Bound by Your Touch (34 page)

For a moment, he thought he'd misunderstood her. Help him? The sentiment was so astonishing that he laughed. "It's you who's the trouble," he said. "You who's determined to get yourself killed. Since I have no interest in sainthood, you'll forgive me if I turn away from the spectacle."

She held silent. He felt her breath, warm against the cloth, calling his consciousness back to the flesh, to the surface that he sometimes forgot, when he was lucky. To the part of him that felt such things—warmth, and dampness, and also the cold. He opened his mouth. But what else was there to say?
You don't mean it.
Or,
You'll help me? It's you who needs the help.
Dried-out, bloodless bluestocking.

Or even this:
You are all that I need.

His lips weren't willing. He reached out—to touch her hair? To trace the parting? Such certain progress it cut across her crown. In his hand, the water was all a-tremble, like the legs of a green girl during her first waltz. He drew a long breath and set the drink on the wicker table beside him. His hand, now freed, hovered uncertainly over her head. Still her face pressed into him, a steady pressure, no trace of hesitation or doubt. "You should take care," he murmured. "Don't put such advantages in my hands."

"I trust you." She inhaled a breath that audibly shook. "I have faith in
you,
James."

His fingers settled on her hair. The purest, softest shade of black The shade one saw when one closed one's
eyes,
in a warm, comfortable place, to rest. "You're an idiot," he said gently. "How have you made it this far through life? I've done nothing to merit your faith." Difficult to dredge the words up from his gut. They felt sharp at the edges, awkward. The cost of voicing them was a bitter burning in his throat.
"Anyone's
faith."

Her head lifted. Two shining lines traced the path of her tears. "I've told you time and again. It is nothing to be earned. It is simply
given.
And why shouldn't I give it?" She paused, and said very softly, "What happened with your sister was not your fault."

What did she know of it? "She came to me for help. All I could give her—"

Her fingers clenched on his trousers. "It wasn't in your power to stop Boland. You gave her
everything you could.
You offered to help her get away from him. If she refused to go, then that was
her
decision, not yours. Good God! Why can't you see that?"

He let the words settle between them. Considered them, turned them over in his head. She opened her mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it.

"Let it go," he said. "That is what you were going to say."

"What? No!" Something tender and amused moved across her face. "Good lord, that's the last thing I'd tell you. Me, of all people! Why, your love for your sister, your loyalty to her, is . . ." She exhaled. "Admirable? Moving." She shook her head. "I don't have the words to express it. It is deep and fierce and has made you do terrible things, and perhaps to think some very twisted and wrong thoughts, which I can't approve of. But it is a part of you that. . . that calls to me." Her lips curved a little—a smile that spoke more of sadness than joy. "It calls to me so strongly. And anyway, I should hate to see it go. It's the only thing holding you to the ground."

Something moved through him. Strange. Like the chills preceding a fever, the first sign of sickness. "It is not the only thing," he said slowly.

Her lips parted. She licked them. Swallowed, as if nervous. "Kiss me."

He thought again of Stella—of the horror of watching her stumble straight into tragedy. Of her refusal to heed him. How damned helpless he had felt. The pain of it, the humiliation of his own failure, still lived so strongly within him.

He looked back at her. Her face was upturned, her eyes closed: waiting for him to touch her.

If he did this, he was committed. Chained and bound to the path she was walking. He could not be a bystander to it. Not again.

But he could not deny her, either. Not when she waited so trustingly.

He took a deep breath, then sat forward to lay his lips on hers. Her mouth was soft against his—as soft as her trust, as easy to break. It was an unbalancing thing, this knowledge of her delicacy. He'd told her she was not fragile, but his hands easily spanned the curve from her collarbones to her nape, and he could trace the sharpness of her bones with his fingertips. And yet the woman housed in this flesh denied its weakness—defied it and risked herself recklessly. He kissed her, harder than he should have done. She would be made to see sense. To acknowledge her vulnerability, so she might reckon her actions more wisely.

