Almost Heaven (57 page)

With a physical effort Elizabeth forced her eyes open and looked at him; what she saw made her heart beat almost painfully harder. In the candle glow his face was hard and dark with passion, and the eyes gazing at her upturned face were blazing with it – and yet there was as much tenderness in them as there was desire. The combination made her ache with sudden yearning to make him feel all the exquisite things he was making her feel, but she didn’t know how. Instead, she did the one thing she
knew
he liked. Spreading her fingers across his smoothly shaven jaw, she gazed unashamedly into his eyes and achingly whispered, “I love you.”

His eyes darkened, but instead of speaking be caught her wrist and drew her hand to his chest. Elizabeth knew a moment of disappointment at his silence – and then she realized what he had done. He had pressed her hand against his heart so that she could feel its violent pounding and know that he was as wildly aroused as she. Her eyes filled with wonder, she gazed at him, and then, because she was suddenly filled with an urge to really look at him, she lowered her eyes to his broad, muscled chest with its light furring of dark hair. In the dim light his skin glowed like oiled bronze; his shoulders and arms were hard with bunched muscles. He was, Elizabeth thought, incredibly beautiful. She started to move her fingers, then hesitated, not certain if it was proper to touch him, and raised her questioning eyes to his.

Ian saw her uncertainty. “Yes,” he whispered hoarsely. Elizabeth realized that he was dying to be touched, and the knowledge filled her with a mixture of delight and pride as she slid her hands over the rigid muscles of his chest, watching as they flinched reflexively in passionate reaction to her feathery touch. He felt, she thought, like bunched satin, and she brushed a kiss near his arm, and then with more daring she kissed his nipple, touching her tongue to it, feeling his sharp intake of breath, the reflexive clenching of his hands on her back as she continued sliding her hands lower. In fact, she was so engrossed with the pleasure she was deriving from pleasing him as she pressed languid kisses down his chest that it was several seconds before she realized that his hand was no longer sliding up and down over her hip, but that it was forcing insistently between her legs.

Helpless to stop the instinctive reaction, Elizabeth clamped her legs together, her stricken gaze flying to his as nameless panic shot through her. “Don’t, darling,” he whispered thickly, his hot gaze on her while his fingers toyed amid the springy hair, stroking. “Don’t close against me.” Hiding her face against his chest, Elizabeth drew a shaky breath and forced herself to obey, then moaned with pleasure, not humiliation or pain, while the stroking continued and became increasingly intimate, and she wrapped her arms tightly around him when at last his finger slid deeply into her wet warmth.

“I love you,” she whispered fiercely against his neck, and the sweetness of her yielding was almost Ian’s undoing.

Shifting her onto her back, he covered her mouth with his and began to increase the deep thrusts of his finger. When her hips started to move instinctively against his hand he eased himself between her legs, his rigid shaft poised at her entrance. Desperate to sheathe himself in her and simultaneously dreading the pain he was going to cause her, he lifted her slim hips to receive him. “I’m going to hurt you, sweetheart, because there’s no other way. If I could take the pain for you, I would.”

She did not turn her face away from him or try to twist free of his imprisoning grasp, and what she said made Ian’s throat ache with emotion. “Do you know,” she whispered with a teary smile, “how long I’ve waited to hear you call me ‘sweetheart’ again?”

“How long?” he asked hoarsely. Putting her arms around his shoulders, Elizabeth braced herself for whatever pain was coming, knowing as he tensed that it was going to happen, talking as if she could calm herself.

“Two years I’ve waited and w –”

Her body jerked and a sharp gasp tore from her, but the pain was gone almost as quickly as the sound, and her husband was already easing deeper into her tight passage until she was filled with his heat and strength, holding him tightly to her, lost in the sheer beauty of the slow, deep strokes he was beginning to take. Guided by pure instinct and a wealth of love, Elizabeth willingly molded her hips to his and began to match his movements, and in doing so she unwittingly drove Ian to unparalleled agonies of desire as he held himself back, determined to ensure her climax before he had his own. He began to quicken his deep thrusts, circling his hips, and the young temptress in his arms matched his movements, clasping his pulsing shaft in her tight warmth.

Elizabeth felt something wild and primitive building inside her, racing through her veins, jarring through her body. Her head moved fitfully on the pillow as she waited for it, sought whatever it was that Ian was trying to give her as he drove into her again and again and then it exploded, making her gasp against his mouth and cry out.

His shoulders and arms taut with the strain of holding back, Ian thrust into her in short sharp movements, matching the spasms shaking her and pulling at him. The instant they subsided he tightened his arms around her and drove into her full length, pouring himself into her, startled when the groan he heard was his own. His body jerked convulsively again and again, and he clasped her to him, breathing in deep pants against her cheek, his heart raging in frantic tempo with hers, his life merging into hers.

When a little of his strength returned he moved onto his side, taking her with him, still a part of her. Her hair spilled over his naked chest like a rumpled satin waterfall, and he lifted a shaking hand to smooth it off her face, feeling humbled and blessed by her sweetness and unselfish ardor.

Several minutes later Elizabeth stirred in his arms, and he tipped her chin up so that he could gaze into her eyes. “Have I ever told you that you are magnificent?”

She started to shake her head, then suddenly remembered that he had told her she was magnificent once before, and the recollection brought poignant tears to her eyes. “You did say that to me,” she amended, brushing her fingers over his smooth shoulder because she couldn’t seem to stop touching him. “You told me that when we were together –”

“In the woodcutter’s cottage,” he finished for her remembering the occasion as well. In reply she had chided him for acting as if he also thought Charise Dumont was magnificent, Ian remembered, regretting all the time they had lost since then . . . the days and nights she could have been in his arms as she was now. “Do you know how I spent the rest of the afternoon after you left the cottage?” he asked softly. When she shook her head, he said with a wry smile, “I spent it pleasurably contemplating tonight. At the time, of course. I didn’t realize tonight was years away.” He paused to draw the sheet up over her back so she wouldn’t be chilled, then he continued in the same quiet voice, “I wanted you so badly that day that I actually ached while I watched you fasten that shirt you were wearing. Although,” he added dryly, “that
particular
condition, brought on by that particular cause, has become my normal state for the last four weeks, so I’m quite used to it now. I wonder if I’ll miss it,” he teased.

