All I Want Is You (22 page)

He was slowly coming towards me, then stopped. ‘I thought you might leave me. After tonight.’

I shook my head. ‘I shall never leave you. Not unless you tell me to.’

‘I thought you would be… afraid of me.’

‘No,’ I said, quite calm now, seeing him with fresh clarity for what he was – a proud, suffering, honourable man. ‘I trust you, you see.’

Gently, almost wonderingly, he lifted his hands and pushed my wet hair back from my cheek. He too was soaked, but it made him gloriously, primevally male, with his thick hair turned jet black by the rain and clinging to his high forehead and cheekbones, while the stubble of his beard darkened his lean jaw. His scarred knuckles had brushed my skin, and though I was shivering with cold, I felt weak with wanting him.

‘You trust me,’ he echoed quietly. ‘God knows I’ve done nothing at all to earn it, but you trust me.’

‘You’re Mr Maldon again,’ I breathed, realising the miracle of it, feeling my heart revel in it. ‘Seeing you here tonight, realising your concern for poor Cora, it reminds me of when you were Mr Maldon. You want to look after her, just as all those years ago in Oxford you wanted to take care of me.’

He shook his head almost violently. ‘Take care of you. Is
that
what you call it? At Belfield Hall I seduced you. Then I was abominable to you that night in London outside your damned theatre, and I’ve behaved no better tonight. You’re a fool to trust me.’

I stood my ground. I said softly but clearly, ‘Listen to me. I dream of you every night. I dream of you making love to me. There will never be anyone else.’

‘Then think again,’ he said flatly. ‘I beg you, for your own sake, Sophie, to think again. You cared for Mr Maldon, who was a figment of your imagination.’

I moved towards him, but he held up his hands as if to ward me off. ‘Sophie. Sophie, my God, however you look at me, I’m damaged. I’ve got to warn you, I’ve no right to ask anything of you or to expect your trust in any way. But those letters you wrote to me, they…’

My heart was pounding painfully against my ribs. ‘What? Please tell me.’

‘They helped me to survive,’ he said very quietly, ‘after I’d been in a dark, dark place.’

They did what?
My foolish, girlish letters, how could they have meant so much to him? ‘So you got them?’

‘Eventually.’

Even as my thoughts whirled, even as I tried to summon the courage to ask more, I saw him drawing in a deep breath. ‘It was the same that night at Belfield Hall,’ he went on, ‘when you gave me the gift of your innocence. Your devotion. Time and time again I’ve thought that I did not deserve either.’

Moving towards him, I wrapped my arms around his waist and lifted my rainsoaked face to his. ‘I gave you everything freely. But why won’t you let me see you, or touch you, when you’re making love to me? Why, Ash?’

‘It’s because I need to be in control,’ he answered. ‘Of those around me, and of myself.’

In control.
Understanding blazed through me. ‘Is that why you refuse to drink alcohol?’

‘Perhaps,’ he said.

I was shivering again; I felt like a foolish intruder into the darkness of his past. ‘I shouldn’t have disturbed you out here.’ I started moving away. ‘I’ll go back down to my room…’

‘No.
Sophie.
Stay out here a while – please.’

And suddenly his arm was around me again. I tried to smile and said, ‘It’s a little cold out here, you know. My brain works better when I’m not freezing to death.’

‘Let me warm you,’ he said softly.

And he pulled me close in a way that almost made me stop breathing. His body heated me; I felt his arms round me and inhaled the intoxicating man-scent of his skin and hair. We could have been standing on an iceberg and I wouldn’t have complained; I said nothing, not wanting to break the spell, but I was aware that though he still held me, he was looking somewhere beyond me, his perfect profile pale against the night sky with its ragged rain clouds.

‘I need space, Sophie,’ he said. ‘I need freedom, and I only fully realised it when I was a boy, and confined to Belfield Hall one summer.’

‘I know. I heard.’

‘Of course you would,’ he said. ‘I should have remembered, how servants talk. I was eleven, and often that summer I used to climb out on the roof at night and watch the stars, telling myself,
This will pass. All this will pass
.’

My heart turned over. ‘Was it so very bad?’

He looked down at me. ‘Not really, no. But you’ve no doubt heard that my parents had separated and so for all that summer I had to stay with the Duke and Duchess, who didn’t want a thing to do with me.’ He gave his faint smile. ‘Actually that quite suited me – I was fed well, I had my own rooms, and there were a couple of friendly grooms who used to let me ride the Duke’s
horses whenever he wasn’t around. I had my tutor for company, and he was a kindly old soul who taught me Latin and Greek as if his life depended on it. In the afternoons I’d go roaming.’

