Teresa Medeiros (27 page)

Fearing he might reach the limits of his endurance long before she did, Gerard growled deep in his throat and kissed the corner of her mouth. “Shall I stop touching you now? Is it too much for you to bear?”

She shook her head, then nodded, then shook her head again. He took advantage of her haze of confusion to gather the gossamer fabric of her skirt and petticoat beneath his palm. He eased them up, past the blush of her stockings, past the frivolous rosebuds embroidered on her garters, finally revealing the silken folds of her drawers.

“Vive la révolution,”
he murmured hoarsely, blessing the French for the decadent fashions they’d foisted on proper young English ladies like Lucy Snow. At this juncture of his life he doubted even an iron chastity belt would have kept him from her.

The contrast between the prim purity of Lucy’s thighs and the lace-edged carnality of her undergarments maddened him, made his hands shake with hunger. He steadied them on her knees and felt a tiny shudder of panic rip through her muscles.

He nuzzled the pulse beating frantically at the side of her throat. “Don’t be afraid, Lucy. I’ll stop whenever you like. I swear I won’t touch you anywhere you don’t want me to.”

Gerard’s vow failed to ease Lucy’s terror. Because
she wanted him to touch her everywhere. All of those sweet, forbidden places she’d never dared to touch herself, not even when in the throes of her darkest, hungriest fantasies. Not even when they ached and melted with anticipation. She wasn’t afraid of his touch. She was afraid she would humble herself beyond redemption by begging for it.

“Please …?”

At first she thought the hoarse plea had tumbled from her own lips, giving substance to her fears, but as Gerard’s powerful hands used all the gentleness at their disposal to coax her knees apart, she realized the entreaty was his own, offered without a trace of apology.

She watched her legs part for him as if they belonged to someone else, mesmerized by the wanton grace of her own surrender. His splayed fingers stroked the virgin cream of her inner thighs, each tantalizing foray edging his blunt thumbs nearer to the damp silk molded against her like a second skin.

A shudder rocked her to her very soul as his warm fingers unerringly found the thin slit in the expensive fabric and slipped beneath to cup her throbbing flesh.

After a lifetime of being denied intimacy, being touched there was the most exquisite and terrifying sensation Lucy had ever endured. She turned her face away and closed her eyes, no longer able to bear watching. Tears slipped silently down her cheeks to dampen the hairs of Gerard’s chest.

With infinite tenderness, his deft fingers parted her, stroked her, explored all but the most vulnerable of her satiny hollows. All the while, his thumb rubbed the sensitive nub buried in her nether curls, striking sparks of fiery pleasure that threatened to incinerate her.

Every nerve in her body began to hum like a piece of Waterford crystal poised to shatter beneath the
wild, piercing climax of an aria. Her heels dug into the feather tick. Her hands kneaded his muscular thighs in mute plea. She turned her head from side to side, blindly seeking fulfillment, ease for the void she feared would swallow her whole if she could not soon appease it.

When she would have clenched her thighs together in desperation, Gerard hooked his ankles around hers to pin them open, baring her body, heart, and soul to his tender mastery.

Once when he’d been a younger and more foolish man, Gerard would have sought only his own pleasure. Now he sought only hers. He clenched his teeth, torn between anguish and ecstasy. He wanted to comfort Lucy, reassure her that he would be there to pick up the pieces when she splintered into a thousand glimmering fragments.

But what did he have to offer her? A passel of lies? Promises he could never keep? Vows that would be broken before dawn? He didn’t dare speak for fear of what might spill out. So he kept them both imprisoned in a world without words. Without truth. A world of darkness. A world of devastating pleasure and bittersweet denial.

She sprawled against him in wanton abandon, melting into his hand as he had always dreamed she would do. When her murmured litany escalated into piteous cries, he slipped one finger into the honeyed cocoon of her body, never ceasing the provocative ministrations of his thumb. She was softer than silk, hotter than fire. Her husky moan coaxed him to dare more. Two fingers. Her untried body received him with such unabashed generosity that he groaned and arched against her, tempted almost beyond the bounds of sanity to ease open the straining buttons of his trousers and bury more than his fingers in her. Much more.

