The Lady Who Loved Him

by Christi Caldwell

  She pulled the door shut and then leaned her head against the oak surface.

  Her body trembled.

  Coward. You are a coward. You expected… nay, wanted your husband to share all his secrets, and yet, you would hide every last part of yourself from him.

  Tears stinging her eyes, she fought back the useless drops.

  Before her moment of bravado faltered, Chloe reached for the handle.

  Chapter 29

  He’d had no right to touch her.

  It was best for both of them if she went on her way and he resolved his assignment and then went on to whatever next case the Brethren tossed his way.

  His body, still throbbing with an aching need for her, cared not for honor or the Brethren, or logic. It cared only about this unfulfilled longing to bind his body with hers.

  Standing precisely where she’d left him when she fled, Leo ran trembling palms up and down his face. Then he registered the faint click and press of a handle as Chloe let herself back into his office.

  Silent, the twenty paces between them a great chasm, Chloe leaned against the heavy panel. Her gaping dress was gathered tightly in her palms.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, clutching at the satin fabric like a warrior would his shield in battle.

  He wouldn’t have her apologies. She’d been clear from the start that she’d not share his bed. “Don’t,” he said hoarsely, his voice still graveled with his hungering for this woman. “You are correct. It would be unwise for either of us…” His words trailed off as she let the bodice of her gown sag.

  Leo’s mouth went dry as she stripped away the thin barrier left by her chemise so that her breasts were bared before him. He took a step closer, like Adam aching for the fruit that would condemn all.

  Chloe drew in a long, slow, noisy breath and then turned.

  Leo froze. All the life went out of him.

  A buzzing filled his ears. The sound of his heartbeat thumping furiously was deafening. His vision tunneled on the crisscrossing of faded scars upon Chloe’s small, white back. The marks decorated her flesh in swirls and stripes of long-faded red.

  “My father was a drunkard,” she said softly, directing the admission to the door.

  “He beat you.” His voice faltered as he forced the truth past his lips, an acknowledgment of what she’d already confirmed with the scars upon her skin. This was the one who’d broken her heart. Not a lover, but rather… the man who’d sired her.

  “Regularly,” she said matter-of-factly. Her always proud shoulders sagged slightly under that revelation. Then, with her infinite spirit and strength, she straightened them. The tensing rippled the intersecting stripes along her spine.

  A piteous moan filled his office.

  Did that tortured sound belong to her? To him? It was all jumbled and twisted. He’d ceased to exist outside the evidence of the suffering stamped upon her, the eternal marks of the evil done to her. Leo made fists so tightly, his nails shredded the skin of his palms, marking sharp crescents that did nothing to ease the horror slapping at his senses. It sucked the breath from his lungs and the thoughts from his head and left him reduced to an agonized mass.

  Chloe proved herself braver than he could ever be, answering the quiet with, “I was four the first time.”

  His eyes slid closed. She’d been a babe as small as the tiny child he’d fenced with in Waverly’s ballroom. Oh, God.

  “Philippa and I were playing hide-and-go-seek,” she went on, a detachedness to her sotto voce telling. “Mother told me never to bother my father when he was in his office, but he wasn’t there. So I made use of his desk. I heard his footsteps and was excited to let him share in our game. I darted out. I asked him to keep me h-hidden.” Her voice quaked.

  Oh, God. I cannot. He did not want to hear the rest. Didn’t want to know that, as a babe of four, she’d discovered the depths of cruelty in the man who’d sired her. And yet, neither could he stop her.

  “He slapped me across the face.” One hand came up to cup her left cheek, and the sight of her in solitary suffering ripped a hole through his heart. “He hit me so hard, my feet left the floor and I landed on my back. I couldn’t even cry,” she whispered. “I couldn’t make a sound. Everything was just sucked out of me in that moment.”

  “Chloe,” Leo whispered, her name a prayer layered with the anguish eating away at him like a vicious, slow-growing cancer that devoured all in its wake. The evidence had been there. Leo just hadn’t seen it. Nay, he hadn’t allowed himself to see it. She’d told him of her father’s abuse of her brothers, and Leo’s mind had not entered into the darkened territory where she was also a victim of that heinousness.

