Swept Away (24 page)

Emory frowned, but did as he was told, pausing first to tug his shirt tails out of his breeches and peel the bloodied garment over his head. Annaleah was tipping water into the bowl while he was doing this, and when she turned, she drew up short for a moment, startled to see him bare-chested before her.

With the light from the lamp burnishing his shoulders, it brought a spark of heat to life in her belly--heat that was most unwelcome and unwanted at a time when she needed to rely on anger to maintain her composure.

Determined to look at nothing but the wound, she soaked the napkin in the washbowl and twisted the excess water free. Working quickly she washed away the blood that had leaked down his arm first, gradually wiping and blotting her way closer to the actual injury. She was not squeamish by nature, and had seen her share of cuts and scrapes--even a horrid long laceration in a groomsman’s leg after a stallion had kicked half the flesh off his calf. It surprised her then, that she should feel queasy bathing a mere cut on Emory Althorpe’s arm, and downright light-headed when he obeyed her instruction to lift his elbow that she might clean the smear over his ribs.

Somewhere between one stroke of the cloth and the next, she lost the battle not to notice the powerful slabs of muscle across his back and shoulders. His neck, where the fine curls of hair clung to his skin held a particular fascination, as did the dark smooth mat that covered his chest. From there, it was only logical to look at his back, at the dozens of raised white lines that had been painstakingly carved into his flesh. Knowing what they were, how they had been caused, the pain he must have endured sent her belly sliding even lower.

“
My
belligerence?”

“Your behavior was downright rude and ugly, sir. I am not accustomed to being treated like a common trull, or being pawed or ordered about. Nor do I take kindly to any man who threatens violence against a woman.”

“And you acted with an unconscionable lack of consideration, not only for me but for my family. Father is a respected member of the House of Lords. You just do not go about kissing the daughters of noblemen in a public street.”

He glanced up and murmured, “I was not kissing you.”

“I meant
kidnapping
. You do not go about
kidnapping
daughters of noblemen! Should so much as a whisper reach his ear that I allowed myself to become entangled in such intrigues, why--” she waved the cloth a moment, searching for a way to convey the trauma it would cause, but the only thing she could think of was that it might put him off his newspaper. “Well, my mother, at any rate, will take to her bed for a month."

Emory watched a small frown crease her brow. Her eyes flickered up from his arm and met his, then sank slowly down again as if she was only just then realizing where she ranked in her family’s priorities.

He reached around and gently grasped her hand.

“Forgive me,” he said with genuine regret. “I realize that by all accounts I make a better villain than hero, but I had hoped--and yes, perhaps even presumed by too much--that you believed me. Perhaps even trusted me a little.”

She stared at the long, tapered fingers where they were wrapped around her wrist and felt their heat ripple all the way up her arm, spread through her breasts, and bristle across the nape of her neck.

“But if I cannot even convince you of my innocence in all this,” he added softly, “what chance do I have of persuading anyone else?”

Slowly, her eyes rose to meet his, and in the prolonged, breathless instant that followed, she wanted to tell him how very wrong he was. She did believe him. And although he made it exceedingly difficult to justify, she did trust him. Far more than she should. She had been raised not to think, not to act, not to believe anything that was not dictated to her over her morning chocolate. In turn it was expected that she would be the dutiful daughter, the obedient wife and mother who would subsequently raise her own daughters to parrot the rigid standards of behaviour dictated by her superior class. But in less than a week, her faith in all that social stricture had been shaken. Florence Widdicombe had shaken it, for she was proof that someone could break the rules and live quite happily ever after. Emory Althorpe had shaken it. He had shattered every rule, broken every covenant, scoffed at every social protocol...yet even helpless, wounded, and lacking any memories of who and what he was, he was more alive, exciting and appealing to her than all the staid, draconian Winston Perrys in England.

She wanted to believe him. She did believe him. And because she believed him the full measure of her loneliness and confusion passed like a shadow through her eyes. Emory saw it. Even more, he could see that by admitting it, even just to herself, she felt more lost and isolated than ever before.

His eyes narrowed a fraction and it was enough to turn her head away in embarrassment, but she was not as quick to move. When he stood, she was still beside him. When he grasped her shoulders and forced her to look up at him again, she could only shake her head in a feeble attempt to deny the emotions that were suddenly raging through her veins.

“Anna--” He cradled her face between his hands. A muscle shivered in his cheek as he studied the melting blue depths of her eyes, the trembling pink bow of her mouth. “Anna...forgive me for what I have done to you.”

“You have done nothing I did not let you do willingly and freely.”

“Ahh, but given the smallest chance, I would have,” he whispered. “Another moment or two in front of that window, with the lightning outside and the heat inside...”

Her lashes fluttered closed with the sensation of his thumb brushing gently at the wetness that had gathered at the corner of her eye. “Given another moment," she whispered, "I...I might not have stopped you.”

His smile wavered, fading altogether as his body reacted to the tremors in her voice. “You don’t mean that. You would have wakened this morning hating me.”

“I do mean it.” Her eyes were huge and fierce with conviction when she opened them. “I mean it now,” she added in a faltering whisper. “I...I...”

The pads of his fingers brushed quickly over her lips, preventing her from finishing the thought. He was not even certain he wanted to know what that thought might be. Not here, not now at any rate. He saw the subsequent movement in her throat as she swallowed the rest of her words and he felt the warmth rising in her skin, burning with the shame of showing him just how vulnerable she was. He leaned forward, pressing his lips over the residue of a tear. He kissed her eyes, her temples, the pink tip of her nose. Her hair was in disarray, catching the lamplight on its dark, tumbled strands and his hands moved almost with a will of their own to bury themselves in the silky waves, drawing her closer, holding her while his mouth covered hers and urged her lips to part, to let him in.

