Rebel Enchantress (41 page)

“They’re Christmas presents.”

Delilah didn’t know how much more she was going to be able to take. Why had he come here asking after her, worrying about her, bringing her gifts? Didn’t he know everything was over? How could he throw her out of his house, look at her as if she were the lowest form of life, and then turn around and give her presents? Tears gathered at the backs of her eyes. If he kept on, she was going to cry right in front of him. She knew how much men hated crying, but it would be his own fault. He just didn’t know when to stop.

Nathan took a small package from the buggy seat. He pried open her clenched fingers and unwrapped the paper. A stream of blue and silver flowed into her hand. Speechless, Delilah stood looking at a necklace of blue stones. It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever been given.

And the one thing she couldn’t accept.

“I brought the velvet, too” Nathan continued, opening one package after another.

But she didn’t see what was in the other packages. Her eyes never left the necklace in her hand. Inexpensive it might be, but it represented all they had shared that was priceless. She didn’t think of the house and the clothing, the silver and china, the security she would enjoy as Nathan’s wife. They would be nice, she would appreciate them; she’d been poor all her life. But she would happily go on being poor if she could just have the man she loved.

She thought of those damned tight breeches. Would she ever be able to picture Nathan without seeing his muscled thighs? She wondered if Jane felt that way about Reuben, and decided that she herself was probably a depraved woman who would be ostracized by society if they knew what went on in her mind.

Then she recalled Nathan’s kisses, the strength of his arms, the wonderful comfort of being crushed in his embrace, his inflamed groin against her fluttering stomach, her aching breasts against his hot hands. She thought of the portrait hidden in his room. Somehow that was the greatest compliment of all.

Then the tears started to fall. Not a delicate, captivating tear dangling from a lash, not even a moist trail down soft cheeks. No, Delilah couldn’t cry in a feminine, seductive manner. She was certain she looked as though someone had dashed a bucket of water in her face.

Then, wonder of wonders, Nathan enfolded her tightly in his arms, one hand pressing her head against his chest as he kissed her hair.

That made her cry all the harder, great gusty sobs which should have disgusted him. But he held her more closely, and before she knew it, her arms were wound around him.

“I can’t take the necklace,” she said between sobs. “I can’t take any of these gifts.”

“I want you to have them.”

“Don’t you understand that everything has changed?”

“I couldn’t give them to anybody else.”

She pulled away enough to be able to look up at him. “You’re the one person in the world I can’t take anything from.”

“I don’t understand.”

“For one thing, Reuben would shoot you and Jane would never speak to me again. But that’s not the real reason,” she added when he would protest. “An unmarried woman should never accept gifts from an unmarried man… . That’s not the real reason either, and you know it.”

“You mean—”

“The situation has changed,” she said, afraid if he spoke first he would further shake her resolve. “Had things continued … if we had … if you still wanted …” Words failed her.

“If we were going to be married, you could accept them as bridal gifts,” he said for her.

Delilah nodded.

“Can’t they just be gifts from a man who loves you?”

Delilah’s gaze flew to his face. As incredible as the words seemed, confirmation was written in his eyes, in the tightening vise of his arms around her body.

“But how? Why?”

“Don’t ask me that. Don’t ask me anything. All I know is I love you more than ever. I’ve been nearly crazy since you left. I can’t sleep I can’t eat. I can’t concentrate on my work. Someone will be talking to me, and I won’t hear a word. Everything I see or do reminds me of you. At times I just stand around, trying to remember everything I can about you. I’m going mad.”

Delilah had thought she was cried out, that she had no more tears in her body, but they began to flow afresh, even more copiously now. She didn’t draw back when Nathan lifted her off her feet and kissed her with a harsh urgency that matched her own need of him. She didn’t protest when his tongue forced her lips apart and plunged into her mouth, seeking her tongue, renewing its intimacy with frantic haste.

