Forbidden (Scandalous Sirens) (31 page)

Vaughn felt a hot triumph as he watched Elisa writhe beneath him, opening herself up fully to him. He knew she came to him completely without reservation this time, unshackled by any commitments. She was his in every sense of the word. His erection was near bursting, but he held himself back, controlled it, wanting her to experience the same joy she’d brought him. He took her breasts in his palms, teasing the pink colored areolas.

She moaned low in her throat and he felt her climax grip and release her.

“Vaughn…make love to me,” she whispered, pulling him toward her.

On his knees, he probed her with the head of his erection. She shifted her hips, trying to take him in, but he held back, studying her gleaming, welcoming cleft, the engorged folds of flesh, and the little tilt and movement of her hips. “You’re so wet for me.”

“Yes.”

He filled her with a single thrust and she cried aloud her pleasure, her head thrown back, her throat extended. With a smile, he lifted her legs and thrust into her a little further, causing her to gasp once more. But the little movements inside her tight sheath were already pushing him too close to his climax. He gripped her thigh, and with shortened thrusts, little movements of his hips, kept the climax at bay.

This time he would wait for her. He wanted them to come together, to experience that rare mutual pleasure. Concentrating on reading her responses, tracking her growing excitement, he found his own pleasure was not building with the direct, swift climb to the peak, but was lifted up by a deep well of sensation that was more intense, more overwhelming than any he had ever experienced. Perhaps his profound pleasure communicated itself to her—he didn’t know if it was possible, for this was a new experience for him—but Elisa was moving with complete and utter abandonment, pushed towards that same exquisite peak. She was tightening around him, her body tensing as the moment drew closer. Then she arched hard, and clenched about him, and the internal caress sent the cascade of rippling, convulsing joy through his body.

As he spent himself within her, he kissed her, wishing they could stay like this forever.

* * * * *

It was nearing three weeks after the shooting when Elisa knew it was time to discuss the future. They could not spend the rest of their lives hiding away in the small forgotten inn. Decisions must be made, actions taken. She knew it was time for such a conversation, for Vaughn had spent the majority of the morning away from the inn. He didn’t tell her where he’d gone, but she could tell by his quiet manner that it probably had something to do with Rufus. That he did not share his morning with her was unsettling. She could not let the matter rest without discussing it. If she had learned anything from her pathetic marriage it was that secrets between people could fester and rot.

She would tackle the subject over lunch, she decided, as the meal was laid out upon the table in the corner of the room.
 
Vaughn was washing the dust of his travels from his face and hands.

But when they sat before the modest repast, her courage failed her. After all, what was her place in Vaughn’s life now? Did she have any right at all to demand an accounting, a settling? The possibility that she did not kept her silent.

Until, finally, he pushed his plate aside. “I need to go to London,” he said, turning to her, his expression undecipherable.

Her heart lurched. He had said
I
, not
we
. Was she meant to stay here? “When will you return?” she asked.

He swiveled to face her properly and took her hand in his big warm ones. “I’m not certain. I do know this much, however. I want us to marry.”

She laughed without mirth. “Vaughn, you know that’s impossible.”

“It would work, Elisa. I know it.”

The words held such conviction, she wished she could believe them. But she shook her head, and shifted her gaze from his steady examination of her. They could not continue to live like this, closeted away from the rest of the world, that was true. But…marriage? “No one would ever accept us,” she said softly. “The moment we revealed ourselves, we’d be shunned by all of society. I know how that feels, Vaughn. I won’t put you through it.”

“I have done nothing wrong,” Vaughn said. “I intend to marry a woman who has been previously married. It’s done all the time.”

“I was your father’s fiancée. I still am, in society’s eyes. And you’re courting Natasha. Our relationship is forbidden and you know it, Vaughn. They will crucify you, as they did me.”

The trials of the past made her think of Raymond. “I would lose any hope of seeing my son again.” Tears burned the back of her eyes and she quickly looked away.

She heard him move, the chair scrape back. Then she was picked up. He took her over to the bed and laid her down as though she were as fragile as crystal. Just as delicately he undressed her and made love to her. When he was within her, she allowed her tears to fall, anointing what might be the last time they ever made love.

Chapter Seventeen

As he hurried into the inn, Vaughn’s thoughts turned to Elisa. How he’d missed her these past five days. Every waking hour he thought of her, wondering what she was doing, praying she would still be there when he arrived. Her refusal to consider marriage hadn’t surprised him, but it reinforced his understanding that Elisa, unlike any woman he’d ever met, was an independent person. He remembered the lesson she had implanted in him in that regard—the bonds and the knife and the control she had exerted over him. If Elisa was still in their room when he arrived, he knew it would be because she had chosen to wait for him rather than leave.

Why she would choose to stay was a matter that puzzled him in the moments when he had the courage to examine it. He had spent the last five days trying to earn that privilege. He would soon find out if he was too late.

He had to force himself not to run into the inn. It was quiet inside—no late customers tonight, either. The door to their room was closed and when he tested it, proved to be locked, too. He pulled out the key from his pocket and turned the lock, cracked the door aside, took a deep breath and stepped inside.

Elisa sat in a chair, her back to him. She appeared to be reading but she didn’t turn as he entered. Her stillness made his heart race. Rufus was not far away—he might have found her while he was not here to protect her…

He hurried to the chair to face her, and his gut loosened with hot relief when he saw that she was merely sleeping, the novel she’d been reading in her lap. Her elbow was propped on the arm of the chair, her hand holding up her head. She was still dressed in her day gown and by the way her body slumped in the chair, she was still without a corset.