Her arms came around him. She pulled him fearlessly off the bench. He slid down onto his knees, but she kept pulling, until he reclined full-length against her body. His weight, atop her, should have made her gasp. It must crush her. But there was resilience to her as well; the muscles of her arms and torso were firm. She made a soft sigh; her lips slipped down to his throat. She bit him softly, where his neck smoothed into his shoulder. She had no idea of her own limitations, even if she understood too clearly what they were supposed to be.

He caught her wrists and placed them above her head, pinning them when she would have jerked free. Her eyes came open, gold now, like harvest moons. They rounded in question.

He stared down at her, his breath coming harder. There was some dark impulse that lived within every man, perhaps—the urge to be brutal, when subdety failed. But it was a poor excuse for action, fit only for cowards. He would give her a choice. "If we do this, I am not letting you go. Do you understand?"

"I don't want to go," she whispered. "James, I've already made the choice. I came
to you."

He wanted to accept that. But his nature was not as generous as hers: he would always wish to test what others claimed to be truth. He rose, ignoring her protest. And then he took her by the waist and lifted her into his arms. As he staned for the door, her struggle grew pronounced. "Where are you going?"

He stopped. "Past all the servants," he said. "Past everyone in this household who talks. And then, up the stairs to my rooms." He waited a moment, to see what she would do.

Her deep breath brought her breasts into his chest. His fingers reflexively tightened, digging into her thigh. He forced himself to relax, to count his breaths. He would not leave bruises on her. She was pale, and would mark so easily.

"All right," she said, and put her face into the crook of his shoulder.

He meant to make a point, but as he crossed out into the hall, he found his patience was not strong enough for it. There was a chambermaid, lurking in the door to the drawing room; her witness would have to serve. The stairs fell away beneath his feet, two by two; he was on the first story now, and shouldering his way into his apartments. Too many bloody anterooms until he reached his bedchamber. He laid her on the bed and avoided her grasping hands. This was not going to be a reprise of the boathouse. There would be no darkness between them. Or clothes.

He expected protests, but she took his guidance, lying quietly as he untied her boots, slid off the garters and peeled away her stockings. Her legs were paler than he had expected, like cream. The possibility that there might be other secrets her body was keeping lent his movements urgency. Another time, he would pause to lick these dimples behind her knees. For now, he would lay her bare, methodically, deliberately. She had fought so hard to keep herself hidden. She would not turn back, after this.

Off came her petticoats and chemise; her bodice and this godawful plague upon mankind, the corset. She submitted to his manipulations with closed eyes. Occasionally a soft humming broke from her throat. That little noise would drive him mad. His hands began to shake. Her drawers he pulled off last, over hips that curved as gently and gracefully as the Chiltern Hills where he'd first had her. Now she was naked before him. Athena and Venus in one. He withdrew to the foot of the bed. "Open your eyes," he said hoarsely.

Her breasts moved on a long breath. A flush stained her cheeks as she looked him over. He was still dressed, and this seemed to fluster her; her head rolled away. He crawled back over her, and cupped her face to force her eyes back to him. "I see you," he whispered. He slid his hands down to cup her shoulders. She wet her lips. Now to the exquisite softness of her breasts, which filled his palms so perfectly. Beneath the brush of his thumbs, her nipples beaded. He laid his mouth to one, sucking softly, and then harder, until she arched up beneath him. How could any woman's skin be so soft? It was as if the world had never touched her. His fingers skimmed onward, along the gende inward dip of her waist, and these miraculous hips, beyond any expectation or hope. Her inner thighs yielded beneadi his hand, falling away like obstacles to a revelation. He bent to lick her once, simply so her flesh might tremble again, as he'd remembered. And then his palms traveled down past her knees, to the tensile length of her calves, the tender arch of her feet. He lifted one ankle to his mouth for a kiss. "I see every part of you," he said softly. "Your body was only the last bit, Lyd."

