by Tamara Gill
“Twas different.”
“How?”
“Because looking at land or my father never once filled me with such quiet pride in what my seed had become.”
“Come on.” Leaning forward to press a gentle, reassuring kiss to his lips, she said, “Let’s go home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
To the cheers of the crowd, Wolfe swooped his wee wench into his arms, then carried her out of the inn and into the rainy night, kissing her full on her lips just before reaching her carriage. “I want you,” he said. “I have grown tired of games. I want there to be naught between us but fevered skin.”
She nodded against his chest, her soft curls tickling the underside of his chin.
Being the man, he longed to carry her all the way back to the cottage and into his bed. But, alas, the past weeks plus a thousand years more had taught him the humility of his own limitations. Just as he had known to hide from a wild dog rather than trying to outrun it, he knew twas infinitely more practical to allow Lucy Gordon to drive them.
Seated beside her, twining her hair betwixt his fingers as she drove, he promised himself to add controlling her carriage to his growing list of skills that he must learn. But then they had returned to the cottage and he was shutting the mudroom door, pinning her to it while kissing her swift and hard, mounding her breasts to his chest, aching much lower to penetrate her now, but knowing full well she deserved a far better show. For the love she would soon declare, for the remainder of his life her declaration would save, she deserved to be taken leisurely, at a pace allowing for exploration and grace.
Somehow, they wound their way upstairs to her room.
Having lain her across her bed, he parted her red coat, then her blouse, before unlatching the protective garment she wore over her breasts. Through it all, he expected her to cry out, to slide her fingers into his hair, shrieking for him to stop, but she did not.
Eyes closed, she arched into him when he stole her bud into his mouth for a swift, hearty suckle. Soft mews of longing parted her ripe lips and when he had taken his fill of her breasts, he moved upward for more lingering kisses.
On his own tongue, he still tasted ale. But on her, the most potent of all liquors—desire. Aye, he might have been a thousand years without bedding a woman but a man did not forget the nectar-sweet smells a woman in need of a man unwittingly produced. He had not forgotten the faint taste of salt between her breasts, or honey between her legs...
But that would come later, much later, when she had all but cried out her need.
For now, he unfastened the top closure of her denim breeches, then lowered the zipper with nary a sound, splaying his fingers to the curve of her belly, imagining it ripe with his seed.
Even pale moonlight could not hide the intensity on his wee one’s beautiful face. Rising, pinning his hands on either side of her, he asked, “What is wrong? You wish me to stop?”
She fiercely shook her head.
“Then what?” he asked, skimming the backs of his fingers along her jaw. “I have never seen your expression so burdened—as if you carry the weight of the world upon your shoulders, when tis only the weight of me upon your chest.” He smiled, pleased with his joke.
Her lips, however, did not budge.
Lucy swallowed back tears.
She wanted this. Lord, how she wanted this, but she wanted other things, too.
She wanted her father’s love, the respect of her peers. Maybe even to become William’s wife. But surely she didn’t want all of that badly enough to pay with Wolfe’s life? And seeing how she supposedly loved the duke, what could even this one night of pleasure bring beyond pain?
Love took time, time she and Wolfe would never have. Given time, seeing how many qualities she’d already grown to love in him, she felt sure she could one day love all of him. Any doubt of that had been banished by the look he’d had in his eyes while speaking of his son. No man as vile as the sorceress had claimed could carry such a look of tenderness for his offspring. It was the kind of look that could come from only one place—his heart.
“You are yet again crying...” He brushed away her tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pressing her hands to his magnificent chest, running them up and over his shoulders and down his arms. His scars, those all-too-painful reminders of just what a treacherous life he’d once led, were savage enough that she could still feel them even beneath the cool white cotton lawn of his shirt. Oh, how she ached for him. For what he’d been though. “Please know, I want this—you.”
To prove her desire, when he sat back on his haunches, she helped him remove his shirt. Seeing him, scars and all, both worsened her pain and increased her longing. On her knees, she pressed butterfly-soft kisses to each badge of courage he so proudly wore. Which scars had been gained in battle? Which as a mere boy, while trapped in a filthy, rat-infested pit? “...My poor, Wolfe.”
At that, he stopped her, hands on her shoulders, dark gaze locking with hers. “Tell me what troubles you. For I assure you, at the moment, the only thing poor on me is my neglected manhood.”
“But your scars. All you’ve been through.”
“All well in the past,” he said, sweeping her hair behind her ears. “Now, the emotional scar I will have if you do not soon bed me... That will be another matter.”
“How can you joke at a time like this?”
Dropping onto his side, he pulled her against him. “Shh...” he murmured into her hair. “Now that you are ready to declare your love, there is nothing to fear.”
“But that’s just it,” she said. “What I feel for you—it’s so strange. Overwhelming. Even scary in the way I’m incapable of thinking of anything or anyone but you. But that’s wrong, because I don’t even know you. You’re like some intoxicating myth come to life. But the duke, he’s real. My work is real. And then I look at you and I can’t think beyond our next kiss. I want so much more. I want to taste you and breathe you and feel you buried so deep inside that this hunger will finally be fed. But then I think of William and all the times he’s stood by me, and I...”
