Mad for Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 2 (5 page)

Shots of sensation pierced her with every deep pull, making her gasp and cry his name. With a muffled laugh, he reached up to touch her mouth with his fingers. “Shh, sweetheart. We don’t want people to come running, do we?”

With a squeak of alarm she shot up, dislodging him, but he spread his hand flat on her stomach and urged her down again. “I swear nobody will come in, but we don’t want anyone to hear you and recognize your voice.” He smiled at her, his attention wholly on her face, despite her bodice being spread so wide it hid nothing. “Let me take care of you. We have half an hour or thereabouts, so let’s make the most of it.” Then he let his gaze fall, to where her breasts jutted out at him. “The next time we do this, we’ll have all night and I won’t stop. There’s no other way.”

His action gave her the opportunity to study him as he dragged his shirt over his head. He had a broad chest, nearly hairless, the muscles defined so clearly she could trace them with one finger. The temptation became too great and she did just that. He flinched but moved forward so she could touch him more fully. When she glanced at his face she drowned in the passion she saw there. All for her.

“All for you,” he murmured as if she’d spoken aloud.

Her future became clear. If he wanted her, he would have her. Finally she had something she wanted enough to fight for. She paused in her caresses and he glanced questioningly at her face. “Now?” she asked. “Is it just for tonight? It’s all right if it is,” she went on, rushing her words before she lost her nerve, “I still want—this. But I need to know.”

He answered her without hesitation. “For always.” He drew her closer, so her breasts nestled against his chest and the voluminous folds of her gown crushed between them, under them and behind her. “We have much to overcome, but we’ll work together. Sweetheart, it might be that we’ll have to wait a while.”

If she had that at the end, then she’d wait. “But what about Lyndhurst?”

His mouth straightened in a grim line. “Leave him to me.”

“But my mother is determined that I have him. She has ways…”

“What ways?” he asked sharply. “Does she hurt you?”

The way he moved gently when he spoke caressed her nipples until she thought she might faint with pleasure. “No, but she has ways, means of getting her way.”

“She won’t. If I have to kill him, she won’t.” Although his words were vicious, his tone gentled her, made her feel oddly safe. Not that she wanted that now. Just when she’d discovered her life’s mission, she wanted to know what to expect.

Wicked thoughts coursed through her mind. She proved that the mind was as potent as anything he could do to her, because she discovered her imagination was vivid.

Reaching down, she found the fall of his breeches and unfastened the buttons. Three on each side, until his breeches proved no impediment to her access. Greatly daring, encouraged by the heat in his eyes, in the way his breath shortened, she delved further, past the soft underwear to the heat beneath. It was burning, rigid and hers. She claimed it. “From henceforth, no woman touches this except me.”

A slight smile curved his kiss-swollen lips. “As you say. And for your part, I am the only man who will do this.” He cinched her tightly and brought his mouth down on hers while she explored with an avidity that knew no end. She gripped him, and he gasped into her mouth when she made a particular movement, pushing down on the skin and then up.

Aurelia had always prided herself on being a quick learner. She did it again, loving his muffled moan. He leaned back, giving her greater access, watching her face. Somehow he managed to fumble his way under the folds of her gown and with his hand on her thigh, she glanced down and saw her white hand caressing him. The head of his erection was plump and red, damp with his natural liquid. She wanted it for herself, but that would mean loosening her grip on him. While she was having such a marvelous effect, she’d carry on doing it. See where it led her. But she paused when his hand inched higher and touched her most intimate area, the part she didn’t even have a proper name for.

“It feels so good.” She wet her lips, and leaned forward, licked his staff.

“Your clitoris is hard. You’re ready for me. So wet, so ready.”

A word she’d never heard before, but his actions told her what he meant. He tweaked, tugged gently, then rolled her flesh between his finger and thumb.

Her legs turned to jelly, and she let her head fall forward, on to his shoulder, as he worked her. When she opened her eyes she could watch him, and the way he swelled and flowered for her.

The same way she was blossoming for him. Her sex felt bigger, softer, and as he stroked and caressed, the sensation invaded the whole of her body, so every hair on her head felt as if it was standing on end. She hadn’t realized she’d been making any sound until he murmured in her ear, “That’s it, sweetheart. I love your little moans and the way your breath heats my neck. Hold on, because we’re going to a new place.”

They did, together. Every sensation coalesced, became one huge surge and at the end, when she was crying his name into his shoulder, she gripped him convulsively. He moved to one side and she didn’t realize why until she saw he held a handkerchief. Nudging her hand farther down, he held the cloth over his shaft and pulsed in her hand, throb after heavy throb proving the nature of her actions on him.

