Craving the Forbidden (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Fitzroy Legacy - Book 1) (14 page)

The anguish of that more realistic possibility was almost worse.

She switched the kitchen light on. On the long table in the centre of the room a roast ham and roast joint of beef stood under net domes, waiting to be sliced up for the buffet at the funeral tomorrow. After that she’d be going back to London, and Kit would be leaving for some dusty camp somewhere in the Middle East.

Sophie felt her throat constrict painfully.

She’d probably never see him again. After all, she’d been friends with Jasper all these years without meeting him. She remembered the photo in the paper and wondered if she’d catch glimpses of him on the news from time to time. A horrible thought struck her: please, God, not in one of those reports about casualties—

She jumped as she heard a noise from the corridor behind her. It was a sort of rusty grating; metal against metal: the noise made by an old-fashioned key being turned in a lock—yet another piece from Alnburgh’s archive of horrorfilm sound effects. Sophie turned around, pressing herself back against the worktop, the scissors held aloft in her hand—as if that would help.

In the dark corridor the basement door burst open.

Kit stood there, silhouetted against the blue ice-light outside. He was swaying slightly.

‘Kit.’ Dropping the scissors, Sophie went towards him, concern quickening inside her. ‘Kit, what happened? Are you OK?’

‘I’m fine.’

His voice was harsh; as bleak and cold and empty as the frozen sky behind him.

‘Where’s the car?’ Her heart was pumping adrenaline through her, making her movements abrupt and shaky as she stepped past him and slammed the door. In the light from the kitchen his face was ashen, his lips white, but his eyes were glittering pools of darkness.

‘In town. Parked in the square outside the solicitor’s office. I walked back.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I was well over the limit to drive.’

He didn’t feel it. No gentle, welcome oblivion for him. The six-mile walk home had just served to sharpen his senses and give a steel-edged sharpness to every thought in his head.

And every step of the way he’d been aware of the castle, black and hulking against the skyline, and he’d known how every potential intruder, every would-be enemy invader, every outsider, for God’s sake, for the last thousand years had felt when confronted with that fortified mass of rock.

One thought had kept him going forwards. The knowledge that the six-foot-thick walls and turrets and battlements contained Sophie. Her bright hair. Her quick smile. Her irreverence and her humour. Her sweet, willing body …

‘What happened?’

She was standing in front of him now, trembling slightly. Or maybe shivering with the cold. She was always cold. He frowned down at her. She appeared to be wearing a large sweater and nothing else. Except thick woollen socks, which only seemed to make her long, slender legs look even more delicious. They were bare from mid-thigh downwards, which made it hard to think clearly about the question she’d just asked, or want to take the trouble to reply.

‘Kit? Was it something the solicitor said?’

She touched his hand. Her skin was actually warm for once. He longed to feel it against his.

‘Ralph wasn’t my father.’

He heard his own voice say the words. It was hard and maybe, just maybe a tiny bit bitter. Damn. He didn’t want to be bitter.

‘Oh, Kit—’

‘None of this is mine,’ he said, more matter-of-factly now, walking away from her into the kitchen. He turned slowly, looking around him as if seeing it all for the first time.

‘It all belongs to Jasper, I suppose. The castle, the estate, the title …’

She had come to stand in the doorway, her arms folded tightly across her chest. She was looking up at him, and her eyes were liquid with compassion and understanding and …

‘I don’t.’

Her voice low and breathless and vibrating with emotion as she came towards him. ‘I want you to know that I don’t belong to Jasper. I don’t belong to
anyone
.’

‘And I don’t have a brother any more.’

For a moment they stared at each other wordlessly. And then he caught her warm hand in his and pulled her forwards, giving way to the onslaught of want that had battered at his defences since she’d sat down opposite him on the train.

Together they ran up the stairs, pausing halfway up at the turn of the staircase to find each other’s mouths. Kit’s face was frozen beneath Sophie’s palms and she kissed him as if the heat of her longing could bring the warmth back into his body. His jaw was rough with stubble, his mouth tasted of whisky and as he slid his hands up beneath the sweater she gasped at the chill of his hands on her bare breasts while almost boiling over with need.

