by Juliana Gray
An inaudible mumble.
“Yes, Hatherfield? You were going to say something?”
He lifted his head and kissed the tip of her nose. “I said, if you can come up with a word to describe all this, you’re a better man than I am.”
“Oh.” She smiled. “Well done.”
“Thank you.” He pressed a lazy kiss to one corner of her mouth, and then the other.
An unfamiliar purring sound rose in her throat. She closed her eyes and absorbed him, his loving kisses, his warmth and weight and sensual beauty all draped atop her.
“You were right, however.” he murmured, between kisses. “This was nothing like before. Different in every way.”
“Stimulating?”
“Eternal.” He kissed her ear.
“Earth-shattering.”
“Life-giving.” He was nibbling along the line of her jaw, kissing his way down her neck. His back arched effortlessly upward, the better to swirl his tongue in the hollow of her clavicle. “And completely insufficient for such a flesh-made sinner as myself. A man wholly and irrevocably in love with the most provocative woman in England.”
“Hatherfield!”
“Mmm.”
“You’re still . . .”
“Ready and able. I’m well aware.” He moved his hips and went on kissing her.
Her heartbeat rose to a flutter again. Her skin, already flushed, warmed anew. “You can’t possibly mean to . . .”
“Yes.”
“Without even . . .”
“Yes. Unless you have any objections.” He released her hands and lifted himself away for an instant, just long enough to roll her over beneath him. He reached for the pillow, such as it was, and slipped it skillfully under her hips.
Her skin shivered, her limbs went heavy. Across the room, the molten glow of the fire roiled on the wall. “Well. If you must.”
His hands closed around her hips and held her firmly in place. “I must, I’m afraid.”
He parted her tender flesh and pushed deep, and the instant sensation of pleasure was so intense, so new and transformed from his penetration before, she cried out.
“All right?” he whispered in her ear.
“Yes!” She tilted up against him.
“I’ve dreamed of this. Every wretched night, since the day I met you, since the moment you tripped over that rug in Olympia’s pile of ancient stone and landed at my feet.” He began to move in a slow rhythm, holding her steady and helpless beneath him. Her hands clutched the end of the soft old mattress as her body accepted the thick invasion of his body. “Dreamed of you in my bed, beautiful as you are, your skin flushed and your throat making those lovely sounds as I drive my cock inside you.” He spoke in a low voice, low and resonant and slow, in time with the thrusting of his body into hers, over and over, deeper and deeper, unbearably good.
Her hands curled into fists. “Faster, God, please, Hatherfield!”
“Oh no, my dear. Only just started.”
She tried to push back, to hurry him along, but he wouldn’t be tempted. He wouldn’t stir from the controlled and massive beat of his lovemaking, as if he were stroking his boat in a marathon race and meant to finish every yard of it. She pictured his magnificent body upright behind her, his sinews flexing, his muscular hips thrusting against her bottom, and another howl escaped her.
“Don’t fight it, Stefanie. Trust me. Just take me, take me all in. Let me show you what you can do.” But his voice traveled on the edge of a razor. His hands gripped her hips as if to save his own life.
“I can’t. I can’t. Please.”
“You can. Just take me in.”
Oh God, it was good. It was so bloody, infinitely good. Each thrust struck her belly and radiated outward to her toes, to her fingertips. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t think. She could only open herself and receive him. Only accept the brute pleasure he delivered inside her.
She sobbed, “My God, I can’t bear it, how can you bear this?”
He growled in her ear, “I warned you.”
She squirmed her bottom into the cradle of his thrusting hips, begging for release, unable to endure the endlessly building ecstasy. She would die of it, she would shatter into a million pieces of exiled princess, each one pulsing with the relentless energy of Hatherfield’s love.
He was right. He had warned her.
Once we start, I won’t be able to stop.
What the devil had she gotten herself into?
An hour later, a lifetime later, she lay in a stupor in his arms, damp and hot and nearly senseless.
