Like No Other Lover (30 page)

Fortunately for him, an air of sobriety was laid over the entire dinner when word was sent ahead from the inn in West Chiverley: Mr. and Mrs. Isaiah Redmond would be home the following morning.

Cynthia disconsolately, distractedly, devoted more energy to stirring her soup than drinking it. And then she pleaded a headache in order to escape the need to eat at all.

“It must be all the excitement of the past few days,” she told Violet apologetically, though compared with the life she had lived in London, the last few days in Sussex hardly constituted excitement.

Violet stared at her accusingly. Then her face brightened.

“You shall want to look your freshest in the morning,” she said meaningfully.

“Yes,” Cynthia agreed. Thinking, given what her plans were, it was hardly likely.

She lay it gently down again.

She scooped up Spider the kitten and kissed him between the eyes, causing a rumble. She peered up into the corner of the window; the web was still there. Susan the spider must be asleep. She was nowhere to be seen.

She slipped quickly out of her dinner dress and hung it lovingly in the wardrobe, slipped into her nightdress, then climbed beneath the counterpane and wrapped it around her shoulders, her feet tucked beneath her, Spider playing within her nightdress as though it were a tent, pouncing on her toes to encourage her to move them. She waited for warmth and watched the fire, hoping to find answers in it the way the Gypsy woman found the future in the leaves of tea left at the bottom of cups. Looking for just the right shape.

He’d given her character depth and dimension now. Her focus had been single-minded before, born of fear and ambition. But now she knew what she needed to do.
Light
had flooded into her life.

She decided that was sign enough.

“Be a good boy,” she told Spider, and placed him, fruitlessly, in his basket in front of the fire. He wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet; he leaped out and began to attack the fringe on the carpet.

And Cynthia left the room.

The dark in this room was as dense and velvety as his eyes; the fire was lowering; shadows and chill encroached. And for a moment she wasn’t certain he was there at all.

But then she could hear him rhythmically breathing in that vast…
schooner
of a walnut bed.

She waited for the shadowy shapes to come more into focus as things she recognized before she thought it safe to travel deeper into the room, for it wouldn’t do to crash into furniture. When she was oriented, she placed one bare foot carefully in front of the other, slowly, as though walking a high wire, as though conscious of the danger and beauty of what she was doing. The thick carpet silenced her footsteps.

The bed was before her, and Miles, asleep, mounded beneath his blankets. Breathing steady, rhythmic, deep.

Slowly, slowly, she crept forward and perched upon the edge of the bed. The mattress didn’t creak so much as sigh; it was thick and she was small. Slowly, slowly, she swung her legs up.

His arm lashed out and held her arm fast. “Who the devil are you?” he snarled.

Ah. So he’d simply been
pretending
to be asleep.

Angry breathing filled the next few seconds.

“Ouch,” she said softly. She made it sound like an endearment.

Miles’s hand flew from her and he rolled away. With a rustle, a clink, and an oath, he had the bedside lamp lit, and then he fumbled to place the globe atop the candle. A soft, small canopy of light swelled over the two of them.

He was sitting bolt upright now. His hair was in disarray, standing up behind him, falling down over his eyes—well, it was everywhere, really. He pushed a hand self-consciously through it, improving matters not at all.

For a moment it seemed he couldn’t speak. He simply gazed dumbly at her.

“Cynthia.” His voice was hoarse. She heard the astonishment in it. And, oh yes, the yearning, too, because she suspected it was the only way he would be able to say her name from now on, and the only way she could say his. “What the devil—you can’t—”

She leaned forward and abruptly placed her fingers over his mouth.

He glared at her, almost comically, over the tops of her fingertips.

It was then that she became fully aware that the bedclothes had slipped from him and he was bare at least from the waist up.

Whoosh
, just like that, she lost her ability to pull air into her lungs.

She’d taken his beauty in before, in fragments: that wedge of burnished skin through an open shirt, for instance; and she knew the feel of his skin against hers, because wanton that she was, she’d sought it out.

But Miles entirely bare seemed to demand everything of her senses; weakened, her fingers slid from his lips to lie in her lap.

She drew in a steadying breath. Viewed from this distance, his bare shoulders loomed; muscle both ridged and elegantly curved met in a torso that tapered to a narrow waist that was…

Sadly, at this moment draped in rumpled sheets, and hidden from her view.