Her throat moved in a swallow. She began to sit up and reach for him, but he withdrew. Falling back against the pillows, she murmured, "Take off your own clothes then. Let me be able to say the same."

He kept his eyes on her as he undressed. Her gaze dipped once as he removed his trousers, and her flush deepened. As he came back over her, he slid an arm under her to turn her over, so the long slope of her back was exposed to him. He laid kisses down her spine, and his fingers skated up the back of her leg, pausing in the hollow behind her knee, cupping the luscious expanse of one buttock. He pressed himself over her, so he covered her from head to toe. She made little twitches beneath the bites he pressed along her shoulder. "Nothing to hide now," he whispered into her ear.

"No," she said, "nothing." She twisted back around beneath him. His cock brushed against her wetness, and a groan slipped out of him. He slid lower, to avoid that temptation.

But her hands followed. She caught and stroked him, at first clumsy, and then, as his hand covered hers and showed her the way, with increasing boldness. He met her eyes, and a little smile moved her mouth. "You will educate me also," she said, and looked down, to watch him guide her.

Only a glance. But it nearly undid him. He removed her hand, licking from the base of her palm to the tip of her index finger before setting it aside. Then he turned his knuckles to charting the soft slope of her belly. He delved through the soft hair between her thighs, until he found her slit. His thumb traced upward and pressed; her gasp was sweet, sweeter even when he pushed his finger inside her, and her hips jerked.

He needed to be inside her then. It was not a matter of mere flesh. As he moved over her and positioned himself, and her eyes met his and her arms came around him, he felt a tension that was beyond lust. Like the vibration that moved through the floor as an orchestra reached its crescendo. Pain was not like music at all.
This
was what his sinews vibrated to: her body, as he pushed into her, as she gasped and her head fell back. For the oddest moment, he did not know if he would be able to withdraw in order to thrust again. The hot, wet clasp of her and the fleshly weight of her body beneath him and her arms around him made something settle in him definitively; it pulled him down like a weight, grounding him deeply within her. And then she smiled up at him, and it traveled like a shock from his brain to his groin, and he began to move.

Everything: soft, hot, giving, carnal, their tongues tangling, her nails in his back.
You are not weak at all,
he thought wondrously. How had he forgotten? She was a Valkyrie. His fears were useless to her. He would never let them trap her. Her fingers pulled at his hair now, and he rolled over so she pressed down on him, and her movements, so inspired,
She will educate me, native genius;
he had known this from the first moment he saw her, somehow. He took hold of her waist and thrust faster now, feeling the moment that she learned to find her own pleasure, the sudden certainty of her hips, her increasing aggression. It was coming to her. She stiffened and bit down on his lip, and he turned her over again, once, twice, climaxing with a power that had him gasping as he collapsed onto her.

They lay there for a long moment, and her shudders were not less marked than his. Her hands slipped from his shoulders, a gentle stroke down to his buttocks, and she kissed him long and deeply. A woman like her— who would fight for her father so fiercely—her kisses were their own commitment. "You won't let me go," he murmured.

"No," she said. "I won't."

A long pause opened between them. He brushed her hair from her shoulders. Her blushes came and went; her lashes fluttered down beneath the barest brush of his fingernail across her brow.

And then her dimple popped out.

"What?" he murmured.

"Nothing."

He kissed the indentation. "Too late."

"What does that mean?"

"You've got a tell, Lydia. At the card table, we'd call you an easy mark."

The dimple faded as her lips curved into a smile. Her eyes came open. As she looked at him, wistiulness sketched across her face, and she sighed.

"Your father," he said softly. "We'll figure something out. I promise you."

"That's not the only thing." Her glance shifted beyond him now. He followed it to the decanter sitting across the room. "It's you I'm worried about," she said. "I would not ask you to let go of your sister. But this trouble between you and Moreland—you must make peace with it. Or it will stand between us, too."