  “I was so afraid of him, but hadn’t believed he’d hit me because I entered his offices.” Chloe laughed then, the sound of it so bloody awful for the misery contained within. “The following day, I plucked flowers from my mother’s gardens and placed them atop the morning papers that always sat in wait for him at breakfast.” She angled a glance over her shoulder at Leo. Her eyes were distant and glazed, belonging to one who’d forgotten Leo’s presence and lived in the hell of her own mind. “He always wanted everything just so. The flowers… they didn’t belong. He found me, playing in the nursery. He didn’t say a word. He just picked up my cup and ball and beat me with them over and over again.” Leo could not bear this. His breath rasped loud in his ears. “That’s when I learned about monsters and hiding and running, Leo,” she murmured, calm once more. She smiled sadly. “I even learned how to pick a lock to get myself into empty rooms to escape him.”

  An agony unlike Leo had ever endured, even at his own father’s hands, gripped him. It filled him with a physical hungering to strip away her sadness and drag the demon who’d dared put his hands upon her from the grave and kill him dead all over again.

  She hastily drew the garment back into place. “That is why I didn’t want to marry. I’ve had the headaches since I was a girl. My siblings and mother kept them from him. They eventually sent me to a finishing school so I might escape my father.”

  But the damage had already been done by that point.

  Can you truly trust that he won’t send you on to Bedlam the first chance he has at his freedom…

  At last, that veiled conversation between his wife and an irate Waverly made sense.

  Leo pressed a fist to his mouth as every last wall he’d built about himself came toppling down, leaving him open and exposed and so wholly shattered by this woman… because of this woman.

  The sight of her struggling to pull her chemise and gown back into place slashed across his soul. Wordlessly, he crossed over and took the sleeves of those delicate garments.

  She bowed her head, avoiding his gaze.

  Leo dropped to his knees and placed his lips along the stark white scar that began at the crest of her buttocks. He followed the puckered mark, trailing a path of kisses that ran the length of her back.

  A broken sob escaped her.

  “So beautiful,” he whispered, kissing each stamp of a pain that would always be with her, wanting to chase it off and leave it with only good. He, Leo Dunlop, a bloody wastrel without a clue as to how to do that. Only knowing he wanted it for her.

  Chloe softly wept. “I’m n-not.” This was the vulnerable side of her. She was a woman who’d gone toe-to-toe with him at every turn, and she continued to ravage him.

  Leo gathered her hand and raised it to his mouth. “There is no one more magnificent than you.” In any way. “You are an Athena in mind, beauty, and spirit.” With his lips, he worshipped every expanse of flesh. Kneeling at her feet, he brought her slowly around to face him.

  Leo gazed up at her, entrusting the decision to her hands. If she rejected him, he’d be forever incomplete for not knowing her in this way. Before she’d come into his life, making love to her would have only ever been a mere physical act meant to sate their mutual lust for each other. Now, it represented an intimacy he yearned to share with her. But selflessly, he would s
uffer the loss of that intimacy if it was what she desired.

  Chloe bit at her lower lip and then nodded slowly.

  Coming to his feet, Leo swept her into his arms, holding her so close their hearts met. Not breaking stride, he stalked from the room with purposeful steps for his chambers.

  Several maids with linens and dusters in their hands blushed and bolted down bisecting corridors.

  Chloe buried her face in Leo’s shoulder. “Everyone will talk.”

  “Let them. Nothing matters but your happiness.” It slipped out, steeped in a truth so utterly foreign and so wholly right.

  Leo took the stairs two at a time. They reached his bedchamber, and Leo let them in. He shoved the door closed hard with the heel of his boot. The force of it shook the frame. With an infinite tenderness he’d believed himself incapable of, Leo carried Chloe to the gilt-bronze kingwood bed and laid her down on the silk, crimson coverlet.

