The Lover (7 page)

Michael slid underneath the covers. The sheets were warm, inviting, the scent of sex alluring.

It had been five years since a woman had warmed his bed. Five intolerable years since a woman had gifted him with her ecstasy.

Michael rolled over onto his side and reached out—

His heart skipped a beat before accelerating to a loud roar.

Anne's pale blue eyes were open. They regarded him alertly, undimmed by sleep or dreams of the past.

Had she been awake when he stood over her?

Had she heard him step out onto the balcony?

Had she overheard his conversation with Gabriel?

"The birds are awake."

He did not move for fear of alarming her. "Yes."

"It's late." Her voice was distant, composed, not at all like the voice that had cried out with passion. "I have to leave."

Michael was suddenly tired of pretense.

He wanted.

She wanted.

Why couldn't it be enough?

He wasn't Michel, no matter how hard he pretended or how much he wished otherwise. The man he had been five years ago was dead. Everyone he had ever loved was dead.

Michael cupped Anne's face in his hands—
Michael's
hands, not Michel's. Hands that repelled rather than attracted.

But
she
had not been repelled
.

Even now she unflinchingly bore his touch, her expression cool, guarded.

Gabriel was wrong. There was no other woman who would take him as Anne Aimes had taken him.

She had been bluntly honest about her desires. She deserved honesty in return.

"In the cab, I didn't tell you something—something that I should have told you," he whispered.

Uncertainty flared in her eyes.

She had such clear, pale eyes. So achingly expressive. They spoke of loneliness and pain and the gut-wrenching need to be touched, held, accepted.

Michael's language
, not Michel's.

"What?" she whispered back, her breath hot and sweet with the remnants of champagne, tooth powder, and a woman's satisfaction.

"I didn't tell you that when a man is inside a woman"—he slowly stroked her velvety soft cheeks with his thumbs while cradling her shell-shaped ears in his palms—"it is her breath that sustains him… just as his does her. I didn't tell you that I need you, Anne Aimes. I need you to touch me. And I
will
pay for it."

She stiffened, unprepared for Michael the Englishman. Unaware that it was he who had taken her maidenhead, not Michel, the French
courailleur
. "There is no need to patronize me, monsieur. I am well aware that a man like you does not need a woman like me."

Michael spread his fingers, trapping her baby-fine hair and eggshell-fragile skull in his hands. "You think that a man who is scarred does not need the touch of a woman?"

She held perfectly still, as she had in the night house, surrounded by philanderers and whores. As she had in the hansom cab, pressed against a man hired to take her virginity. As she had in his arms when he had undressed her, immobilized by fear and desire. "I did not say that."

He tilted her face so that it was aligned with his, lips to lips, nose to nose. "Then you think that because I'm a whore, I don't need to be touched."

She rolled slightly toward him to relieve the pressure on her neck and grasped his forearms. "I did not say that, either!"

Panic and embarrassment were rampant in the spinster's eyes.

She was right to fear him—Michael, unlike Michel, would take and take until she had nothing more to offer. He would not seductively cajole her from maidenly shame or modesty as Michel would do. Time was too short.

His fingers held her head immobile, his gaze locked to hers. "Then what did you say, Anne Aimes?"

Her breath fanned his lips in short, hot spurts. "I merely imported… You have many women who come to you—beautiful women. Younger women."

How could she be so naive?

Did she need spectacles? Couldn't she see what he was?

"I have not had a patroness in five years," he said bluntly, acutely aware of his throbbing, engorged penis and the confession that would change everything.

Her eyes widened in disbelief; the frantic tug of her fingers slackened. "Why?"

"There was a fire," he returned roughly, dreading pity even more than repulsion.

"You did not wish to… be with women, because you were burned?"

How could Michel's pain—a man who had been dead for five years—hurt so much?

"Women did not wish to be with
me
… because I was burned."

"I find that difficult to believe, monsieur."

"Why?" He dug his fingers into her scalp, not exactly rough, but not exactly gentle either. "Why do you find it difficult to believe that a woman would not pay to lie with a scarred whore?"

"Because you are still the most handsome man I have ever seen."

Michael froze; the bird warbling outside the balcony was suddenly, piercingly loud. Nine miles away in London proper, Big Ben announced the time—one distant bong, two, three, four, five. "You have seen me before?"

"Once. Eighteen years ago. At a ball."

"I do not remember you."

"No. Of course not. Why should you?"

It should not matter that she had seen him before the fire.

But it did.

"I am not the same man."

"I have no complaints."

Lightninglike sensation rammed through Michael.

Why did this spinster accept him when every other woman spurned him?

He eased the pressure of his hands and threaded his fingers through her hair; it was warm and alive as he was not. "I asked you what you wanted. Before I took your virginity."

"I told you what I wanted."

"No." Michael gently massaged her scalp, easing away their pain, hers… and his. "You repeated the words that I gave you. The things I said I would do to you."

Her affirmation was swift and firm. Heartbreakingly predictable. "But I did want those things."

"But you didn't know that a man kissed a woman's clitoris," he ruthlessly insisted. "That a man tasted her, licked her, tongued her. Until tonight. Did you?"

A pale spark of desire flamed in her eyes.

She liked the words. Explicit words. Sexy words. The carnal phrases that between a man and a woman created an intimate dialogue.