Hot and exhausted, they clung to each other and tipped sideways on to the soft pillows and blankets beneath them. Held so close, so safe, she’d have drifted off to sleep except he moved, rousing her. Chuckling, he sifted his fingers through her hair. “I’m not a very good lady’s maid. I suggest we restore you to a semblance of respectability, then I’ll tell someone to come up here. Is your maid here?”

Roused to a sense of place and time once more, she shook her head. “My cousin’s maid is serving us both.”

“Good. Tell her you felt faint. You want to go home.”

“But they’ll guess that you—that we—”

“No, they won’t. They think I left half an hour ago, I saw to that. I have a friend who will say I was with him in the disreputable gaming hell where he’s currently fleecing anyone foolish enough to sit down with him. The people he’s with don’t move in the same circles as us.” He cupped her breast and placed a lingering kiss there. “Remember this. Remember me. I’ll see you soon, I swear it.”

“My mother is like to increase the pressure on the duke, and I know he’s willing.”

“We’ll see. I think I can persuade him to leave you alone.”

She gazed at him, smiling, showing him everything. “Why do you want me so much? After three meetings you’re so sure?”

“So are you.” Yes, she was, and with a certainty she didn’t know how to question. The part of her mind that clung to reality was asking questions, but she ignored it in favour of the overwhelming joy just being with him brought her. And trust. He had a reputation the likes of which took years to obtain, but instinctively she trusted him. He had proved her right this time. He could have taken her completely, ruined her, but he had left her maidenhead intact.

He kissed her, soft and gentle. When he opened his eyes, they held an arrested expression. Alert, unlike the soft, tender expression of a minute ago. “Sometimes it doesn’t take long to make up your mind.”

Her smile disappeared. “It doesn’t, does it?”

Chapter Four

With a sense of wonder and relief, Blaize read her, skimmed her mind with his own. Without her compliance, so he only went as far as he needed to. Whatever or whoever had pushed them together, she knew nothing. He read only warmth, affection and desire. Not that buzz of power, the rigid control that marked the sentient immortal, someone in control of their extraordinary talents.

He’d wanted love, but someone had taken advantage of that vague yearning. He didn’t take as much care over his privacy as perhaps he might, especially in the mornings when he woke up blind drunk, desperate for wine so he could sober up.

Savouring these last few moments, he held her close, her sweet breasts nuzzling his chest. The next time he’d have her naked. Already his body, his mind, screamed for it. He was a man addicted. He knew all about addiction. As the god of intoxication, he could induce the state, or control it.

At first he’d met Aurelia so he could reassure her about the duel, then kiss her again and slip into her mind when she was unaware, to search for signs of immortality. But as soon as he’d touched her, desire had grabbed him, fierce and irrefutable. He’d only averted taking her virginity by enjoying her body in another way, and when she’d touched his cock, he’d threatened to go off like a firework.

Again. Never had he undergone anything so violently compulsive, and that was remarkable in someone as ancient as he was.

But she was as helpless under it as he. He’d protect her. He would marry her, bring her under his protection in the eyes of society. It didn’t matter if the spell wore off. He could build a new relationship with her or release her in the manner of so many society couples—by going their own ways. But when he thought of that fate, bile rose to his throat. She was his and he’d protect her with everything he had.

One step at a time. First he had to confound his rival.

He flung on his clothes, enjoying her gaze on him as he did so. Then he assisted her to dress, found a brush and pinned her hair up in a semblance of respectability. After throwing the cover over the bed, he glanced around, swept up a few hairpins and shoved them in his pocket before helping her back onto the neat cover. “Tell them you were taken ill and you had to lie down. I’ll ensure someone finds you.”

Wide-eyed she nodded. He couldn’t resist stealing another kiss.

Then he took the locking compulsion off the door, the one that had deterred anyone from coming near, filling them with vague dread. Someone would arrive shortly.

He left the same way she’d arrived, ensuring anyone who passed him took no notice of him.

In the most primitive way he wanted to take her, claim her and bear her off somewhere he could make love to her thoroughly and irrevocably, making her his. Soon that would happen.

When he spoke to d’Argento a scant few hours later, as he dressed in sombre black for the meeting at Hampstead Heath, he related his suspicions. “Who would act like this? Tempt us by using an innocent as bait?”

“A god of mischief?” D’Argento paused before the mirror to twitch his snowy white neckcloth into place.

Blaize glanced at his dressing table, intending to fasten his own cravat with the diamond stickpin, but he couldn’t see it. The last time he’d had it, he realized belatedly, had been last night.

“So you seduced her?” d’Argento said without heat. “Then you’re bound to her. Honour demands it.”

“I barely held off.” He would say no more. “But she’s intact. Unsullied, you might say.”

“If she spent half an hour in private with you, then I doubt that very much. However, if she’s still marriageable and we can break the spell, you can both move on.”

