Chasing the Heiress (17 page)

“I see where this is going. The wagers went high.”

“Mostly for whiskey and tobacco,” she explained.

“But I'm sure some money also passed hands.”

“Of course.” Her eyes focused on some point in the distance. “The grasshoppers were very accommodating. They loaded the rifle, told me how it aimed, explained all the tricks of shooting it. It was a calm day, so I didn't have to think about wind, only distance and how much the ball would drop before it hit. I hit the target. That's how I met my fiancé.”

“He was one of the sharpshooters?”

She nodded, losing herself in memory. “It was his gun that I shot. Of course he took the credit for being a fine teacher. After that, I learned a great deal more about how to shoot. Later, he gave me my own gun. Sometimes we had intruders in the camps during engagements. There were always some who thought to steal or attack the hospital tent when the fighting moved a distance away. It was important to know how to defend oneself. I kept it under my shirt in the hospital tent, to protect the camp when the fighting had moved ahead of us. Sometimes, if the colonel needed a particularly tough shot, he'd call on me. I thought I'd never have to do that again.” Her hands and voice began to shake.

“I'm glad you could. My life depended on it . . . possibly all our lives.” He kissed her hair and stroked her back, until Fletcher called for him from the stairs.

She closed her eyes, then opened them and met his gaze. “Tonight.”

“What about tonight?

“I don't want to sleep alone.”

He stroked her hair. “If you do not wish to, my darling, you won't.”

* * *

For dinner that evening, Fletcher and Bobby wished to hold a celebration, and Jennie even ventured from her retreat.

Bobby was recounting how he had stumbled across the men and been captured, both men praising Lucy's unexpected skill. “You saved us all, Miss Lucy,” Bobby kept repeating, as if still surprised by the fact that he was alive. “You should have seen it, Jennie, both men on the ground, one bleeding something fierce. She saved us all.” Jennie and Bobby—separated in age by only a handful of years—had grown into close confidants in the past few days, Bobby spending most of his time, when he wasn't on watch, in the priest hole with her, both telling stories to while away the time.

But with each recounting of the day's adventures, Lucy's face grew more and more haunted. And when Jennie and Bobby declared they would wash the evening's dishes, Lucy withdrew early.

As Jennie and Bobby began to clear the table, Fletcher—drawing upon their years of silent communication in the camps—had motioned with his eyes that Colin should follow her. But Colin had shaken his head slightly, refusing the suggestion. She was shaken and distraught, and he did not wish to impose on her. Even so, he could not keep his thoughts from turning to her, to her plea that she not sleep alone. By the end of the evening, when he was finally able to retire, his body was taut with desire.

Yet when he reached their bedrooms, no light shown from below her door to show she had waited for him, and the door adjoining their rooms was shut.

His side was mending well, testimony in part to Lucy's skill. Though it still ached, the wounds had knit firmly closed. He stripped to his drawers, chest uncovered, and lay in bed, hands behind his head, trying to distract himself by reviewing the next steps in their plans to move William to Brighton.

When the moon was high in the night sky, he head Lucy cry out in alarm. He was through the door adjoining their rooms in an instant. From the light at the window, he could see that she was in the throes of a nightmare.

She whimpered, a plaintive sound, and called out the word, “No!” followed by a mournful moan and tears.

He moved to her side and, kneeling beside her bed, called her name, brushing the hair from her face, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

She sat up, startled, her eyes wide, her hands out before her as if deflecting a blow. Still not yet fully awake, she remained trapped in the violence of her dream.

He stood and sat on the bed beside her. Pulling her in against his chest, he cooed her name gently. Slowly, her body relaxed against his as she wakened. For several moments, she breathed into the circle of his arms; then, lifting her face to regard him, she searched his eyes.

He kissed her forehead, her hair, her temple, kissing away her fears and replacing them with desire. He brushed his hand over her hair. “I'm here. You are safe.”

