Nan Ryan (3 page)

Once, years ago, she had thought for a short while she had found the right man. It had been his intellect, not his looks, that had attracted her. A university professor and a poet, he’d been twenty-eight, she twenty-one. He was slender, bearded, and highly intelligent. He had seemed to be so completely unattainable that it made him incredibly attractive. And he had treated her as an equal, as if she were as bright and brilliant as he. Their highly stimulating conversations might have taken place between two astute, forward-thinking men who respected each other’s keen intellects.

It had been wonderful.

Bored with the trivial talk of clothes and food and babies of which her female friends never seemed to tire, she’d been inspired and excited by the sparkling conversation of her scholarly companion. A true academic who wrote beautiful poetry, he was also an excellent listener who encouraged her to think for herself and speak what was on her mind.

It was all perfect until a chilly November afternoon when he persuaded her to visit his remote stone cottage not far from the university.

A blazing fire, a bottle of chilled wine, and a book of his own poetry. No sooner were they inside than he took her in his arms and began kissing her passionately in the entranceway, the weak autumn sunlight spilling through the tall windows.

Their beautiful relationship was forever altered. Overnight the brilliant university professor whose superior intelligence had so attracted her became a besotted admirer who could no longer think straight and wanted immediately to make her his wife.

Temple shook her head now as if to clear it. Where, she wondered miserably, was the man who was as strong and independent as she? The man who wouldn’t swoon at her feet the first time she kissed him? The man who would think as she thought? The man who no more wanted the constraints of marriage and home than she did.

Sighing deeply, Temple glanced at the porcelain clock beneath the bedside lamp: two o’clock. She should have been in bed and asleep hours ago. She was to meet Cousin Rupert downstairs in the dining room at dawn for a hasty breakfast before departing for the docks, where they would board the vessel to take them across the Channel on the first leg of their long journey.

Temple began stripping off her clothes. When she was completely bare, she picked up the gossamer nightgown from the foot of the bed and pulled it over her head. She didn’t don the matching robe. Nor did she immediately get into bed.

Temple Longworth was, as usual, still restless. Edgy. Unfulfilled. Longing for something. Something … she didn’t know what. Something that in her twenty-five years she had never found. Something that likely did not exist.

All the light-hearted gaiety of the evening had evaporated, and Temple felt unusually melancholy. A sad, sweet yearning plagued her. Again.

The ruby, suffused with an
incandescent red glow, produced that unique six-starred prism for which it was famous as its bearer’s dark fingers fitted the key into the lock.

He opened the door and stepped quietly into the dimly lit foyer of the luxurious corner suite. Noiselessly he placed the key in a flat silver bowl on a marble-topped table and walked unhurriedly into the hotel suite’s high-ceilinged drawing room.

He was unbuttoning his white suit jacket when a beautiful woman wearing only a revealing nightgown of sheer black lace came rushing out of the bedroom. She was Lady Barrow, a blood relative to Queen Victoria, a gorgeous but rather petulant thirty-three-year-old auburn-haired, milky-skinned divorcée and his mistress for the past six months.

An affair that, for him, had become increasingly tiresome.
She
had become increasingly tiresome. She had fallen in love with him and had grown suffocatingly jealous and bad tempered because she so wanted to possess him.

No woman had ever or would ever possess him.

Lady Barrow hurried anxiously toward him now, scolding as she came.

“Christian, you can’t treat me this way!” she cried shrewishly. “I will not tolerate it! It’s after one in the morning and you said you’d be gone no longer than an hour. Where the hell have you been? And with whom? I want to know her name. Tell me!”

The jealous Lady Barrow continued to rage as the unresponsive Christian Telford calmly shrugged out of his suit jacket, tossed it over a chair back, and crossed to the liquor cabinet to pour himself a brandy.

“… and I simply will not allow it! Are you listening to me, Christian? I will not be ignored, nor made a fool of! You cannot expect me to …” On and on she went, relentlessly rebuking him.

Clasping the crystal snifter lightly in the palm of his tanned hand, Christian swirled the dark amber liquid about, the large ruby ring on his finger shimmering and showering red sparks with his movements. He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it slowly. He swallowed the smooth, warmed brandy and exhaled heavily.

Finally he glanced at the angry, red-faced woman, raised his dark hand, and said in a low but commanding voice, “That’s enough, Beatrice.”

Lady Barrow broke off in midsentence. She knew he meant it and was immediately contrite. She was sorry she’d said anything. She was frightened because she knew she was losing him, had perhaps already lost him. Their affair, which had been so heated in the beginning, had begun to cool in the past few weeks, and frequently he ignored her completely. She could see it his eyes, hear it in his tone when he spoke that the end was near. His interest had waned, and she was desperate to reclaim it.

“Oh, my love, forgive me,” Lady Barrow murmured, and anxiously set about to make him do just that.

“It’s all right,” he said, and poured himself another brandy.

He sat down on a long beige sofa, yanked impatiently at the creases in his trouser legs, and lighted a Cartier cigarette.

“No, it isn’t all right,” she said, now thoroughly chastened. “I know how you hate being interrogated, and I shouldn’t have said anything.” She swept her unbound hair back over her bare shoulders and moved seductively toward the sofa. Smiling sweetly now, she said, “I’m just glad you’re back. I missed you terribly.”

Christian took a long, deep pull on his cigarette and slowly released the smoke. His night black eyes flicked over—then dismissed—the scantily clad auburn-haired beauty moving toward him.

He said, “I didn’t expect you to be here, Beatrice.”

She laughed nervously, sat down on the sofa beside him, and said, “Not be here? Why, darling, what a foolish statement. Of course I’m here. Where else would I be?”

