Hadrian (27 page)

Abruptly, Avis became determined that their encounter be
mutually
pleasurable, and felt the first stirrings of confidence that she could make it thus.

“Hadrian, I am so sorry.” This wife had
hurt
him, for which Avis wanted to lecture her sternly and at length.

“We had relations infrequently, in the dark, under the covers, as she all but pretended to sleep. I learned not to miss what I would not ever share with my devoted helpmeet.”

A breeze sprang up and fanned ripples across the quiet surface of the pond, while Avis struggled with bottomless consternation. “In the dark? Under the covers?”

“Infrequently.”

His complete lack of expression confirmed that the memories were painful still, and that Hadrian had not found a way to make sense of a woman who promised to love, honor and obey, and then delivered an intimate rejection instead.

Not so very different form Hart Collins, pledging his lifelong companionship, respect and affection, then delivering violation and betrayal in their place. At least Hart Collins had done his damage then decamped for the Continent.

“Were her marital duties painful for her?”

“Physically? I can assure you I took every measure to guarantee they were not, and she never accused me of hurting her.”

“Not in words.”

“You begin to grasp an element of the marital dynamic I found baffling for the entire length of our union. If the woman didn’t want to be my wife in the most basic sense, then why marry me?”

My poor Hadrian
. Rue had married the handsome Mr. Bothwell for the same reason Avis had at least temporarily accepted Hart Collins’s suit.

“Rue accepted your suit because a woman must marry or she’s an object of pity and derision. Her sisters chose you for her, and you had a viscount’s title in your future.”

“Why are we speaking of this?” He began unbuttoning his waistcoat, a blue paisley silk that did marvelous things for his eyes. “The day is spectacularly lovely. I’m in the best company, and we’re alone for as long as we please.” He cupped the curve of Avis’s jaw, his hand callused and warm against her cheek.

He was more than half-undressed, while Avis needed time to adjust to his disclosures. Her ordeal with Collins had been painful and scandalous, but over in minutes. Hadrian’s marriage had lasted several years.

“Shall we eat?”

He dropped his hand. “Maybe. You will make me a promise first, though.”

“You would ask me for vows, Hadrian? I’m surprised you’d trust another woman to keep her word.” Surprised he’d consider marriage ever again under any circumstances.

“You’ll make this promise or I will set off down the hill at a dead run. You must assure me, Avie, that if you’re at all uncomfortable, physically or otherwise, you’ll stop me.”

What was he asking? “I’m uncomfortable now.”

“Painfully uncomfortable,” he clarified. “A certain anxiety is to be expected, on both of our parts, for I am at something of a loss myself. If I exercise excessive control, you’ll have time to fret and worry and think yourself out of your pleasures. If my attentions become too precipitous, you might be reminded of Collins.”

Hart Collins was never very far from Avis’s awareness, which was in some ways his greatest transgression. Avis decided, between one breeze and the next, that Collins would have no part of what transpired between her and Hadrian on that blanket.

And yet, what about Hadrian’s past, which he’d born with the polite, mendacious good cheer of a rural vicar? “Tell me about Rue.”

He sat a foot away from Avis, his waistcoat gaping open. “I already did. We were married and we learned to be content.”

“You learned to cope. One does.”

He and Avis had been coping separately, but with at least some of the same demons. Avis pushed Hadrian’s waistcoat off his shoulders.

“One did,” he said. “I’m here now with you, and for that I am grateful.”

“As am I. Profoundly grateful.” Not the dutiful, pious, Christian sort of gratitude, but—despite all manner of looming difficulties and impossible choices—a wild, joyous, incredulous gratitude that needed the endless blue of the Cumbrian summer sky to encompass it.

Hadrian shifted so his back was to the tree shading their blanket and patted the place beside him. “Then stop being so skittish, my love, and cuddle up. Shall I tell you what I’m planning for you?”

“Merciful days, Hadrian. You shall not deliver a sermon on the topic of my pleasures.” Despite her scolding tone, Avie took the place beside Hadrian, her knees drawn up under her chin.

Hadrian settled a hand on the back of her neck, such a vulnerable, pretty neck, and mustered not a sermon but rather an ode.

“I’ll start with the little touches, for they calm something that clamors inside me when I’m near you. I think,”—he traced the curve of her ear—“this is what fatuous young men mean when they say, ‘She completes me.’ To touch you in any way is soothing and compelling at once.”

He watched her for a reaction, and perhaps, just perhaps, her head dropped forward an inch in relaxation.

“Touching you makes me want to kiss you,” Hadrian went on, his tone steadier than his nerves. “I want to kiss you all over, your hair, your face, your hands, your luscious breasts, your
everything.
I want my mouth on you everywhere, learning the taste of you, the scent of you, and that, of course, makes me want your mouth on me.”

He scooted, so he could start on the hooks of her dress. She held quite, quite still for that, too.

“When my mouth,”—he leaned in for a kiss to her nape—“and my hands are on you, I want to be inside you. I want to feel your passion as we join, and give you pleasure upon pleasure upon pleasure.” He paused to slip his hands around, slowly, slowly, and rest them on her waist.

“I want to take pleasure from you too,” he admitted, brushing his palms over her breasts as he returned to the endless—endless!—procession of hooks down her back. “I want to feel you writhing beneath me, eager for what I can give you, demanding it. I want those lover sounds pouring from you in a desperate torrent. I want your nails,”—he brought her hand to his mouth and sucked on an index finger—“scoring my back in mindless abandon and sinking into my—”

“Stop.”

He fell silent, almost glad for the freedom to focus on disrobing her.

“I didn’t mean you must cease speaking.” She peered at him over her shoulder, her gaze a bit dazed. “I can get this dress off now.”

“I’ll get the dress off you.” Hadrian slid his hands forward again, under yards and billows of fabric. “Soon.”