Blaize turned to pick up his coat from the back of a chair, giving himself a moment, but it was no good. He couldn’t stop thinking of her or the ramifications of last night. “I’ll marry her,” he found himself saying.

“You can’t.”

With difficulty, he retained his sangfroid. “Why not?”

“For one thing, barring accident or murder, you could live for hundreds of years after she dies. You know that.” D’Argento swivelled around on the stool he occupied to stare at Blaize, his silver eyes wide with horror. “Not again, Blaize.”

As one of the oldest gods surviving, d’Argento had seen Blaize’s suffering the last time that had happened, and the time before. Both times he’d married mortals and both times the mortals had proved incapable of conversion. His first wife had refused to try the test. The second had been eager to join him, and it had been the first time he’d tried the procedure. She’d died and he blamed himself for it. Immortal blood was poison to mortals, and he’d hurried to the task, trusting her too much. He’d loved her, although over the centuries that had eased to a soft fondness. It had been a long time. But the shame and guilt lived on, twisting his gut when he let himself remember.

Others he’d loved and left. Or they’d left him. He’d never found a partner among the other immortals, although he’d never wanted for brief affairs. It seemed to be their fate. The immortals he knew had formed lasting relationships only with mortals, and most had suffered for it; Blaize hadn’t been alone and he could think of several other relationships that had ended the same way as his.

So now he could say, “It happens to all of us. It’s our fate, the price we pay, don’t you think?” Together with all the other ways they had to pay for the powers and the gifts they had. Nothing came free.

He had power, strength and longevity, as well as wealth that he’d built up over centuries and the appearance of vigour and youthfulness. It all cost something.

D’Argento shrugged. “I’ve passed from woman to woman. Man sometimes. It’s not usual with me, and nowadays, with the practice illegal—” His grimace told Blaize what he thought of that stricture. “Best avoided, if possible. I don’t want to end my long life on the gallows.”

“They’d probably allow you an axe.” Unimpressed, Blaize shrugged into his coat and then strapped on his sword belt. Not the fancy small sword he used every day, but a longer, beautifully honed rapier. D’Argento would carry a case of other swords, since he’d omitted to define what kind he’d prefer. Lyndhurst would probably prefer the sabre, which made Blaize determined to continue with the rapier.

A sabre could inflict a killing wound more easily than the rapier, and he wanted to avoid that fate now he’d found someone worth living for. He had more than himself to think of now. Showing none of the nervousness that invaded him, he swallowed one last glass of wine and followed d’Argento out of the door and to the carriage that would take him to his fate.

Morning mist crept over the quiet heath, one of the reasons it had become a favourite place for duels.

Blaize was surprised to discover more spectators than he’d expected, considering duelling was illegal. “Good day for sword practice, eh?” one called. Lyndhurst arrived a few moments after Blaize and d’Argento. He’d selected a respected man of fashion devoted to fair play as his second, a statement, if anyone needed any, of his intention to play the game properly. Not that Blaize expected him to. Either this man was part of the scheme to bespell and trap him or he was the person casting the spell. One way or another, this morning Blaize would discover the truth and find either an ally or an enemy.

Blaize studied the man standing opposite, his booted feet wet from heavy morning mist. Blaize knew how to cope with the slippery grass under his feet, slick with morning dew. He gave Lyndhurst a curt nod and received one in return.

The rituals were gone through, the seconds declaring they could not reconcile the parties, the reason for the dispute named as a lady of Covent Garden, although most present would know that both were rivals for the hand of Lady Aurelia Welles. However, the lady’s reputation would escape besmirchment by this ploy.

When Blaize offered Lyndhurst the choice of rapier or sabre, Lyndhurst gave him a glinting smile. “What if I said sabres?”

“Then we fight with those.” Blaize wouldn’t allow his opponent the satisfaction of seeing his reaction. Sabres could mean death, and both men knew it.

Lyndhurst shrugged carelessly. “I can inflict as much damage with a rapier. I know how to kill a man with my bare hands, so why not with a stickpin of a sword?”

Blaize showed his teeth, more a grimace than a smile. “How uncivilized. One would think us primitive. Shall we to it, sir, before we freeze to death?”

Lyndhurst glanced up into the sky, the white blanket of clouds adding their presence to the bleak atmosphere. “I find the morning pleasant.”

He couldn’t even agree about the chill in the air. So be it. Blaize formally chose his rapier and, with a show of indifference, Lyndhurst picked up the other. They stripped to shirt and breeches. The shadow of Lyndhurst’s powerful frame gleamed under the fine white linen. He wondered if Lyndhurst was surprised at his own body, for Blaize did his best to appear slighter in the fashionable attire of the day. He preferred people to underestimate him.

