Elene uncurled the fingers of her hand that had clutched a coat collar. Her voice a mere breath of sound, she said, “Ryan?”
“There are no sharp shells, no mud, here.”
“No,” she agreed with caution as his meaning began to creep in upon her, “but what of the others, your servants, Benedict?”
“Benedict is on watch for us at my order, though anyone would have to have the eyes of a cat to see.”
“That may be, but—”
“I have been thinking of making love to you under the night sky for what seems like hours, since the vauxhall garden. Will you deny me?”
How could she when he asked it so simply, and with such vibrant desire in his voice? The answer was, she could not.
She said softly, “Not I.”
12
HE LOWERED HER TO HER FEET and brushed his lips across her forehead. He quickly shrugged from his coat, then spread it on the flagstones and went to one knee on its silk lining. Taking her hand, he drew her down to kneel before him. He lifted her other hand also, and pressed both to his lips in turn. His warm breath feathered the sensitive skin of their backs as he said quietly, “Je t’ adore. I adore you, not just because you are more generous than any woman I have ever known, but because you are more honest.”
Elene’s chest swelled with pent breath and pain. It was so nearly a declaration, but one made for the wrong reason. She was not honest, had never been, even from the first. But she could not tell him, not now when they were so close within the sheltering shadows of the soft summer night. She could offer an apology hidden in a caress, however, one to soothe her misgivings even if it could not relieve them.
Gently she released her hands. With fingers that were unsteady, she touched his chest, smoothing over the linen that covered its muscular hardness. His cravat had been loosened and she slipped it free and let it fall. Finding the stud that held the collar of his shirt, she worked it from its hole, aware at the same time of his hands upon her back, tracing her shape underneath her nightgown. She set the stud aside and opened his collar to spread the placket of his shirt wide, exposing his chest to below his breastbone.
Ryan drew in his breath as she lowered her head to brush the dark, curling growth of hair about his paps with her tongue. Her hair spilled across her shoulders, falling in a pale swath to rest on his hard thigh where he could feel its warm weight. Caught in enchantment, he reached to tangle his fingers among the shimmering filaments that caught the starlight with a silver-gold sheen.
An odd exultation moved like wine along Elene’s veins. He wanted her, needed her, felt for her some degree of emotion, however fleeting, that he called adoration. There was no compulsion for him this time. In that knowledge there was for her a sense of glorious freedom, as if some restraint had been removed. She could give joy as well as receive it, and that realization made her bold.
She flicked her tongue over the hard, tight bud of his nipple. Feeling the shudder of pleasure that rippled over his skin, she smiled to herself in rising gladness. At the same time, she slid her hands in slow exploration down the taut, muscle-padded stretch of his rib cage to his waist and began to tug his shirt from his breeches.
He accommodated her, stripping his shirt free and drawing it off over his head in a single, sure movement. The crisp linen made a soft, whispering sound as it landed behind him. He reached for her then, cupping her shoulders in the palms of his hands while his thumbs caressed the fragile lengths of her collar bones under the skin. Gently he eased the cap sleeve of her nightgown from her shoulder and, bending his head, pressed his lips to that smooth and rounded surface. He trailed a line of fiery kisses to the curve of her neck and delicate hollow under her ear, at the same time easing the nightgown lower and lower still until it was caught on the upper curves of her breasts.
Elene made a movement, as if she would reach to untie the ribbon closure. He was there before her, slipping the bow free, drawing the opening wider until the soft batiste slid over the peaks of her breasts and dropped in soft folds about her waist.
“Sweet, sweet,” he whispered as he tasted the twin mounds he had uncovered with the grainy surface of his tongue, lapping their sensitive nipples with careful attention as he fitted their weight in his cupped hands.
Exquisite, blooming sensations rippled through Elene in vivid waves, vibrating downward to the lower part of her body. She drew breath in such rich delight that it lifted her breasts in a voluptuous gesture of encouragement. Her nightgown, dislodged by the movement, drifted lower until it pooled about her knees.
Ryan released her to put a hand to the waistband of his breeches. She forestalled him, brushing his fingers aside to loosen the fastening and also that of his underdrawers. She inserted her fingers in the opening and spread them wide over the iron-hard surface of his belly, enjoying the roughness against her palms of the narrow line of hair that grew there. She touched the heated resilience of his manhood that thrust against the crotch of his breeches, capturing it with a thumb on either side. As she heard the soft hiss of his breath through his teeth, there burgeoned within her a sense of power and glorious, wanton rapture.
With a sudden, wrenching movement, she slid his breeches and undergarments from his hips. He moved to help her, levering off his low evening boots before sliding out of the last of his clothing.
Elene drew her nightgown from under her knees to spread its fullness with Ryan’s coat. She lowered herself to her side on that thin, makeshift pallet. Ryan joined her there, stroking along the turn of her leg, skimming the curve of her hip with his lips and tongue before stretching full length and pulling her against him. He held her close as, heart to heart, they reveled in the tactile sensations of skin against warm skin, with curves and hollows, firmness and softness perfectly matched, so nearly complete. Yet not quite.
