by Renee Peters
“She has become my now,” he said quietly, as they moved along the path. “I find that I cannot see far enough to know that she is my Eternity.” Not yet. “And I would not hurt her for the experimenting.” Eternity was too long a season to face knowing that he had taken the woman for his pleasure if there was another waiting for him who was his Eternal Heart.
It did not make him want her any less. Selfish bastard that he was.
“Then I suppose we shall accept your now will be as long or short as you wish it. She is not a child in her years, and you would not be the first pair to bond for a time — or for Eternity in Anowen’s symphony.” Lian’s expression grew dry. “But you might be the first to hold out so long with the music flowing between you both.”
The Earl stopped and turned to face the Conde, his smile appearing a little gentler. “She is happy, Dorian. I know it must not be an easy path. She has become a queen for it.”
Dorian’s gaze settled upon the man who was both his brother and his Sovereign. Lian was right. Joanna was happy. He heard it singing in her music and felt it in the velvety softness of the kisses she seemed to enjoy. What cause was there really, beyond his pride, not to enjoy their Now?
She was his. Now, if not forever.
“I find perhaps, that I have reached the limits of my endurance on that front,” he offered on a breath.
Especially given the restless darkness of the notes that were threatening to rise in his blood. It was as if the beast sensed the weakness of the breach in his defenses.
“As well as a sudden urgency of the need to complete our business without further delay.” Dorian’s lips curved wryly.
“Truly?” Lian laughed and turned back to the path. “Then I expect you shall be of more use with our negotiations so it does not fall only to my shoulders to keep us from the poor house next year. It is of little wonder we were in Honeyfield’s office for the whole of the afternoon.”
Dorian grunted, flicking the Arch Lord a sharp look that faded almost immediately into frustrated resignation.
The week that it would take to make their way back to Easthaven even after they were done yawned with endless hours before them.
Chapter 18
“Tu me manques.
You are missing from me.
Not only I miss you
But missing you
Your darkness
Your voice
Your touch
Missing like a piece
Of all I’ve learned to be.”
Delilah folded Joanna’s poetry over in her lap, and when she spoke again, her voice bore a hint of exasperation, “Goodness, Jo. It is only another two days.”
The women sat in the drawing room of the Vaughn manor, lounging in plush chairs as they played cards and read. Nearby the fire in the mantle cracked, stiffening Joanna’s back before she relaxed in her lean.
“Is it terribly dramatic?”
“I would think he was lost at sea and expected never to return,” Delilah offered wrly, tapping the pages.
“We have been reading the Odyssey.” The Frenchwoman breathed a laugh, her fingers drifting to the ribbon at her throat before she reached to pluck the cards up. One by one, she ruined their game by stacking them into a weak effort at a house. “I would not let him read those. The one I am working on for him is a little… less likely to make me seem a widow. Or embarrass me. I am sure he would turn just such a look on me for my humors.”
“Only a look?” Delilah giggled and her own cheeks reddened for a thought that set her lavender gaze shimmering.
“Why? Do you think my words would draw more than that?” She could not help the wistfulness that ghosted her tones.
“I cannot speak for the humors of the gentry, I suppose, but I am inclined to think your words might cause Sam to forget his intentions to be proper in his courting.” Delilah flushed darker and set the sheafs of poetry aside. “I will be frank to admit that I find myself shamefully curious about what awaits me in the marriage bed. Does that make me terribly wanton?”
Joanna smiled, and her expression softened somewhat as she turned it down to the card house she was building. “If he knows what he is doing, you will not have to do much at all — beside mind your squeals.”
She cut a glance toward the girl who had turned several darker shades of red. “Men can find their own pleasure in any pokehole and it will not take them terribly long to finish, leaving you bare and staring at the ceiling.”
“Jo.” Delilah’s fingers leapt to her face, but the display was only instinctual. They were quick to part and lower slightly to meet the queen’s amused gaze again.
“We are not without recourse, however. Women are blessed with a little seed molded only for our pleasure and ours alone. It is hidden, but not so terribly well that you might not find it yourself — or guide a hand to it properly. It is rooted in your secret garden and should a man be of a mind to seek out your garden in its depths, he will sow a pleasure that will leave you breathless.”
She had been fortunate that Jakob and Dorian both were no strangers to the art of pleasing a woman.
The queen leaned forward, cupping her cheek in her palm. “You will feel the garden growing inside of you, spreading roots and vines through your belly and up your back until you cannot think you will contain it. And then it will all burst into bloom at once, scattering your senses around like petals.”
“Oh… my,” Delilah breathed. Joanna’s companion shifted in her place, her fingers curling into the material of her skirts. “No… that does not sound nearly as… unpleasant as we have been warned. It is no wonder the Mistresses of the Lords look so pleased for their shame. I am surprised that wives take so little enjoyment of the event.”
Joanna turned her attention back to her cards. “Not every husband cares for the effort. If Samuel does not grow your garden on your marriage bed, then you might practice yourself to teach him how to do so properly.”