“You’re insatiable.” She tried to say it, but all she could manage was a humiliatingly raspy whisper.
“That’s what I was trying to explain, before. You didn’t seem to understand. I thought it best if I showed you instead.”
“I hope you’re not planning to do that again.”
“Not for at least another twenty-four hours. You need your strength.”
She turned her head into his shoulder. Her arm lay across his stomach. In the silence, she could hear his heartbeat, could actually feel it thud in a slow cadence against her eardrum. Hatherfield’s heartbeat, his precious blood, his life flowing next to hers.
“In the meantime, I’ll endeavor to go a bit easier on you,” he went on. “Gentle as a lamb nibbling his favorite spring grass.”
Stefanie swallowed.
“In the meantime?”
“Unless you’d rather waste your time sleeping.”
“I would, rather,” she murmured. “For just a few minutes. Please.”
He laughed and stroked her hair. “You invited me, remember. I’m only indulging your wishes to the best of my humble ability.”
She pinched his ribs. A slap would have been more effective, but it was all she could muster.
He laughed again and settled her even closer. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine slipping through his skin and merging herself with him, her luminous Hatherfield.
“I do mean it, you know,” he said softly.
“Mean what?”
“I am insatiable. Base and carnal and rapacious. I want you again already. I can control myself—God knows I’ve had years of practice—but it’s there. It’s inside me, it’s who I am. I want you so much, it strangles me. I want to take you day and night, in every possible way. I want to give you pleasure over and over. I want to have you again and again, until I’m stone dry.”
Impossibly, something stirred inside her belly.
“Then have me.”
“No.” He kissed her hair. “You need rest. And we have a lifetime.”
A coal popped in the fireplace. Stefanie’s finger, which had been inscribing circles around the smooth skin of Hatherfield’s gleaming left pectoral, dragged to a halt.
“A lifetime?” she whispered.
“My dear. I am insulted. Do you really think me so unscrupulous as to lie with you, to spend myself inside you, without offering my own hand in return?”
She summoned what little energy she owned and pushed herself upward on his chest. “Hatherfield, I hope you don’t feel obliged by all this. There are no chains attached to my bed, I assure you.”
“Look. In the first place, this isn’t your bed . . .”
“It is tonight,” she said with dignity.
“And in the second place, I can’t speak for your own intentions, my love, but as far as I’m concerned, this act of concourse in which we have now engaged twice . . .”
“Oh, is that how you describe it?”
“This—ahem—this transcendent act of ours, I happen to consider in the same nature as a sacred vow.”
The word vow struck her dumb.
He tucked her hair over one ear. “A vow of loyalty, of fidelity. Of my constant devotion and protection, until death.”
A stinging ache spread across the backs of her eyeballs. She tried to blink away the sensation, but it persisted stubbornly and spread to her throat.
“Oh,” she whis
pered.
“As I said, I can’t speak for your intentions. God knows you’re the most unconventional woman I’ve ever met. But I want to be quite clear about my intentions.”
His large and calloused hand spread gently across the small of her back. His eyes searched hers, unrelenting; she wanted to look away, but how could she break the spell of that fulminant blue gaze?
Hatherfield did it for her. He turned her head back into his shoulder and settled her in the shelter of his body. His voice was soft. “As I said, there’s no hurry. Rest now.”
Her body agreed. She knew that she was tired, she knew that she was sleepy. Hatherfield was so solid and delicious, and the bed so narrow, and the scratchy wool blankets made such a marvelous cocoon.
If only her mind would stop jumping about.
“Hatherfield.”
His hand ran along her arm, delicate as a feather. “Yes, love?”
“How have you done it, all these years?”
“Done what?”
She laid her hand flat on his chest and stared at her fingers. “You’re more cleverly disguised than I am, aren’t you? No one knows. No one even suspects how passionate you are, how enormous your heart is. How much is packed inside that golden shell of yours. That angel’s face.”
