Masquerade (24 page)

"You're here. That's all that matters now." A smile came to his mouth.

The sight of it was all Adrienne needed as she crossed the room with no memory of her feet touching the floor. He swept her into his arms and wrapped her tightly around him, covering her lips with a fiercely tender kiss.

Almost before it had begun, he was breaking it off, raking his mouth across her cheek, murmuring a husky and rough "I've missed you."

She closed her eyes, thrilling to the emotion vibrating so thickly through his voice. "And I have missed you, Brodie," she declared just as thickly.

"It's been hell these last two days—wanting to see you, wanting to hold you, wanting to be with you."

"It has been the same for me." Adrienne rubbed her cheek against his, feeling its smoothness, its chiseled bone structure, its heat.

With an effort, he lifted his head and framed her face in his hands, looking at her with heavy-lidded need, a smolder and a sparkle in his eyes. "I was standing at the window, wondering where you were, wishing you were here with me. And when you came through that door, I thought you were a dream I was having. It's a dream you are, Adrienne—a dream most men carry in their minds but never see."

"I am no dream."

"No," he said, none too certainly, his mouth slanting in a near smile. "But I've been thinking, Adrienne—what is a man? There's stars he wants to reach, but it's the earth that stains him. Man was meant for the earth, but he can look at the stars. When you appeared tonight, it was like I was seeing a star suddenly blaze and fall to fill the sky—to fill my night. . . and my life." He paused and deliberately lapsed into a lilting brogue, trying to lighten the seriousness of his feelings. " 'Tis loving you I am, Adrienne Jardin."

She drew a small, quick breath, conscious of the sudden soaring of her heart, and smiled. "And 'tis loving you I am, Brodie Donovan." She used his phrasing, moved by the simple sincerity of it.

Humor, warm and glinting, mixed with the desire for her in his eyes. "It's bold you are again, mocking me with my own words."

"It is no mockery." Smiling, she ran a caressing hand over the angled line of his jaw. He caught it and pressed the tips of her fingers to his lips. "I love you. You are the man I want for my husband. It is your children I want to have, your home I want to keep, your bed I want to lie in."

For an instant he gripped her fingers so tightly that she thought he would break them. Then he was murmuring her name in a groan as he smothered her lips with a kiss that was warm, hard, and demanding. Adrienne was stirred anew by the flood of sensation washing through her. She had no doubt that this was what she wanted—the heat, the need, the near desperation.

His mouth shifted, pressing rough kisses over her cheek and eye. "I want that too," came the thick words against her skin. "I want you."

She felt the faint tremors that shook him, the struggle for control. But there was no place for control in this moment of giving—this release of feelings too long held back. She knew that, as a woman knows it.

"I want you, Brodie." She drew back to look at him, taking his hand and drawing it inside the lace collar of her jasper silk walking dress, laying it against the bare skin of her breastbone, the heel of his hand resting on the top swell of her breast. "Do you feel the pounding of my heart? Do you feel the trembling within? It is for you."

He was still, so still he could have been made of stone. Only his eyes were alive to her—so very alive to her. "You don't know what you're saying, Adrienne."

A smile touched her mouth, at once warm and amused. "You likened me to a star, but I am not something to be regarded and admired from afar. I am a woman to be loved by a man—by you. The stars are outside, Brodie. We are here."

"Aye," he breathed the word, his hand slipping lower, finding the roundness of her breast beneath her gown's corsage. At his touch, an indistinct murmur of pleasure broke from her. "We are here."

His head bent. His lips brushed hers, then came back to plunder and invade. As she tasted the hardness of his tongue, Adrienne knew that this was what she wanted—his hands on her, his mouth on her, his muscled body pressed tightly to her. It was what she had always wanted.

He swept her into his arms and carried her from the parlor, up the curved staircase to the master bedroom on the second floor. The soft glow from a lamp on the bedside table illuminated the full tester bed, with the lace baire rolled up and the bed linen turned down, the massive rosewood armoire along one wall and the pale-blue carpet on the floor. He lowered her feet onto the carpet and continued to kiss her. She felt his fingers at the fastenings of her dress, and then it was swinging loose.