His heart ached. She had endured too much of the cruelty life could deliver, yet appeared untouched by it. Her naturalness, her candor and the tiny line between her brows that dug deeper whenever she insisted her demands be met…he had much to do with the emergence of these qualities, but the world had created Elisa, full of promise and potential and he had been lucky enough to watch her flower to full bloom.

“Please make her stay,” he breathed to the same world that had delivered her to him, then ran his fingers down the side of her face and kissed her lightly.

Her eyes fluttered open andthe radiant smile that emerged made his blood heat within his veins.

“Vaughn,” she said on a sigh, throwing her arms around his neck and holding him tight against her. “I was so afraid something had happened to you.” She put him from her. “Let me have my fill of you. I’m starved…five days you’ve been gone and not a word.”

He was startled to see tears in her eyes despite her smile and realized then that she had been dealing with her own fears. He had selfishly focused upon his own affairs. “Elisa, my love, my dearest love, I’m sorry,” he said and heard his own words with a small spurt of surprise. The surprise fled when he realized that he had spoken truly.

Her eyes widened. He saw doubt, then a deep glow seemed to fill them. Happiness, he realized and felt a giddy joy that he had put that happiness there. Would loving her keep her by him?

“Truly?” Elisa whispered.

He took her hands within his own and brought them to his lips. “With all of my heart.”

She pulled her to him, kissing his neck, his ear, his jaw. Soon she was reaching for the buttons on his shirt, but he held her hands fast. “First I want to tell you about London.”

He saw the wariness in her eyes as she sat back. He pulled the other chair closer, took a seat and once again picked up her hand. “Weeks ago I organized a group of men to look into Raymond’s whereabouts.”

Her throat convulsed as she swallowed hard.

He smiled, hoping to calm her fears. “They found him, Elisa, and I went to him.”

Tears welled in her eyes. “Why did you not tell me?”

“I wanted to see for myself what had happened in the years you’ve been separated. I wanted to talk to him, to hear what had transpired.”

“But why…?”

“Elisa, I lived Raymond’s life. I was separated from my mother at a very young age, given no explanation for her departure and no hope of her return. She loved me and would have kept me by her, but there were times when I resented her for the pain her absence caused in me—so much at times that I felt I hated her. If she had suddenly appeared before me during those times, I would have struck out at her with all the despair and pain that I had in me.”

“Oh Vaughn…” she breathed.

He shook her hand a little, to take her focus away from him. “I did not want you to be greeted by that reception, if by some enormous stroke of luck you had got past the front door of his home.”

“But you did get past?”

“I am not without…influence.”

“How did you find him?” she asked, and dread was thick in her voice.

“He was lodged with distant members of Roger’s family. They are not as well off as you. He has a roof over his head, but it is not the life he would have had with you.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Did he ask about me?”

“Elisa, look at me.”

She opened her eyes. The guilt, the torment of a mother who feels she has failed her child—Vaughn could read it all in her eyes. “He showed me a well-worn leather book, with silk stitching and hand-drawn lettering, St. George and the Dragon. He said you used to read it to him every night before he went to bed. He keeps it upon his bedside table.”

“My father gave me that book. It is very old, from a monastery near where he grew up. Oh, Vaughn, he still has the book? Then…he does not bear me ill-will?”

Hope was emerging now. He rejoiced at its appearance. “That is what Raymond told me about the book, too. Elisa…he believed you were dead.”

Her mouth opened and her eyes widened. “Dead? How could he—”

“Rufus,” Vaughn said simply.

She stared at him, her eyes widening even more.

“Rufus arranged it through intermediaries. That’s how I eventually found Raymond—money always leaves a trail. This decrepit wing of Roger’s family did not want the boy, but with the annual stipend Rufus gave them, they accepted both the discomfort and his instructions that the boy must not learn where you were and try to reach you. The easiest way to ensure that was to tell him you were dead.”

She sunk into her chair, shaking her head a little. “Vaughn, I knew Rufus was a little mad, a little cruel in his methods of acquiring what he wanted, but I cannot believe the depths of his depravity. This is…this is a wretched thing he has done.”

“He wanted you to himself, Elisa. He lied to ensure you were tied to him.”

“My poor little boy…”

Vaughn couldn’t quite suppress his smile. “No longer, madam. I made sure he knew the truth.”

“You spoke to him?”

“I did better than that. He waits outside
.”

Her eyes widened as she looked to the door, then back at him. “You jest?”

“In this matter? Never. I am giving your son the one thing I yearned for as a child…The chance to see my mother again.”

She began to tremble and he stood and took her in his arms, comforting her. “Elisa, be calm. He is as nervous as you.”

“I should change.”

“No. Let him see you as you really are. The way I see you.” He put her from him. “Are you ready?”

She nodded, biting her bottom lip doubtfully.

“Stay right there.”

Elisa could hear her heart thudding in her temples and her ears, the organ jumping against her chest. She gripped the back of the chair tightly as Vaughn crossed the room to the door.

For years she had worked only to have her son returned to her and suddenly, without warning, the moment was here—her crowning ambition completed. Steadying herself, she folded her trembling hands together and waited.

The door opened once again. A tall child stepped through, Vaughn just behind him.

Raymond.

Elisa’s breath left her in a rush. He was a young child no longer, but a boy on the brink of adolescence. He reached to Vaughn’s shoulder already, his dark hair a little unruly, but curly just as Roger’s had been. His eyes, so like hers in shape and color, stared back at her with disbelief.