He picked up her hand and kissed it. “Shh, now. Go to sleep. God knows you’ll need it tomorrow.”
Hatherfield woke before dawn, as always. But instead of startling awake in the grip of an unsettling dream, instead of lying there on his back while his heart pounded blackly in his throat, he simply . . . opened his eyes.
And saw her.
His princess. Tucked up against him, her back curving into his chest, her bottom snuggled into the hard cave of his lower belly. The fire was nearly out, and only a faint hint of ambient light drifted through the window glass, so he couldn’t make out any details. Only his own arm draped possessively across her breasts, and the tip of her nose picking up a silvery gleam from some unknown source.
The familiar surge of desire enlarged his prick, but he ignored that. He breathed silently into her hair, not moving, not wanting to wake her. If she didn’t wake, the day wouldn’t begin. If the day didn’t begin, their idyll would remain intact, and no unknown danger would lurk outside on the doorstep, no jumbled barricade of obstacles to their future together: her station, his family; her disguise, his past; Worthington and Olympia, Lady Charlotte and the Revolutionary Brigade of the Free Blood.
And just like that, the thought of those obstacles snapped his rosy contentment. His muscles flexed around her. The instinct to protect.
She was deeply asleep, her body utterly slack and trusting in the shelter of his own. His princess. His precious Stefanie, full of his love and his seed, who had given herself to him with such willing passion in the dark hours of the night, and taken everything he had in return.
He had made his choice. He had crossed the Rubicon. He had staked his all now, and there was no turning back.
In reluctant movements, he disengaged himself from her and slipped from the bed. He tucked the blanket around her and spread another one on top. He added a few coals to the fire and went downstairs for water.
When he returned to the room twenty minutes later, having coaxed the coal stove to its duty and heated two steaming pails, Stefanie was still asleep, clutching the pillow to her chest. He smiled at the sight. What if his future contained a thousand such moments, ten thousand mornings with a tousled Stefanie sleeping off a night’s passion in his bed?
Was it possible? Could he be so fortunate?
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” he called softly.
She mumbled a decidedly vulgar response.
“Ah. Not now, I’m afraid. Though the prospect is tempting, in an exotic sort of way.” He brushed the hair from her face and kissed her lips. “I’ve brought your bath.”
Her eyes blinked open. “Bath?”
“Well, not a proper bath. Strictly speaking, we have no tub, and the boiler for the showers takes ages to heat sufficiently after a long winter’s nap. But I’ve hot water and a bit of soap and a towel.” He gave her bottom a squeeze through the blankets. “Come along, now.”
“You’re sadistic.”
“Only if you beg me.”
She turned on her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. He laughed, tugged the blanket downward, and picked her up and over his shoulder in a single swing of creamy royal limbs.
She flailed. As well she might.
“You know, I’m beginning to suspect you’re not an early riser by nature, my love.”
“Not when I’ve been kept awake all bloody night, serving your endless beastly needs!” She wriggled her provocative bottom under his hand.
“I protest. Not all night, by any means. If I had, you wouldn’t be able to stand.” He set her down on the rug before the fire and ducked the soap into the first pail, working up a good lather.
“You’re not going to bathe me!”
“With the most loving hands in the world.” He lifted his soapy fingers to her breasts. “We can’t have you waltzing into Worthington’s worthy chambers at half eight in the morning, scented with musty blankets and carnal lust.”
“Oh.” She closed her eyes. “Well, perhaps not.”
He washed her carefully, missing not a single curve or crevice of her body, not a single tender inch, and then he stroked her clean with water from the second pail, until she was naked and rosy and shivering under his gentle hands, and the rug beneath them was thoroughly wet. For an instant, he imagined spreading her satiny new body out before the fire. He imagined stroking his tongue over the delicate anatomy between her legs, until she arched under his lips and sounded her barbaric cry of release, and then rising up to push his eager prick inside her and watch her face transform in the red gold glow from the coals.
