An Unexpected Pleasure

by Candace Camp

  In the center of the room was a large stone, waist high, and so flat on top that it seemed almost a table. On this slab of rock lay a man. A sheet of white cloth covered his legs and torso, extending midway up his chest, which was bare. His hair was thick and black, shaggily falling almost to his shoulders, but swept back now from his face and spread over the gray rock.

  His eyes were closed; she could not see their color. But she could see the handsome features—the full lower lip and high, wide cheekbones, the firm thrust of jaw and chin, the straight nose, the thick black sweep of eyebrows and eyelashes. His skin was darkened from the sun, but she could see the flush of blood beneath the tan. His flesh, damp with sweat, gleamed in the dim light.

  There was a woman standing beside him, a small woman with delicate features and velvet-brown eyes. Thick black hair fell in a sweep down her back. She wore a white gown that fell straight from her shoulders, belted at the waist with plates of gold fastened end to end. A wide band of gold encircled her head, cutting across her forehead, and above it rose more narrow plates of gold, shorter at the ends and tapering to the longest plate in the center. Fastened behind the plates was a small fan of feathers, long, bright sweeps of yellow, red, blue and green. A gold armlet banded one upper arm, one end of it the stylized head of a snake, the body zigzagging to the other end, which was its tail.

  She held her arms out, palms up, over the man on the slab, and her eyes were closed, her face raised. She chanted in a strange tongue, her words nonsense to Megan. A bowl lay on the table in front of her, beside the man, and next to it lay a cloth and a golden goblet. At either end of the table sat metal bowls, and in them incense burned, its pungent smoke curling up toward the ceiling and perfuming the air.

  Megan was looking down upon the scene as if she were floating above the man and his companion. She stared, fascinated, as the woman ceased her chant and picked up the cloth, dipping it into the bowl and mopping his face and chest with it. The man stirred and muttered, then coughed, a long, wracking cough that shook his large frame.

  The woman put her hand behind his neck and lifted his head a little, bringing the goblet to his lips and pouring some of its contents into his mouth. He drank a little, and she laid his head back down. Picking up his hand, she slipped something into his palm and curved his fingers around it. She inclined her head, her lips moving in prayer or incantation; Megan was not sure which.

  Megan moved closer, drawn to the man, floating down from the heights to stand on the rock floor. It was cool beneath her feet, and she realized in that instant that her feet were bare. She glanced down at herself. She was wearing one of her nightgowns, a simple, straight, white cotton shift with a rounded neck and one frivolous row of ruffles across the bosom. The air was chilly on her skin, but it did not bother her.

  She walked closer, and the woman on the other side of the table lifted her head and looked straight into Megan’s face. She smiled slowly, with satisfaction, then turned and walked out of the cave into the darkness beyond, leaving Megan alone with the man on the rock slab.

  Megan went to his side and looked down at him. The heavy incense filled her nostrils, the smoke stinging her eyes. He moved restlessly on the stone, coughing again. His face was flushed, and she could hear the rasp of his breath in his lungs. She touched his forehead, and his skin was searing with heat. He was dying. She knew it as certainly as she knew that she loved him.

  “You can’t die!” she exclaimed, her voice cracking with emotion.

  His eyes flew open at her words, and he stared at her. His eyes were dark in the dim torchlight, and he seemed to gaze deep inside her.

  “You cannot die,” she repeated. “I won’t allow it. I am waiting for you.”

  She slipped her hand in his. His palm opened to her, revealing the clear crystal that the woman had laid there. Megan curled her hand around his, the crystal trapped between them, and squeezed, holding onto him fiercely.

  “Live!” she whispered. “You are mine.”

  The crystal between them flared with heat, sending it shooting up Megan’s arm and into her body. She trembled with the intensity, her gaze locked with that of the man before her. For an instant they were melded together; her veins, her nerves, her flesh connected to him, humming with the same piercing vibration.

