by Liz Carlyle
“Don’t say a word,” she ordered. “Oh, please don’t! Edward, please don’t ruin it.”
He closed the distance, pulling her from the door and into his arms in an embrace he hoped was less carnal. “Kate,” he said again. “Oh, Kate, love, be serious.”
She set her cheek against his chest. He settled his hand on the back of her head, savoring the silky warmth of her hair. He shut his eyes and prayed for the strength to do the right thing.
But Kate was of no help whatever.
“Edward,” she whispered, “what if I am being serious?”
And she was; Edward could hear it in her voice. She was entirely willing. Willing to give herself to him. Willing to make his dark dreams come true.
It stunned him for a moment, but he quickly regained himself. He had, after all, been teasing her—and calling her his goddess. Obviously he’d taken that teasing much too far.
“My dear, we aren’t entirely sure what manner of man I am,” he whispered. “I’m certainly the sort who hasn’t any business trifling with a young lady’s affections.”
At that, she planted her hands against his chest again, and pushed herself firmly away. “I am not young,” she said, looking up into his eyes. “And I’m no longer fool enough to allow any man to trifle with me.”
“Kate, Kate,” he murmured. “How you honor me. But love, we cannot—”
“Have you any idea, Edward, the sort of life I live here?” she interjected.
He set his head to one side, and studied her a moment. “The sort of life you wish to live, I hope,” he said. “Am I wrong?”
Her lips thinned pensively as she formulated her words. “Not entirely, no,” she finally admitted. “But it is not remotely like the life I expected to lead. And it’s often lonely. There are parts of it that are too full—too crammed with expectations and problems and hard work—and then, sometimes late at night, there are pockets of this … this terrible, swamping emptiness.”
He cupped his hand around the turn of her face again. “Oh, Kate,” he whispered, “as tempting a notion as it is, I should rather not be the means of a lady’s self-destruction, if that, God forbid, is what you contemplate.”
Her pale coloring deepened to pink, and he realized once again how lovely she was. “I don’t know what I contemplate,” she said huskily. “I beg your pardon, Edward. I didn’t mean to put you in an awkward position.”
She started to pull away, but he could see the hurt in her eyes.
“No, no, Kate,” he said, drawing her back again. “Don’t ascribe any hidden meaning to my words. Oh, I want you, my dear. I have wanted you, I think, almost since the moment we met.”
She buried her face against his shirtfront. “When we met, I nearly killed you.”
“And still, here we are,” he said on a choked laugh. “It seems I’ve a penchant for dangerous females. But I’m far from a saint; of that I’m quite certain. Don’t waste your virtue on me, Kate, for I cannot deserve it. And you would surely regret it.”
She lifted her face to his then, her expression stricken but earnest. “I have some experience with regret,” she said very quietly. “And strictly speaking, I have no virtue. I already wasted it, you see—to please a man who truly did not deserve it. No, Edward, we do not need to talk about regret. I have felt it often these last eight years.”
It was a brave speech, but he could feel the pain behind it.
He held her gaze very steadily for a time, trying to swallow down an anger that was bitter as bile in the back of his throat. Then he surrendered, and said what he wished. “Oh, Kate,” he rasped. “I could kill the bastard with my bare hands.”
“Why?” she said simply. “It was my doing. I was not … coerced.”
She meant that she was not raped, he thought grimly. He very much doubted she’d known what she was doing.
The gentleman, however—or rather, the scoundrel—almost certainly had known.
But Kate was still watching him, her eyes unwavering. “It was, quite honestly, an awful experience,” she confessed. “I thought I loved him. That it would be somehow magical.”
Edward elevated both eyebrows. “Ah, the fiancé!” he murmured.
Her lashes swept down. “Yes.”
“Who was he?”
She gave a little shake of her head. “Just an old family acquaintance,” she said. “He was beautiful, and so charming. But too late I learnt that I loved an illusion; that I merely idolized him for being all those things that I was not.”
