Axel (20 page)

“Do you know what the worst part of a fire is?” she asked. “A fire takes lives. So do disease, war, and old age. Fire takes everything else too—your dearest treasures. Not money—money can be replaced—but your great-grandmother’s recipes written in her hand, the sketches done by a great-uncle who emigrated to Canada and was never heard from again. The sentimental anchors that tell you who your family is, who has loved you, and for how long.”

Abby was crying, again, when she’d thought all her tears had been shed. “Fire destroys the very place you thought would be your refuge when your loved ones were gone. Fire eats up your memories and turns them to ash; it consumes everything, your past, your hopes, your home. And there was Gregory, all solicitude and concern, stealing even my right to grieve.”

She’d been nearly shouting.

Axel brushed his thumbs over her cheeks. “Then grieve now, for grieve, you must.”

His touch was… everything unexpected, and everything good. Gentle, unhurried, intimate. Abby closed her eyes and turned her face to his palm.

“I hate Gregory Stoneleigh.” The words gave her a sad kind of peace. “I hate him with a passion I didn’t realize I was capable of.”

“Good. Hate him as passionately as you need to, for as long as you need to.”

She opened her eyes, and held Axel’s hand to her cheek. His gaze was steady, fierce, and approving.

Hatred was exhausting, though the force of Abby’s antipathy had been a revelation. How dispirited had she become? How weak, that a betrayal of this magnitude had been necessary to rekindle her temper?

Tomorrow she would look like a harridan. She’d make herself eat, make herself go down to breakfast, or possibly luncheon. She’d swill tea, scold Nicholas, and start planning her return to the estate she now owned in fee simple absolute.

Tonight… tonight she would run wild.

She kissed Axel Belmont, grateful that Gregory’s sterile, avaricious version of marriage hadn’t imbued her with even this skill.

“I will never refer to him as my spouse again,” Abby said. “He was my jailer, an assassin preying upon innocence. Don’t stop kissing me.”

For long, quiet moments, Axel obliged. As he’d once indicated, he possessed an entire vocabulary of kisses. Sweet, soft, savoring,
comforting
, daring—kissing was not a silent endeavor either. Mouths touching and learning each other, arms embracing, had a whispered music Abby had never heard before.

She followed that whisper, tucking herself close enough to feel the evidence of Axel Belmont’s arousal, and like a fire finding a fresh breeze, her emotions shifted.

Axel drew back. “Abigail, we must not. You’ll regret—”

“I have many, many regrets,” Abby said, resting against him. “I will have them for years, as you have your regrets. I want you now, Axel Belmont. I want all of you there is to want, with all of me that remains to do the wanting.”

Little enough though that was. Axel couldn’t know how little, nor could he know how badly Abby wanted to give it to him and him alone.

His hand, slow and warm, caressed her hair. “I will not take advantage of—”

“That is the most wrong, misguided argument you could make. I desire you, you desire me. I’m a widow. Will you presume to know what’s best for me, to tell
me
what I want or need? To judge when I’m competent to make a decision, and when I’m not?”

Oh, the terrible pleasure of hoisting an intelligent, honorable man on the twin petards of logic and respect. Axel could not deny her without disrespecting her wishes, as she’d been so brutally disrespected in the past.

“I won’t beg,” Abby said, kissing him again and nudging a knee between his thighs.

“You should never have to beg,” he muttered against her mouth. “Not ever, Abigail. Do you understand me?”

She understood that he’d relented, that despite the convoluted, male flights along which honor might speed in the morning, her desire for him would be gratified now. This was a victory, against Gregory, but also against grief, and against losses so intimate, Abby could not have shared them with even the man about to become her lover.

“Begging does not serve,” Axel said, easing back from Abby’s embrace. “Not until we’re under those covers, not a stitch of clothing between us, our mutual dignity in a panting heap on the floor. Then you may beg me all you please.”

He locked the door, but his lecture was not complete. “Haste does not serve. If you are determined to take this bold step with my humble and obliging self, though it complicates all and solves nothing, though it confounds both reason and decorum, though Nicholas will be most—”

Abby unbelted her dressing gown.