Wolfe released her, then pushed himself off of the bed.
“W-where are you going?”
“Anywhere.”
“But I thought this was it? I thought we were about to make love?”
His answer was a sharp laugh. “You just admitted what we share is not love, so how can we make it?”
“But...”
Savagely drawing on his shirt, he said, “Go to him if you have need to be bedded.”
“But it’s you I want. Think about it, Wolfe. According to your own rules, only true love can save you. But the two of us will never have enough time to find true love. All we have is tonight and the precious few nights yet to come.”
“Unlike my own mother,” he said, a muscle twitching in his hardened jaw, “I will not be party to adultery. Any woman I am with will want me and only me. My name will spill past her kiss-swollen lips and when we have both had our fill, we shall sleep. And then we shall sup of each other—only each other—again and again.”
“Yes,” Lucy said, scrambling onto her knees, mindless of her gaping clothes, only caring for him, for how she could somehow make him understand. “What I feel for you is night-and-day different from what I share with the duke. Please,” she clutched his shirt. “Please, understand. Share what time we have left with me. Give us both something to cherish and remember.”
“You are but a child, Lucy Gordon, desiring two treats when only one is what you may have. Choose. Choose between us right now.”
“Don’t you see? I can’t.”
“Excellent. I will take that as your answer.” Eyes impossibly dark, mouth an angry slash, he said, “Good night, Lucy Gordon. I know not—if ever—we shall meet again.”
***
Alone in her cold bed, the cottage’s quiet crushing, Lucy swiped away still more tears.
What had she done?
She’d delivered her speech to
justify the wrongful act she longed to commit, but in explaining herself to Wolfe, she’d only made herself look the part of a traitorous fool. Traitorous for longing to be with Wolfe before breaking things off with the duke. A fool for ever believing she could have it both ways. She was an even bigger fool for believing she’d ever be able to willingly trade Wolfe for scientific glory. On the other hand, what if she truly did love him heart and soul when he might very well be using her for no other reason than to stay alive—reason enough in any sane person’s eyes!
Worse still, what if he wasn’t a frog prince after all? But your garden variety whack job, scamming her for meals, a roof over his head and great sex? Only much to her disappointment, there hadn’t even been any sex!
Washing her face with her hands, she drew her knees to her chest.
How could she have let things come to this? She was a scientist. She’d been trained to look at things objectively. But when it came to her study of Wolfe, she should’ve known she’d been doomed from the start.
From that first look at him in his full naked splendor that forever-ago day on the castle lane. To the way they talked for hours about nothing and played games and read. When she had problems at school, he listened—truly listened.
For the first time in her life, in him, she’d felt as if she’d found someone who truly cared what she had to say and hadn’t just felt obligated to be present while she droned on. Her father had always been patronizing—and that was on his good days. While the duke was unfailingly polite, seeming to hang on her every word, she felt the hum of his brain, always moving one step forward, as if even in the midst of her latest sentence he was formulating the profits-and-loss ledgers of his latest account.
Who was to say? Maybe she was wrong about all of it? Maybe, like Wolfe had pointed out, she was a child and not even thinking in her right mind. But like children didn’t think about anything, but instead followed their hearts, maybe that was the course best taken? The one thing her heart was currently saying—no, screaming—was for her to see where things with Wolfe might lead.
If they only had this time together, so be it.
If, by the full moon he was still living and breathing, only not alongside her but some other woman, well, she’d have been proven a fool, but at least she’d have a clear conscience.
Like him, she had to adopt a conquering warrior’s spirit, only the war she now battled raged within herself.
***
“You don’t look so hot,” Bonnie said on Wednesday morning in the teacher’s lounge. “Rough night?”
“Rough life,” Lucy said, nursing her coffee.
“Chin up,” Bonnie toasted her with a butter cookie, “at least the dance is just three more nights away. I’ll bet once the duke slips a great big jewel on your finger, you’ll feel super.”
Doubtful.
How was it Wednesday already? What’d happened to Tuesday? Not to mention her every hope and dream beyond a magnificent man named Wolfe? Monday night, after their argument, he’d left. She hadn’t seen him since. She hadn’t cared about anything since.
Staring out the window at the day’s drizzling gloom, at skeletons of trees and tall brown weeds, she asked her friend, “What if the duke proposes but I don’t want to marry him?”
Bonnie gaped. “Why would you even say such a thing? You’ve been mad about William for years. The only possible reason I can think of that—” She put her hand over her mouth, and shook her head. “Please tell me it isn’t true? Luke came in from the hospital this morning and said one of the orderlies told him he’d seen you mugging on a strapping bloke at the Hoof and Toe. Luke told him, no way. You were as good as engaged to the duke, but—”
“Can’t a girl have any privacy around here?”
“So it’s true? You’ve got another man on the side?”
Lucy pressed her lips tight.
Bonnie lurched forward. “To be virtually throwing away a scrummy catch like the duke, I can’t even imagine what your other guy must be like.
“Nonexistent, okay?” Lucy slammed her coffee mug onto a side table, then stood, straightening her somber blue skirt and jacket. “A few nights ago...he, he—” The bell rang.
