers—not to keep. He was a vagabond actor and writer with troubles of his own, not likely to love a woman such as her. But he had given her the gift of listening to her,
really
listening, and had helped free her from those old ghosts.