He picked up the towel and wrapped her from chin to knee.
“Hatherfield.” She was a little breathless. “Can’t we . . . ?”
“Can’t we what?”
“Please.”
He kissed her forehead. “There’s no time. The other chaps might start turning up any minute. It’s nearly spring. The Boat Race is in a few weeks, and everybody’s coming back to the fold.”
She put her arms around his neck. “I’ll be quick.”
“Trust me, this pains me more than it pains you. As you can plainly see.”
She breathed into the side of his throat. Her linen-draped breasts touched his naked chest. “Hatherfield. Then let me touch you.”
He shut his eyes. His lips slipped against her silken hair. “We don’t have time, my dear.”
“All last night, we did the most intimate things together. We gave each other such joy. You’ve touched me everywhere, seen me everywhere, kissed me everywhere. I just want to know you, every inch of you.”
His knees sank into the soaking rug. Stefanie’s soft body fit into his arms, fresh and pure and smelling of soap. Her long-fingered hands rested against his chest. He was as hard as stone, as thick as a tree, as hot as a coal.
“Hatherfield, please. Let me worship you.”
He rose to his feet. “Let’s find your clothes.”
He managed to bring her back to Cadogan Square and through her third-floor window before the maid had come in to lay the fire.
“How am I supposed to sit next to you at breakfast, as if nothing’s happened?” she said.
He produced a fresh shirt and collar from her drawer and unbuttoned her jacket. “That’s easy enough. I won’t be at breakfast this morning.” He drew the crumpled old shirt up and over her head.
She snatched the long linen strip from her chest of drawers and wrapped it around her chest. “What? Why not?”
He was already popping the new shirt over her head, already stuffing the ends into her trousers. “I have a number of calls to pay this morning.”
“What sort of calls? And I can dress myself, by the way.”
“When I’m enjoying myself so thorou
ghly?” He pushed her hands away and attached her collar, and then he turned her around before the mirror and threaded her necktie underneath. “To answer your question, I shall first visit His Grace, the Duke of Ashland, and then His other Grace, the Duke of Olympia. And then I’ve got to bite the proverbial bullet and seek audience with His bloody damned Grace, my father, the Duke of Southam, during his party tonight.”
“Why?” She was watching his expert hands in the mirror, as they folded her necktie. Her breath was becoming rather shallow.
“In the case of my father, because I have a certain matter to take up with him, related to my Hammersmith project. In the case of the other two, because I can no longer ignore the rather pressing need to track down this damned group of anarchists who attempted to kill you last night.”
She spun in his arms. “You won’t! You can’t put yourself in danger like that. It’s not your fight.”
“If not mine, then whose?”
“My uncle and Miss Dingleby.”
“Forgive me, but I believe they’ve had time enough to sort things out on their own. I want these men caught immediately and put somewhere—six feet underground, if possible—where they’re no longer in a position to harm a single hair of your head.”
“But I’m not in any danger. Not if I stay hidden.”
He turned her around and wrapped his arms around her waist. Their tangled reflections gazed back at him, shirtsleeve against shirtsleeve, his broad forearms white against her dark waistcoat. “You can’t stay hidden forever, you know.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
“Particularly if any consequences arise from our reckless night’s work.”
Her eyes in the mirror went wide and shocked.
“You hadn’t considered that possibility?” he asked gently.
She whispered, “Yes, of course. But you needn’t say it out loud.”
He glanced at the clock. Five minutes to seven. He dropped a kiss on her temple and made for the open window. “I’ve got to leave, and you have breakfast down below, to say nothing of the conclusion of your case in court today. I’ve asked my driver to keep a close watch on you. He’ll follow you and Sir John about in the hansom; discreetly, of course. He’s well trained. You’ll be in good hands. I’ll return at nine o’clock to take you to the party. And for God’s sake, keep your head down and your voice deep.”