Kate’s eyes were shimmering dangerously, he realized. Edward reached up and ran a thumb beneath her eye, but the tears hadn’t spilled.
He resolved that they would not.
“I’m sorry, Kate, that your lover was not what you’d hoped,” he said. “You’re the sort of woman who deserves to have her dreams come true.”
“I think so, too,” she said simply. “And lately … well, lately, I have dreamt of you.”
He shook his head, but drew her fully against him all the same. “Kate, my dear,” he murmured into her hair, “we must be mad. Both of us.”
“I am not mad,” she said, her cheek pressed to the wall of his chest. “I am perfectly aware of what this is, and what it is not. I know you will not stay here. That you’re getting well and must go back to your life soon. That we will not meet again.”
He suspected she was right, and knew that he should have been glad. But her words instead filled him with an inexorable sadness; a longing so deep he ached with it.
“Kate.” Edward’s hand sculpted the small of her back as her lips brushed his again.
There was no more need to talk. She was Kate, and she desired him. And he would do his best to be—at least for tonight—the lover she wanted. The man she deserved.
And yet he could not mistake something hot and burning behind his own eyes. The longing he felt for her seemed to be rushing toward a crescendo of its own. The ache seemed drawn from a well of sadness and longing he could not explain. And for better or worse, he was going to slake it.
Kate’s lips softened beneath his as he kissed her, hot and openmouthed, with his eyes wide open. Her hands moved over him again, then began to tug eagerly at his shirt, drawing it from the waist of his breeches until it billowed nearly free. Like warm silk, her tongue slid willingly along his, allowing him to plunge deep.
Edward knew precisely what he was doing—and thought he knew precisely how his body would react. He could not have been more wrong. For when Kate’s slender hands slid beneath his shirt, raw need surged again, and left him shivering beneath her artless touch.
She touched him tentatively at first, and then more urgently. Gingerly, he moved her nearer the bed. Pulled free the ribbon of her wrapper. Pushed it over her slender shoulders and listened to it whisper its way onto the floor.
Kate made a sound of pleasure, and began to push off his shirt. Impatiently, Edward yanked the last of it free, then stripped it off and over his head. Kate’s eyes widened innocently. And then—like the siren she secretly was, he feared—she set her lips to his breastbone, her tongue stroking ever so lightly, drawing a ribbon of heat up his flesh.
“Edward,” she whispered as she moved her lips over his skin, “I’ve wanted to do this from that first day; from the moment we took your shirt off. You’re so exquisitely, perfectly male.”
At those words, raw lust twisted deep in his belly, an agonizing knot of sweet, throbbing pain. His erection pulsed insistently between his legs. And any hesitance he might have felt vanished on the sound of her next sigh.
He kissed her again, and pushed her gently down on the bed, wedging one knee between hers. She fell back into the softness on a sigh, smelling of sunlight and of grass after a spring rain; all innocence and sweet seduction. He followed her down, his face buried against her neck. Kate’s body arched beneath his weight, her dark brown hair scrubbing the pillowslip.
On the night table, the lamp flickered, casting dancing shadows across the white sheets. “N
ow, Edward,” she said throatily, her hands pushing at the band of his breeches.
But she was not ready for now.
He kissed her again, exultantly, then slowly moved away, pressing butterfly kisses along her throat. Then he twisted around to sit on the bed, the floor cool against his feet as he propped his hands on his knees.
For an instant, he tried to talk himself out of what he was about to do. But it was far too late, and he was far too lost. Behind him, Kate made an impatient sound, and drew a fingertip down his back. Edward reached over and turned down the wick until it was nothing but a glow in the darkness. His need for her was like a palpable thing, the ache in him so deep he wondered already how he would ever extricate himself from this.
But that was a problem for the morrow. He and Kate, they were the here and now. Edward jerked to his feet and began to slip loose the buttons of his breeches.
He heard the mattress creak behind him. “Edward—?”