‘God, Sophie …’

‘Come on.’

Seizing his hand, she ran onwards, up the rest of the stairs. Desire made her disorientated, and at the top she turned right instead of left, just as she had that first night. Realising her mistake, she stopped, but before she could say anything he had taken her face in his hands and was pushing her up against the panelled wall, kissing her until she didn’t care where they were, just so long as she could have him soon.

Her hips ground helplessly against him, so she could feel the hardness of his erection beneath his clothes.

‘My room,’ she moaned. ‘It’s the other way—’

‘Plenty more.’ He growled against her mouth and, without taking his lips from hers, felt along the panelling for the handle of the door a few feet away. As it opened he levered himself away from the wall and stooped to hoist her up against him. She wrapped her legs tightly around his waist as he carried her forwards.

Sophie wasn’t sure if this was the same room she’d stumbled into on her first night, or another one where the air was damp and the furniture draped in dust sheets. The window was tall, arched, uncurtained, and the blue light coming through it gleamed dully on the carved oak posts of an enormous bed.

As he headed towards it her insides turned liquid with lust. The room was freezing, but his breath was warm against her breasts, making her nipples harden and fizz. He was still dressed, the wool of his jacket rough and damp against her thighs. As she slid out of his arms and onto the hard, high bed she pulled it off his shoulders.

She was on her knees on the slippery damask bedspread and he stood in front of her. His face was bleached of colour, its hard contours thrown into sharp relief, his heavy-lidded eyes black and fathomless.

He was so beautiful.

Her breath caught. Her hands were shaking as she reached out to undo the buttons of his shirt. He closed his eyes, tipping his head back, and Sophie could see the muscles quilt in his jaw as he fought to keep control.

It was one battle he wasn’t going to win.

Gently now, she slid her hands beneath his open shirt, feeling him flinch with his own raw need. His skin still felt chilled. Tenderness bloomed and ached inside her, giving her desire a poignancy that scared her. She felt as if she were dancing, barefoot, free, but right on the edge of a precipice.

His shirt fell away and quickly she peeled off her jumper. Slowly, tightly, she wrapped her arms around him, pressing her warm, naked body against his cold one, cradling his head, kissing his mouth, his cheekbones, his eyes, his jaw as he lowered her onto the bed.

His heartbeat was strong against her breasts. Their ribs ground together as he undid his jeans with one hand and kicked them off. Sophie reached up and yanked at the damask cover so she could pull it over them, to warm him again. She was distantly aware of its musty smell, but she couldn’t have cared less because he was cupping her cheek, trailing the backs of his fingers with exquisite, maddening lightness over her breast until her nerves screamed with desperation.

Reality blurred into a dreamlike haze where she was aware of nothing but his skin against hers, his breath in her ear, his lips on her neck. She kept her eyes fixed on his, swimming in their gleaming depths as beneath the sheets his hands discovered her body.

And with each stroke of his palm, each well-placed brush of his fingers she was discovering herself. Sex was something she was relaxed about, comfortable with. She knew what she was doing, and she enjoyed it. It was
fun
.

And this was as far removed from anything she’d ever felt before as silk was from sackcloth. This wasn’t fun, it was essential. As he entered her, gently, deeply, she wasn’t sure if it was more like dying or being born again.

Her cry of need hung in the frigid air.

She had never known anything more perfect. For a moment they were both still, adjusting to the new bliss of being joined together, and, looking into his eyes, she wanted to make it last for ever.

But it was impossible. Her body was already crying out for more, her hips beginning to move of their own accord, picking up their rhythm from him. His thumb brushed over her lips, and she caught it between her teeth as with the other hand he found her clitoris, moving his fingertip over it with every slow, powerful thrust.

The thick, ages-old silence of the room pooled around them again. The massive bed was too strong to creak as their bodies moved. Sophie wanted to look at him for ever. She wanted to hold for a lifetime the image of his perfect face, close to hers, as she spiralled helplessly into the most profound chasm of sensation. Their legs were entwined, his muscles hard against hers, and she didn’t know where he ended and she began.