That fine dark hair she’d curled her fingers into before, had brushed her breasts against before, trailed from a flat belly upward, from where it began.

Beneath the sheets.

He was at once magnificent and so unutterably
male,
she felt bashful and peculiarly unequal to him and the occasion.

And yet he was somehow vulnerable, too, because this beautiful bare person was Miles Redmond, rumpled from sleeping, confused, yearning. And she knew him. She knew him. Odd that in this very moment she should feel protective of a man who could probably lift her by the scruff and toss her from the room. But she would go at anyone with her fists for him.

As he had done for her.

He saw her expression; his own instantly reflected hers, she suspected. The awe, the heat, the immeasurable desire, the futility of resistance.

“Why?” He sounded bemused. He’d whispered the word.

She supposed he meant: why are you here? Because her mind answered with:
Because I love you, and damn you for it. You have both made my life worth living and utterly ruined it, and I’m grateful that you did.

She smiled faintly. She would never say it.

She reached out a shaking hand instead, and dragged the bedclothes entirely away from him.

Why, yes: in answer to her question, he
was
completely nude. He coughed a surprised laugh. His erection was already curving quite impressively toward his belly.

Reflexively, she drew a proprietary finger along it. How utterly brazen she’d become.

He closed his hand around her wrist to stop her.

And like that, he held her, for the time it took the two of them to breathe in and breathe out. Then gently, slowly, he uncurled his fingers from her wrist. And with both hands he reached for the hem of her nightdress, draped around her feet.

Thus with those two gestures he told her:
I will lead every moment of this
.

Her heart bucked

She never seemed to have any choice where he was concerned: she gave herself up into his hands.

Now, she slowly raised her arms so Miles could divest her of the nightdress, which he did with a minimum of ceremony. It was going well enough until it snagged on her chin, necessitating a grunt and a decisive tug from him.

So this wasn’t to be a flawless seduction.

He folded the nightdress neatly in his hands and placed it aside on the bed as carefully as if it were a living thing.

She was suddenly
profoundly
aware that she was entirely nude; the air of the room chilled her skin. She fought the urge to cross her arms over her breasts.

But there was no need; his arms were already wrapping her bare back gently, his warm hands sliding firmly along either side of her spine, just as her hands went around his neck. She knew she would forever remember the moment they were finally folded tightly together, skin against skin.

Cradled in his arms, he tipped her back against the bed; her head seemed to sink for slow miles into the feathers of his pillow.

And there were his eyes above her, burning, his beautiful mouth a solemn line.

She was afraid, and a little frantic, and shivering with desire. Frantic because she wanted to touch him everywhere, to know and memorize every inch of him, to
become
him, and this seemed impossible in the time they had, because every inch of his skin seemed precious, desirable, interesting, a
universe
. A lifetime would be required. Her hands unlocked from their grip around his neck, slid urgently down to smooth over the hard ridge of his collarbone, the taut swell of his chest, to discover again the texture of his flat nipples.

He allowed her to explore. But she felt the impatience in him. “God help me and forgive me, Cynthia, I don’t think I can be slow.” He said it ruefully; a slight smile came with the words, but his eyes contained a warning.

She’d thought herself unable to speak. But when she opened her mouth, out the words haltingly came, like something imprisoned too long, unsure of its welcome: “I want you
now
.”

Well, she might as well have handed him her raw and beating heart along with a knife with which to carve off a piece.

But Miles closed his eyes, as if to protect her from the searing emotion flaring in his. He gave a short laugh, and then his lips moved in a silent hosanna.

Ah, but she’d seen his eyes before he closed them: white hot joy. And it was as though the sun lived in her chest, rose and set there.

His hands pulled her hard against him now, and rearing against the soft place between her legs was the enormous, meaningful swell of his cock. The pleasure nearly blackened her vision. Her entire body instinctively opened toward him: her arms pulled him closer; her legs wrapped his thighs, found them warm and thick and hairy; her mouth took his tongue when he bent his head for a kiss.

His hands were swift as he smoothed over the nip of her waist, the rise of her hip, to the round white swell of her arse, setting her nerve endings aflame, until she was arching and rippling for his touch. It was difficult to distinguish where his body ended and hers began; it didn’t matter, as his pleasure was hers.