  She pushed herself up onto her elbows. Some of the earlier passion receded as she examined the room with curiosity brimming in her eyes. “I did not appreciate yesterday how very… wicked your chambers are,” she murmured contemplatively. Chloe touched her gaze on the nymph carved at the center of the headboard and the sirens stretched out on each poster. She studied the matching satine nightstands and armoire. “Do you know, I think it is rather… pretty? Elaborate, but there is a poetry to them.” She stretched innocent fingertips to the gilded skirts upon the closest siren.

  His lips twitched. “If you’re more fascinated by my bedroom décor, love, then I’ve failed as a rake.”

  “Oh, no, never,” she said quickly, coming up onto her knees. “I was quite…” She blinked wildly. “You’re teasing.”

  Leo shucked a boot. “Indeed.”

  “I thought you didn’t tease, Lord Tennyson.”

  He paused, awkwardly balanced in his efforts to remove his other gleaming black Hessian. “I didn’t…” Their gazes locked. “Until you.” He hadn’t felt, laughed, or loved completely until her.

  Leo fell on his arse.

  Scrambling to the edge of the mattress, Chloe peered down at him. A smile teased her lips. “Are you—”

  “Fine,” he muttered. His bruised ego ached worse than his posterior. With that, he wrenched the boot free and tossed it aside. The crimson Aubusson carpet muffled its fall to the floor. Kneeling, Leo met Chloe at the side of his bed and kissed the smile from her lips.

  A breathy little sigh left her, allowing him entry, and he slipped his tongue inside, tangling that flesh with hers. Cupping her about the nape, he angled her head to better avail himself of her mouth.

  Wrapping her arms about his neck, she met his kiss with a wild abandon. The tip of her tongue as it touched his was like a brand that seared him, left an imprint that would mark him as only hers until he drew his last breath and went on happily to the hereafter because of the joy she’d brought him.

  His chest rising and falling, Leo crawled onto the bed. In synchronic harmony, she inched back so that they lay at the center of the feather mattress.

  Leo slid the delicate puff sleeves of her modest dress past her shoulders, kissing a path down the silken softness of her arms. “I’ll never look upon a white gown again without thinking of this moment,” he rasped against her chest.

  Her head fell back as a soft laugh shook her frame, the pale swells of her breasts rising and falling. “You despise white.”

  “Never,” he said, filling his palms with those orbs.

  Whimpering, Chloe bit at her lower lip. Several curls popped free, framing her damp brow. “O-oh, yes,” she panted. He massaged her breasts, weighing the flawless feel of her against him. How perfectly she fit into his hands, as though she’d been made for him… nay, as though their bodies had been made for each other. “Y-you said as much at our f-first meeting.”

  “Surely not,” he said as he closed his lips around a swollen peak. He drew the bud deep, suckling and teasing.

  “Mmmmm.” She encouraged him with the tilt of her hips. Her body’s involuntary search for him sent another surge of blood to his shaft. Never before had he been consumed with this need. Before Chloe, it had been about sex… a surcease that offered an infinitesimal release from the ugliness of life. After her, everything had changed, because of her, and he would never be the same. And, God help him, he never wanted to be the same.

  Turning his attentions to her neglected breast, Leo worked her gown over her hips. With the same spirit she’d shown since their first meeting, she kicked it aside. Next, Leo slipped her chemise off until she lay bare before him in all her naked splendor.

  *

  Chloe had known so much pain in the course of her life that she’d never known her body could also be capable of such splendorous… bliss, this heady, dizzying magic that robbed one of one’s breath, logic, and sense. It transformed one, instead, into a bundle of nerves capable of only feeling.

  Leo guided her back until a mound of pillows cased in satin met her. Not taking his hot gaze from her, he pulled his shirt overhead and threw it to the floor.

  Her breath caught. From the rippling muscles of his stomach and his narrow hips, he was a study of masculine perfection. And yet… as he reached for the waistband of his trousers, Chloe came up on her knees.

  He froze. There was a question in his gaze as she drifted closer.

  Chloe’s throat worked painfully as she trailed a fingertip lightly over the small, circular, puckered scar embedded within his right shoulder. “Who did this?” she whispered, reality intruding.