She didn’t know anything any more. As a second cry—her high, broken sob of release—shattered the stillness she could only feel that everything she’d ever thought she believed was ashes and dust.

Kit slept.

Whether it was the whisky or the six-mile walk or the shattering, deathlike orgasm he didn’t know, but for the first time in years he slept like the angels.

He woke as the sun was coming up, streaking the sky with rose-pink ribbons and filling the room with the melting light of dawn. In his arms Sophie slept on, her back pressed against his chest, her bottom warm and deliciously soft against his thighs.

Or, more specifically, against his erection.

Gritting his teeth, he willed it away as remorse began to ebb through him, dissolving the haze of repletion and leaving him staring reality in the face. He closed his eyes again, not wanting to look at reality, or at Sophie, whose vibrant beauty had an ethereal quality in the pink half-light. As a way of blotting out the anger and the hurt and the shock of his discovery, last night had been perfect—more than he could have hoped for, and certainly more than he deserved. But it was a one-off. It couldn’t happen again.

Sophie stirred in his arms, moving her hips a fraction, pressing herself harder against the ache of his erection. He bit back a moan, dragging his mind back from the memories of her unbuttoning his shirt, wrapping her arms around him and holding him when he most needed to be held, folding herself around him as he entered her …

The whisky might have blunted the pain and temporarily short-circuited his sense of honour, but it hadn’t dulled his memory. Every detail was there, stored and ready for instant replay in the back of his head. A fact that he suspected was going to prove extremely inconvenient in the nights ahead when he was alone in a narrow bunk, separated from the rest of his men by the thinnest of makeshift walls.

Rolling out of bed, he picked his jeans up from the floor and pulled them on. The pink light carried an illusion of warmth, but the room was like a fridge and he had to clench his teeth together to stop them chattering as he reached into the sleep-warm depths of the bed and slid his arms under her.

She sighed as he gathered her up as gently as possible, but she didn’t wake. Kit found himself fighting the urge to smile as he recalled the swiftness with which she’d fallen asleep on the train the first time he’d seen her, and the way it had both intrigued and irritated him. But, looking down into her face as he carried her down the shadowy corridor to her own room, the smile faded again. She was like no woman he’d ever known before. She’d appeared from nowhere, defiant, elusive, contradictory, and somehow managed to slip beneath his defences when he’d wanted only to push her away.

How had she done that?

With one shoulder he nudged open the door to her room. The window faced north, so no dawn sunlight penetrated here, and it was even colder, if that were possible, than the room they’d just left. It was also incredibly neat, he noticed with a flash of surprise, as if she was ready to leave at any moment. Her hair was fragrant and silken against his bare chest as he laid her gently down on the bed, rolling her sideways a little so he could pull back the covers and ease them over her.

Her eyes half opened as he tucked her in and she gazed up at him for a moment, her lips curving into a sleepy smile as she reached out and stroked the back of her hand down his midriff.

‘It’s cold without you,’ she murmured. ‘Come back.’

‘I can’t.’ His voice was like sandpaper and he grasped her hand before it went any lower, his fingers tightening around hers for a moment as he laid it back on the bed. ‘It’s morning.’

She rolled onto her back and gave a little sighing laugh. ‘It’s over, you mean.’

‘It has to be.’ He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes, physically stopping himself from looking at her as he spoke so his resolve wouldn’t weaken. ‘We can’t change what we did last night, but we can’t repeat it either. We just need to get through today without giving Jasper any reason to suspect.’

Against the pillow her face was still and composed, her hair spilling around it and emphasising its pallor. She closed her eyes.

‘OK.’

The small, resigned word wasn’t what he had expected and it pushed knives of guilt into his gut. Why was she making him feel as if this were his fault? Last night they had both been reckless but the result was just the logical conclusion to everything that had happened between them since the moment they’d met. It had felt inevitable somehow, but nonetheless forbidden.

Kit turned away and walked to the door, bracing his arm against the frame before he opened it and saying with great weariness, ‘Sophie, what did you expect?’