Hadrian (35 page)

“Such talk,” Hadrian murmured, kneeling up and opening the hamper. “Perhaps I misheard you.”

“Hadrian, was I so inept as all that?”

He went still, as if the bottom of the hamper had turned mysterious on him, then he sank back on his heels.

“I did not observe precautions last time, Avie. For the first time in my life, I
could
not. If you get a child of me, then your options are gone. I hope you understand that.”

“I understand that the more time we spend together, the more you avoid me somehow. If currying favor with the neighbors is to cost me your affections, then the neighbors can go hang. You haven’t even kissed me, haven’t brushed my hair, haven’t napped with me again.”

And she was angry,
again
, to have to point this out to him, also bewildered, and maybe a bit proud of herself for forcing a confrontation.

More than a bit.

Hadrian’s arms came around her. “Hush, Avie. The resumption of your social activities has taken a toll. I should have anticipated that.”

She shoved him to his back and climbed over him. “I will not be hushed, not by you of all people. I miss you, Hadrian. Is that your point? Did you need to hear me say it?”

“It’s gratifying,” he admitted, drawing the backs of his fingers over her cheek, “but I wouldn’t bring you misery for any price, Avie, except your own well-being. I miss you too.”

And yet, he regarded her with a combination of wariness and affection, as if he’d happily endure more weeks of polite social calls.

So Avis kissed him. She poured her frustration and bewilderment into the kiss, and by degrees, Hadrian kissed her back. He came alive beneath her, his arms anchoring her to his chest, his kisses waxing hotter and his body—

He
had
missed her, as a man misses a woman he’s made love with.

Avis subsided against his chest and inhaled his citrus and clove scent. “I want you, Hadrian. I want you, I want you here, I want you now.”

Also everywhere and for always, which was a problem.

“Avie, this is complicated. I desire you until I’m nigh blind with it, but passion can bear fruit, and I won’t trap you as Collins tried to.”

Avis rolled to her back, so she was presented with the wide blue expanse of the Cumbrian summer sun.

“I hate your gentlemanly scruples, Hadrian Bothwell.” Though she loved him, which was why becoming his wife would be complicated. “If the Baroness Collins is behind these notes, we cannot seek redress from her. Public opinion will be sympathetic to her, and perhaps it should be. You will be ostracized for marrying me, or pitied. The pity is worse, I can assure you. Worst of all would be if harm were to befall you—mortal harm.”

Hadrian made no move to touch her, which was fortunate, because Avis was trying to
think
—without much success.

“I will be envied, if you marry me.”

He believed that. The daft, lovely, dear, stubborn man believed that, and his belief warmed all the cramped, lonely, bewildered corners of Avis’s heart.

“I
need
, Hadrian, to make a lovely memory with you here. My need is not rational, and it is certainly not convenient, but I won’t apologize for it, either. I can understand that you seek to protect me from further scandal with your warnings and scruples, so let us compromise: If I conceive your child, I will marry you.”

Because in that much, he was right, though Avis was right too, to insist on an opportunity to reclaim more of her past—more of her soul—from Hart Collins’s grip.

As the foals capered and played in the summer sun, and the mares contentedly cropped the grass, Hadrian studied her. Avis saw all manner of emotions in his eyes: frustration, anger even, calculation, lust, affection, exasperation, and something warm and sweet and lost.

He sat up, and for an endless, unendurable moment, Avis thought he’d leave her on the blanket, doubly cursing a place in need of redemption.

“This is not wise.” He yanked his stockings off and tossed them toward his boots. “You have me cornered. I will earn your ire do I refuse you, and I will earn your eternal resentment if our joining has consequences. This isn’t how I wanted it to be.”

Avie was nearly begging Hadrian for his favors, and his Avie should never have to beg, not for his attention, not for anything, and especially not here in this place, on another lovely day.

They’d been weeks at this business of calling on the neighbors, riding out together, and attending services together, but they’d not succeeded in provoking any notes, or any apparent increase in the gossip directed at Avis.

They had succeeded in straining Hadrian’s self-discipline to the limit of his strength, though. He’d taken to nightly swims in the quarry pond, forcing himself to linger in its frigid depths until his limbs ached and his teeth chattered.

