A Secret Passion (9 page)

“What on earth do you think you are doing, my lord?”

“Trying to get my face slapped, Madam.”

“Well, I should think…” she started.

“No, don’t think,” he interrupted. The earl’s shadow fell across her face as his warm breath reached her cheek, giving her ample time to draw back. When she did not, his full lips met hers as he drew her into the circle of his arms. Her mind raced with shock as the reality of the scene unfolded. She must take hold of herself. But she could not. The effort to say no was too far away. She felt drugged by the raw, male, familiar smell of him. In embarrassment, she felt his tongue curl against her own and tasted brandy. Harry had never kissed her like that. His kisses had always been chaste and brief. This was intoxicating and knee-weakening. His hands were loosening her gown while he looked into her eyes. She felt paralyzed by the excess of emotions coursing through her.

“Are you more inclined now, Jane?” he asked, whispering into her ear as he placed one of her hands on his shoulder. The intimacy of hearing her given name on his lips was almost more provocative than what he asked.

She was too embarrassed to answer. All she knew, for some unfathomable reason, was that she would not back down now.

He lowered the edges of her dress and shift and sucked in his breath. He seemed almost dazed, Jane saw, when he leaned down to taste the tip of her breast. His hand rose to trace the contours of the other. The twin sensations of overwhelming shyness and an unfurling desire made her stand perfectly still. He suckled her and gently touched the sensitive tips with the palm of his hand. Jane felt a rush of heat and a painful longing run through the core of her body as his rough face etched itself on her breasts. She stopped breathing as she combed her fingers through his thick black silky hair and arched her back.

Rolfe paused and looked up at her with half-closed eyes. “You must tell me to stop if you so desire.” She stared back at him.

“I insist, my lord…” she whispered.

“You must say it with more force, Mrs. Lovering,” he said dryly.

“Are you intoxicated, my lord?” she retorted with as much dignity as she could muster, considering her state of undress.

He smiled and picked her up like a child then made his way through the passage to lay her on the bed in the darkened room. He pushed off his coat and undid his white neckcloth. As he pulled the linen shirt over his head, she noticed the large bulge in his buff-colored breeches. She felt goose bumps on her arms as fear waged war with desire.

He leaned over the bed and peeled back the layer upon layer of dress clothes, petticoats, underclothes, and her shift until she lay naked upon the bedcovers. She watched his gray eyes dilate with passion as he drew the pins from her hair. Waves of her hair fell past her shoulders onto the pillow.

He sighed. “I want you. I want all of you right now.”

She lay still on the silk comforter, her mind and body torn between an unknown, intense need and complete embarrassment.

In a haze, she remembered spying on a stallion and her mare in heat in the middle of the hot summer stable when she was fourteen years old. She had stared in shock and wonder as the stallion nipped the mare on the shoulder, forcing her to submit to the mounting. Then, the earsplitting squeals from the animals as the male entered and pumped his seed into the female. She had stayed hidden long after the men overseeing the breeding session had separated the animals and departed. She loved her horse and had wanted to know everything about her. But it had been more than she could have imagined. And now she wondered how she would endure this interlude, which was sure to embody pain.

Rolfe looked into her half-closed aquamarine eyes as he edged onto the bed and pulled her body close to his. He wondered how much of his intense attraction to her was due to his five years of self-imposed celibacy. His mouth followed the trail left by his hands as he discovered her body. As he kissed her soft, small waist, his hands caressed her slim, firm thighs. Her legs trembled as his fingers moved up along her inner thighs and pushed them apart. When he reached the downy, darker curls of her femininity, she gasped. He massaged the center of her womanhood and was gratified to feel wetness. He leaned forward to tease the tip of her high, full breast to tautness again with his lips and heard her indrawn breath. She lay silently as he tried to enter her with two fingers. He was stilled by the realization of untried tightness. His mind reeled, and for the first time in many years, he felt very unsure of himself.

But then, it could not be true, he reasoned. He knew it could not. She was a widow. As he probed further, he could feel her stiffen.

He withdrew his fingers and sat up. He leaned over her to pick up his fine lawn shirt off the floor and drew it over his head. “Mrs. Lovering, we must stop this nonsense, immediately.” He paused before adding, “I do not take pleasure in deflowering virgins. And I am not on the marriage mart.”

She lay on the bed and looked up at him. “I would not have you as a husband, my lord,” she said low. “But you yourself brought me here, and proposed a rendezvous not long ago. Have you forgotten?”

“You are an innocent. I should have recognized the signs.”

“You said I was a widow and you a widower. You suggested a liaison, and now you lack courage? Is that it?”

His eyes drifted to her beautiful breasts once more, and he felt drugged as he once again cupped the curls of her womanhood. A jolt of raw desire raged through his body when he felt a rush of dampness. He swore and raised himself from the bed to strip off his boots and breeches and to take off his shirt for the second time. In the dark, faraway recesses of his mind, he knew he would come to regret this inability to deny himself.

He spied apprehension in her eyes at his nakedness. As he moved onto the bed again and eased his body close to hers, she tensed.

“Please tell me what to expect,” she said in a small voice.

“You will feel pain. That is certain,” he murmured in her ear, giving her one last chance to stop. He wondered which would be worse, stopping now or finalizing the act. He accepted her silence as an invitation to continue.

He grasped her hand on the silk covers and slid between her legs. The fingers of his other hand delved between the folds of her femininity. He dipped his head to suckle her breast again. She reached for his face as he closed his eyes and breathed deeply her faint lavender scent. He fought to control the hard edge of his desire as he pushed her hands back and kissed her. The pressure within him pulsated with need. A rosy blush overtook her porcelain face as his fingers explored the most intimate places on her person. He kissed her delicate neck as he stretched the barrier within her and massaged the firm bud of her desire.