“Now,” she said, her voice taking on a new, stubborn edge.

“Very well.” Hadrian moved around to face her on the blanket. “Now I really must kiss you.”

He’d found his rhythm, no doubt a little faster than she wanted, a lot slower than he wanted, but it was working. Avis’s gaze was softening, and her mind was easing into the tempo of passion. He brushed his lips over her eyelids, and a happy, sweet sigh breezed past his ear.

“Hadrian Chastain Bothwell…”

He went on a kissing tour of her features, tending to her eyebrows, her jaw, her cheek, her forehead, and finding the place just above her collarbone that provoked a sigh slightly more ragged and needy than its predecessors.

She turned her face, seeking his mouth, and Hadrian sat back.

“Help me with my shirt, Avie.”

She hauled him forward by grabbing a fistful of that shirt, and Hadrian fell into the role of kissee rather than kisser. Avie undid the buttons of his shirt, then stroked her hands over his chest as if she’d been expiring for the feel of his bare skin beneath her palms.

He should have kept his shirt on, literally, for the desire to ruck up her skirts and start rutting kicked hard at his self-control.

No rucking, old boy
.

Collins had no doubt done some rucking and worse, and the thought was enough to jerk hard on the reins of Hadrian’s arousal. He settled for pulling the shirt over his head, the better to oblige Avie’s curiosity.

She dropped her forehead to his bare shoulder, and God help him, she tasted him, a tentative flick of her tongue that had heat arcing through him, into his bones, and down.

“Hadrian, you must kiss me.” A little breathless, but a command rather than a request.

Bless the woman.
Commandments were something he understood.

“I assuredly must kiss you.” He nuzzled at her throat, pressing her back, until she lay flat, her dress loose. He brushed her hair off her forehead, giving himself a moment to steady his galloping impulses, and then stretched out beside her. “Or you could kiss me.”

That she launched herself at him like a female variant of the Congreve rocket suggested she liked the idea.

“I want to gobble you up,” she said, rolling up on her side and using that infernal tongue of hers to taste his chest. “In little bites, slowly, and thoroughly.”

“I’m willing to be gobbled.” He was only human, though, so he had to touch her while she tortured him. He sank his hands into her hair and wondered fleetingly if she’d rather have it loose, and then his fingers were searching out the pins, because
he’d
rather have it undone, brushing across his chest, fanning his belly, spilling around them in soft, fragrant abundance.

He teased the neckline of her dress down, and she smiled more radiantly.

“I’m glad we’re outside,” she said, then pressed her face to his shoulder. “It’s better, like this.”

He cradled the back of her head against his palm, respect for her courage washing through him and gentling the lust.
Better
was her euphemism for unashamed. Not in some musty little cottage, not furtive or dark or under the covers. Better, gloriously better.

She put them both out of their misery and brought her mouth to his at the same moment Hadrian drew the last pin from her hair. As she shifted over him, her mouth still joined to his, her hair tumbled down in silky, shimmering waves.

Hadrian gathered up her tresses, glorying in their warmth and abundance. She paused in her plundering of his mouth to shake her head, the better to spill her hair over them both.

“Kiss me, Avie, or I’ll start howling and panting, my eyes will cross and my—”

She sighed into his mouth. Precious, her life’s breath, tasting of peppermint tea and sweetness. She was tentative, seaming his lips, tracing his teeth, then gradually, going deeper.

She touched him too, making the newly created
no rucking
commandment a sore trial. Her fingers traced Hadrian’s jaw, his hairline, his ear, and on down his neck, to his throat, his collarbone—she was particularly interested in that, or in driving him mad pausing there—and then to his chest.

He trapped her hand in his and brought it to his falls, and when she startled above him, he cursed himself for being too headlong, too greedy.

No rucking, and now,
no rushing.

Then she shaped him through his breeches, and he couldn’t ruck, or rush, or think, because her touch was too
wonderful
.

“Easy, love.” He kissed her around the words, arching up when what he wanted to do was thrust hard into that curious hand. “Perhaps you could get me out of my breeches?”

“While I’m still dressed?”

“You’re only somewhat dressed.” He lay beneath her, nearly panting with the need to be naked.

And when, he wondered vaguely, had he developed such wanton inclinations?

And why had he waited so long to indulge them?

“Buttons, Avie. Please.”

She smiled a secret, smug smile—he’d have to remember to beg more often—and her deft fingers were soon undoing his breeches, thank ye gods. When she had his falls open, she sat back, a prizefighter regaining her wind between rounds, then went exploring among the folds and tucks of his clothing, gently extracting the treasure she found.

“Oh, my.”

“Avie, dearest, if you keep looking at me like that, I will surely disgrace myself.” Though what a pleasurable disgrace it would be.

She scooted back and leaned down to swipe her tongue up the length of him, lingering for a swirl right up under the tip, where his best intentions had never resided.

He stroked his hand over the back of her head. “Love, if you don’t get on your pony this instant, he’ll gallop off without you.”

“Bad pony, to leave a lady stranded,” she said, letting her hands fall away from Hadrian’s cock. “How does one do this?”

“Two do it. Straddle me,” he said, keeping his tone brisk, for the moment was critical given the doubt in her eyes. “Then you owe me some proper kissing.”

“Improper kissing,” she corrected, but she gave him room to peel out of his breeches and then took a moment to survey his naked body, slowly, from head to toe, and back up.

“What a magnificent man-beast you are.”

Eve might have said those very words in the Garden of Paradise.

“You can stare at me all you like.” Hadrian made a show of folding his arms behind his head. “Or you can stop dithering.”

“You’re nicely put together.”

And dear Avie was still dithering. “The part you’re staring at is in proportion to the rest of me, and you’re stalling.”