Out of the Blue (A Regency Time Travel Romance) (23 page)

She shook her head. “A stroll? Me? Now? Nope,
I don’t think so,” she said quickly, the words tumbling over each
other as she dared a peek at the bed and then all but dived under
the covers, pulling them up to her neck.
Oh, boy,
she
thought, wincing, as she realized what she had done.
Great work,
Sherlock. You’re right back where you started.

His smile nearly destroyed her, for she was
convinced he was laughing at her, seeing her for what she really
was—an inept, clumsy, disaster-prone idiot who couldn’t pull off a
romantic assignation if she had a week to prepare for it. A
year.

“I’ve taken the liberty of bringing us some
wine,” Marcus said, using the slipper to point across the room, so
that for the first time she noticed the silver tray holding a
decanter and glasses that sat on her desk. “Shall I pour you a
measure?”

Her tongue cleaving to the roof of her mouth,
she only nodded, wildly wondering how Sheila Cranston would handle
this particular situation.
One whole hell of lot better than
you’re doing, sweetcakes,
her brain announced in mocking tones,
so that Cassandra felt tears stinging behind her eyes. What was
wrong with her? She loved Marcus, truly loved him. Why was she
carrying off this interlude with all the panache of a hippopotamus
stuck in an elevator?

Marcus, now minus the slipper and holding two
filled glasses, perched himself on the side of the bed, his
position not in the least threatening, even if his proximity had
her toes curling under the covers. “Here you are, my dear. I
suggest you sip it.”

She took the glass and downed its contents in
one long gulp, wishing it were Scotch and water—not that she was
ever a heavy drinker. “So much for suggestions,” she said, handing
him the empty glass. “Marcus—I’m not too clear on this point, so
I’ll ask you, okay? Is England prone to earthquakes?”

He leaned forward to place the wineglasses on
the nightstand, then looked at her, frowning in the moonlight.
“Earthquakes? We’ve had a few. Why?”

Cassandra nervously plucked at the bedcovers.
“No reason. Well, that’s not quite true. There is a reason. You
see, I never get away with anything. Honestly. You already know
about Brad the Bod. Well, the first—the first
time
we, you
know, the first real
time,
my dormitory caught on fire. And
then—and then there was the time I had this crush on Josh McCabe in
the ninth grade. We were taking an English exam and I was whipping
right through that test, when all of a sudden Josh poked me in the
back and handed me a note asking for the answer to number seven. I
knew it, of course—and I gave it to him. I figured he’d appreciate
it so much he wouldn’t notice the braces on my teeth, or the fact
that I hadn’t really
developed
as much as the other girls in
my class.”

“But?” Marcus prompted, resting his hand on
top of hers as her nervous plucking had begun to wreak havoc with
one of the embroidered roses.

“See? Even you knew there had to be a ‘but’
involved in anything I do.
But
Mr. Hendricks saw me pass the
note back to Josh and I got sent to the principal’s office for
cheating.
Me!
Not Josh. The other kids made fun of me for
days, and Josh took Melissa Sanderson to the freshman mixer
anyway—that’s a dance, Marcus. God, how I hated Melissa and her
straight teeth and her thirtysix-C cup. Anyway, what I’m trying to
say here is that I just can’t get away with anything. I don’t know
how to pull it off, I guess. I always end up in some kind of
trouble.”

“Hence your question about earthquakes,”
Marcus said, lifting her hand to his lips. “Do you really believe
that making love with me will cause this house, perhaps even this
entire city, to tumble down around our heads?”

She felt the imprint of his lips burning on
her skin, so that her throat constricted, making it difficult to
swallow. She pulled her hand away and pressed it against her cheek.
“Possibly—at least figuratively. I just think it’s only fair that I
warn you. I mean, look how we met in the first place, for crying
out loud. I was breaking the rules when I stumbled down that rabbit
hole of a flight of stairs and into the blue mist. Every time I
break the rules it’s like I’m
begging
for some sort of
disaster to strike. And then tonight—tonight”—her voice broke on a
small sob—“tonight I wanted everything to be
so
perfect. You
don’t know how I planned for this, Marcus. It all seemed so good in
theory, but in practice? Think about it, Marcus—you came in here
tonight expecting to find a woman waiting for you, and instead you
stumbled over an idiot stuck half under her bed, bobbing for
slippers. God, Marcus,” she wailed, falling back against the
pillows and pulling the covers up over her head, “How can you be
depending on me to save your life? I can’t do
anything
right!”