Not now. He may as well display what he had. Lyndhurst stood a couple of inches taller, but that didn’t amount to much in these circumstances. It depended on how well he could use the more civilized rapier, rather than the cut-and-slash attack of the sabre.

“One moment.”

What did the man want now? Lyndhurst gestured to an attendant who carried a wooden box. The man stepped forward and opened it.

It held two wicked daggers. “Do you know how to use these?” Lyndhurst asked carelessly.

“I’ve used them.”

“I thought they might make our encounter—more interesting.”

The man knew he’d choose rapiers, damn him, and he wanted to add more danger. Blaize picked up one of the daggers in his left hand and hefted it. A beautiful weight, not unlike one he’d owned in the last century. Not that these were old. Merely lethal. Rapier and dagger fighting led to more injuries. This was far more serious. Good. He’d show the arrogant bastard who could fight.

The onlookers murmured. They were changing the odds. Blaize might fight well with the civilian weapon of choice, but add a dagger and it put the ball back in the court of the military man.

Or it would, if Blaize didn’t have extensive experience in sword and dagger work.

Darkly smiling, he moved the dagger in his hand, careful not to appear too practiced. A clever addition. He contacted d’Argento at the deeper level they used occasionally to ensure nobody could detect it.
Get a bet on now. The odds will be against me for a while, and you’ve seen me with this combination of weapons.

If I lay the bet, the odds will switch back.

Not before you make it.

With a shrug, d’Argento went to make the bets. Because he was the second, they had to wait until he returned.
Just rubbing their noses in it?

He could be better than me.

D’Argento smiled.
Then we’ll be out a thousand guineas.

That gave him an extra incentive to defeat the man standing before him. The immortal who dared set himself against him. He’d drive the man insane. He could do it. One touch, one push, and he could disarrange the thought process, insinuate ideas that Lyndhurst was not ready for. And he’d enjoy doing it, once he knew for sure. Once he’d brought the arrogant bastard to his knees.

They took their places after the seconds had both indicated the terrain and conditions were acceptable. Nobody had a clear advantage. Except with one comprehensive glance Blaize had memorized each tussock, each small dip in the soft earth. His biggest gain remained. Lyndhurst didn’t know what he could do.

They bowed, curtly polite, and Blaize nodded.

Before he’d brought up his sword, Lyndhurst was on him, bringing his weapon down in a decisive slice meant, as far as he could tell, to cleave him in two. Almost lazily Blaize riposted, using his own sword to knock Lyndhurst’s weapon aside, but at the same time brought his dagger down, to deter the slice he knew the man would try, using the more flamboyant gesture as cover.

That left Lyndhurst’s centre section open and exposed to attack. A gentleman would disengage, but Blaize could drop the pose any time he chose. He chose now. Bringing up his knee, he landed a very nice blow to Lyndhurst’s most vulnerable area. His opponent showed teeth, as the breath hissed in with the impact.

He’d finish it quickly. First blood. Blaize didn’t intend to deliver a killing blow, but he’d cause enough damage to keep Lyndhurst out of the game for a while. He brought his sword back and in, meaning to slash along Lyndhurst’s arm, something nice and dramatic.

Except that he slashed thin air. Lyndhurst had twisted around on the balls of his feet, a dancer’s move that left Blaize gasping at the big man’s dexterity. Joy leaped through him, the delight of a man meeting a worthy opponent, someone who would challenge him.

But not for long. Standing back and wondering could get a man killed. In the rapt silence, only the clash and ring of their weapons was heard as they settled down to a thrust and riposte session. Having got each other’s measure, both men realizing their opponent was a gull, they marked and fought with a steady purpose—that one break of concentration, the moment’s pause when a weapon could flash in and take what it needed.

After twenty minutes, sweat was dripping in Blaize’s eyes. He found the time to back off without leaving himself vulnerable and shook his head like a dog, getting rid of the moisture threatening to blur his vision. The brief second he took gave Lyndhurst the advantage, but Blaize was expecting it. In automatic response he swept his sword before him, forcing Lyndhurst’s aim aside and then brought his dagger forward and centre. Only to hear the ring of metal as Lyndhurst deflected it. For an instant they were nose-to-nose, their breathing misting the heavy morning air, gazes sparking, aggression lighting their vicinity.

Loath though I am to put an end to such a magnificent display,
d’Argento said,
I think you should finish it.

You don’t think I’ve been trying?
At least the exchange had given him the opportunity to spread his senses and slip into Lyndhurst’s mind. A furious rebuff had met him, but not before he’d discovered a few things. The man
was
an immortal, an Ancient, which was how they referred to the gods of Olympus and the Titans. From his mental patterns, he was more likely an Olympian.