She did it willingly, tilting her head higher, feeling no compunction whatsoever to pretend she did not want him to kiss her, or that she did not want to kiss him in return. Her one lingering concession to modesty was that she did not groan aloud with longing when her hands slid up the bare heat of his chest and curled around his neck. In the end, the sounds all came from him: a throaty surrender when her body pressed eagerly up against his, a husked, breathless curse when her mouth would not settle for anything less than his very best effort.

“Stop me,” he gasped, his hands trembling around fistfuls of her hair. “Stop me or I will not be able to stop myself.”

She pulled herself higher and wrapped her arms tighter and kissed him like she had never kissed a man before, never known it was possible to kiss, with her whole body and soul.

Emory’s groan turned deep and guttural, his lips demanding and possessive. Her breasts were crushed against his chest, and his hands moved restlessly to explore what had kept him awake through most of the night, but there were too many barriers, too much silk, too many fashionably pert satin ribbons. He pushed aside the tumbled waves of her hair, his fingers searching blindly in the delicate pleats a moment before he found the upper lacings. A few quick tugs and the gathered folds of the bodice were slack enough for him to ease the sleeves of the dress and underlying chemise off the top of her shoulders. A further stroke of his hand brushed the flimsy shields down to her waist and he breathed another oath, soft and warm against the satiny smooth flesh as he dragged his mouth downward and claimed the crinkled pink crown of her nipple.

Anna gasped and arched her head back. Her fingers curled into his hair and her body swayed with the sensations that poured through her, a flood of sweet, hot shivers that responded to every rolling thrust of his tongue. She felt deeper, more urgent contractions in her belly and between her thighs, but it still came without warning--the hot, shuddering rush of exquisite pleasure. Desire for more spread through her body and weakened her knees; it brought her down beside him, then beneath him as he lowered her onto the crush of her own skirts. His lips continued to plunder her breasts, then moved lower, following the path his hands blazed as he pushed her gown lower to bare her hips, her thighs. When the last filmy layer of silk was tossed aside, he lingered over the smooth plane of her belly, his breath as hot as his mouth where it teased the indented vee above her thighs. His hands skimmed down to her knees, coaxing her limbs gently apart, wide enough for him to ease his fingers, then his mouth into the dark patch of curls.

Anna did not know where to look or what to do with her hands. The shock of feeling his fingers sliding back and forth over her flesh was devastating enough; the realization that it was his mouth now, and his tongue lapping at her, devouring her like she was some exotic delicacy nearly sent her skin up in flames. Surely this had to be the ultimate violation of every moral and chaste rule that governed the behavior of a proper young lady, but for some inexplicable reason she wanted to laugh out loud with the joy of it. It was pleasure. Simple, raw, sensuous pleasure with a magnificent rogue who saw no shame in her cries and who did his very best to elicit more.

When the pleasure became almost too acute to bear, she tried to pull herself away, but his hands were to catch her, to hold her by the hips and brace her while he proved she could indeed withstand more. His tongue lashed furiously at her few remaining shreds of modesty and Anna did not even have a chance to draw a full breath before the light and heat and fury burst within her. It sent her arching up off the floor, her hands clawing at his shoulders, his neck. It sent her fingers twisting frantically into the waves of his hair, holding on for dear life as streak after streak of unimagined ecstasy brought her writhing and lurching against him.

When the tumult passed, she lay quivering and shaken beneath him. He lifted his mouth from her body, but only for the few brief seconds it took to strip away his boots and breeches. Then he was back, his lips chasing the shivers that raced across the surface of her belly while his hands stroked and caressed and urged her thighs to part again, this time to welcome the heat and heaviness of his own naked need.

Emory forced himself to move slowly, to introduce himself inch by agonizing inch. She was lush enough, slippery enough to accept the intruding pressure with a hardly more than a startled gasp. Yet she clutched at his arms, his shoulders, even his hair, until he began to fear that perhaps she was too small, too frightened to accommodate something so swollen and inflexible, so rigid he almost did not recognize it as part of his own body.

In some ways, he shared her thrill and uncertainty. Lacking any memories of previous experiences to fall back on, he did not know if all women tasted this sweet or felt this sleek and luscious, if it was pure instinct or something else urging him just to thrust and thrust and thrust until there was nothing between them but friction and heat. The reality that he had barely eased half of himself inside her, that she was whimpering softly in his ear, made him stop and gather himself before tearing into her like a plundering barbarian.

His stomach clenched, his whole body shuddering with the effort it took just to calm himself and count his heartbeats, one thunderous measure at a time. She was a virgin. Of course she was. She was tense, tight as a fist and he had her on the hard wooden floor like a twopenny strumpet, with her thighs spread and her eyes undoubtedly glazed with fear over the size of what he was trying to push inside her.

“Hurting
me?
” He lifted his head off her shoulder and gazed down with a combination of disbelief and wonder. “I am barely holding on by the skin of my teeth, trying not to make a complete damned fool of myself, and you want to know if
you
are hurting
me?”

Her eyes were indeed glazed, but not with fear over any discomfort he was causing her. They were bigger and bluer than any ocean he had ever seen, and were looking up at him almost apologetically as she gently untwined her fingers from his hair. It was only then that he understood. She was afraid she had tugged too hard on the bruised back of his scalp and the pain was what had made him stop and pull back.