“He what?” Bonnie asked, glancing toward the hall already swarming with chattering students.
“He left me, all right? I offered myself to him like a trussed-up Christmas ham and then he stormed out of the cottage.”
“The cottage? You’ve been seeing him right under the duke’s nose?”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds. It’s complicated. I—”
“Ladies?” Grumsworth stepped into the room. Eyebrows furrowed, he tapped his watch. “High time you got on to your classes.”
Lucy snatched her purse and dashed past him, Bonnie hot on her heels.
In the crowded hall, Bonnie elbowed her. “Don’t think just because Grumsworth mucked up the juiciest part, that I’m letting you off the hook. I want details—now.”
“I have to go,” Lucy said, wishing she’d never shared anything. What was the point? It wasn’t as if all the talking in the world would ever change her situation. She was in love with a thousand-year-old frog prince who couldn’t care less about her, beyond the fact that he’d somehow managed to finagle that love right out of her supposedly already taken heart!
“Miss Gordon?” Lady Regina Cowlings wildly waved her hand.
“Yes?” Lucy said from behind her lecture podium, highlighting wand in hand.
“Could you please go back over species competition?”
“Sure.” On autopilot, glad she finally had a few years of teaching behind her to let experience carry her through, Lucy patiently explained the lesson again, the whole time aching for her next break so she could call home.
She’d tried an hour earlier, but Wolfe either still hadn’t returned or wouldn’t pick up. Not that it mattered. What was she going to say?
Um, look, I’ll tell you I love you, but only if you promise you’re not playing me for a fool. ’Cause if you are, I’ll personally zap you straight back to the pond.
Even worse, she’d had a message from her father, commanding her to e-mail him a clearer picture of her frog. He’d been gritty as sand in her eyes through the first part of the message, but had ended it with a simple, heartbreaking, “Love you, Polliwog.”
“Miss Gordon?” Now, Lord Randy waved his hand.
“Y-yes?” Lucy swallowed hard, trying to dislodge the terror of indecision from her throat.
“If a sea turtle lays eighteen hundred eggs, I fail to see how only four hundred hatch, and only two or three ultimately live. Somewhere along the line, someone messed up and should be sacked.”
She grinned. Randy’s parents probably had highly paid consultants tasked with rating other consultants. “Okay, here’s the deal. The eggs are actually a food source for—”
“Miss Gordon?” Sir Thomas Gerardo Beamoneaux the Fifth joined the hand-raising club.
“Just a sec, Tom. Let me make sure I’ve answered Randy’s question, then I’ll get to you.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I promise, Tom. I won’t forget—”
The class laughed.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
Tom pointed toward the door where a glorious bouquet of at least three dozen pink roses bobbed up and down.
Lucy’s heart lurched.
Wolfe stood grinning behind them.
“Oh...” All her breath mysteriously left her lungs. “Um, you all review this section on your e-readers. I’ll be right back.”
In the hall, classroom door closed behind her, she said, “What are you doing here?”
He winked. “What kind of greeting is that for a man bearing roses? Pink roses that are the shade of all of those pink clothes you favor.” Holding them out to her, he said, “The pretty flowers reminded me of you. I am sorry for our fight.”
Taking the tissue-wrapped bundle, breathing deeply of the sinfully rich aroma, she shook her head. �
��I was the one in the wrong. I should never have assumed we could... Well, you know, change things between us in the bedroom, then go back to the way things were. I’m pretty confused at the moment about a lot of issues, but—wait a minute. Where have you been? How did you even get here?”
Gracing her with a broad, white-toothed smile that toppled her heart, he said, “I took the liberty of borrowing one of the duke’s stallions. Henceforth, I have traversed the county, getting the cobwebs out, so to speak.”
“You’ve slept outside?”
He shrugged.
“The roses? Did you borrow those, too?”
“Nay. A village antique dealer was only too happy to trade a tidy sum of your paper money for but one of my coins.”
“What coins?”
He sighed. “Wench, must you know my every secret?”
“Yes—and don’t call me wench.”
“Very well, then...” He politely bowed his head, before blasting her with another wickedly handsome smile. “If you must know, there are vast caches of coins and jewels all over the castle grounds and inside the castle itself. Sadly, my mother taught my father to trust no one but himself and me. Consequently, all that he or I ever won in battle was hidden from those whose loyalty may have been less than golden.”
“Whoa...” Head spinning, Lucy leaned hard against the door. If she confessed her love, and he was playing her, with his own fortune at his disposal, he needed her for nothing beyond her eternal vow. Shoot, for all she knew, she might not even get that much-touted bedding he’d promised!
But then what was she thinking?
Was she really prepared to give up her every professional hope and dream—not to mention her future relationship with her father—on this pipe dream? There was no way Wolfe would want a woman like her.
How many times had he told her that unless a woman possessed great wealth or land, he had no need for her?
Even knowing all of that, though, how could she live with herself, knowing her professional dreams came at too high of a price. Oh—in presenting Wolfe in his frog form, she’d garner the respect of every biologist in the world, but what had she done to deserve that respect?