Then he felt the tiny convulsions ripple out from her womb, gloving his fingers in searing heat. Gerard lost all conscious thought except for the presence of mind to lay his other hand over her mouth to capture the first of her breathless, broken cries in the cup of his palm.

Lucy shuddered again and again as Gerard’s hands, his clever, magnificent hands, held her hostage to delight. Rivers of pleasure poured through her in an unending torrent, sweeping the last of her inhibitions away. Her hips moved of their own accord, wildly seeking the mate of the spasms that raked her with such exquisite rhythm. Just when they began to abate, his thumb worked its dark magic again. Her scream would have awakened the entire household had Gerard not had the foresight to tighten his hand over her mouth.

She collapsed against his chest in a shivering heap, her hands groping for the sustenance of his warm skin.

Gerard wrapped his arms around Lucy and cradled her in his lap, his desire to protect never so strong as in that moment when she was at her most vulnerable. That moment when she gave him the gift of her trust although she’d never been more at risk.

He smoothed damp strands of hair from her flushed cheeks, realizing in an instant of ruthless clarity that he held in his arms the perfect tool to achieve all of his goals. He’d sown the seeds for scandal by dancing with her publicly at the winter masque. All that remained was to reap them by ruining her and abandoning her to face the Admiral’s wrath and the consequences of their folly alone. Consequences that might very well include his bastard.

The ease of it taunted him. The Admiral’s haughty daughter seduced by a servant. Her father’s worst expectations of her fulfilled. It would be a scandal of epic
proportions to be savored by every gossipmonger in London.

Lucy emerged from her drowsy haze of satisfaction as Gerard’s arms tightened painfully around her. She could feel his arousal nudging her rump, unabated and unassuaged. A small, guilt-stricken sound escaped her. He had given everything, but asked nothing for himself. She turned in his arms, no longer content to be held as a child. She wanted him to make her a woman. His woman.

Her lips flowered against his chest, tasting the salty spice of his skin as she had longed to do for so long. Her hands crept through crisp hairs still damp from her tears, drifted upward to ease his shirt over the muscled breadth of his shoulders.

He caught her wrists in his hands. “No!”

Lucy recoiled from the harsh warning, gazing up at him in bewilderment. Conflicting emotions warred in his eyes, as if he wrestled with some dark demon visible only to him. An all too familiar feeling of dread blossomed in her belly. No matter the outcome of the battle, she feared she would be the loser.

His tormented gaze raked her face, then dropped to flirt voraciously with her bare breasts. There was something different about his eyes, some mercenary flicker that made Lucy painfully conscious of the gown bunched around her waist, her crooked garter, the stocking collapsed at her ankle. Something that made her cheeks burn with shame at her disheveled nudity. A tendril of panic wove through her desire.

“What is it, Gerard? What did I do?”

His grip on her wrists softened. His eyes darkened with a bleak regret that made her heart quail. “Nothing. You’ve done nothing. Which is exactly why you should go now. Before it’s too bloody late.”

His fingertips grazed her cheek in the ghost of a
caress before he stood, dumping her from his lap to the rumpled quilt. He tugged his shirt closed, his profile implacable in the dim light. Only moments before his hands had been adept enough to melt her trepidation to pleasure, skilled enough to keep that pleasure from becoming pain. Now they fumbled clumsily with the buttons of his shirt as if they’d turned to chunks of ice, devoid of all grace and feeling.

Gerard couldn’t afford to be gentle with her. He had no comfort left to offer either of them. He was too frustrated. Too near to the edge. One tender touch from her would push him right over the precipice and he wanted her badly enough to take her along for the fall without a qualm of conscience.

“We can discuss this in the morning,” he said, his voice gruff with unspent passion. “When we’ve got all our wits about us.”