  Then the moment was gone, and she went limp. She had to grab the edge of the stone table to remain standing. She looked at the man. He gazed back at her for one long moment, then placed the crystal in her palm.

  Megan closed her hand around it tightly, not caring that its edges bit into her flesh. She laid her other hand upon his forehead. It was noticeably cooler, and she smiled. He would live now, she thought.

  Reaching up, she took the chain she always wore out from beneath her nightgown. She slipped it off over her head and kissed the medal, warm from lying against her skin. Then she put the medallion and its chain into his palm, replacing the crystal, and curved his fingers around it. She lifted his fist to her mouth and brushed her lips against his knuckles.

  “Remember me.”

  “Always.” His word was a mere breath on the air, but she heard it.

  He smiled.

  Theo.

  CHAPTER 17

  MEGAN SHOT BOLT UPRIGHT in her bed. She stared into the darkness, her heart racing. The man in her dream had been Theo.

  She had had the dream before. She remembered it now, with that eerie sense of reliving a moment.

  She had dreamed it when she was sixteen, a few weeks after Dennis had left on his expedition. It had been erased by time—and, she thought now, by a certain reluctance to recall it. It had been too piercing, too vivid, too at odds with the world she knew, to be retained.

  But now she remembered. Remembered each word, each movement. A shiver ran through her.

  Megan slipped out of her bed and hurried to her dresser. Lighting a candle, she opened the top drawer of the dresser and pulled out her little box of treasures.

  She set the box on the dresser and lifted the lid, reaching in to take out the chunk of glass that she had kept as a lucky charm for so many years. Ten years, she thought now, remembering how she had found it lying underneath her bed one day when she was cleaning.

  It seemed strange, thinking about it now, that she had never questioned how it had come to be there. She had simply pocketed it, keeping it, she thought, because it was intriguing.

  Megan held the thing up to the light. Though the candle cast only a dim glow, it lit the silver lines inside the glass. Not glass, she told herself. She realized that now. It was a crystal. She gazed into its depths, scarcely believing the thoughts that were whizzing around in her head—incoherent, unbelievable ideas that she could not dismiss.

  Her fingers closed around the crystal, and, picking up the candlestick, she turned and left her room. She hurried down the hallway, hand held up to shield the flickering flame of the candle, heedless of the fact that her feet were bare upon the runner of carpet or that she had not even thrown on a dressing gown over her night robe.

  She did not pause at Theo’s door, but turned the knob and rushed in, calling out his name in a low, urgent voice.

  He sat up, coming awake with a start. “Megan!”

  Theo shoved aside the covers and leaped out of bed, realizing a moment too late that he was wearing nothing beneath the sheets. Megan gasped, blushing red to the roots of her hair, at the sight of his lean, muscled body. Yet she could not look away, could not close her eyes, fascinated by the smooth musculature of his hardened body, the dark hair that sprinkled his chest and tapered down to the flat plane of his stomach and abdomen…and lower…. Heat curled through her own abdomen and pulsed along her veins.

  Muttering an oath, Theo grabbed the sheet and yanked it from the bed, quickly wrapping it around his waist and tucking the ends in to secure it. Thus covered, he came forward.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” he asked, reaching out to her.

  He laid his hand on her arm, and his touch was like a k
iss of fire to Megan’s already heated skin.

  “I…um…” Megan gathered her scattered wits together. “I dreamed tonight.”

  Theo looked puzzled. “A nightmare?”

  “No. A dream I had a long time ago. One I had forgotten. I—I think I put it out of my mind because it was so unbelievable. But tonight it came to me again. A man in a cave, lying there flushed and ill with fever. A woman standing over him, chanting. She was wearing a feathered headdress, and she gave him something to drink.”

  Theo’s eyes widened, intent on her face, but he said nothing.

  “I was there, although I did not know either one of them. I walked over to him, and I—I took his hand. There was this flash of indescribable heat between us. Something…happened to me. I cannot explain it.”