“Lectures will not serve,” she said. “Do you need assistance undressing, Mr. Belmont?”

He held out a hand. “You may undo my cuffs. Dexterity at this hour eludes me.”

Abby’s room was warm. She’d been pacing, reading, fuming, and crying behind her closed door for hours. She shrugged out of her dressing gown, draped it over the chest at the foot of the bed, and took Axel’s hand in both of hers.

She kissed his knuckles, for the sheer pleasure of rewarding his surrender—also for the newfound delight of unnerving him. He had experience, of course, but Abby was convinced his experience was far from recent.

His sense of his own desirability had been a casualty of the failures and hopes in the glass house, of parenting, botany, time, and benign neglect.

She dropped his cuff-links into his palm.

“Get into bed, Abigail. I can’t have you taking a chill.”

Abby glowered at him, though in her heart she was beaming. Axel slipped his cuff-links into his watch pocket, pinched the bridge of his nose, then stared at the ceiling.

“
Please
, rather. Abigail would you
please
consider, at your leisure of course, getting into the bed, so that in all my frail conceit, I might be spared the burden of concern for your welfare? A gentleman never imposes on a lady, particularly not when in her very bedroom, contemplating intimacies so precious and unexpected that the same gentleman, against all dictates of rational—”

How she loved to hear him babble. Abby hopped onto the bed, which had that lovely, cozy, half-made feel because Axel had straightened the covers earlier.

The room had a privacy screen. Axel disappeared behind it, and the sounds of water splashing and fabric rustling came next. Abby yanked off her nightgown and fired it in the general direction of the foot of the bed, then scooted beneath the covers.

So that’s how this is done.
She hoarded up the simple sequence of a mutual seduction, one small increment of knowledge against all the ignorance she’d been enshrouded in over the years of her marriage.

Axel emerged from the shadowed corner, naked from the waist up, the firelight gleaming against his damp chest. He held his boots, shirt, waistcoat, and cravat in his arms and deposited the lot in a pile on the chest.

“Do not scold me for failing to hang up my clothing,” he said, setting his boots near the door. He banked the fire next, casting the room in damnably thick shadows.

Abby had wanted to see him, had wanted to glory in every inch of him, exposed once again for her delectation, but perhaps that wasn’t the done thing on a first encounter, or perhaps ladies never expressed—

Woodcut images of smiling women, their knees spread, their bodies exposed for the mutual pleasure of both—or several—parties, came to mind.

To blazing hell with what ladies did and did not do. With Axel Belmont, at least, Abby need not be a lady. She need only, finally, be herself.

Axel sat on the bed, his back to Abby. “In the past, I have been ridic—
chided
, rather, for excessive modesty,” he said. “I am not… I am not—”

Abby rose, pressed her bare breasts to his back, and wrapped her arms about him. The contact was warm, friendly, pleasurable, and shocking—probably to them both.

“You bring a few bruises and memories of your own to this bed,” she said, kissing his shoulder. “I could not be here with you otherwise. Be as modest as you please, Axel. I could never trust myself with a strumpet of a man.”

Those broad shoulders relaxed. “The things you say, Abigail.”

She liked hugging him this way, liked exploring the odd contour of male chest hair, muscle, ribs, and even nipples without being able to see any of it. She paused on a happy sigh, in charity with a life that a half hour ago had seemed endlessly bleak.

The bleakness would encroach again, but this night would give Abby at least one torch to hold up against that darkness.

“Is madam quite finished having her way with my person for now?”

Madam was barely getting started. Abby let Axel go, though. He couldn’t get his breeches off as long as she was plastered to him.

“Have I told you, Mr. Belmont, how much I admire your patience?”

He stood and faced the bed, his breeches loose about his hips. Abby climbed under the covers and realized he was waiting for her to dart a glance his direction. He pushed his breeches off, paused for a deliberate, unblinking moment, then bent to toss them onto the pile on the chest.

Anger and bravado had inspired Abby to proposition Axel into intimacies, as had a sense that if she did not seize this moment, she might become the woman Gregory had tried to paint her—spineless, retiring, fragile, and dull.