He turned his dark head, looked directly at her. His gaze a mixture of annoyance and compassion, he said, “It was settled, was it not? Didn’t I made myself clear. We agreed it was over, that we’d—”

“Oh, don’t, Christian,” she choked, “don’t say that. It isn’t over, it isn’t. I won’t let it be over, I can’t let you go.”

“This is my last night in London,” he said flatly. “I’ve no idea when I’ll return. It could be years. You are beautiful, wealthy, titled. You’ll find someone else.”

“Christian, my love,” she said, rising from the sofa and turning about to face him. “I don’t want anyone else. I want only you. And you want me, I know you do. You’re tired and tense, that’s it.” She smiled then, catlike, lifted the black lace nightgown high up her milky thighs, and slid swiftly down astride his trousered knees.

“It won’t work, Beatrice,” he said as she settled herself on him. “It’s over. I’m sorry.”

“If you wish,” she murmured even as she tugged at the knot in his silk cravat. “If it’s over, I’ll accept it. But does that mean we can’t enjoy this final night together?”

Her fingers were nimble on the buttons going down his shirtfront. He made no move either to stop her or to aid her. He sat there sipping his brandy and smoking his French cigarette while she worked furiously to excite him. In seconds the powder blue shirt was completely open down his dark chest.

Eagerly she pushed the shirt apart and ran her nails through the crisp black hair covering his broad chest. She caught and held his gaze as she popped a forefinger into her mouth and sucked on it briefly. She felt his lean, hard body tense slightly when she lowered her finger, placed the tip on a flat brown nipple, and teasingly drew a wet circle around and around it.

“Get down now,” he said, the faintest hint of desire creeping into his low voice. “Go on to bed.”

“In a while,” she said. She moved her tormenting finger, bent her head, and began licking the erect nipple.

Christian exhaled heavily, finally put aside his brandy snifter and snuffed out his smoked-down cigarette. He put both hands in her flowing auburn hair, gripped the lustrous locks in his long fingers, and drew her head up off his chest.

“This will change nothing,” he said, and meant it.

“Nothing? How can you say that when already you’re hard and throbbing beneath me?”

He released her hair, laid his hands lightly on her thighs. She placed her own hands atop his and guided them carefully to push the black lace nightgown higher up her bare belly. She trembled with delicious pleasure when he settled her more fully upon his straining groin. She felt a rush of sweet triumph and quick desire ripple her.

Maybe
he
no longer wanted her, but his body still responded. She’d make him want her again. She’d drive him mad with desire until he was ready to admit he still wanted her, had to have her, would never leave her!

Lady Barrow hastily pushed the wispy straps of her black nightgown off her shoulders. Anxiously she shrugged until her pale, full breasts sprang free of the flimsy lace, the large nipples already peaking in anticipation of her lover’s heated kisses.

When he didn’t immediately lean forward to press his dark face to her bared breasts, Lady Barrow put her hands into the thick dark hair at the sides of his head and kissed him. Her lips moving eagerly on his, she rubbed her naked breasts against his chest, letting him feel the taut nipples brush and graze the crisp dark hair and hard, hot muscle beneath.

During the prolonged, passionate kiss she felt his hands move impatiently under the twisted black lace to the twin cheeks of her bare bottom, and her heart pounded with joy. Her lips still fused with his, she clung to his dark hair with one hand and lowered the other between them. Her nervous fingers fumbled with his belt buckle, managed to get it undone, then deftly flipped open the buttons of his fly.

She gasped excitedly into his mouth when his hard, heavy flesh sprang free of his tight trousers. She immediately took her hand away so that she could settle her own moist, throbbing flesh more fully against that fierce, fully formed erection.

Lady Barrow finally tore her burning lips from Christian’s, lifted her head, and looked at him. His dark, hooded eyes were glazed with passion, and his chest was rising and falling rapidly. She was jubilant.

It had taken her longer than usual, but finally the sexually experienced Lady Barrow had managed to arouse her less-than-ardent lover. You won’t leave me now, she thought victoriously as she rocked rhythmically against him. Sliding slowly, erotically up and down the impressive length of him, she could hardly wait to have all the pulsating male power inside her.

Christian clasped her waist with his firm fingers and lifted her. Lady Barrow licked her fingers anxiously, took him in her hand, and ran her wet fingertips over the jerking head, then guided the glistening tip into her wet, waiting warmth. Her fingers released him and she put her hands atop his broad shoulders. Both watched as he eased her all the way down on his thrusting masculinity.

Half dressed, they made love there on the sofa, she with her black lace nightgown bunched up and tangled around her waist, he with his shirt and trousers open and his shoes still on. When her climax came, Lady Barrow cried out in her ecstasy, then collapsed against his naked, sweat-dampened chest.

Breathless, sated, she whispered, “Carry me to bed, my love, and hold me in your arms all through the night.”

His chest heaving, heart racing, Christian made no reply. He carried her to the bed. She sighed and stretched happily as he stripped and got in beside her. Placing a proprietary hand on the now flaccid flesh that had just given her such incredible pleasure, Lady Barrow began tenderly to toy with him, intending for them to make love again.

But her hand soon stilled and her breathing deepened, and she was almost immediately asleep.

He was not.

Christian Telford lay awake in the darkness. Restless. Irritable. Edgy.

He slipped from the bed and wandered into the adjoining room. He took a cigarette from his slim gold case and went out onto the darkened hotel balcony.

Standing naked in the cool night air, he put the cigarette between his lips and was starting to light it when a woman stepped out onto the balcony directly next to his.

She wore only a flimsy gossamer nightgown. Her feet were bare, and her heavy blond hair was flowing loose down her pale, bare back. She hurried to the balcony’s stone railing, gripped it tightly, threw back her head, and took a long, deep breath.

The cigarette dangling unlit from his mouth, Christian watched her, his dark eyes narrowing. A half-cruel smile touched his lips.