He cut a glance over his bare shoulder. Kate was on her knees behind him, her fingers drawing up the hem of her nightgown. But her eyes were fixed upon his buttons.
“No,” he rasped. “Leave it on.”
Her hands fell. “Must I?”
He slipped the last button free. “Leave it on if you wish,” he clarified.
Apparently, she did not wish.
Seizing the hems in both hands, Kate stripped the thin cotton up and over her head, tossing it into the darkness behind him. His hands froze in the act of pushing down what remained of his clothing, and his throat seemed to catch.
The glorious silk curtain of her hair had slid over one shoulder to spill about her feet. In the candlelight, its chestnut sheen warmed to russet red. Her breasts were high and round, almost surprisingly full, with small, dusky-pink nipples already erect. He let his gaze trail down the soft swell of her belly, all the way to the thatch of hair between her thighs, and felt something carnal stir deep in his loins.
It was the male need to have her. To take. To dominate. To thrust himself inside Kate and worship her pure femininity.
He closed his eyes, shucked off what was left of his clothing, and crawled back onto the bed, taking her down into the softness with him. He kissed her again, slowly thrusting as his hand tangled in her silky hair. Kate began to move urgently against him, her hands moving hungrily if inexpertly over him.
After a time, he forced his breath to calm. Twisted the burning lust down with a fierce chokehold so that he might pleasure her properly. He rolled to one side and stretched out along her length to face her. He tilted up her chin with his finger. Kissed the tip of her perfect nose.
“Kate, love, are you sure?”
She nodded, and reached for him. “Oh, Edward,” she whispered, “I am so sure.”
It was the sound of his name on her lips that nearly broke him.
“I am sure of you,” she went on. “I am sure this is right.”
God help him, but he was sure, too.
And even then, Edward knew that a part of him was holding the truth at bay. He felt in that moment as if he could have remained by her side forever, lost in the sweetness of her. Lost in the solitude of this place, and the steady warmth of Kate’s gaze.
And he knew, just as surely, that it would never be. That he was taking what he did not deserve. Tainting, perhaps, a pure innocence. And for an instant, he felt the hot press of tears behind his eyes again.
“Make love to me,” she murmured. “Pleasure me. Please.”
He hadn’t the strength to say the word that honor required. Perhaps he hadn’t any honor at all. He did not know.
“I will, love,” he assured her. “In time. But you’re the sort of woman a man should love slowly.”
She reached for him then, but he caught her wrist, gently restraining her. Then he pushed her over, dragging his leg over hers. “Slowly, Kate,” he said again, his tongue flicking out to stroke her nipple.
“Aah,” she said.
Capturing her breast fully in his mouth, Edward suckled her, drawing the plump flesh into his mouth, then stroking the tip with his tongue. Kate cried out in the darkness, her hips arching hard beneath the weight of his thigh.
“Be a good girl,” he murmured, brushing his lips down her breastbone.
Instead, she tangled her fingers in his hair on a soft, needy cry.
He forced her to still with the weight of his arms and legs, kissing and suckling each breast in turn. She whispered his name. He was lost in the sound of her voice.
She was like no other woman he’d made love to before; he knew this even though he could remember no woman before her. He had the feeling that, even were his memory intact, he still could not have remembered them.
Kate sighed again, artless and eager. He wanted her; wanted, he feared, more than this mere moment in time. And when her hips began to arch restlessly, Edward set a hand alongside her inner knee and drew it slowly upward, skimming along flesh so warm and so soft he wanted to drown in it.
He drew the hand higher, until he reached the nest of curls that guarded her center. Kate’s eyes were closed now, her mouth open on a soundless cry. He stroked deep, almost brushing her nub.
“Open your eyes, love,” he whispered.
They flared wide, her pupils dilated in the darkness. “Edward,” she murmured.
“I want to touch you, Kate,” he said. “I want to make you mine.”
“Touch me,” she whispered, her eyelids heavy. “Touch me, Edward.”