For the first time, Lucy allowed her gaze to linger on the gaping door of the wardrobe. On the yawning leather valise that had confirmed her worst fears the moment she’d stepped into the gatehouse.

She tugged the sleeves of her chemise over her shoulders and pushed her skirt down to shield her nakedness, possessed by a calm as fragile as the glassy surface of the sea after a raging storm. “You won’t be here in the morning, will you? Smythe as much as told me you’d been dismissed.”

“Dismissed?” Confusion touched his features, elusive in the dying firelight, then he shrugged carelessly. “Being dismissed is a hazard of my profession. If you do your job well enough, eventually you’re no longer needed.”

I need you
.

The words hung unspoken between them, as tangible as the knot of longing wedged in Lucy’s chest.

As if to escape her challenging gaze, Gerard moved
to the wardrobe and began dragging out his meager collection of well-worn garments, cramming them into the valise with no more care than Lucy would have taken in organizing her dressing table.

Smoothing her skirt, she rose to stand beside the bed. “Take me with you.”

Gerard’s hands faltered in the motion of wadding a cravat into an untidy ball. Lucy was willing to sacrifice everything for him—her reputation, her wealth, even the improbable but irresistible chance that her father might someday come to love her. The sharpened blade of irony twisted in his heart, giving him the unholy strength to do what had to be done.

“You should go, Miss Snow,” he said without turning around, knowing only too well that each cold word was like the jab of an icicle through her tender pride. “I’d hate for your presence here to cost me my references.”

He heard the padded sigh of her feet across the rough planks, felt a blast of wintry air against his nape. He rushed to the still swinging door to watch her running figure dissolve like a phantom into the swirling curtain of white.

He slammed his fist into the doorframe. Lucy had been right. He wouldn’t be there in the morning. He wouldn’t be there in an hour. No matter the cost of his haste, he couldn’t spend a minute longer than necessary within sight of Ionia’s gabled roof. If he dared, he knew he would find himself slipping into that decadent bower Lucy called a bedroom, smothering her sobs with his lips, and soothing her stricken pride beneath the hard, hungry thrusts of his body.

He rested his mouth against his clenched fist, breathing deeply of the lemon and musk that still clung to his fingers like an aphrodisiac. The Admiral’s beautiful daughter would never know how narrow her
escape or how devastating the cost of his mercy. He’d come to Ionia believing himself a man with nothing to lose only to lose the one thing he hadn’t even known he still possessed.

His heart.

L
UCY STUMBLED ACROSS THE LAWN, EACH clumsy thud of her feet breaking the powdery crust of snow. Her heart hammered in her ears as if to drown out the echo of Gerard’s crass dismissal. Icy flakes battered her face, melting as they encountered the warm tears coursing down her cheeks.

She didn’t know where she was going until she saw the homely old oak, its harsh silhouette blurred by a dusting of snow. She sank to her knees beneath the shelter of its branches, hugging herself as the cold seeped into her naked limbs.

The night whispered its mournful secrets in the creak of the withered branches. Lucy bleakly surveyed the snowswept vista, wishing for the bitterness to pronounce it ugly. But she would be lying if she did. The hills rolling down to the river still sparkled with a heavenly iridescence. The snowflakes still waltzed and twirled to the silent music of the icy gusts. Lucy shivered. It was all so beautiful. So treacherous. Like love itself.

She buried her face in her hands. Gerard didn’t want her any more than her father ever had. He might lust after her as all those men had lusted after her mother, but he would never love her. Her body, still tingly and slightly tender from his loving attentions, throbbed in contradiction.

What terrible flaw did she possess that made it so impossible for anyone to love her?

After tonight, there wouldn’t even be anyone to watch after her. No one to keep the light in the gatehouse burning after midnight. No one to stand beneath the old oak at dawn. No one to blow smoke rings at her nose or tease her until she sputtered with indignation. After tonight, Gerard’s rich laughter would be nothing more than a memory, a haunting echo of a brief interlude in her colorless life.