She preceded him up the grand staircase. The ship listed sharply. His arm was instantly about her waist.
“I’m quite all right, thank you.”
He let go of her. She grimaced at her tone—she sounded nothing like a woman with lovemaking on her mind. If she were any severer, she’d be leading the temperance movement.
The Victoria suite was several decks above the dining saloon. For the rest of the way, they said not a word to each other. At the door of the suite he glanced at her—an unreadable look—before he turned the key.
The parlor was dimly lit. She could only make out the location and general outline of the furnishing: a desk and a Windsor chair before the window, a chaise longue to her right, two padded chairs opposite, shelves that had been built into the bulkhead.
He shut the door.
A surge of panic made her blurt out, “You will not ask to see my face.”
“Understood,” he answered quietly. “Would you care for something to drink?”
“No.” She inhaled hard. “No, thank you.”
He walked past her, deeper into the room. It was not until he reached out a hand that she realized he was extinguishing the light. Shadows enfolded her, alleviated only by flashes of lightning.
He drew the curtain, the slide of rings on rod quick, metallic. The unbroken darkness pressed against her sternum. The din of the storm faded. Even the slant and toss of the Rhodesia seemed to happen elsewhere. Her body knew how to brace itself for the volatile swells of the sea, yet the very predictable course Lexington set was a maelstrom, threatening to tow her asunder.
“Would you agree that I can’t see anything now?”
He was right in front of her, just on the other side of her veil. Her fingers clutched the folds of her skirts. “Yes.”
He removed the veiled hat. Her breath caught. She had never felt more naked in her life.
He slid the back of his hand against her cheek. It was as if a torch caressed her. “The door is unlocked. You may leave at any point.”
The scene crashed into her head: Lexington wedged inside her, and she, overcome at last, begging to be let go.
“I won’t.” Her voice was small but defiant.
He made no reply. Her shallow, erratic breaths drowned out the waves battering the Rhodesia. He touched her again—the pad of his thumb grazing her lower lip, leaving a burning trail in its wake.
“You don’t want to sleep with me. Why are you here?”
She swallowed. “I am not unwilling, only afraid.”
“What do you fear?”
He kissed her just below her jaw. She shuddered. “It—it has been a very long time.”
His hands were on her arms, their heat scorching her through the satin of her sleeves. “How long?”
“Eight years.”
He wrapped one hand around her nape and kissed her, parting her lips without hesitation. The kiss tasted of Arabian coffee, as pure and potent as his will. And she felt that will deep inside her, in places that had lain dormant for nearly a decade.
All too soon he pulled away. The ship staggered. But the violence of the sea was nothing compared to the turmoil inside her: She wished he hadn’t stopped.
“Where is the door?” she asked, her voice uneven.
He did not answer immediately. Into the impenetrable night came the sound of his breathing, less quiet, less controlled. “Five paces behind you.” He paused a second. “Would you like me to walk you there?”
“No,” she said. “Take me in the opposite direction.”
The bedroom was, if possible, even darker than the parlor. Christian stopped when he reached the bed. Under his thumb, the small vein at the baroness’s wrist throbbed wildly, one beat indistinguishable from the next.
He spread open her tightly clenched hand. She was as tense as a full-blown war. Yet beneath all the rigidness, all the reluctance, pulsed an arousal made audible by every one of her ragged breaths. He couldn’t remember the last time a woman so incited him.
Cupping her face, he kissed her again. She tasted impossibly clean, of rain and snow and spring water. The scent of her was equally spare, no sultry musk or sweet flowers, only the fragrance of freshly laundered hair and skin, underpinned by the warmth of her body.
She made small whimpers in her throat. Lust shot through him. His fingers were impatient, almost unsteady, as he undid the top of her bodice, peeling back the layers that imprisoned her.
He was more interested in her reactions than her flesh, yet the sheer smoothness of her skin made him light-headed with desire. He took her mouth once more, invading it thoroughly. His body pressed hers into the footboard of the bed.
She trembled. Did she feel him through everything they still wore? He was hot and hard, almost senselessly so. Then she did something that poured fresh fuel on the fire of his lust: She helped him with her corset, her hands and his working the busk closures together.
The corset was the castle gate. Once it had been undone, everything else was but formalities. He pulled the pins out of her hair and rid her of the rest of her clothes, touching her as little as possible in the process, not quite trusting his own usually ironclad control.
When she was naked, she asked, “Can I still leave?”
“Yes,” he said, pressing her down onto his bed. “Anytime.”
“What would you do, if I left now?”
“Sulk.”
He kissed her chin, her throat. She was delicious everywhere. And still so wound up, her fingers gripping the bedspreads as if she might fall off the bed otherwise—a real possibility, with the Rhodesia reeling every which way. But he doubted she noticed. What she feared was not God, but man.
“Why don’t you want to see my face?” she murmured.
“Did I ever say I do not want to see your face?” He palmed her breast, a most tactile handful, and grazed its underside. “But if you don’t want me to, I will learn to recognize you by the texture of your skin.” He rolled her already erect nipple between his fingers, eliciting a trembling exhalation from her lips. “By your voice,” he said, taking the nipple into his mouth. “And by your taste.”