On that, he plunged one finger into her and felt her body spasm with the shock. She moaned, a sound that was not a sound but something that vibrated from her deep into him. He stroked again and again. Kate’s breath sped up, one hand fisting in the sheets.
His thumb found the wet, trembling jewel and lightly stroked. Kate cried out, then murmured his name again. He felt caught in the madness. And foolishly, he let that deep urge to dominate get the better of him. He let himself say the thing that was not true; let himself make the promise—or the threat—he could not keep.
“Kate, this is mine,” he rasped. “Do you understand?”
She shut her eyes and nodded almost imperceptibly, her hair scrubbing the pillow.
His breath was coming hard now, his body focused on just one thing. Claiming her. “Do you understand?” he demanded. “If we do this—no, regardless—this is mine. You are mine.”
“Yes.” The word was soft, thready with need. She swallowed hard, her throat working up and down. “I am yours, Edward. Make it so.”
He pushed inside her again, two fingers now, his thumb lightly circling. Kate cried out, and began to pant, her head turning a little into the pillow. Again and again he moved, the silken muscles of her passage tugging at him. Urging him.
Desire throbbed inside him now; not just his cock but the whole of his being. He could not wait. He dragged himself fully over her, and pushed her knees apart with his own. Guiding himself between her legs, he pushed himself inside and felt her stiffen at the invasion.
“It’s all right, love,” he whispered, drawing out ever so slightly.
“I know,” she whispered, reaching up for him.
Edward lowered his weight onto her and took her mouth in a kiss both fierce and unyielding. A kiss that truly claimed her. He thrust deep, parrying her tongue, intoxicated by her taste.
He drew back and thrust his cock again. Kate cried out, and drew up her knees to cradle him. He set his arms rigidly against the mattress, lifted, and rocked into her, praying for strength.
It was as if Kate knew just how to madden him. Tilting her hips, she let her warm hands slide down his back, then down his buttocks, drawing him to her with unerring womanly instinct. He felt his body shudder, thrust again, and squeezed his eyes shut.
This was making love.
The thought flashed through his mind, clear as a lightning bolt.
This was rare. Singular and perfect. This, he dimly realized, was what it meant to be as one with a lover. Beneath him Kate was movin
g more urgently. Ruthlessly, Edward bit back his impatience and set a steady rhythm, matching his movements to hers. Kate made a sound of pleasure, and hitched one leg around his waist.
“Yes, love,” he crooned. “Show me what you need.”
“You.” Her nails raked his flesh, setting his back aquiver.
Each thrust was better, sent him spiraling higher, pushed him nearer the edge. He could fall in love with her, he realized; perhaps already had. He pushed away the truth that kept threatening, and followed her pace, determined to pleasure her. Determined to bind her to him.
She cried out, and arched hard against him. He stroked deep, and stroked again, urging himself against her at that sweet, perfect angle. And then her head tipped back into the pillow, and Kate shook beneath him, her flesh drawing his. Her fingers curled into the muscle of his buttocks, and her knees clasped his hips until the shuddering rush of pleasure finally slowed. Edward pushed deep one last time, and felt reality splinter.
It was as if his very soul rushed out of him with his seed, flooding like a relentless surge into Kate. He thrust again, felt the tendons of his neck and back draw taut as a bowstring. Felt Kate’s arms come around him, drawing him down and down and down.
Down into a cosmos that went beyond his understanding.
Down into her exquisite embrace.
CHAPTER 8
In Which Fendershot
Sets to Work
Still a little heavy-eyed from lack of sleep, Edward dined the following morning with Miss Wentworth, a little troubled she might somehow see the truth in his eyes. What would she say, he wondered, if she knew what he and Kate had done last night—all of last night—save for those last three or four hours spent in sweet oblivion?
She would not approve.
Hell, he did not approve.
But he’d done it, and given the chance would likely do it again, despite the fact that he could feel himself sliding near a perilous precipice. Though he was sure he’d bedded many beautiful women—and likely without a great deal of forethought—Kate was dangerous.