Soon her clothes were in a pile at her feet. Brodie drew back to look at her standing before him, proud, bold . . . beautiful. The back-glow of the lamplight made the thin material of her chemise appear transparent. His mouth went dry. She looked small and delicate, with a narrow rib cage and a waist so small he could span it with his hands, and slender hips that were yet wide enough to cradle a man. He wondered how a form so fragile could hold so much strength—and how a pair of eyes could look at him with a desire so deep it rivaled his own.

"You are beautiful." His voice was husky as he let his gaze stray to her hair, swept back in its smooth knot. She reached up and pulled the securing pins from it, combing it loose with her fingers and drawing its length forward over one shoulder. "This is the first time I've seen it down," he said, and he ran his hand under the silken length of it, a knuckle grazing the peak of her breast, further sensitizing it. Then the ends of his fingers were along her throat, his thumbs under the point of her chin, tilting it up. "You have such full and giving lips."

He lowered his head and she closed her eyes, anticipating the hard demand of his kiss. She was startled—wondrously so—when he caught her bottom lip between his teeth, the light nibbling sensation arousing a whole new shimmering ache within her. A sigh whispered from her as he brushed his mouth over her parted lips, saying against them, "It's sweet they are too—like wild honey."

He tasted them, his tongue tracing their outline, then stroking their inner softness. She swayed against him, her hands clutching at his middle as the world spun behind her closed eyes at this excitingly evocative kiss that was not really a kiss at all. An instant later she discovered that his fingers were no longer at her throat. Instead, they were at the front of her chemise, undoing its fastenings with a deftness that surprised her.

Only a moment later, when she stood naked before him, her chemise joining the rest of her clothes on the floor near her feet, Adrienne felt no self-consciousness, no awkwardness. She knew by the soft hiss of his indrawn breath that the sight of her more than pleased him, and the look in his eyes confirmed it.

Needing no invitation, Adrienne moved against him, the fine texture of his linen shirt brushing against her bare skin as she curved her hands behind his neck and drew his head down, urging his mouth to take its fill of her lips. When he did, her tongue began a slow and silent seduction. His hands glided down her spine, the faintly rough feel of them somehow stimulating to her as they pressed her hips against him, then roamed free over her waist, her ribs, her breasts, in even more stimulating play.

Swept by a desire to touch him as he was touching her, she tugged the hem of his shirt free and ran her hands under it and onto his hard flesh, reveling in the sudden contraction of his stomach muscles. Abruptly he gripped her arms and pushed her back, then pulled off his shirt, baring his torso to her.

His sun-bronzed skin gleamed in the lamplight, lean muscles rippling in his chest, shoulders, and arms as he unfastened the fly-front of his trousers, then hesitated. "Do you want me to turn the lamp down?"

"No." If there was color to her cheeks, it was not from embarrassment as she watched him strip off the rest of his clothes. When he stood before her, she was stirred by the magnificent breadth of his chest and shoulders, the tapered trimness of his hips, and the long columns of his legs. "You are beautiful," she said.

Succumbing to her fascination with the innate power of his body, she spread her hands onto his shoulders, rubbing her palms over their hard, coiled muscles. But the feel of him only whetted her appetite for more as she pressed her mouth to his chest, running her lips and tongue over its lean ridges and the tiny nubs of his male nipples, tasting the warm, salty flavor of him and inhaling the earthy and invigorating scent of his skin.

Before she could protest, he scooped her up into his arms and strung a trail of hungry kisses across her cheek, jaw, and lips as he carried her to the tester bed. He lowered them both onto it. Neither of them needed its relative narrowness to force them to lie close together, facing each other, their lips joined in an intimate kiss, their hands alternately caressing and pressing. There was no sense of urgency, only a desire to pleasure each other to the fullest. It incited a passion stronger and hotter than lust.