With one small moment of naked silence, Axel had recast the nature of the encounter. A gentleman would never impose on a lady, but a lover, a bruised veteran of his own private battles, could offer his trust.

And in that moment, much to Abby’s relief, the shadows on her heart receded. Her deceased family, the murder investigation, marital betrayals, and fortunes squandered ceased, for a time, to hold sway in her mind.

Widows were permitted to dally discreetly, that was a universal truth, whether Miss Austen had ever acknowledged it as such.

“Come to bed,” she said, holding out a hand. “Please, rather. Axel Belmont, won’t you please come to bed?”

The mattress dipped, and for the first time, Abby found herself sharing a bed with a lover.

Truly, Axel’s academic calling was genuine, if he could not recall the last time he’d been intimate with a woman. He’d given up house parties years ago—polite orgies for the most part, and a high price to pay for a peek at some viscount’s conservatory, or an earl’s gardens.

He would never forget this night with Abigail.

He’d withdraw, of course. He’d become frightfully adept at withdrawing. The boys had come so close together, he’d been determined Caroline would not be burdened with another pregnancy until she was demanding more children of him as only Caroline could demand.

Axel sank onto the bed and, as naturally as he pulled on a favorite riding jacket, drew Abigail into his arms.

Caroline had told him—ordered him—to remarry, one of the last orders she’d given him. Remarry and be happy. Don’t grow old, contrary, and blind in those damned glass houses.

“Should I be doing something?” Abby asked.

She should be changing her mind.

“I’m considering my strategy.” Though Axel hadn’t a strategy. Distracting Abigail from the heartbreak he’d served her wasn’t a strategy. Obliging a new widow on her first reckless tear wasn’t a strategy either. “I function well within clearly articulated rules.”

Abby wiggled around to peer at him. “No, you don’t. Whoever told you that was wrong. You function well when given a task and left complete latitude to decide how to execute it. Your estate thrives, and nobody tells you how to go on with it. Your boys are perfect gentlemen, if their behavior in the churchyard is any indication. You raised them without any guidelines save your own common sense. Your botany is entirely your own undertaking. Rules, indeed. I am in bed with a daft man.”

She wasn’t… she wasn’t wrong. She was warm, and naked, and so clearly happy to be in this bed. Axel wanted to savor that, and yet, he wanted
her
too.

Desperately.

“Lecturing is apparently contagious,” he muttered. “My sons have warned me this is so. Enough lecturing, then.”
For once.

Axel rose over her, arranged himself on all fours, and commenced a spree of kissing that felt so miserably overdue, he nearly spent on Abby’s belly when she brushed her fingers over his cock.

Haste would not serve, but restraint would kill him.

“You want me,” she announced.

“Do I detect a note of glee in your voice? Perhaps smugness is the more accurate term. You’re the prose lover in this bed, and—merciful God, Abigail….”

She had the most beguiling way of wrapping her fingers around a man’s sanity. Caroline had been all reckless dispatch, a woman intent on her goals. Axel had been expected to aid that objective, and be content with what pleasure he could manage for himself along the way.

Abigail was the curious sort. She had deucedly good coordination too, tangling tongues as she stroked him and explored his most vulnerable attributes.

“Men are so oddly constructed,” she said, fondling him gently. She was bold but careful, and diabolically thorough. “I love touching you.”

Had Abigail raised her knee, she could not have dealt a greater blow to the composure Axel was determined to maintain, even under intimate circumstances. Every man should hear those words—
I love touching you
—spoken in those exact, purring tones, and yet, Axel never had. Not from his wife, not from the casual liaisons from years past, not from the well-practiced women who catered to strutting, insecure university boys.

“Your touch conveys your delight, Abigail. I can
feel
your joy to have me in your grasp.”

Not simple desire, which could be so much selfishness. He’d merely kissed her, and yet her joy in the moment—in him—was as much a source of warmth as the fire in the hearth or the covers surrounding them.

“You know you make a fetching picture in your breeches,” she said, palms brushing over his fundament. “I like to watch you walk away. I am shameless.”

She was balm to a widower’s soul.

This time, when Axel kissed her, he added a caress to her bare breast, and that—most fortunately—slowed her plundering of his wits.