Finally, reluctantly, she admitted, "No."

Michael breathed in the scent of her, of her sex, the sweetness of her unperfumed skin and feminine lust.

"If I had not told you about these acts, what would you have asked for?"

How she hated confessing her ignorance. Yet her inherent honesty would not let her lie.

"I don't know. I didn't think you would ask me…" She closed her eyes, hiding her vulnerability. "I didn't know what to ask for."

And she still didn't.

"But you knew that men touched women. That men lay with women. Tell me what you thought I would do," he said softly.

"I thought… that you would kiss me… on the mouth."

"Did you know that a man suckled a woman's breasts?"

"No."

"Had you ever imagined a man suckling your breasts?"

Distress pulled at her lips. "Yes."

He gently feathered her eyelashes—they were short, spiked, tipped in gold—with his thumbnails. Her eyes sprang open at his touch.

"Tell me," he whispered, wanting to share her simple desire. To forget, however briefly, the evil that men did to men. Women. Children.

"I've seen mothers nursing their babies, and I thought… I thought how nice it would feel… to have a man suckle at my breasts. What a special closeness it must create."

Michael's breath quickened, his own need fanned by her innocent sensuality. "Did you ever touch your breasts when you had these thoughts?"

The mattress shifted underneath him.

"No." Michael held on to her, forcing her to turn on to her side and fully confront her passion. "Don't pull away from me."

They were all each other had—possibly they would be the last person either would ever touch. Hold. Love.

She rolled against him—her nipples bore into his chest; his manhood prodded the vee of her thighs.

"Your feet are cold," she murmured breathlessly.

And she still did not flinch from him.

He could feel the pounding of her heart as if it beat inside his own body; the pulse of his desire throbbed in his temples. "You didn't answer my question."

"I don't understand what it is that you expect of me."

"The truth, Anne Aimes. You may ask me anything you wish and I will not lie to you."
Not in bed, not about sex
. "You asked me if I had ever wanted to be touched so badly that I paid for it.
Yes
. The last five years I've paid for my pleasure. Knowing that whores found my touch repulsive, I still went to them. Wanting to touch. And be touched.

"Sometimes, when the sex was over and I lay awake in my own bed, I touched myself and wondered why it wasn't enough, taking a woman who didn't want me. I closed my eyes and imagined that there existed a woman who did want me… a woman who wasn't repulsed by my scars… and I would come again in my own hand."

Conflicting emotions raced through her eyes, like clouds tearing across a clear blue sky. Shock, that a man would openly speak about his need for a woman; understanding, that he would touch himself and yearn for more.

As this spinster had no doubt yearned.

"I want you, Anne. I want to be more than your whore. I want to be your lover." He rubbed his lips against hers until they parted and his breath invaded her mouth. "Stay with me. Now. Tomorrow. Stay with me for the month. I'll tell you what to ask for. What every woman has a right to demand. And then I'll give it to you. Every touch. Every kiss. Every lick. Things you've never imagined. Sexual acts I haven't performed in five years."

Pain glistened in Anne's eyes. "You didn't cry out… when you reached your orgasm."

At his moment of climax he had not been able to cry out.

Michel cried out, not Michael.

"Is that what you want? As my procuress, you are entitled to whatever you wish. A whore will cry out, if that is what pleases," he murmured relentlessly. "Whether orgasm is achieved or not."

"You're not a whore," she protested tightly.

Michael smiled humorlessly, knowing the lie for what it was. "But I was."

A whore.
Courailleur
. Stallion.
Macqueral
. Pettycoat pensioner.

The names for men like him were endless, in both English and French.

"What are you now?"

What was he now?

What was a man who preyed upon a woman's need for sexual pleasure, and who then used her need to be wanted?

There was no excuse for what he was about to do.

If he didn't keep her she would die.

If he did keep her she would be taken.

Only fools believed there was nothing worse than death.

Michel had not been a fool—only foolish. Michael was neither.

He felt the coffin lid slam down on them both as he uttered the words that would bind this spinster woman to him.

"I am a man"—Michael harshly expelled—"who wants to turn back time for one month. A man who wants to hear a woman cry out with passion and know that it is not feigned. I want to feel like the man I was five years ago. Whole. Desirable. Like I did tonight, when you climaxed for me. And later, when you slept in my arms. I want to share my body with you, Anne, but I can't do that if I'm your whore. And I won't be your lover if all the time you'll give me is a few hours here and there."

His needs were echoed in Anne Aimes's eyes. The longing to be attractive. To be wanted. To experience the special closeness of sex.

"I can't stay," she murmured. "I have to go…"

But he couldn't let her go.

"You woke up… earlier… and said that you were late." He lightly licked her lips, absorbing her taste and smell, deliberately imprinting her with the flavor and scent of his own body. "That you had forgotten 'their medicine.' Do you take care of someone… nurse someone?"

Guilt spread over her pale features; immediately it was gone as she retreated into her spinster shell. "No. Not anymore."

He didn't want to hurt her.

"Then you have no one who needs you," he whispered. "No one to go home to."

Michael braced himself against the flatness in her gaze. "No. I have no one."

"My family died when I was eleven."

He was surprised at his admission.

She did not seem astounded that a man hired to pleasure her would discuss his family. "How did they die?"

"Cholera," he lied.

"Does it bother you, being alone?"