She lay very still, waiting for him to leave
the room, disgusted with her, and had to bite back a sob when she
felt the bed shift beneath her as he stood up. Counting to ten,
waiting for the sound of a door opening and closing again behind
him, she held her breath, expelling it only when the mattress
shifted once more and she became aware of the fact that he was now
lying on the bed, beside her.

A moment later he had removed the covers from
her face, slowly sliding them down until they rested just above her
breasts. “Much as I appreciate your warning, Cassandra, I’ve
decided I like living dangerously,” he said, the back of his
knuckles softly stroking her cheek. She looked over at him and saw
that his banyan was gone, as were the rest of his nightclothes. His
long body was stretched out on top of the covers for her
examination, and with the help of the candlelight and moonlight
that spilled across the bed she drank in the sight of his bared
chest, his long, straight legs, his—

“Oh, you’re good, Marcus,” she whispered
hoarsely, raising her eyes to his face, to his wonderfully
handsome, lovable, and openly loving face. “I don’t have much in
the way of personal experience, but I’ve seen all of Kevin
Costner’s movies; and I can tell you this—you’re very,
very
good.”

“And you talk too much,” he responded,
inching closer to her so that he could place small kisses on her
bared arm, then moving his lips provocatively from her elbow to her
shoulder:

Cassandra closed her eyes and pressed her
head back against the pillows as his lips began blazing a trail
across her shoulder and up the length of her throat, lingering just
at her ear, his tongue and teeth doing things to her equilibrium
that she hadn’t believed possible while she was lying flat on her
back in bed.

She felt the covers receding from her body
and her nervousness ebbed along with them, exposing her to his
view, exposing her to the heat of his body as he moved marginally,
pressing himself against her hip, and then ever further, searing
the soft skin of her belly through the sheer material of her
nightgown, branding her as his own.

And then he moved again, his actions swift
yet tender. A moment later her nightgown was gone, discarded right
along with the remainder of her inhibitions.

Cassandra had never felt less gauche, less
inclined to disaster, than she did as Marcus tilted her head toward
his with his fingertips and claimed her mouth. She opened her lips
to him, and he took up the invitation, his tongue making rapid
inroads on her belief that sex, while really not all that bad with
Brad, probably hadn’t ever really lived up to its
advertisements.

His hands were everywhere, but not in the
wildly groping way she had experienced with Brad. This was a man
who knew what he was about, whose lovemaking was just that—a
sharing of love, and not a taking of territory; an action born of
desire, and not a selfish indulgence in which she might as well be
nothing more than a mildly interested spectator.

Marcus moved his fingers around the fullness
of her breasts, across the sensitive skin of her rib cage, and into
the moist nest between her legs. Cassandra felt beautiful,
cherished, as he spoke sweet love words in her ear before he moved
to her breasts, his mouth claiming one tightly budded nipple, then
the other, coaxing them into full flower as he cupped, kneaded,
caressed, with his hand.

She opened her legs as she was no longer able
to keep up a show of feminine modesty, of typical Regency “missish”
prudency. Marcus was magically lighting small fires of desire with
every light stroke of his fingers as he gently probed her most
secret parts. The fires built, glowing white-hot behind her tightly
closed lids as they combined to make a single all-consuming
conflagration, so that she felt almost feverish with desire.

It was all so beautiful, so dazzling, so
perfect—but it was not enough. She needed
him,
needed him
deep inside her, holding her tightly in his strong arms, quenching
the fires with the power of his love or burning them both to a
crisp with the flames of his passion. It didn’t matter. Nothing
mattered. Not as long as they perished together, soared above the
constraints of the flesh together—were reborn together, as the
phoenix had risen from the ashes.