Suddenly he heard her breath catch and she seemed to be on a precipice, hanging by a thread. He felt the unfulfillment of all the years gone by dissolve in that suspended moment in time. In that instant Rolfe pushed inside of her. She clung to him and held her breath as he began the necessary, painful stretching. Breathing hard, he strained to maintain control. He moved slowly in and out of just the mere edges of her for long moments. Then, closing his eyes, he firmly plunged inside her, past her barrier, past her innocence, filling her completely. In a fog, he could hear her calling him.

“Please, oh… wait, wait, please.”

He stopped and looked down at her face. Her expression filled him with pain. With more control than he knew he possessed, he rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes. “Jane, I shall stop if you insist. But, my dear, the damage is already done.”

“Is it over?” she asked in a high, nervous voice.

“Not for me, no.”

“Will it hurt if you continue?”

“Possibly, a little, I think,” he said hoarsely. He felt that the slightest movement might cause him to explode. He continued, “Jane, hold me, and let me take you.”

She wrapped her arms around his back, and he guessed she was keeping her panic at bay. Slowly, he withdrew and massaged just the outside edges of her again. He teased the opening until she could bear it no longer. She pulled his buttocks down toward her, and he began an excruciating, slow rhythm.

Now the aching pleasure he felt was almost painful in its intensity. As he broke rhythm, he pressed deep into her. She gripped his shoulders and twined her long legs around his. He strained to move the last fraction of an inch closer to her being.

Abruptly, he stopped, and pulled out of her. He savored the intense release of his seed onto her soft belly, and listened to her breathing.

Wiping away the evidence of his passion with the sheet, he moved to cover her again with his body as he buried his face in her golden hair, breathing in her feminine scent. She loosened her grip on his shoulders and caressed his back. He felt satiated and at peace—sensibilities that had eluded him for such a very long, long time.

He arranged her in the cradle of his arms as he withdrew her arms from around him. The strain of holding back had taken its toll. He had used the last drop of his innermost resources of strength in his care of this woman. The loss of her innocence had tasted bittersweet. An overwhelming feeling of protectiveness enveloped him as he held her in his arms and tucked the bedcovers over both of them. He pulled her body close to his. His hand found its way to her breast, and he could feel her erratic heartbeats.

She covered his hand with her own. In a low voice she whispered, “Thank you.”

The cold stirrings of doubt battered his thoughts as he stared up at the bed hangings overhead. “Thank you? Is that really what you should be saying to me? Should it not be, ‘Damn you’?”

“Perhaps. However, all I can feel at this moment is a sense of gratitude.”

He continued as he sat up in bed. “What could you have been thinking to allow, nay, encourage, your own seduction when you were a virgin?”

He watched a deep blush suffuse her face as she sat up, holding the bedcovers to her breasts. She pulled her shift from the top of the heap on the floor and put it on. “I am sorry to have troubled you, my lord. But do not forget it was you who brought me here,” she added with a tight smile. She trembled despite her attempt to portray a cool exterior. She rose from the bed and stepped into her gown.

Rolfe sighed and ran his hands through his hair. He looked up at her as she struggled to fasten the buttons at the back of her prim mourning dress. He stood up, shaking his head as he walked straight toward her. Jane blushed anew and lowered her eyes, but not before he saw her look down his frame. The entire scene seemed so incredible and unreal still.

“Stop looking at me that way, or I will force you into my bed again,” he whispered. “And stop using my title in the bedchamber. It is entirely inappropriate.” He reached out and cupped her face with one hand. “I desire to hear my name on your lips.”

In embarrassment she looked at the jagged scar just below his shoulder. She stared hard at it. “Is this the wound that almost cost you an arm at Waterloo… Rolfe?” Her gaze moved down the rest of his body, stopping at his torso.

“Do you see what you do to me?” Rolfe asked, ignoring her question. He pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her neck and shoulder. Something on the bedsheets behind her caught his attention. Several crimson stains marked the linen sheets. He stopped suddenly. “Are you all right? Are you in any sort of pain?”

As her gaze followed his to the bed, she responded with keen embarrassment. “Yes, I mean, no. I’m all right, really just fine. But I must go before any more time passes.” She began pinning up her hair as she turned her back to him to present the many buttons that needed attending. His fingers completed that task instead of choosing the task he would have preferred, that of caressing the soft, fair curls at the base of her neck.

She turned as he looped the last button. He was amused to find that her severe black gown was formidable armor he was unlikely to easily pierce again. She insisted on returning to the cottage alone, despite the rainy, dark sky. But the earl refused to be put off, despite Jane’s worries concerning appearances if they were seen walking alone in the evening.

“Come,” he demanded. “We will go out by the doors leading from the ballroom. No one will see us. I insist.”

With a firm grasp of her hand, he led her as one would lead a wayward child. Down the back staircase, through the ballroom, and out into the semidarkness, they made their escape unnoticed save by one oddly smiling old lady at her window clutching a volume by Burney.

Chapter Five

THE cold day broke without a cloud in sight, a circumstance that proved to be at complete odds with the overcast tint of Rolfe’s mind. He had awoken several times during the night, only to smell Jane’s sweetness imprinted on his bedcovers. By dawn, he paced his room in deep thought. He was in a predicament he had sworn to never ever face again, that of marriage. The ways of a gentleman forbade him to consider any other solution. He only questioned whether he had consciously or unconsciously chosen to be in this state of affairs. No, he reasoned, he had had no way of knowing she was a virgin—except her behavior in the field when she had been by turns hot and cold. Rolfe rang for his valet and chose a black coat to match his mood. Forgoing breakfast, he stalked out of the Hall toward the stables.