‘So that’s how you knew the grounds so well! And all about the Duchess’s cats, and Mr Peters!’ I was remembering his letters, finding a sudden, surprising happiness in this feeling of being close to him, however briefly.

‘I knew about the Duchess’s cats and Mr Peters indeed,’ he nodded. ‘At night I’d climb on the roof and lay plans to be rich and powerful when I grew up. As you’ll have gathered, I felt no gratitude towards the Duke and Duchess and their son.’

‘Lord Charlwood was there?’ Remembering his brief affair with my mother when I was a child, I felt fresh bitterness at his name.

‘Unfortunately, yes. Charlwood was twenty-one years old and a bully. He’d invited friends to stay for a couple of weeks, and for a while I was part of the entertainment.’

My breath caught. ‘What do you mean?’

He looked at me quizzically. ‘One afternoon,’ he said at last, ‘when he and his friends were drunk, they all decided to go fox-hunting – with me as the quarry. They gave me ten minutes’ start. I ran like hell, and thanks to that start I managed to keep ahead of their horses until I got to the river close by, where I swam downstream so the dogs lost my scent.’

‘
Dogs…
Oh, Ash.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for me.’ His low laughter warmed me; he was still holding me close and I hardly dared
breathe in case I broke the spell. ‘I got back well before they did,’ he went on. ‘They were scouring the grounds on horseback for over an hour – so in the meantime I went to Lord Charlwood’s room and emptied his full chamber pot over all his clothes that were laid out for the evening. He whipped me for it, of course, but I didn’t care. His friends found it amusing, the servants too – the news of it was all over the place. He was made to look an absolute fool.’

‘I’m glad,’ I said fervently, thinking again of my mother. ‘You don’t know how glad.’

But I must have shivered slightly, because suddenly he wrapped his arms around me even more tightly. ‘God,’ he said, ‘my God, Sophie, you’re frozen, and I’ve kept you out here in the cold; I’m a brute. Come inside.’ Quickly he led me back to his rooms, where he put more coals on the fire while I stood in my soaked dressing robe and pyjamas.

‘Take them off,’ he exclaimed, ‘take them off – here.’ He’d handed me another of his dressing gowns; then he removed his own wet jacket while I stripped myself and put on the quilted silk dressing gown, which was miles too big for me, but I loved it, because it was his, and I wrapped it tightly round me.

Then he came back to me.

Ridiculously, I found I was shaking harder now than I had been out on the balcony, but I was clinging to him. His lips were cool and sweet on my forehead, on my eyelids; then he was tilting my face up to his and he was looking at me, his gaze penetrating and so sad.

‘Ash,’ I whispered. ‘Ash.’

Suddenly he eased me away and went towards the door. I thought he was going to leave me here in this room, cold and alone; I felt as if I was standing on the edge of that damned balcony again and about to fall into the blackness below.

But he’d only gone across the room to lock the door. He came back and I remember I was excruciatingly aware of the rise and fall of my chest with each and every breath I took. I knew that this was madness, utter madness, to stay with him and surrender myself to him, but I loved him so much, you see.

He held my gaze, almost daring me to look away. Then he slowly came nearer to me, his eyes never leaving mine as he held out his hand. ‘Come to me, Sophie.’ His gaze was so penetrating and so sad that even more intense emotions clawed at me.
‘
Look at me,’ he instructed.

I did. His hands – oh, his badly scarred hands – moved to my cheek, then slid to cup my chin. Then, with his forefinger, he traced the curve of my upper lip and lowered his exquisite head to mine.

The brush of his lips was scarcely a touch, yet it had me wanting more, so much more.

I lifted my eyes to his, drinking in his face, because I knew already what was going to happen next.
Not yet. Please, Ash, don’t blindfold me just yet. Let me see your glorious face, your glorious body for just a while…
But already he was drawing a soft black blindfold from a nearby drawer, and I stood very still as he tied it round my eyes, then knotted it at the back of my head.

‘Why?’ I whispered. ‘Oh, why? Can’t you… can’t you just turn out the light, Ash, if you don’t want me to see you?’

I felt him ease a tendril of my hair behind my ear, then his lips were tracing teasing kisses down the sensitive column of my throat. ‘But I want to see you, Sophie,’ he said.