She moaned and undulated beneath him. He’d always been a meticulous lover—it was only fair that he should repay the lady for his gratification. But her he wanted to overwhelm with pleasure, to have her bask in it, wallow in it, revel in it. He wanted to make her forget that she’d ever been anxious and afraid.
She’d never been more anxious, more afraid.
That he was the one to give her such pleasure frightened her. But she had no one to turn to, except him. The next time he kissed her, she gripped his shoulders and kissed him back, because she didn’t know what else to do.
His response was fierce. He removed his own clothes, slid his hand under her bottom, and came fully inside her.
She sucked in a breath. Yes, she’d been another man’s wife. Yes, Tony had been a competent lover in the early days of their marriage. But had the sensations ever been this sharp, this white-hot, as if lightning had struck?
“Can I—can I still leave?” she heard herself ask.
He withdrew and drove into her again. “Yes.” Another long, infinitely pleasurable stroke. “Anytime.”
She panted. “What would you do if I left?”
He ground into her. “Weep.”
She could not help smiling—just a little.
He gripped her hair and kissed her. “But you are not going anywhere.”
He did dirty, delicious things to her. Fanned the flames of her desires until she was nothing but fever and need. Her pleasure gathered into such an immense, pressure-filled mass that the only way to relieve the pent-up tension was to convulse and scream.
“It really has been eight years,” he murmured.
His hand caressed her where their bodies were still joined. How good it felt, how exquisite. She writhed, whimpering.
“It’s only been a few months for me, but I begin to be convinced I must also have gone years without
.”
He withdrew and pushed slowly, ever so slowly, back into her. Her breaths shuddered. It dawned on her that he had not yet reached his resolution.
His fingers stroked her again at the juncture of her thighs, arousing fresh, hot desires. But it was his lips at her ear that thoroughly reignited her. “You are so tightly strung,” he whispered, with a bite to her earlobe that she felt all the way in her toes, “the least touch makes you vibrate.”
After that, there were no more words. He calibrated and fine-tuned her until the merest contact between their bodies was a crescendo of sensations. When his control broke, he pushed her over the edge again. She was deafened and blinded by pleasure. Drowning in it, clutching onto him as her only salvation in the maelstrom.
They stilled. He was solid and heavy above her. She listened to his tattered breathing and felt strangely raw, the way a patch of skin that had been bandaged for a long time did when it was at last exposed to air, light, and touch.
Don’t think, she told herself. Don’t think of anything. For as long as you can.
CHAPTER 5
The rumbles of thunder had grown more distant. The pelting of rain was not as savage upon the deck. The Rhodesia still wobbled, but she no longer lurched in unpredictable directions.
Christian rolled onto his side, taking the baroness with him. Her hair, cool and silky, tickled his arm. Her breaths were little puffs of moist warmth at the crook of his neck. Her body, at last, was slack, almost limp.
He was pleased with himself—too much so, perhaps. To a naturalist, there was no act more mundane than the sexual one. Yet making love to Baroness von Seidlitz-Hardenberg had been anything but ordinary. To the contrary, it had felt momentous, far more significant than merely the beginning of a weeklong affair.
He’d been so caught up in the heady events of the evening he hadn’t even given a thought to a sponge or a French letter until now, he who was usually far more scrupulous about such things. That she was in his bed was another aberration. In his liaisons, he preferred to set the itinerary, to leave or stay as he chose. But this time, he’d ceded the control to her: She wanted to conquer her fear, and that appealed to his sense of gallantry.
He lifted a strand of her hair and wound it about his fingers. “I’m glad you decided to reconsider my proposition.”
Against his shoulder, she made a sound, something of a humfft.
He let go of her hair, turned her face, and kissed her on her mouth. “What made you change your mind?”
Her answer was the same humfft, but she tensed again—he felt it in the set of her jaw.
He had an idea why she might not be keen on speaking to him: She probably thought he’d propositioned her randomly and she still hadn’t made peace with her eventual acceptance.
“There is an interesting contradiction to you. You hide your face, but your gait is anything but retiring.”
Not only did he want her to stay, tonight he’d be the one to make conversation as well—quite a reversal for a man who was more accustomed to seeking his solitude afterward.
“Oh?” she murmured against his cheek.
“You walk with a certain swagger. Not a strut, mind you, but a confident, assertive gait. A woman out and about with her face covered can expect a great deal of attention, which can be daunting. But you carry on as if this attention is the least of your concerns, as if you daily part a sea of staring eyes.”
She stirred. “And that interests you?”
“Your reasons interest me. I asked myself whether you might be a fugitive, and decided no, the veil makes you far too visible. There is also a small chance you are a Musulman, but no Musulman woman who takes the trouble to cover her face entirely would be caught dead traveling unaccompanied. Which leaves two possibilities. One, you simply do not wish to show anyone your face, and two, there is something highly irregular about your features.”