She raised her arms and moved to hold Marcus
closer, to feel his heated skin beneath her fingers as she slid her
hands over his shoulders and down his smoothly muscled back. So
strong. So perfect. So unbelievably, heartbreakingly wonderful.

And now, now that she held him, a new
sensation built deep within her and intensified her desire a
thousandfold. This was more than lovemaking, more than a mere
delight of the senses. She could feel it growing, crowding out
everything save the awareness of a yawning emptiness that only
Marcus could fill, an expanding hunger that mere food would never
satisfy. It had taken her twenty-five years and a time leap of
nearly two centuries, but at last she knew why she had been born.
Not only to save Marcus, but to love him.

To be loved by him.

Forever.

Without conscious thought she began to move
her hips, and she rubbed herself against his hardness—feeling his
hand on her breast was no longer adequate to her newly discovered
but rapidly mushrooming needs. His mouth was driving her steadily
toward ecstasy—steadily, yet not fast enough. She moved her hands
lower, to his buttocks, guiding him fully on top of her, so that
she could wrap her legs around his.

He lifted his head, looking down at her
through the moonlight, the soft candlelight—his dark eyes
questioning. “Cassandra, my sweet darling—so soon?”

The old Cassandra would have been
embarrassed, and instantly awkward, mumbling something inane and
digging herself a figurative hole to throw herself into. But this
was the new Cassandra, reborn only moments earlier, in this room,
in this man’s arms, and she had never been more sure of herself, of
anything, in either her old life or this new, enlightened
incarnation.

She gazed up at Marcus, loving the way his
dark hair tumbled forward onto his forehead, loving the way she
could actually see his pulse beating frantically in his throat,
loving the way he looked down at her as if she were the most
precious, wonderful creature he had ever seen. Loving
him.

“Do you love me, Marcus?” she asked,
shuddering as his thumb lightly grazed her nipple, sending
blissful, shivering signals to her nether regions. “Will you always
love me, no matter what the future has in store for us?”

His smile almost broke her heart. “I will
love you, Cassandra Kelley, until there is no past, no present, and
no future. I will love you forever.”

Laughing, crying, she opened herself to him
completely, saying, “In that case, my darling marquess, it can
never be too soon for us. We have the rest of the night, the rest
of our lives, to take it slow.”

It was only as dawn began to break over
Grosvenor Square that Marcus gathered up his nightclothes, kissed
Cassandra one last, lingering time, and slipped back to his own
bedchamber. Snuggling deep under the covers, her body still warm
from his loving, she realized her most beloved marquess had been
wrong. There
had
been an earthquake in the mansion last
night, a devastating, heart-stopping, truly glorious shifting of
the earth—only the phenomenon had been confined to Cassandra’s room
and the high, wide tester bed.

“W
ell, I hope you’re
satisfied, gel,” Aunt Cornelia said, nudging the feathered
headdress that had slipped a notch as she pushed her way through
the crowded hallway. Cassandra followed along behind, stopping
every few moments to gawk at yet another artistic extravagance the
Prince Regent had on display in every nook and cranny. “I never saw
such a sad crush this early in the year. Everyone and his wife must
have come back to town for the evening. See and be seen, my sainted
aunt Mary! If one more person trods on my hem, the entire
ton
will be seeing me
in naturabilis,
for my gown
will be stripped from my body! Don’t dawdle, child—the gentlemen
are waiting.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cassandra answered dutifully,
taking one last peek over her shoulder. She was sure the painting
she had glimpsed was a Constable. Strange, she hadn’t thought he
had been well received in England until much later. Obviously the
Prince Regent made his own decisions concerning what he liked.

And, she thought as she followed the nodding
purple plume stuck in Aunt Cornelia’s headdress, the Prince Regent
seemed to like almost everything. No wonder the man was in debt up
to his eyeballs. From the moment she, Aunt Cornelia, Marcus, and
Peregrine had passed beyond the fine Corinthian portico and into a
large, absolutely splendid hall lined with Ionic columns fashioned,
so Marcus told her, of the finest brown Siena marble, Cassandra had
been hard pressed to remember to keep her mouth closed. She knew
she was in danger of making a complete jerk of herself by oohing
and aahing like some hick tourist set loose in the big city for the
first time.