At the word
safe
, she seemed to make a decision. He could almost see it in her face. She pressed her lips against his softly, then firmly, then with greater passion. He met each change with equal fervor.

Raising one hand, she cupped the back of his head with her hand, holding his lips to hers. It was dark enough that he could not see her body in the depth of the bed, but with his hand, he could follow the line of her body, from her shoulders to her side, down to the curve of her hip. The curve of her hip. He realized it in an instant. All he felt were curves, not the square form he'd spent his last weeks imagining undressing.

He drew his hand back up, tracing the flare of her hips, the narrowness of her waist, the full swell of her breasts. Such efforts to conceal her shape suggested her troubles were more severe than he had realized, but he would think on it tomorrow. Tonight he would simply delight in the unexpected gift of her.

She tightened her fingers in his hair, pulling a handful of it slightly, just enough for a pleasurable tingle to travel down his spine; then she moved her hand slightly and repeated the action. Soon, all of his scalp and neck felt live with sensation. Her other hand caressed his shoulder to his chest, then slipped under his arm to his back, pulling his body closer to hers. She opened her mouth to his, teasing his lower lip with her tongue.

He set her away, just slightly, and looked into her eyes. “Yes?”

She turned her bottom lip under her upper teeth, then whispered, “Yes.” He leaned into her mouth, pressing his lips against hers. He sucked her full bottom lip until he pulled the sweet edge of it between his teeth. Her lips opened, allowing him to trace her lips, then her teeth, with his tongue. She mirrored his actions, in a delightful game of give and take.

Caressing her body from hips to breast, he stopped to cup her breast with his hand, raising it slightly as he bent his head. He teased her breast with his tongue and teeth, biting the thin material of her shift and pulling it gently across the responsive skin.

At the middle of her chest, three small bows held her shift closed over her breasts. He pulled the first loose, then the second, then the third. Slipping his hand under the open bodice of the cotton, he felt her flesh, cool against his palm.

Such sweet skin, soft and clean, smiling of roses and of lemons.

She mirrored his actions, letting her hands drink in the feel of his skin at his chest and shoulders. Her caresses felt like cool fire, then only like fire when she leaned down to kiss his chest, trailing a line of lips and tongue from his collarbone to his navel, then lower. She brushed her hair—unbound—against his chest, using its silky length to caress and tease him. The sensation was exquisite. In the darkness, he closed his eyes, focusing on each spot where her body met his, feeling her moving down his body. Each inch lower tested his control, but he reveled in the sensations, at her pleasure in his body. He began to touch her once more, but she pushed his hand away. She tugged at his linen drawers, and he felt the first button release, then the second, freeing him from the restraint of his clothes. The moon at the window yielded a soft half light, and he watched her face. Her eyes closed, she focused on the explorations of her fingers.

Then she drew him fully out from beneath his drawers. With one hand, she gathered him—shaft and balls together—while, with the other, she began a slow tantalizing pattern, around and up and down. He allowed himself the pleasure for a moment, then put his hand on hers, stopping her.

“My turn,” he whispered into her hair. He loosened the remaining fabric of her shift, and pushed it down from her shoulders to her waist. Leaning down, he took each breast in turn into his mouth. Ample breasts, filling his palm. He kissed a line from one areola to the other. Next, carefully avoiding the most sensitive spots, he nuzzled the skin between her breasts, using the light day's growth of hair on his cheeks to stimulate her skin. The sounds of her pleasure—soft moans, whispered encouragements—only made him wish to please her more. Never had he been so focused on the slow exploration of a woman's body. An accomplished lover, he had learned early where to touch to bring a woman the greatest pleasure. But now, with Lucy, he found he wanted to know how each inch of her skin responded, a complicated dance where he alternated the greatest pleasures with lesser ones, pushing her to her limits, only to pull back and let her passion subside, before beginning the pattern again with other sensitive spots. He wanted not just to bring her to climax but to prolong the journey itself. He made a sort of pilgrimage of her body, intent on touching, kissing, caressing each inch of skin.