She pulled away. “You’ve a taste for deformed women, sir? Is that why you asked me to be your lover?”
“Did I ever ask you to be my lover?”
“Of course you—” She stopped.
When he’d stated that he’d like to know her better, she’d been the one to ask whether he was looking for a lover.
“When you instantly jumped to the conclusion that I’d like to sleep with you, you answered my question. A woman of highly irregular features might be suspicious about my interest in her, but she is unlikely to immediately accuse me of a lascivious overture. You, on the other hand, take it for granted that a man’s interest in you lies in that direction.
“Since there is nothing physically wrong with you, if I were to pretend I did not have some carnal curiosity about you, I’d be lying. So, yes, I acknowledged that component of my intent. But if you’d asked, I’d have told you that I was more interested in the why of you than the naked pleasures of your body.” It was strangely easy to talk to this faceless woman in the dark, as if he were speaking to the sea or the sky. He brushed her hair back from her shoulder. “Although, had I known just how monumental were the naked pleasures you’d bring into the bargain, I’d have pursued you with much greater vigor.”
He must have failed abysmally at explaining himself—or offended her anew. For she pushed away from him and sat up.
“I should go.”
Would you like me to help you find your clothes? They might be scattered around—I’m afraid I wasn’t too careful about collecting them in a neat pile.”
His German was quite nimble and there was a smile in his voice. She bit her lower lip. Why hadn’t she planned things better? How would she be able to find everything in the dark—and dress herself to a semblance of decency?
He left the bed the same time she did. “This is something of yours. This is mine. What is this? A corset cover?”
Her toes encountered her shoes and stockings. But before she could pick them up, he was already upon her, handing her a bundle of clothes. When she took the clothes from him, his hand brushed her arm.
“Need some help dressing?”
“No, I—”
“We’ll pretend this is an excavation site and work methodically,” he said, taking the clothes from her again. “I’ll lay out your clothes on the bed one by one, then we’ll know what is what and which pieces are still missing.”
She had not expected this helpful alacrity. Her clothes landed on the bed with a small whomp. He rounded to the other side of the bed, presumably to begin the classification of said garments.
She bent down and gathered her stockings. When she straightened, she came up against what felt like a very soft blanket at her back. “Put it on, or you’ll be cold,” said Lexington.
It was a dressing gown of merino wool. She tightened the sash at her waist. “What about you?”
“I have found my trousers. Now, let’s see about your clothes. Your dress”—something rustled; his voice once again came from the far side of the bed—“will form the bottom of the heap, to be followed by everything else in reverse order. How many petticoats were you wearing?”
“One.”
“Only one?”
“The skirt is split, so the dress comes with an embroidered inner skirt. And the cut is narrow. More than one petticoat and the fit will suffer.”
Why had she explained in such detail? It was almost as if she was afraid he’d think the lack of multiple petticoats translated into moral laxity on her part. When she’d just slept with a man to whom she hadn’t even been properly introduced!
“Wise choice,” he murmured. Again that smile in his voice. “The fit most certainly did not suffer.”
She felt as if she’d fallen down the rabbit hole. Or perhaps he was a strange incarnation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde—but instead of turning evil in the dark, he became much nicer.
“Can you find your way here?” he asked. “I have your things in readiness.”
She skirted the edge of the bed. “Where are you? I don’t want to step on your foot.”
“Hmm,” he said, “t
here is an accent to your German.”
She halted. She’d grown up with a German governess. Native German speakers usually remarked on her lack of an English accent. “What kind of an accent?”
“I’ve spent some time in Berlin and you don’t have the vowels of Prussia proper, either the German parts or the Polish parts. You sound as if your origins are farther south—Bavaria, I’d say.”
Her German governess had indeed been from Munich and spoke the lilting Bairisch dialect. “Very good for an Englishman.”
“Yet I’m not convinced you are German.”
Too good for an Englishman. “Why not? You yourself identified my Bavarian accent.”
“When I mentioned your accent, you stopped cold. You are still standing in place, by the way.”
She remained where she was. “Does it matter whether I am German, Hungarian, or Polish?”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t. Is your name really von Seidlitz-Hardenberg?”
“And what if I am not a baroness, either? Will that cause the Rhodesia to sink?”
“No, but I’m convinced it precipitated the storm.”
Judging by his tone, he was smiling once more—and standing all too close.
His hand combed her hair. “What are you still afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.” Yet she sounded as if she were cowering.
“Good, you shouldn’t be. What can I do to you? Once we disembark, I wouldn’t know you even if we came face-to-face.”
But she’d planned differently, hadn’t she? At Southampton, she meant to reveal herself and let him know he’d been had. She’d imagined this denouement in dozens of delicious variations, each leading to that inevitable point of rage and devastation on his part. Looking back, it was as if she’d planned a trip to the moon, with her only qualification an enthusiasm for Monsieur Verne’s scientific romances.
He tucked back her hair and kissed her beneath her earlobe, the sensation so jagged it almost hurt. Nibbling a path down the column of her neck, he pushed aside the collar of her dressing gown and exposed her shoulder.
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