That the warden she had held as an infant had grown to manhood and was due to make a wife of her companion had been something of a surprise, especially given the mystery surrounding Delilah’s Aegean lineage. But Lian appeared willing to permit the union, and the queen could not help but envy the apparent simplicity of the pair’s growing bond.
“Besides,” Joanna continued. “A marriage is too long a commitment to tend a barren field. Or to let him take his tool to it without knowing what he is doing.”
And yet, here she knew all too much of barrenness.
Her heart whispered the taunt.
Delilah’s brow furrowed. “I am certain I shall not be so careless, now that you have instructed me.” she murmured, and nibbled on her lower lip. “I can certainly understand that you might have a cause for missing the Conde then, if he tends your garden well.” Her tone turned impish. “He will soon be home and I will soon enough be wed.” Another wave of color suffused her cheeks.
A card dropped, scattering the whole house Joanna had built to the tabletop. She could feel the darkness in her song slinking down her spine and the stirring in her neglected garden that accompanied it.
Maddening.
He could certainly tend her garden well, but he had given no indication of a desire to do so beyond what strums of violin chords escaped the harmony they had fallen into.
More than that, she was convinced that he wanted her too.
If he was unwilling to breach the comfort of the gentler song they wove between them, she supposed she could. A breath of a laugh escaped her for the thought. If she had had that boldness on her wedding night, perhaps she would not have spent so long watching his door and waiting for him to come to her. He brought too much out of her.
Or she had always been thus, even in her shadows. She had only learned to thrive in the light of his attention again.
Joanna’s fingers lifted to splay across her face before lowering to pluck up the cards.
“When you are wed, and I am assured that he can pleasure you, I will give you secrets to
make him melt, Lilette. Men have gardens too. Alas, most only know of one way to tend it, and their blossoms are not as vibrant as they could be.” She tapped the deck’s edge on the table. “He’ll want for no one else.”
“Joanna!” Delilah’s eyes widened with shock. “Surely such words are not at all permissible for a gently bred female. I would not have thought the Lady who scarce whispered when first we met hid such secrets.”
“Je suis Français, Lilette.” Joanna lifted her shoulders. “Perhaps my Conde’s confidence has grown on me.” Her expression shaded wry, “Besides, ma petit Lilette, you do want to know, oui? I could let you discover them on your own if it is your wish.”
Delilah lifted her palms to her cheeks again and laughed a bubble of sound that betrayed she was overwhelmed. “The French have almost certainly earned their reputation,” she murmured. “I am pleased to learn… Perhaps only, not all at once,” she added weakly.
“I suppose he should propose to you first.”
“Yes….”
“It will satisfy me that you know of your own garden, then, Lilette.”
But she let the subject drop, turning instead to poetry and what book she might borrow next for the lazy afternoons she and her Conde shared. All the while, she felt the seeds she had sown stirring restlessly in anticipation.
Two days.
Chapter 19
Her husband’s coach arrived with the dreariness of a mid-October day chased on its approach by a rainstorm.
Joanna stood in the safety of the drawing room archway holding a towel as William exited the front door with an umbrella. A few moments later, Dorian stepped inside.
Rainwater dripped off the brim of his hat, running down the edges of dark features — features that had haunted her in his absence. When his eyes met her own, they flared amber, summoning the beast in her blood from its depths.
“Cherie,” he greeted politely, stepping forward as William shook out the umbrella and closed the door behind him.
His music was far less restrained as it reached out to brush a touch to hers; a stroke not unlike the touch of his fingers so many nights ago. Her flutes lifted against it, pressed to his strings as though their instruments were playing across the same score.
She did not resist her want to touch him in turn — there was little need for propriety before William. The fingers of one hand cradled his pulse and she raised the towel in her opposite hand to dab at the moisture on his skin.
“I have missed you, Dorian.”
Her fingers threaded a caress through the damp waves at his nape, and she felt an answering ripple in his music.
“I am happy you are home.” She was more pleased for his response to her than she cared to admit or allowed to show on her face, though she knew her song keened a betrayal.
He covered her fingers with his touch, curling around them to lift them to his lips for a kiss that lingered on her prints. The scrape of his teeth to her skin was so quick, she might have doubted it had happened at all were it not for the shiver that ran up her back.
“As I have missed the attention of my wife,” he said in low tones. “And everything else about her.” The darkness of his gaze found and held her own, and a sweet, heated pleasure flushed her belly for the storm she saw brewing there.
“Some things, more particularly.” The Elder’s lips curved into a slight smile, and his gaze traveled over her languorously, leaving a warm trail in its wake. “You have kept out of trouble, Minx?”
“What trouble could I get into without you, mon cher?”
The Conde’s music darkened slightly — a heavier, primal and possessive score.
Joanna’s smile ticked into a faint smirk before softening, and her free hand traced downward to touch the solidness of his stomach.
William coughed politely and stepped around the pair. “Sire. I will draw a hot bath while you finish your greetings.” He tipped a bow. “My lady.”
Joanna hardly noticed him leave for as fixed as she was on her Lord’s attention. Dorian lifted his fingers to skim the pad of his prints over her cheekbones and jawline.