Adrienne felt consumed by heat—the furnace-like heat of his body that seemed to envelop her from head to toe, the moist heat of the kisses he burned over her face, lips, and throat, and the curling heat from within that spiraled through her with such a pleasant ache. His hands lifted her higher, with a strength and an ease that she'd come to expect. Then his lips brushed her breast, and she gasped at the fresh explosion of sensation. His hands had fondled her breasts and teased her nipples into erectness, but never his lips, his mouth, his tongue. When he drew a nipple into his mouth, Adrienne shuddered.

Brodie felt her tremble with pleasure—the pleasure he gave her as he tasted, tempted, and teased. He had never known such power or such humbleness as he heard her breath catch on his name. She was small, delicate, and fragile but more than strong enough to hold him—to move him. For all the lust, all the passion, all the desire that coursed through him, he was driven by a need to cherish and protect her. She belonged to him, and he was determined to show her how beautiful it could be for them, no matter the ache that grew hotter and hotter within him. He waited until her hips rubbed against him in eager insistence, until her hands pressed and urged in desperate demand, until the sounds coming from her throat revealed the intensity of her longing. Only then did he ease himself onto her, the caress of his hands subtly positioning her body to receive him.

She had a moment of making the small discovery that he wasn't too heavy for her. Nor did his greater height cause any awkwardness. They fit together naturally, the way God had intended. Then she could think of nothing but his hard body, the damp earthy smell of him, the wild taste of his mouth—and the kiss that swamped her, drawing her into some dark, secret place where there were only the two of them.

"I'll not hurt you, Adrienne." His voice rumbled against her skin. "I'll never hurt you."

But she knew he was wrong. It was inevitable that he would hurt her. Three years ago she had gone to her aunt with stories she'd heard from other girls in the convent about the horrible agony a woman was expected to endure on her wedding night when she was impaled by her husband. Tante ZeeZee had explained that a woman would feel pain when her maiden veil was torn by a man's entry, but she said the discomfort would pass in a little while and not return. Knowing that, Adrienne had no fear.

Yet the pain never came. She could feel him inside her, the slow and lazy, oh so very satisfying stroke of him, but each time she felt the beginnings of discomfort, the pressure was withdrawn. Then it would begin all over again, invading a little deeper.

She didn't understand, and she didn't care, not when it felt so good and the ache inside only became wilder and sweeter. Suddenly she felt a sharp pinch, followed by the incredibly wondrous sensation of him filling her. Her tiny gasp became a shuddering sigh. They were one, rising together in a harmony of rhythm that was its own form of beauty.

 

 

 

 

17

 

 

“The magnolias." Remy stood at the French doors leading onto the second-floor gallery, staring at the towering trees with green, leathery leaves on the front lawn. She turned to Nattie, faintly stunned by the realization. "Brodie Donovan built this house. I never thought ... I assumed . . . even though I remember that the Garden district was originally established by wealthy Americans, it never occurred to me this house was built by anyone other than a Jardin. I should have known that the Jardins, being Creole, would have lived in the Vieux Carré."

"This was Donovan's house, all right," Nattie confirmed with a nod of her gray head.

"Then we got not only the shipping line from him but this house as well. How?"

"I'm getting to that." Nattie waved a hand at her, demanding patience. "Anyway, there's no doubt Adrienne knew exactly what she was doing when she went to bed with Brodie. By that I'm not saying that she didn't giver herself to him for the same reason any young woman gives herself to the man she believes she loves. But she had other reasons."

Remy frowned. "What other reasons could she have?"

"Don't forget, in those days a woman was compromised merely by being alone with a man for an extended amount of time. And Adrienne always intended for her grand-père to find out that she'd been secretly meeting Brodie—at the appropriate time, of course—
and
she wanted her grand-père to know without a doubt that she'd been irreparably compromised. There was even a good chance she was going to have his baby. She figured her grand-père not only would have to accept Brodie Donovan, but he'd also insist that they get married." She paused briefly. "I think Adrienne had images of the two of them reigning over both American and Creole society, living a life still cushioned by the wealth and prestige of the Jardin name."

"Obviously that didn't happen," Remy guessed as she wandered over to an old rosewood priedieu, suddenly wondering who had knelt on its padded knee-rest to pray. Had it belonged to Adrienne? "Why? What went wrong, Nattie?"