I nodded, swallowing. One of his hands was under my dressing gown, sliding down my spine, sending delicious shivers through me, before gliding to my hips and caressing me there. I drank in the feel of him, the male scent of him, realising anew that his touch was heaven, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to touch him back, to stroke his skin, to kiss him everywhere. I lifted my hand to his stubbled jaw…

‘
Stop
,’he ordered.

I let my hands drop to my side. My heart thudded sickly in disappointment. He cupped my face with his hands again and turned my face upwards so I could almost feel his gaze burning into me. ‘Sophie,’ he said quietly, ‘I thought I explained that I don’t like you to touch me at times like this.’

Bitterness etched my reply. ‘I know you find it difficult to be intimate with someone as… as lowly as me.’

He let me go, and swore. ‘You think that? You really think that?’

I felt powerless, I felt almost afraid of him now, blindfolded as I was. I tilted my head in his direction. ‘What else am I supposed to think?’

‘That the fault lies with me, not with you. Please believe me.’ I could hear him breathing hard. ‘Let me
spell out my terms. I cannot let you see my face or touch my unclothed body with your hands while we’re making love. Can you accept those conditions?
Will
you accept them?’

I realised I would do anything,
anything
for this man, and the thought terrified me. To leave him now would break me. He was my master, I was his possession; I was his, and he knew it.

‘Yes,’ I breathed. ‘Yes, yes.’

He began to kiss me again. He lifted me onto the bed completely, then eased the dressing gown from me; it was warm in the bedroom now with the fire burning, and I felt flushed with heat. He turned me over carefully, so I was arched on all fours on the bed, on my knees, while he gently spread my forearms apart…
what was he doing?

‘That’s it,’ he was murmuring. ‘Put your hands here, lift your shoulders a little more.’ He was kissing me all the time, kissing my upper arms and shoulders, and stroking me, soothing me. Then I heard him move away again but soon he was coming back.

And this time – this time, he was lifting up my wrists one after the other and binding them to separate bedposts with something – my stockings, I guessed –
oh, God.
I was afraid again, but he steadied me with his hands as I crouched there, naked, and he kissed the nape of my neck tenderly.

He lifted my bottom higher in the air, so my elbows and knees were on the bed, my forearms taut, while my cheek rested on the pillow. My world rocked with sensations. I felt wicked, I felt wanton, I was burning with
need. All the time his lips were pressing kisses to my body but avoiding that tender bruise; kissing my back, my hips. I squirmed in my bonds, longing for him desperately.

‘Slowly,’ he breathed. I heard him climb off the bed again and tried, despite my blindfold, to visualise him; I heard his trousers dropping to the floor, I heard him unbutton his white shirt and ease it off; I visualised his naked body and I waited with longing for him, with heartache too.
He must be so beautiful. Why won’t he let me see him? Why?

I must have wriggled with anticipation as I felt him kneel behind me on the bed. I think I moved immediately and shamelessly towards his sleek, hard body, gasping as I felt the full power of his steel-hard erection nudging against the tender skin of my buttocks.

‘Cold?’ he whispered.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No.’

He brushed light fingers under my ribs to my breasts then teased one tender crest while I squirmed, a captive with my hands tied.
Oh, Ash. I want to see you.
I saw him instead in my mind’s eye, my beautiful man; imagined him watching me with his dark, dark gaze; then I heard him moving again. He was behind me on the bed, his breathing was ragged, and he was arching himself over me, stroking my bottom –
What next?
Oh, God, what next?

I was hot and shamefully wet down there; I blushed with embarrassment. Soon he would realise it, for his fingers were slipping between my thighs and I heard a faint gasp –
mine –
as he parted the delicate folds there
and began a rhythmic stroking that had me lifting my hips and pressing desperately against his hand, wanting, needing more.

He kissed me. ‘Oh, Sophie. How ready you are. How delicious you are.’

My bottom was in the air, my arms outspread and tied to the bedposts; my blindfolded face was pressed sideways against the pillow. I could feel his strong thighs now, parting my own legs, pushing them wider apart as he positioned himself over me and gripped my waist with his hands. Then the blunt tip of his phallus was prodding hungrily at me, and I heard Ash’s low growl of satisfaction as he eased himself inside me. I felt the incredible invasion, the moist tightness as I stretched to accommodate him; the hard, pulsing surge as he filled me with his thickness, and acute pleasure rolled through me once more.