Holy Scoundrel (13 page)

He took her hand and she stepped over her clothes, to face her lover in the center of a gypsy-wagon-turned-cocoon-turned-heaven.

He slipped her camisole up and over her head. Then he stepped back to regard her, a connoisseur examining a work of art, assessing it and delighting in the vision of creation.

“God’s work,” he said. “Well done.”

Standing there, in corset, chemisette, and stockings, Lacey wished her underpinnings were silk and lace, like those she’d helped make for Jade’s trousseau at Peacehaven. Hers were no more than serviceable cotton, rough, plain, and well-worn, yet Gabriel regarded her every bit as hungrily as Marcus had often eyed Jade.

She’d dreamed of this moment for five long years, and whether this would be the first of many nights for them, or the last, she loved this dignified, handsome, stubborn bear of a man more than she loved her life.

She wouldn’t trade this time with him for anything, no matter the pain that must inevitably follow.

She wanted him in the way a woman wants her man, inside her, deep, one with her and the universe, as if no one else existed but them.

As if she spoke her surrender, Gabriel nodded and undid her garters with renewed determination, sliding each of her stockings down her legs. Then he stood, turned her back to him, and unlaced her corset just enough to slip his hands inside and around her, until he cupped her breasts full in them.

Lacey leaned back against him as he plumped her breasts like silk pillows and pebbled her nipples, whispering his adoration of her body, his breath and lips warm along her neck, her ears, her shoulders.

Potent points of pleasure coursed through her with burgeoning force. Happiness soared, her womanhood flowered, wet and welcoming, pulsing to take him in.

In a trice, Gabriel did away with her corset, turned her, and lifted a breast to suckle through her chemisette. With his other hand, he reacquainted himself with the heat of her beneath her drawers.

Finally, they, too, were gone and Lacey stood naked before the man she loved.

Rather than allow his smoldering eyes to set her ablaze, she disposed of his trousers in a thrumming heartbeat and saw he was wearing an item of male attire she’d heard about but never seen. Underbreeches. She circled him to get a good look, then she gave him back a bit of his own.

Stroking the fabric ever so lightly across the front, she discovered, to her surprise, that the marvelous new inventions were slit just enough to accommodate . . . a lover’s hand, or his own, the thought of which made her wet.

He gasped when she found him, that part of him rigid and thick, the rest soft and supple . . . except her other hand wanted to touch him as well, and so she knelt and teased his underbreeches down his legs, slow and torturous, letting her cheek graze him, making him jump, and swear, and shiver and groan, until she finally cupped him in one hand even as she closed her other around him.

Who knew she had such power? She incited him to throw back his head and shout for her to stop, and continue, and to stifle a groan, as if he experienced more pain than pleasure, but she knew better. She liked as well that she could make him beg and buck and plead for her to stop and continue and hurry and, “Stop!” but “Don’t!”

Then he was setting her on the bed and kissing her and coming down on her, opening his mouth over her own once more.

Hard to her soft, cool to her hot, he dipped where she curved, and arched where she plunged, and all so deliciously and perfectly well. They fit into and along each other like two pieces of a hand-shaped puzzle, making her wonder how even the Deity had accomplished it.

“Gabriel. You feel so good
.
Thi
s
is good; it’s right and—”

“Just kisses,” he said. “Kisses and touches enough for pleasure. Nothing that can result in babies.”

She reared back for a minute, too shocked to go on. “You think onl
y
dar
k
passion makes babies?”

“Shut up, Lace, and kiss me.”

She chuckled and did.

Just touching could bring pleasure, Lacey discovered, wild pleasure, trembling pleasure, when touching just so, in just the right places, and with the right rhythm. Tongues touching and dancing, mating. Hands, legs . . . mouths touching everywhere.

She learned variations on pleasure—with no danger of babies—a pleasure she never imagined possible without the joining of bodies. Wondrous. Yet, something was amiss, something nameless and poignant that made her want to weep, like sliding fast yet not fast enough, down an ice-slick hill. But despite the lack, pleasure grew and burst, and set them free to drift.

Like two spoons in the small bed, they slept . . . until Lace woke, sat up, and examined every facet of Gabriel’s man parts in the soft light of dawn, stroking along and around, up and down, testing his bollocks, the soft, the hard, up his length, teasing his moist tip with a slick finger.

When she dared to kiss that silky tip, he awoke with a moan, saw what she was about, and as fast as that, she was on her back with him deep inside her.

In a frenzy, he brought her higher in three deep strokes than he had all night long, and she curled her legs around him and arched her back to pull him deeper, worked her muscles to keep him there.

He gasped, he groaned, and he shouted her name to the heavens in thanksgiving.

So blessedly good she felt with him there, she’d nearly wept after they crashed for the simple joy of his weight atop her. Even then she’d known she would take him any way she could have him. But this glorious, incredible, ordained way, this was the most perfect of all.

They climbed and soared, and then, like water cascading down a mountain—pure, bubbling, wild, and free—they floated as one, peaceful and at rest, for minutes or hours. It might even have been days. Who cared?

Ready again, Gabriel worked in her, slow and purposeful, making her whimper for faster, then slower, then just plain more. She looked up at him looking down at her, handsome, too handsome for a man of God, certainly too handsome for her. And when he laughed, the sun shone brighter in the sky.

“Come with me, Lace,” he said. “Come with me to heaven. I’ll wait. Come.” Then, deepening each concentrated thrust, he dipped his head to suckle her, pulling hard shafts of leaping pleasure.

He stopped suckling with a groan to move higher over her and increase his pace. She feared she might die of the frenzy, just before she shattered into a million star-bright pieces, to hover over the earth and become one with eternity.