  “It is difficult to,” Theo agreed.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?” Megan asked. “How can that be?”

  Theo shook his head. “I don’t know. But I recognized you the moment I saw you in the garden with Mother.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “What was I to say? You are the woman I saw in my delirium ten years ago? You came to me and touched me, and I didn’t die? You told me I could not go because you were waiting for me? You would have thought me mad.”

  “Perhaps we are both mad.” Megan held out her hand to him, the crystal nestled in her upturned palm. “I found this in my room not long after that dream, and I kept it, even though the dream had left my mind. It has been my lucky charm throughout the years. Whenever I felt hurt or tired or lonely, I would take it out and hold it. Somehow, it seemed to help.”

  Theo’s gaze flicked down to the crystal in her hand, then back up to her face, astonishment beginning to dawn across his features.

  “This is the crystal that was in your hand, isn’t it?” Megan asked. “The one that you gave to me.”

  He looked at her for a long moment, then, saying nothing, he turned and crossed the room. Opening a wooden box that sat upon his dresser, he took something out of it and came back to her, his fist clenched tightly.

  He opened up his hand. A silver medal on a thin silver chain lay in his palm, small and delicate in his large, roughened hand. On the front of the medal was a raised figure of the Virgin Mary.

  With trembling fingers, Megan reached out and picked up the familiar religious medal. She knew it, had worn it for years.

  It was hers, the one her mother had given her and she had believed she lost. But she had not lost it; she had given it away.

  Her stomach flip-flopped, and her knees went weak, her eyes blurring.

  “Megan!” Theo’s arm lashed out, catching her around the waist and holding her up.

  She leaned against him, and quickly he bent, scooping her up in his arms and carrying her over to set her down on the side of the bed. He sat beside her, his arm around her shoulders, propping her up. Megan leaned her head on his shoulder, letting the buzzing in her mind and the lights dancing behind her eyes fade away.

  “I am not going to faint,” she murmured. “I never faint.”

  “I am sure you do not.” Amusement threaded through his voice.

  “This is my medal,” Megan said, lifting her head and looking at him. “My mother gave it to me years ago. It was my most treasured possession.” She paused, then asked, “Is this what Barchester saw you taking out and looking at?”

  “Yes. I turned to it whenever I was tired or troubled.” The corner of his mouth quirked. “When I needed to reassure myself that what I had seen had really happened.”

  He lifted her hand, folding it closed over the medal and bringing it to his lips, gently kissing her knuckles. “You saved me.”

  The soft touch of his lips on her skin sent tingles through Megan. The heat, still heavy in her loins, expanded, heightened. Yearning began to throb deep within her.

  Destiny, she thought, gazing up into Theo’s face. It was no wonder that she had had trouble believing him a villain. He had lived in her heart for ten years, even though she had not been aware of it.

  Megan lifted her other hand and curved it around his cheek, looking into his eyes. It did not matter anymore that he was a lord with centuries of aristocratic English breeding behind him. It did not matter that he could never marry an ordinary Irish girl from New York City.

  Theo belonged to her and she to him. She loved him. She knew that now. She loved him with every ounce of her being, with every breath she took and every thought she had. Titles, families, the censure of society, could not measure against that love. If it meant that she would be his mistress, then she would live with that. She could live without a ring upon her finger. She could not live without Theo.

  A smile trembled on her lips as her eyes drank him in. With a little sigh, she stretched up and touched her lips to his. And in that small joining, she gave herself up to him. To fate. To love.

  Theo went very still for an instant, and then his arms came hard around her. He kissed her, long and deep, hunger shimmering through them. His mouth teased and satisfied, his hands exploring, arousing. Theo felt as if he had been waiting for this half his life. He wanted to taste her all at once, to gulp her down like water to a thirsty man. At the same time, he wanted to savor her, to linger over every kiss, every touch.