“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, realizing that he was perfectly serious despite his light tone.

“The agony of unfulfilled desire,” he explained, brushing a kiss on her forehead, “brought on by wanting you.”

“Wanting
me?” she burst out, rearing up so abruptly that she nearly overturned him as she leaned up on an elbow, absently clutching the sheet to her breasts. “Is this what we’ve just done, I mean –”

“The Scots think of it as making love,” he interrupted gently. “Unlike most English,” he added with great scorn, “who prefer to regard it as ‘performing one’s marital duty.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said absently, her mind on his earlier remark about wanting her until it caused him physical pain, “but is this what you meant all those times you’ve said you wanted me?”

His sensual lips quirked in a half smile. “Yes.”

A rosy blush stained her smooth cheeks, and despite her effort to sound severe, her eyes were lit with laughter. “And the day we bargained about the betrothal, and you told me I had something you wanted very badly, what you wanted to do it with me . . . was
this . . .?”

“Among other things,” he agreed, tenderly brushing his knuckles over her flushed cheek.

“If I had known all this,” she said with a rueful smile, “I’m certain I would have asked for additional concessions.”

That startled him – the thought that she would have tried to drive a harder bargain if she’d realized exactly how much and what sort of power she really held. “What kind of additional concessions?” he asked, his face carefully expressionless.

She put her cheek against his shoulder, her arms curving around him. “A shorter betrothal,” she whispered. “A shorter courtship, and a shorter ceremony.”

A fresh surge of tenderness and profound pride swept through him at her sweetness and her candor, and he wrapped his arms tightly, protectively around her, smiling with joyous contentment. He had realized within minutes of meeting her that she was rare; he had known within hours that she was everything he wanted. Passionate and gentle, intelligent, sensitive, and witty. He loved all of her qualities, but he hadn’t discovered the one he particularly admired until much later, and that was her courage. He was so proud of the courage that had enabled her to repeatedly confront adversity and adversaries – even when the adversary was him. Without it she’d have been lost to him long ago; she’d have done what most of her sex did, which was to find the first available male they could stomach and let him deal with life’s unpleasantness. His Elizabeth hadn’t done that; instead she’d tried to cope, not only with him, but with the terrible financial burdens she’d carried. That reminded him of how thrifty she was, and he promptly decided – at least for the moment – that her thriftiness was one of her most endearingly amusing qualities.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked. He tipped his chin down so that he could better see her and brushed a stray lock of golden hair off her cheek. “I was thinking how wise I must be to have known within minutes of meeting you that you were wonderful.”

She chuckled, thinking his words were teasing flattery. “How soon did my qualities become apparent?”

“I’d say,” he thoughtfully replied, “I knew it when you took sympathy on Galileo.”

She’d expected him to say something about her looks, not her conversation or her mind. “Truly?” she asked with unhidden pleasure.

He nodded, but he was studying her reaction with curiosity. “What did you think I was going to say?”

Her slim shoulders lifted in an embarrassed shrug. “I thought you would say it was my face you noticed first. People have the most
extraordinary
reaction to my face,” she explained with a disgusted sigh.

“I can’t imagine why,” he said, grinning down at what was, in his opinion – in anyone’s opinion – a heartbreakingly beautiful face belonging to a young woman who was sprawled across his chest looking like an innocent golden goddess.

“I think it’s my eyes. They’re an odd color.”

“I see that now,” he teased, then he said more solemnly, “but as it happens it was not your face which I found so beguiling when we met in the garden, because,” he added when she looked unconvinced, ‘I couldn’t
see
it.”

“Of course you could. I could see yours well enough, even though night had fallen.”

“Yes, but I was standing near a torch lamp, while you perversely remained in the shadows. I could tell that yours was a very
nice
face, with the requisite features in the right places, and I could also tell that your other – feminine assets – were definitely in all the right places, but that was all I could see. And then later that night I looked up and saw you walking down the staircase. I was so surprised, it took a considerable amount of will to keep from dropping the glass I was holding.”

Her happy laughter drifted around the room and reminded him of music. “Elizabeth,” he said dryly, “I am not such a fool that I would have let a beautiful face alone drive me to madness, or to asking you to marry me, or even to extremes of sexual desire.”

She saw that he was perfectly serious, and she sobered. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “That is the nicest compliment you could have paid me, my lord.”

“Don’t call me ‘my lord,’” he told her with a mixture of gentleness and gravity, “unless you mean it. I dislike having you address me that way if it’s merely a reference to my title.”

Elizabeth snuggled her cheek against his hard chest and quietly replied, “As you wish. My lord.”

Ian couldn’t help it. He rolled her onto her back and devoured her with his mouth, claimed her with his hands and then his body.

“Haven’t I tired you out yet, darling?” Ian whispered several hours later.

“Yes,” she said with an exhausted laugh, her cheek nestled against his shoulder, her hand drifting over his chest in a sleepy caress. “But I’m too happy to sleep for a while yet. “

So was Ian, but he felt compelled to at least suggest that she try. “You’ll regret it in the morning when we have to appear for breakfast,” he said with a grin, cuddling her closer to his side.

To his surprise, the remark made her smooth forehead furrow in a frown. She tipped her face up to his, opened her mouth as if to ask him a question, then she changed her mind and hastily looked away.