The mounting pressure of desire shuddered through them. They stirred, their caresses becoming more heated, less controlled. Elene’s heart jarred against her ribs, sending her blood in a swirling mill race along her veins. Her skin glowed with rising internal heat that brought a moist sheen to its surface so that Ryan’s seeking hands glided upon her as he sought the intricate opening of the recess that led to the core of her being. Finding it, he brought more moisture still. Lost in infinite bliss, she returned his caresses.
Dipping, bending in the ancient dance that leads to love, like relentless marauders they used their hands and mouths to drive the aching ecstasy higher and higher still, until both were slippery with the dew of their exertion and drenched in the scent of a perfume that evoked haunting visions of elusive paradise. Together, they gave each other joy, until the effort to hold the ultimate release at bay was so great the torment was more rending than the pleasure.
Heaving to his back, Ryan drew her over to lie upon him, urging her with firm hands to take him inside her. She needed no second bidding. Her taut moan of gratification came from deep within as she encompassed him. The muscles of her thighs trembled as she pressed down further and further upon him so that he filled her to the utmost depth. She began then to move in exquisite, rocking rhythm, plunging toward a bright and beckoning fulfillment. So near, so incredibly near. It spiraled through her, gathering brightness, spreading, growing, until as it burst upon her she cried out and went still.
Ryan gathered her to him so that their foreheads rested together and their breathing mingled as their chests rose and fell. A mosquito whined around their heads. He muttered a soft curse. Brushing along her back and hips with his hands as if to dislodge any biting insects, he then pressed her knee down to straighten her left leg and, with a powerful surge of coiled muscles, swung her over and to her back with the long strands of her hair flailing, twisting around them. At the same time, he raised himself above her to cover her body protectively with his. Once more, he pressed into her resilient softness, driving deep. And once more the splendor gathered around her.
Her senses stretched, soaring. Her muscles convulsed, the tendons strung with tightness.
The darkness around her expanded into a limitless universe in which nothing mattered except this wondrous joining. She lifted her hands to clench them on the effort-ridged muscles of his arms and shoulders, using that hold to move with him, lunge against him, to absorb the hard shocks of his thrusts that propelled her higher and higher still in the frenzied urge toward the fulfillment.
It burst upon her in furious grandeur, a wild yet silent explosion of the innermost self. Magical, amazing, that internal violence convulsed her being around the man who held her so that movement, thought, all sense of self was lost in the wondrous flowering. She gasped his name. Hearing that soft sound like a plaudit and a plea, feeling the velvet grasp of her heated tissues, Ryan locked her in his arms and plunged in final, wrenching exertion to his own instant of glory.
The wind rifled through the leaves of the oak. The shadows in the corners of the courtyard shifted as the starshine flickered among the tree branches. Somewhere a cricket chirped with monotonous regularity. The fountain chuckled to itself. A pair of mosquitoes sang in a circling pattern, then were ominously still.
Ryan stirred. Resting his weight still on his elbows, he brushed the fine mesh of hair from across Elene’s face. He kissed her gently, thoroughly in a warm salute of appreciation and pleasure. Then gathering himself in what seemed to be a species of reluctance, he rolled from her and pushed to his knees.
“As agreeable as this is,” he said in replete humor, “it would be foolish to sacrifice more blood than we have already for the sake of it.”
Elene made no move to rise. “I was beginning to think you enjoyed being eaten alive.”
“That wasn’t my greatest pleasure.”
“No? Possibly it was the dark and the hard bed. You seem to have a regard for those, also.”
“What I have a regard for is your delectable body, as well you know. Now, will you come inside before I leave it, with deepest regret and only slightly wavering determination, to the mosquitoes?”
“I’m right behind you,” she said on a gasp as the whining of a mosquito came again and she felt a sting on her ankle.
“Of all the positions I can think of for you, that is the least satisfactory.” Ryan reached to scoop her into his arms. Lifting her high against his chest, he surged to his feet and strode with her toward the stairs.
At the foot of the flight of steps, the form of the majordomo melted away in the darkness. Beyond him, near the workroom door, was a second guard. Devota.
Elene’s grasp on Ryan’s shoulders tightened and she set her teeth in her bottom lip. As the two of them reached the gallery, she said in stifled tones, “I don’t know what they think of us.”
Ryan gave a breathless laugh. “Don’t you?”
“Make a joke of it then,” she snapped. “I don’t know why you didn’t just sell tickets while you were about it.”
He pushed through the opening of the French doors and stepped into his bedchamber. Knocking aside the mosquito netting with one shoulder, he deposited Elene none too gently on the cool surface of the moss-filled mattress. Looming above her in the dim golden glow of a single candle, he said, “I might have, if I hadn’t been too involved at the time to think of it.”
“Humph,” she said, flouncing over in the bed, “and I suppose the whole household will get to snicker in the morning when they find our clothes.”
“Benedict and Devota will take care of them, and of us, as always. What is the matter with you? Was it so bad as all that?”