“I had forgotten how like satin your skin is to the touch,” he said, and seemed almost distracted by the sensation. “I am afraid in my travel dirt I am not nearly so pleasant a complement. You will forgive me the untimeliness of my demand.”
The kiss he claimed was not the chaste echo of passion that their touches had become. Rather, the voice of the hunger that had fevered him on their wedding night. He nipped her lips, and this time, when she parted for him, he gave her what her heart had craved when he had teased without mercy.
Sparks flared between them as he drank of the heat she offered him, and it was only the tightening hold that she curved into his garments that seemed to help him recall his current state and more pressing need.
“I need to freshen up.” His voice was raspy with a frustration that delighted her.
“Of course, mon Seigneur,” she murmured and drew her bottom lip in to suckle the remnants his taste from her swelling skin. Leaving the towel in his care, Joanna stepped aside to allow her husband to pass.
She waited until she heard the upstairs door close. Brushing her thumb against her lips, the woman exhaled and followed. He wanted her. It was the fuel that kept her boldness burning, as much as his song in her blood, and it was the thought that guided her steps to her bedroom suite.
The pins were pulled from her hair with care and a comb run through the tresses so they glimmered in the low light of the suite. By the time she slipped into her shift, she heard the splash of a body slipping into water. The French woman spared a final look at herself in the vanity mirror and almost laughed at the picture she presented. There would be no hiding her intentions.
Particularly not when she stepped barefoot and without a knock into the washroom.
Dorian stilled in the copper bath in which he sat, but did not turn to face her. She watched the muscles in his back ripple with the tension that leapt through him. It was not the darkness of the Castilian’s eyes that greeted her when she stepped around the tub, but an amber heat that threatened to draw her own darkness free.
Joanna knelt alongside the bath folding an arm over its edge, and her free hand trailed over the tautness of his shoulder. She traced a path along his arm and down to his fingers where he held the sponge. Its muscle leapt beneath her touch, and his head angled slightly to follow the course of her movement.
The Conde’s music found an almost deathly stillness as if every inch of him had held his breath.
Joanna’s fingers drifted over his and then to the sponge, and after a beat of hesitation, he released it to her hold.
“You missed your wife’s attentions,” she murmured and eased higher so she could begin. Slow spirals with the sponge spread their design across the sculpted musculature of his chest. “But I have not shown you any, yet, Dorian.”
“The thought had not escaped me,” her husband managed on a rasp that betrayed the clench he had on his jaw. “Had I known how… capable she was, I may have been less inclined to wait on them.”
She smiled, but did not answer. Her focus was on her ministrations and on the leisurely path she took across his carved contours. Dorian. Her fingers dropped below the water, soaking the sleeve of her shift, but she did not mind.
A muscle in his stomach jumped, and she let herself learn the shape of him where it hid beneath the steam and soap suds. Dorian.
“Joanna….” He growled a low warning, and it was echoed in the flex of flesh and weight that thickened to fill her hand.
His hand lifted in a touch that skimmed her pulse and flushed her with heat. Joanna leaned in and swallowed his warning with a kiss. Dorian’s fingers curled into her hair in a grip that forgot to be gentle.
“Are you certain, Cherie?” His voice was heavy with want, and his song a seducing siren call summoning her higher, nearer.
Her laugh fell against his lips and her answer came along with the sponge as it bobbed to the su
rface of the water; her hand otherwise occupied with the massage.
She let herself get lost in the rumble of his music, as rich and full as the member pulsing beneath her touch. He groaned, and pleased, Joanna bowed her head to touch a kiss beneath his jaw.
“Do I seem uncertain?”
“No,” he gritted out tightly. “Though I fear you will not hold the advantage much longer.”
He shuddered under her ministrations, his fangs showing visible through lips that had parted for ragged breaths. “Your hands, perfect though they may be, are not where I will spend myself tonight.”
With the promise in his words, Joanna freed him, taking his neck in her hands to seal her desire with a kiss.
“Non,” she said. “You will spend yourself in me.”
Chapter 20
She was going to destroy him.
Dorian was fortunate that he had not erupted beneath the bath water already, for the expertise with which she had handled him.
Trapped and helpless beneath the slickness of her strokes, it had been all that he could do to breathe — much less speak — as her touch sent jolts of pleasure frissioning through his body with all the heat of lightning.
He had known intuitively the sensuality that sang at her core, but nothing could have prepared him for this fire that threatened to consume him. The darkness of his beast was in full roar, desperate to claim the female whose arousal it scented on the steam of the air that swirled around them in the bathroom.
He released her for only as long as it took him to unfold to his full height in the tub, and to step over its edge onto the hardwood floor. Water and suds streamed from his body disregarded, and he made no attempt to reach for his towel.
There would be no more barriers between them.
Joanna stood watching him in the lamp light, her golden hair a halo that shone around features he thought were perfect — even if she did not. A touch of her tongue to her lips betrayed her visceral reaction to the evidence of his arousal, and he felt a faint stirring of masculine pride.