Even though she knew it was useless, that it would only make telling him to go that much more difficult, Delilah threw her arms around his neck and kissed him with equal intensity. She gave no thought to being observed, to Jane and Reuben coming back early, or to Shays or one of his men stopping by to see her brother and finding her locked in a passionate embrace with one of his enemies. She only cared that Nathan loved her, that he wanted her, and that she was in his arms.

For that moment Nathan was enough.

“I’ve thought about holding you in my arms so long it has become an obsession,” he whispered.

“I’ve thought of you too,” Delilah said, squirming in his embrace as his tongue tickled her ear. “Every night I tried to think of the things I needed to do for Christmas, but all I could think of was you.”

“I remembered the way we used to share secret looks during dinner,” Nathan said. He nuzzled her neck, making his words hard to understand. “That day down by the river, the night I waited for you in your room, the hours we spent together in the library. I remember most the way you looked that evening in the drawing room singing love songs. I always imagined you sang one to me.”

“I did, when I was alone. I never realized until then how powerless words are to express our deepest feelings. I wanted to touch you, but I didn’t dare.”

“You can touch me now,” he murmured as his lips trailed searing kisses across her bosom. She knew she should object – she would be mined if anyone saw such an intimate display of feeling–but she didn’t want to stop him. She felt his loins begin to swell, the pressure against her abdomen increasing, and a moltep core of heat expanded and flowed through her. Her arms encircled his waist and drew him closer.

She would have to live without him for a lifetime.
Just a few minutes more.
Then Nathan’s lips touched the tops of her breasts, and she knew her moment of decision was near. She had to stop him while she still could. His tongue snaked down below the edge of her gown, pushing down the linen lining until it reached the hard, aching, swollen nipple just waiting to be caressed.

Delilah gasped when he gently removed her breast from the confines of her gown and suckled it with his hungry mouth. Her body grew rigid with tension, alive with expectation, demanding in its hunger. The now familiar uneasiness came to her stomach; it spread through her body until every nerve stretched to the breaking point. She felt the warm moisture between her thighs grow hot, felt her hips loosen, her muscles quiver with eagerness.

She grasped Nathan’s head to press him closer to her breast, hoping his nearness would relieve the growing ache inside her. His mouth loosely cupped her swollen nipple while his tongue’s rough edge teased it. Then ignoring her nipple, his impudent tongue traced circles around its sensitive base before laying trails across the warm underside of her breast.

Desperate to relieve the delicious ache that tortured her, Delilah roughly guided Nathan’s lips back to her throbbing nipple. He eagerly took it in his mouth and sucked, hard.

Delilah gasped at the sweetness of this agony.

In that moment she wanted Nathan more than she wanted life. Every day, every hour, every second of the last four months had been leading up to this moment. Now that it was here, Delilah wondered that she had never seen its inevitability – and that she didn’t want to escape it.

She offered no objection when, with a groan of throttled passion, Nathan swept her up in his arms and carried her into the house. She offered no protest when he laid her upon the bed and uncovered both her breasts to provide a feast for his hungry mouth and seeking hands. This was an affirmation of her love. Above all else she wanted him to have that.

Fulfilling a wish which had bedeviled her for months, Delilah placed her hands on Nathan’s bottom and caressed the firm, muscled mounds of his buttocks, feeling muscles tense and quiver under her fingertips, his body move and shudder against her, her own body become more heated. Even as Nathan tortured her breasts, the center of her need changed.

A burning sensation centered itself in her loins. Dimly perceived at first, it continued to grow in intensity and breadth until the whole lower half of her body was on fire. She couldn’t remain still. She wriggled and squirmed until she brought her aching flesh with its mounting need into contact with Nathan’s body. There was no reluctance, no twinge of regret. Unconsciously her hips relaxed and her legs opened.

Nathan uttered an agonized groan when she pressed herself against his swollen groin, then peeled her dress and shift down to her waist. From there it was a simple matter to slip it from under her hips so Delilah lay naked before him.

It happened so quickly it took Delilah’s breath away. For a moment the cold air made her conscious of her nakedness, but soon the heat from deep within her core warmed her entire body until she felt she would burst into flame. She wanted Nathan. She had to have him. Her seeking hands found his groin.

