The Courtship (20 page)

“Oh, dear,” Helen said, and choked on a scone. Lord Beecham leaned over and lightly thumped her back. His hand stopped and he looked at his fingers, saw them twitching to caress her. He resolutely put his hand back on his thigh and drank more tea.

“He is too pretty,” Lord Prith said. “I don't know about marrying our Teeny off to him, Nell.”

“I will give this more thought, Father. Thank you for your information. Oh, dear, I suppose I will have to accompany Teeny when she meets him, as her chaperone.”

“Oh, no,” said Lord Prith. “Send Flock with her.”

“He would certainly protect her virtue,” Helen said, grinning. “Of course he would also probably stick a knife between Mr. Walter Jones's ribs.” She turned to Lord Beecham. “You are looking too tired, sir. Would you like to stroll around the gardens with me?”

“The gazebo,” he said. “I want to see the gazebo.”

It was a lovely warm afternoon. Lord Beecham smiled fatuously when he saw that lovely little gazebo sitting atop a small rise to the east of the hall. Helen was still thinking about Teeny with that lecherous young man, of whom she had absolutely no doubt she could make the most ardent and faithful of husbands, or she would have seen that smile of his.

“My dear grandfather built that gazebo,” Lord Prith had told Lord Beecham earlier while he consumed two glasses of champagne. “He used to say that my grandmama liked to sit there and watch the geese wheeze and paddle to the pond just beyond while she did her tatting. But I don't know if that was true. You see, there was always this strange sort of smile on his face when he talked about that gazebo.”

Yes, Lord Beecham thought, taking Helen's hand to pull her more quickly to that gazebo. Tatting of a sort was just what Miss Mayberry needed.

A
LL HELEN COULD TALK about was the Pahlavi scroll and the Old French they had copied from the ledge in the cave. That is, it was all she could talk about until he jerked her against him and kissed her, his hands on her bottom, kneading her, pressing her against him, hard. He didn't have to lift her, she fit against him perfectly. He nearly swallowed his tongue.

It didn't even occur to him that he wasn't behaving with her as he normally did with a woman. With any other woman, he would have gone slowly, easily, his charm overflowing, his wit smooth and fluent, his kisses deep and drugging. His master's hands would be touching her everywhere, testing, assessing what pleased her most until she was wild and ready and so eager she reached her pleasure and was asleep from exhaustion before he'd managed to hie himself over the edge.

But not with Helen. He was moaning into her mouth, kissing her jaw, her nose, back to her mouth, deeply, then teasing her with his tongue, and his hands were everywhere, rough and fast, and then he pushed her back onto the chaise that was in the gazebo, jerked up her gown, and nearly lost his seed at the sight of those long white legs of hers. “I simply cannot deal with this, Helen,” he said, wondering how he even managed to place those words together in a logical string. “I am just a man. I can't deal with it.”

“No,” she said, “no, I can't either. Hurry, Spenser, oh, please, hurry.” She was trying to unfasten his breeches, and he slapped her hands away. This time he wanted at least to pull his boots off. He managed it, but just barely.

He was on top of her, pushing her legs open, lying between them, breathing so hard he knew his heart would burst out of his chest. “It's been too long,” he said into her mouth, “much too long.” His palm slid over her belly and pressed down over her and she cried out, a thin wailing cry that nearly broke him. “Just a moment, love, just a moment,” he said over and over into her mouth even as his fingers were on her soft flesh and he felt the building heat of her, the easing of her, the utter giving of herself to him, and he began a rhythm that was natural to him, thank God, because he was in such a bad way, he doubted he could have realized what to do next if it hadn't been second nature to him. She was tensing, arching beneath him, and he knew, as a man knew always, somewhere deep inside him, that she would reach her pleasure at any moment. He wanted to be with her, not watching her, not controlling her, and so he kissed her hard, reared back, and came into her fully and deeply, groaning because it was nearly painful now, this urgent need of his, the wild pounding of his own blood, faster, harder, burning him with its heat. His whole body tightened as he pushed deeper, deeper until he pressed against her womb. She nearly bucked him off her, arching and twisting, nearly taking them to the floor. He managed to pull them back. He was desperate, throbbing, moaning into her mouth. When her muscles tightened around him, making him bellow with the exquisite agony of it, he knew he couldn't hold back any longer. To his delirium, he felt her pleasure cresting, knew she was bursting with it and he was giving it to her, and he smiled as he threw back his head and yelled to the crossbeams in the gazebo ceiling.

Helen was gasping, still twisting beneath him, still straining against him, and he knew, simply knew in that moment, that it was all over for him. When, finally, she stilled, he kissed her, and sent his fingers into her beautiful hair, pulling it free, burying his face in it, then pushing it back and nibbling her earlobe. He lay fully on top of her, his weight pressing her into the soft chaise cushion. He finally managed to raise himself on his elbows and look down at her. That was all it took, just looking down at her flushed face, her parted lips, the banked wildness in her eyes. And then she had the gall to raise her hand and lightly touch her fingers to his chin. “You have just a bit of a dimple. I've always liked chin dimples.”

That was all it took. He sucked in his breath, began kissing her again, and in a remarkably short time, he was moving inside her again, and it no longer surprised him at all. He wanted to make it last longer this time, and it did, at least a full minute longer before he was jerking above her like a palsied man and she was heaving, so frantic that it seemed to him in one single sane moment that she wanted him all at once, just as he did her. When his hot fingers found her, she cried out into his mouth, her breath hot and fierce, and he poured himself into her.