He took off his jacket and cravat, lay back on the blanket, and settled an arm around the woman he loved, for nothing less than love could result in the torment of longing he endured in her company.

“I’m proud of you, Avis Portmaine.”

“You’ve barely started undressing. Why are you proud of me?”

“You can see to my clothes. A little effort for your pleasures isn’t much to ask. I’m proud of you because not once in all these weeks of doing the pretty with me has your composure faltered. My composure, however, is jeopardized by your request.”

His sanity, his heart, his
everything
, hung by a thread—probably a glimpse into the way Avis felt when one of these notes dropped into her quiet life, wreaking havoc from some unknown quarter.

She levered up to sit beside him. “If you’re dithering, it won’t do you any good, Hadrian, I have become a determined woman.” Her hands went to his falls, while Hadrian laced his fingers behind his head and prayed for fortitude.

Also for erotic inspiration: If they were to indulge in a lapse in judgment, let it be the very best lapse he could give her.

She took a peculiar and charming approach, undoing his breeches and drawing forth his burgeoning erection. With his falls lying open and the summer breeze gracing him in unusual locations, she made an inspection of the rest of him: cuff-links, waistcoat, shirt, and every so often, she’d come back to his breeding organs for the occasional stroke or pat or caress.

“You are diabolical,” Hadrian said when he was lying naked on his back. “I suppose you’ll take another eternity to remove your own clothes?”

“I’ll need your help with the hooks.” She turned, swept her hair up off her nape, and presented that particularly vulnerable and fetching part of herself while Hadrian’s cock leapt.

“You will pay for this,” he warned as he sat up and started on her hooks. “A man can take only so much, Avie, and then he must retaliate.”

“I live in hope.” She sighed dramatically while Hadrian pushed her dress off her shoulders, trapping her arms.

“You can just stew in your hope, my lady.” He set his lips to her spine and nibbled and teased and nuzzled his way south, then north, then out over her shoulder blades, to the juncture of her neck, her ears, and just about everywhere her warm, fragrant flesh was exposed.

“You’re making love to my back,” she whispered long moments later. “Not well done of you, when the rest of me feels so neglected.”

She was teasing him. Saints be praised, Avis Portmaine was intimately teasing him, and he was proud of her all over again.

“We’ve time, Avie,” he said softly, but he resumed undoing hooks, until the dress was pushed away and she was left in only her shift. Slowly, while she watched him, Hadrian undid one bow at a time until her jumps were discarded and her chemise was more off of her than on.

“I love how you look at me,” Avis said, winnowing her fingers through his hair.

“How do I look at you?”

“Like I’m the answer to years of prayers.”

He leaned forward to graze her mouth with his. Kissing her was the easiest thing in the world, as they sat nearly naked on their blanket in a little summer Eden.

He tried to hold back, to merely tease, and taste, and coax, but her tongue was bold, and she whimpered with wanting. Still, he would not be hurried, until the backs of her fingers brushed his cock.

“Not fair, Avie,” he rasped. “One wants to savor such pleasure.”

“Savor this.” She put his hand on her breast and arched into his palm. For two years, he’d been celibate, and for most of those two years, it hadn’t been so difficult.

As an eighteen-year-old, he’d been one, eager, strutting, monument to perpetual arousal, but most of the pleasures he’d longed for then were yet to be experienced. Now, he knew what gratification could be, and how starved he’d become for pleasure.

For her.

He eased Avis to her back and settled his mouth over her nipple. He rode the rise and fall of her sigh as her hands cradled the back of his head in a slow, sweet caress that brought him closer to her.

“You like this?” He drew on her gently and used his tongue to heighten the sensations.

“I adore it, with you, Hadrian. I wish you had two mouths and four hands. I wish I had as many myself, so badly do I want to touch you everywhere.”

“I’m in no hurry.” He rolled to his back, though he’d never been in a bigger, harder hurry.

She sat up and surveyed him as he sprawled, trying for a credible impersonation of a happy, relaxed fellow—except for the erection arrowing up along his belly.

“You’re in a peculiar mood,” she said, stroking his shaft.