She looked away from him. The trouble was, it hadn’t been bad at all. She was afraid she had revealed too much, given too much of herself into his keeping. If that was so, she didn’t know how she would survive if he should ever leave her.
But there was more to it than that. Honest, he had called her. What would he think if he knew the truth? She should tell him. She should confess in full now, this moment, make him understand how she had tricked him, enthralled him. Not deliberately, no, but the results had been the same.
She could not do it. It would be the end; she had no doubt of it. He had said himself he would not tolerate being tricked. Never would he permit the woman who had done so to continue to live under his roof, to lie in his bed, at his side.
“Elene,” he said, his voice questioning as he joined her on the bed. He reached out to put his hand on her shoulder, turning her toward him.
She looked into the dark blue of his eyes with their soft sheen of concern that contrasted with the hawk-like severity of his features, and she knew she could not tell him. Surely there was no need. He had come to her without the coercion of Voudou sorcery, had he not? And easily might again.
She forced her lips to form a smile, though her throat hurt and her voice was husky with unshed tears as she spoke. “You know very well it was not bad at all, that it was incredible.”
“Do I?”
She flung herself against him, hiding her face against the strong column of his neck as his arms closed around her. “You should, since you paid for it in mosquito bites.”
“A few itches is a small price,” he said as he stroked her hair. There was a frown between his thick brows, however, as he stared at the carving on the headboard of the bed. He could feel Elene trembling against him, sense the disturbance that made her grip him so close. He could not begin to fathom its cause. He wished he understood her, but at the same time feared to know too much. It was not a situation he enjoyed, or one that was at all familiar. He did not like it. In fact, he despised it, and despised also the cowardice that prevented him from forcing the issue and discovering the truth.
Morning came too soon. The knock that heralded the arrival of Benedict with coffee and rolls sent Elene burrowing under the sheet. The majordomo was discretion itself, however; he spoke no greeting, but placed the tray on a side table and went out again with a near-silent tread, closing the door softly behind him.
The aroma of hot, yeasty brioches and the coffee and hot milk for café au lait wafted on the air. Elene ignored it, keeping her eyes firmly closed as she held tight to the last vestiges of sleep. If she did not let go, she need not face the problems that waited.
Beside her, Ryan shifted. His hair-roughened leg touched hers and his arm snaked around her waist to draw her securely against him with her hips nestled against his belly and something else that was just as rigid and much warmer. He blew on the nape of her neck so that a shiver ran over her. Softly against her ear, he said, “Are there any itches you might have this morning that I can scratch for you?”
She flung over to her back to stare up at him as he lay propped on one elbow. “You’re impossible!”
“Almost, but not quite.”
“I was not referring to your prowess in bed.”
He gave her a look of mock innocence. “Who said that I was?”
There was such a teasing light in his eyes that her heart swelled inside her, throbbing with pain. The dark stubble of a beard shadowed the bronze planes of his face, giving him a ruffian appearance that was oddly endearing. She cleared her throat. “Humbug. Your coffee will get cold.”
“No great matter.”
“It’s daylight.”
“So it is,” he said after a brief survey of the window.
“The servants will tell everyone we do nothing else.”
“It’s a harmless diversion.”
“The gossip? Or—”
“Or what?”
“Or the dalliance in bed,” she said, refusing to be cowed.
He kissed her shoulder without taking his eyes from the delicate color in her face. “Is that what this is?”
“You know very well—”
“So I do. Now that we have begun, we might as well continue.”
“We haven’t begun!”
“What a shame.” He reached to catch the top hem of the sheet, slowly peeling it downward to expose the apricot-tinted peak of one breast.
“Something you apparently have none of whatever,” she declared, though the words were not so incen
sed as she could have wished due to her interest in the warm circles he began to make with his tongue on her uncovered skin.
“Shame? No, none, not when it comes to you. You could teach me, of course.”
She might indeed, she thought, but she did not say so. Instead she shook her head as she reached to push her fingers through the whorls of glossy, walnut-colored hair that grew low on his neck. “I have better things to do.”
They ate their breakfast cold. Afterward, Ryan threw back the covers and slid from the bed. There was a ship due up from Balise that morning with cargo aboard in which he had an interest, and he needed to see to its unloading and storage.
Elene lay and watched while Ryan, stalking about in splendid nakedness, shaved himself and dressed for the day. He did not ring for the aid of his majordomo, though that was not unusual. He had no use for a valet on board ship, he said, and the fact that he was on land did not make him suddenly helpless.
He came to stand beside the bed when he was ready to go. Leaning over her, he pressed his warm lips to her forehead, then quickly to her mouth. He smelled of the freshness of soap and starched linen and leather polish from his boots, with a faint hint of spice from a preparation he used as a septic for shaving nicks and also his own male essence.
He did not move away at once, but stood with his hat in one hand, his gaze searching her face. His voice low, he asked, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she answered, her smile deliberately slumberous with sated desire. “When will you be back?”
His mouth twitched at one corner. “Before you have time to miss me.”
“Ah, well, then that can’t be long.”
“Noon, at the latest.” With a look that held more than a hint of amorous threat, he swung away and walked from the room.
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