With one foot still on the floor, he took only a minute to stand, let his drawers fall to the floor, then return to her. He leaned her back and tugged her shift out from under her hips, using her slight rise in assisting him as an occasion to press his palm against the sensitive join of her body. She gasped in pleasure. Her legs now free of the bedclothes and her shift, he left one hand's subtle pressure at her mound and used the other to skim the skin from her feet to her thighs, first on one leg then the next. He kept the pressure building at his palm, a rhythmic pulse, until she rose up and pulled him to her, drawing his body down to hers, raising her hips to meet his weight.

“I want you, on me, inside me.”

Her words aroused him even further, tightening his body to its limits. But he still held himself back, taking his position at her entrance and pressing shallowly in, then withdrawing, only to press again.

She groaned in frustration, moving her hands from their caress at his back to grasp his buttocks, and pull him firmly against her body, grinding herself against his thickened flesh.

“Now,” she whispered into his hair. “Please.”

And he pushed himself into her slowly, drawing out each sensation until he was embedded in her warm heat to his hilt. Then he began his dance again, stoking her pleasure with firm thrusts, her hips joining him a game of parry and thrust. He felt her hips rise farther, her inner muscles clenching him more and more tightly, but he held himself back, waiting on her to find her release, wanting nothing more than to chase away her dreams and give her the richest pleasure he could offer. With each stroke, he made her his, claiming her most intimate places. He wanted to possess her thoroughly, wanted to make her never able to look on another man without wishing that man were him, wanted to make her shatter in his arms over and over and over again.

He increased his pace, the power of his thrusts, and she met each one. He had intended for this claiming to be slow, gentle, but the course of their passion had been too long denied, and she held him tighter and tighter against her hips, her fingers clenching his buttocks insistently.

He felt her tighten, and tighten, and then she was his. He met her in the climax of their passion, both breaking together into a mindless oblivion where there was only sensation.

Sometime later, his body still pressing down on hers, he tried to shift his weight, but she pressed her hips against him. “Stay.”

At the word, his body tightened once more, urging him to take her again. She returned her hands to his buttocks and pressed down as she raised her hips to rub against him. “When you touch me, I can forget. Help me forget.”

He pushed into her once more, and she smiled at the sensation. “Yes, that's perfect. More.”

He met her eyes, and much as he would have liked to continue, he withdrew. “I did not expect. I'm sorry, Lucy, but I took no precautions. I will of course care for you and . . .”

She put her hand to his lips and covered his mouth. “I am barren. My fiancée and I . . . for years in the camps, we . . .” She shrugged. “I have long ago come to accept it.”

He kissed her lips gently, to take away the sorrow in her voice. “I would still care for you . . . and any child . . . my child.”

“Don't wish for the impossible, Colin. I learned that long ago.” She brushed the hair back from his face, then replaced her hands on his buttocks and pressed him into her body. “But we can enjoy the situation. What man doesn't want a mistress who will never inconvenience him with children? Who will never turn him away in his passion because she grows too large for pleasure?”

At the thought of Lucy, big with his child, Colin's passion bloomed fully, and he responded to the insistence of his hips with ardor.

“See: already you comprehend the benefits. I can feel you harden inside me. And I am ready for you again.”

He didn't correct her, just let her take pleasure in his body. The light from the window had grown more insistent, and he could now see more of her. But he wanted to see all of her.

He held her hips against his and rolled her on top of him. “Then take your pleasure, my lady. I am here to serve. See me as your concubine, for you are already the master of me.”

She laughed, a rich delighted sound. And she sat up on his hips, revealing her breasts and belly to his sight. “I've always wanted . . .” She blushed.

He was puzzled for only a moment. “To be on top?”

“James preferred . . . we . . . How can I be shy when . . . ?” She clenched her muscles, and he moaned.

“If that is shyness, I beg you to be more coy, my lady.” She laughed again. “So, let me see if I understand. Your James liked it best when you were beneath him.”