“I want you on top of me,” he said into her ear when he could draw a breath. She said nothing, not that he expected her to. She was utterly relaxed beneath him, probably asleep, he thought. Then he simply collapsed, his head beside hers. It was as if someone had slammed a door down on his head, only it didn't hurt at all, and his sleep was very deep and profound. He just winked out, holding her tightly, still deep inside her, her arms holding him hard against her. He felt her hands on his back, warm even through his clothes and he realized in some part of his brain, that he'd just pulled his breeches down and that he still had on his shirt and his jacket.

He was a pig, but he would think about it later.

He awoke at the touch of a wet tongue on his left ear. “Spenser,” she said, then licked him again. He reared up over her, balancing himself on his elbows and looked down at her face.

She looked dreamy, vague, and excited, a combination that ignited him instantly, no delay whatsoever.

“Spenser,” she said again, and when he leaned down to kiss her mouth, to taste her, to revel in her, she said, “I've seen pictures of the woman on top of the man. I would like to try it. You don't believe I am too big, do you?”

“Oh, no,” he said. “But not just yet, Helen, not just yet. I'm sorry, but I just can't. I'm an old man, Helen—” And then he was moving deep inside her again, growing harder and harder by the moment as her mouth was on his, and she was biting him, licking him, and his world once again spun out of control.

“I'm going to die,” he said when at last they were both breathing hard, pressed hard together, his face only an inch above hers because he didn't have the strength to push himself up higher. “I am thirty-three and I'm going to die. Helen, I may be a man of interesting habits and experiences, but this goes beyond anything I've ever known in my life. I'm tired now. Would you like to sleep for just a little while with me?”

She drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. There was a slight smile on her mouth. He kissed her, then once again they were asleep in Lord Prith's gazebo.

Lord Beecham awoke to realize his butt was bare and he was cold. It was twilight. He slowly eased off Helen. He fastened his breeches and pulled on his boots. He stood over Helen, just watching her breathe. Her legs were glorious, long and white and sleekly muscled, his seed smeared on them, and he groaned with the feelings that flooded through him. He hadn't asked for this. Life had been perfectly pleasant.

Of course life had been pleasant. What had he done to make it unpleasant? He had enjoyed himself, done precisely what he wanted to do whenever he wanted to do it. He wasn't vicious or petty, but it was rare that he saw things outside his pleasant existence.

He looked down at Helen.

She wanted him for a partner. She wanted to find that damned lamp more than anything else in this entire world. He didn't doubt for a moment that she wanted that damned lamp more than she wanted him, except for the few moments when he touched her and she touched him and they came together as fast, as violently as a winter storm lashing out of a midnight-black sky.

He lightly touched his palm to her thigh. Slowly, very slowly, she opened her eyes. She didn't move, just looked up at him. She smiled at him. “I didn't get to be on top,” she said.

His muscles nearly went into a spasm. “Next time, I swear to you, next time.”

“It is too much,” she said then. “Simply too much. This cannot continue.”

He had thought the same thing, recognizing the strangeness of this immense need for her, so different from the other women who had come into his life. But to hear her actually say the words made him go right over the edge. It made him nearly wild with rage.

He jerked up and removed his hand from her leg. He straightened. His voice was colder than a delicious vanilla ice at Gunther's. “You don't know what you're talking about. Of course it will continue. It is too much, but we will figure all that out sooner or later. Keep these inane conclusions to yourself, Helen. I have promised that next time you will be on top.”

She frowned at him. She cocked her head to one side, regarding him from beneath her lashes. Then she sat up and looked down at herself. She said blankly, not looking at him, “I am wet with you. Very wet.”

“Yes.” He handed her his handkerchief. He turned away to walk to the narrow arched entrance of the gazebo.

“I'll return your handkerchief to you tomorrow.”

“Yes, do that, since I imagine that you will be needing it again.”

She didn't say anything at all, just walked around him, down the gazebo steps, across the vast expanse of lawn and into the library entrance on the east side of the hall.

He didn't move, just watched her. At first her steps weren't all that steady, and he knew it was because of the special strain he'd put on her muscles, something she wasn't used to. He smiled. He realized something else then. This proud, very independent woman was fighting him for all she was worth.
It cannot continue.
Like hell, he thought.

At that moment, he realized that he himself had lost all perspective on this situation.

It was a mighty lust, a lust the strength of which he had never experienced before in his life. And perhaps that was all it was—lust, an incredible lust, a lust that would bring a man to his knees in short order, or simply smite him dead from overindulgence.

This had to be dealt with. He knew there would be no dealing with anything as long as she was beside him, just there so he could make love to her, and not stop.

He had some soul-deep thinking to do. It could be that the conclusion of his thinking just might end up changing the course of his life.

The thought of taking a wife didn't freeze the blood in his veins. Odd that it didn't. He was thirty-three years old. He would have thought that life would have settled into its lifelong pattern by now, but, Lord love him, it hadn't.

Life had seen him coming around the corner and smacked him between the eyes.

Whatever had happened between them, repeatedly, and even more repeatedly after that, he was prepared to face head-on. He just couldn't face it with her anywhere in the vicinity. Seeing her, listening to her talk, looking at her, any of it, all of it, turned him into a cock-hard fellow with no thought of anything at all but being inside her and hearing her yell out his name when she clenched and shuddered beneath him. Ah, the pleasure, that gut-deep, nearly painful pleasure. He had promised her that next time she could be on top. He nearly swallowed his tongue at that thought and the incredible image it brought clear to his mind.