With a strangled protest, Nathan snatched her hands away. “I can’t control myself if you touch me,” he muttered.

Delilah didn’t understand, but as Nathan’s hand slid along the line of her leg, over her thigh, and directly to the sensitive spot between her creamy white thighs, it ceased to matter. No hand had ever caressed her. She had never allowed anyone to explore her body, but she didn’t draw back. This intimacy, this sharing of what had always been hers alone, was her gift to Nathan. She entreated him to possess her.

Her body tensed as Nathan’s fingers skimmed over hypersensitive skin, igniting a trail of sparks, each lighting up a different nerve center until she squirmed beneath his touch.

But nothing compared to the shock of Nathan’s fingers parting her flesh and driving deep inside her. Delilah’s entire body rose off the bed. The feeling was indescribable. It was as though she had been invaded, plundered, and possessed by a force beyond her power to resist, yet at the same time finally liberated, taken outside of her corporeal self to a plane where she and Nathan could truly become one.

Fighting to retain some control over her limbs, Delilah unbuttoned Nathan’s shirt and pulled it off his shoulders. She let her fingers play over his chest, across his back and his tight abdomen. But the feel of his body under her fingertips was almost blotted out by the blaze he had kindled deep within her. As his hand sank deeper inside her, her hands became more insistent in their searching. Again she found his groin, and again he groaned in pain as he pushed her hand away.

“Don’t. You’ll ruin everything;” he said as he slipped out of his clothes. Nathan barely had his body under control. He trembled with the urgency of the need that filled his every living cell. He was trying to prolong each precious moment, but it took all his willpower to keep from falling upon her right then.

Before Delilah had time to see the beauty of his naked body, Nathan moved above her. His hand plunged inside her once more while his lips sought out and suckled her tender nipples.

She thought she would cry out in sweet agony. Then she felt something larger, softer, more insistent between her legs. The pressure increased and she instinctively opened wider to accept him. Slowly Nathan entered her, stretched her until she was certain she could never hold all of him. No matter how impressive he had been in his tight breeches, he seemed even more enormous inside her. Then, without warning, he drove deep into her until she sheathed all of him. The sharp, unexpected pain stunned Delilah, and she lay still, fearful of what would come next.

When he began to move inside her, slowly withdrawing and then, just as deliberately, sinking his full length into her, Delilah’s fears receded before the sweet intoxication that gripped her. Her abdomen tensed, the muscles in her groin expanded and contracted with his movements. Nathan methodically stoked the fire he had built within her, careful to keep it growing, careful to keep her balanced on the edge of the abyss.

Until his lips found her swollen nipples once again. That was too much. Delilah could no longer control her body. Unable to further endure this slow buildup, to wait for the explosion she instinctively knew was coming, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him with all the longing and fear and desperation and hunger that had haunted her from the moment she’d left Maple Hill. She wanted to get her fill, to absorb enough of him to keep her from ever again feeling so desperately in need of him.

Nathan’s lips covered Delilah’s neck and shoulders with kisses. Even as he plunged deep into her, as the rhythm of his lovemaking increased to a headlong rush toward fulfillment, his lips worshiped her body. The feel of her soft skin under his fingertips, the taste of her sweet mouth, her feathery, warm breath on his cheek, the salt of her tears of happiness, the smell of her fresh clean skin mingled with the fine moisture of desire and combined to stir his passion as much as the wet, welcoming flesh he buried himself in.

Delilah’s body responded, adjusting her rhythm to his, an ever-expanding wave of pleasure radiating from her belly, cutting her off from the trammels of her ordinary being and leaving her free to meld – heart, body, and soul – with Nathan. Delilah surrendered to this swell, this never-ending series of swells, which carried her along on its powerful crest. Higher and higher, deeper and deeper, until, utterly disembodied, she was completely free.

She felt Nathan react to her quickened tempo, her more aggressive response, with an increase in his rhythm. Absorbed by the sensations which rocketed through her limbs, Delilah surrendered and let herself be carried along by the quickening pulses.