And the motion seemed natural and inevitable when he pressed her flat, raising her arms above her head, and covered her body with the heavy hot length of his. She pulled her knees higher to cradle his groin with hers; he raised himself on trembling arms to fit himself to her. His desire quivered in the muscles of his body; his sweat slicked over her body.

Her thighs gripped his waist, and he dipped and dragged, just once, his cock against where she was wet and aching for him. Her body leaped up eagerly; she moaned softly.

Miles didn’t ask,
Are you certain?
He knew there would be no niceties, only this joining. It might very well be the first and last time he used his body for its truest purpose. For why else had the species been given this capacity to give and take pleasure unless to express the vastness of what he felt?

Her breath was hot and quick against his throat, her eyes hazy with want, with trepidation.

“Hold on to me, Cynthia,” he told her softly. Thrilled, afraid, she obeyed: her fingers gripped his shoulders. And he thrust into her hard.

She gasped, her chin tipped back, her teeth in her lips; her belly leaped up. Of a certain he’d hurt her a little.

He comforted himself that her pain would ease. And he would make certain her pleasure was incendiary.

He sank slowly, deeply into her. Withdrew and thrust again slowly.
Christ
. The pleasure…so sweet…it all but blinded him. It rushed over his skin with a breath robbing white heat.

“Cynthia…I don’t know if I…I can’t wait…”

He wanted to drive himself into her until the two of them were senseless, to indulge an animal need. And then again, he wanted it to last forever, to be forever. He opened his eyes to find her gazing up at him through heavy lids. Her chest rose and fell hard in tandem with his. Together they had created a storm of breathing.

She pulled him closer with her thighs, locked her legs around his taut buttocks. She drew her fingertips down his shoulders, tracing the muscle there. “Please,” she whispered. “Take me now.”

He didn’t need to be asked twice, yet at first he attempted finesse. Attempted to angle his thrusts to give pleasure to her, and when she hissed in a breath and released it as a moan, he knew he’d succeeded. Her head thrashed back; her body arced to meet his.

The rhythm of their joining remained nearly languid for a brief time, their hot skin meeting as he sank himself into her; but a wild building bliss urged him on, faster, harder. It cost him everything he had not to obey it: sweat beaded, gathered, on his chest. Cynthia’s skin was sheened in the firelight.

He would die, die, if he couldn’t just drive himself home.

“Miles…”
She writhed upward, taking him more deeply still, as he drove into her yet again.

He knew triumph. But he wanted her bucking with pleasure beneath him when her release came. He dipped to take her nipple in his mouth, he bit lightly; she gasped an oath of pleasure so raw he smiled. And he sank into her clinging heat again.

Her nails dragged his skin. Delicious pain. And the pleasure mauled him.

He sank into her again and again, and she shifted her body to take him deeper still, rose up hard to meet him, arms and legs clinging to him, murmuring urging things in his ear, words he hadn’t the faintest idea she knew, spurring him on. He was dimly aware of the sounds of their bodies meeting hard, of the slide of sweat between them, their hands slipping from each other, clinging, nails dragging.

And then he was at the mercy of the drum of his own hips and the ecstasy driving him. And then Cynthia bowed hard upward, whipsawed by her own release. Her cries rang in his ear, and she pulsed around his cock as he drove mercilessly home toward a completion he’d needed since he laid eyes on this woman.

He heard his own voice, a raw scraped sound forming her name, echoing in the dark of the room, as a violent pleasure tore him out of his body, wracked him like no fever ever could. He surrendered to it. Eased himself down over her on shaking arms. Tucked his face in the crook of her throat, where her soft dark hair cradled his cheek.

He floated on peace.

Cynthia couldn’t yet open her eyes; her lids were far, far too exhausted. Every bit of her body seemed to have participated in and thoroughly enjoyed this bout of lovemaking with Miles Redmond, and she needed to marshal all of her resources to lift her eyelids. Not yet, not just yet.

She felt him gently withdraw from her body and lower himself next to her; he pulled her into his arms, and she went with a contented sigh, as though she had no muscles or bones.
Warm again
. His body was home. She listened to his breathing and smiled. He sounded as though he was recovering from running a mile or two. It soothed her, the life gusting through him rhythmically.