“We’re taking our time. The ease of our pace now will pay off later. Trust me on this.”

“I do trust you.” She swirled her tongue around the head of his cock, then shifted down to her side, her head pillowed on his belly. “Just recall,”—another slow, hot, wet swipe—“this taking our time business was your idea.”

He settled a hand in her hair and resigned himself to protracted torture, because he owed her this. He owed her any foray she wanted to make in the direction of sexual intimacy and confidence, even if it meant he embarrassed himself in ways that hadn’t plagued him since his adolescence.

She undertook her explorations with a vengeance, alternately nibbling, caressing, and then suckling at him, until the urge to move his hips became imperative.

“Are you bored yet?” he asked.

Her grin said she wasn’t fooled. She could
taste
his passion straining at the leash.

“Maybe soon.”

“Maybe now,” Hadrian growled, shifting to loom over her and join his mouth to hers. He pressed his cock against her hip—which brought not a scintilla of relief—then crouched over her, ready to exorcise any and all of her demons.

Her arms and legs vised around him, and her hips arched up in a slow, sinuous tease.

“Maybe five minutes ago,” she growled back, and he laughed at her fierceness. He reached between them and feathered his thumb over the seat of her pleasure while she hissed out a breath.

“Now, Hadrian, please.”

“Soon.” He kissed her as he teased her, each moment of honest desire a small gesture of reparation for the twelve years she’d wandered alone in a wilderness of hurt.“Hadrian,
please.
”

He was inside her in one smooth, gloriously deep thrust. He paused, hilted in her damp heat, because the pleasure was sublime.

“Finally.” She closed her eyes and laced her fingers through his. When he moved to withdraw, her ankles locked at the small of his back.

“I won’t go far,” he whispered, “and I’ll come back, Avie, as often as you like.”

He tormented them both with long minutes of slow, deep thrusts, resisting mightily the satisfaction threatening to swamp him. Avis was the embodiment of delight, giving and taking, taking and giving, her hands holding his in a grip both fierce and intimate.

“Hadrian…”

“I’m here, Avie. I’ll catch you when you fly away.”

“You too.”

God, yes,
him too
. He sped up, and completion seized her. Her body fisted around him hard, repeatedly, until Hadrian was holding his own satisfaction at bay by sheer will, and then she eased around him in a voluptuous stretch.

“Damn you, Hadrian Bothwell.” She sounded thoroughly pleased and licked at his throat as she squeezed his hands. “Damn you for leaving a lady unescorted.”

“One doesn’t want the dance to be over too soon.” That hadn’t come out as the teasing rejoinder he’d intended. She was owed twelve years of such dances,
at least.

“I can still hear the music.” She buried her face in his shoulder and held him, inside and out, until he began to move. From somewhere, he found the resolve to drive her over the edge yet again, and confound the luck if she wasn’t just as appreciative of hard, fast loving as she was of the slow, languorous kind. If anything, her responses became more spontaneous the longer he was joined with her.

Hadrian took a moment to be still and let Avie recover. The sun was a pleasant heat on his shoulders, the meadow breeze cooled the hint of dampness at the small of his back, and bliss throbbed through him.

Here, where Avis had known such fear and pain, a good memory was taking root.

Proud of her was a monumental understatement.

“I cannot fathom,” Avis said softly, “that such pleasure awaits all who speak their vows. It is incomprehensible.”

“Talk later,” he muttered, “love now.” He surged up over her, taking her mouth and her body in one movement. He made a physical statement of mutual possession, and she merely sighed into his mouth and rocked her hips against his.

He drove her up in a slow, steady build of passion, his tempo increasing only gradually, until she was bowing into him, clinging to him, and panting against his neck.

“Hold on, Avie,” he whispered.

“Can’t.”

“I want it to last.”

“
Hadrian,
don’t you—holy—”

Her whole body shook this time, and she didn’t just whimper, she moaned, and keened, and bucked, and drove him right out of his mind and into the greatest depth of pleasure he’d ever endured. His body dissolved with the ecstasy of it, the bliss of it, until he was floating, breathless and suffused with joy, basking in the warmth and wonder of making love with Avie.