A fraction of a moment later, Gabriel climaxed, shouting her name, and she rushed to the heavens again. One last incredible time she fell to earth to drift sated and exhausted in Gabriel’s arms.

After a time, he reversed their positions and settled her atop him in a state of lazy contentment.

He urged her to sleep, so she closed her eyes.

She had never been so comfortable.

Awareness came as Gabriel felt the morning light tease at his eyelids. Remorse hit and consumed him before he opened them. Instinctively, he tightened his arms around Lacey to keep her with him, always to be a part of him.

No use. He’d done it again, let passion all but rule him. He’d taken her, by God, while holding passion back, and could not imagine what might have happened had he set it free.

If he were not careful, his baser instincts would win. This night alone together could ruin them. And Bridget, caught in its aftermath, would be hurt as well. Cricket had lost everyone but him and Lacey. Him, she could do without; Lacey, she could not. He’d come to that sorry conclusion in the two days he spent mindlessly pacing after the night Lace came to his room.

To keep Bridget, he knew he must keep Lace—no easy task. Though she had always been his missing half, he hadn’t realized it as a boy. Back then, he knew only that following her, adoring her, being ordered by her, even, infrequently touching her—as in, being pushed into the mud by her—had been joy enough for him.

Now he wanted more. He wanted everything. He wanted . . . them.

She stirred in his arms, snuggled her face deeper into his neck, moved, and moaned. Parts of her must be tender and sore. He would have to kiss them better the minute she woke. He frowned.

No. First he would settle the matter of their marriage, then he would make her tender parts better, and after that, perhaps he would let her out of his bed.

He supposed he had no choice in that matter. She should be dressed in the event someone spotted their benighted wagon, impaled by an encroaching tree, its leaves now bathed in colored light from the sunbeams splintered through the intact—praise be—stained-glass window at the back of the wagon.

Lacey shifted and moaned and rubbed her nose back and forth against the hair on his chest. Then she stilled and looked up at him, as if getting her shocking bearings.

He laughed and his stone heart warmed. “Itchy nose means you’re coming into money.”

She smiled lazily and stretched her arms in that fine feline way of hers, her limbs sliding along his own. “Don’t need money. I have you.”

“Not yet, but you will.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Lacey regarded Gabriel soberly. “What do you mean by that? I will what?”

“Have me.”

“In the biblical sense?”

“Well, yes. You’ll have me in that way as well. Often.”

Lace took her luscious bottom lip between her teeth, making him want to bite it himself, while she appeared to be working out some high mathematical equation. Her growing silence made him nervous. “You understand,” he said, “that after last night, w
e
mus
t
marry.”

“Must we?” She rose too fast at that, placing certain parts of him in perilous danger of extinction, until she got herself free.

Safe to love another day, Gabriel expelled a relieved breath and tried not to be distracted by her pert breasts and fine bottom. He watched her rummage and blush until she covered herself to her thighs with one of Ivy’s shirts, so worn Gabe could practically see right through it.

Then he had to raise one knee to keep her from seeing how alluring he found her in it, or she’d find something else to wear, for certain. She seemed that annoyed, though he didn’t know why. Oh, how cork-brained was he? Of course he knew why
.
Mus
t
. No one told the Lady Lacey Ashton that sh
e
mus
t
do anything.

“Lace, listen. Bridget needs a mother. You’re her cousin; you love her and she loves you. Who better? And if you marry me, you can save me from a tittering empty-headed wife and a motherin-law who carries a pitchfork.” He’d thrown that in to make her smile, but it seemed, rather, to bring a thunderous frown to her brow.

“I know,” he said, rising to look for food, “that we’d have to get Prout on our side.”

“When hell freezes over.”

He scratched his lush, man chest. “Aye, most likely.”

She regarded his rampant desire with an annoyed frown.

He followed her gaze down to the evidence of his randy self. “Sorry. I forgot.”

“You can forget something that large? Doesn’t it get in your way? You should be tripping over it, for heaven sake.”

“Why, thank you. But one gets used to what one has always had.” He scratched his hairy chest. “I’m . . . hungry.” His body rose as he regarded her.

She scoffed. “For food, even?”

“That, too. Splendid idea. Ah,” he said looking into the round tin from which he’d pried the cover. “Irish soda bread.” He took a bite and offered her the can but she shook her head. He made a face. “It’s dry; it could use some jam.”

Lacey searched the floor and stooped, carefully, to pick up a jar. “I saw it rolling around before, before we….”

Too many silent minutes passed, them facing each other, her thighs beneath that shirt looking perfect and welcoming, his body jumping up and down, shouting, “Let’s go, I’m ready.”

Gabe raised a brow. “Before we what? Hit the tree? Took off our clothes? Laid hands on each other? Burned each other alive?”

She made a strangled sound deep in her throat, her cheeks strawberry-bright. “Before any of it, blast it!” she snapped. “Will yo
u
pleas
e
put on some clothes?”

“They’re wet.”

Lacey huffed and grabbed them from the floor to throw them over the encroaching branch. “There, now they can dry. Ivy must have something in here that you can wear.” She searched frantically and finally gave a great sigh of relief. “Here, put this on.” She handed him a second old shirt, just as worn but not so sheer that she’d realize what hers revealed, thank goodness, because he liked the view.

The shirt she chose for him fit his wide shoulders well enough, but it didn’t meet in the front to button or cover his chest . . . or anything.

He couldn’t help laugh at her, standing there half-dressed, half-exasperated, and totally appalled. “At least it keeps my back warm. You could come closer and warm my front.”