  Megan slid her hands into his hair, letting the silky strands slip across her skin. She was bombarded by new sensations, greedy to taste every one of them. Her hands slid down his neck and across the expanse of his shoulders, exploring the thick pad of muscle and the bony outcroppings of his shoulders and collarbone. His flesh was smooth and hot beneath her fingertips, and it spurred her own excitement to hear the quick intake of his breath when her fingers brushed over the sensitive skin, arousing him.

  His chest was hard, the hair prickling against her fingers. Something coiled and tightened deep in her abdomen as she trailed her hands down over his chest and back up, and the warm ache between her legs blossomed.

  He could feel the faint trembling of her fingers as she touched him, and both the touch of her skin and the evidence of her own urgency aroused him. Fire washed out across his skin and tightened in a ball in his belly. He ached to be inside her, to sink into her soft, welcoming warmth. But first there was the journey, the slow, drifting exploration, and that made it well worth the wait.

  There was little that separated her flesh from his—a loose cotton gown that crumpled in his searching hands, easily pushed up until his fingers could roam beneath it over her bare flesh. His palms slid up the smooth line of leg and hip and onto her side. He felt the hard cage of her ribs beneath her skin, and he ran his fingertips along the lines of the bones, then up until he touched the satiny curve of her breast.

  Megan drew in her breath in a sharp gasp, shaken by the wave of intense desire that swamped her. Her breasts turned swollen and heavy, the nipples tightening in a sudden, intense ache of passion. She dug her fingers into his shoulders and, turning her head, nipped gently at his arm. He let out a groan, and his hand moved more urgently across her breasts, stroking and squeezing.

  His mouth left her lips to roam down her throat, nibbling and kissing the sensitive flesh, until he ran into the obstruction of her gown. With a soft oath of frustration, he pulled back and grasped her nightgown, pulling it up over her head and tossing it away. Gently he eased her back down on the bed, then paused for a moment, his eyes roaming over her naked body, washed by the flickering golden glow of the candlelight.

  “You are beautiful,” he murmured hoarsely. “So beautiful…”

  Slowly he caressed her, watching his hand as it moved across her creamy skin, delighting in the sight of her nipples prickling in response to his touch. He stroked down across the soft skin of her stomach, and Megan twisted beneath him, her body thrumming with passion. He ran his fingertips down over her hip and along the side of her thigh, then moved back up, sliding them between her legs. She clamped her legs together, startled, but at the same time suddenly, intensely, aroused.

  T
heo smiled down into her eyes as his hands moved slowly up, separating her legs. Her breath rasped in her throat, and her legs fell apart, opening to him. Megan closed her eyes, giving herself over to the sensation.

  His fingers were on her, slipping across the slick flesh, opening, teasing, stroking. Megan gasped, and her heart seemed to wobble in her chest as heat rolled and twisted through her.

  She was all feeling now, every inch of her alive to each new pleasure that rippled through her body. With every moment, she was sure that she had reached the height of sensation, that she could feel nothing more intense than what she felt right then, and in the next instant, she was trembling under the force of an even greater pleasure.

  As his fingers caressed her, found and explored her most intimate flesh, Theo’s mouth trailed across her chest and onto the supremely soft skin of her breasts. With tongue and lips and teeth he teased, stirring them both to an almost painful pleasure. When at last he took her nipple into his mouth, Megan let out a small whimper of delight.

  She wanted, and with every stroke of his tongue, each pull of his mouth, she wanted more. Megan dug her fingers into his shoulders, her wordless moans urging him on. He murmured her name against her skin, his voice thick with passion.

  Desire was building in him, pounding like fury with every beat of his heart. The mists of passion clouded his brain as he struggled to maintain control.

  Megan let out a low sob of pleasure, reason seeming to hang by a tenuous thread. Something was building in her, so forceful and stunning that her limbs trembled, tightened. She ached with the sweetest longing she had ever known. It was as if she were racing, racing toward her destination, fear tickling in the back of her mind that somehow the moment would end before she reached it.