  “It was a long time ago.”

  She shook her head. “That isn’t what I asked,” she scolded, lifting her eyes to his, wanting to know every secret he carried. Wanting to share in his life in every way.

  “When Boney was in power, he sent men to sow the seeds of discontent here in England. It was my role to identify them… and stop them.”

  Stop them.

  A chill scraped along her spine at the pointed reminder of the perilous nature of what he did. “They shot you,” she whispered.

  He lifted his lips in a wry grin. “One of them did.” Chloe caressed the bullet hole left, that a few inches lower would have snuffed out Leo’s existence and the reason for more light and happiness than she’d ever known.

  Chloe continued her agonized search elsewhere to other jagged marks left upon him. How many other times had he suffered?

  Her husband caught her wrist and dragged it to his mouth. “They are gone, Chloe. And I don’t want their ghosts here now. I only want you.” He came down over her once more, taking her lips as they went. The mattress cushioned her fall as she bounced within its feather-soft folds.

  Leo stroked a hand up her stocking-clad thigh. She held her breath in anticipation of the touch that had the power to break her into a million useless shards of tingling sensation.

  Instead, he rolled her knitted silk hose down, kissing each portion of her limbs as he exposed first one leg and then the other to the cool air.

  Chloe’s lashes fluttered. The act he performed was one she or a maid had seen to countless times, and yet, Leo transformed it into something so very different. It was heady, erotic, and scintillating. He drew her foot to his mouth and touched his lips to the sensitive skin of her arch.

  A breathy half laugh, half moan pulled from her throat.

  “Since I first had your ankle in my hand, I’ve dreamed of this, Chloe.” His breath came labored, his chest rising and falling heavily. “I dreamed of exploring every nuanced curve of your body, discovering what makes you scream to the heavens, and then bringing you to pleasure after you climb that peak.” Gently lowering her leg so her knee remained bent, Leo shucked his trousers, unrepentant and proud in his naked form.

  Chloe’s mouth went dry, and she ran the tip of her tongue over her lips.

  He was… “Magnificent,” she whispered, devouring him with her eyes. His long shaft jutted out high and proud amidst a thatch of dark, golden curls. It stood straight against his
stomach. The sight of him drew forth images of Michelangelo’s masterpiece David, but Leo was so much more beautiful for the life that rippled from his frame. “You are magnificent.”

  He grinned. It was a pleased masculine smile as he drew her naked body close.

  Electric heat coursed through her, and she twined her arms about his neck, bringing him down for another kiss.

  Their mouths danced in a passionate give-and-take.

  And then he was moving lower, worshiping each breast, pulling pleading, incoherent whimpers from her mouth. He slid a finger inside her sodden channel, and Chloe mewled shamelessly, unapologetic in her desires. “Leo,” she begged, and he slipped another long digit within her.

  “Your body was made for this, Chloe,” he crooned, sweat beading on his brow. “Spread your arms wide,” he ordered, a man wholly in command. In this, she could deny him nothing.

  She obeyed, stretching her fingertips out beside her.

  “Do not touch me. Use your hands for nothing. Just feel.”

  He slid down her body until his face lay between her legs.

  Chloe arched her neck in a bid to see… “What are you…”

  “Shh,” he instructed, his voice a sough upon her aching core. And then he buried his face between her legs.

  Chloe collapsed against the mattress. All the air exploded from her lungs on a long, endless hiss. She moved her palms reflexively. Not shifting his attentions from the magic he wove, Leo stretched his arms beside him, capturing her wrists, forcing them back to her sides as he worked a slow, exquisite torture on her.

  He teased her nub, flicking his tongue back and forth over the sensitive flesh until Chloe’s hips, of their own volition, were rising and falling.

  Leo laved her channel, stroking her with his tongue.

  She bucked, fighting for all her worth to keep her arms as he’d instructed. But as his mouth continued its torture, the ache at her center was excruciating and splendorous all at the same time. Her feet arched, and she scrabbled with the sheets. Pleading. Begging. Weeping.

  And then he drew back. The loss of him was so keen, she cried out.