Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  She shook her head. Confusion, mixed with desire clouded her eyes, as she urged him to speak.

  “I am a monster,” he said through stiff lips. “I am scarred.” The fire lit by St. Cyr’s misfired volley had badly burned the upper portion of his chest and singed the hair from his ruined body.

  “Oh, Derek,” she whispered. She leaned up once more and took his lips in such a fleeting, gentle kiss, that emotion stirred in a heart she, in her short time here, had proven was very much alive. “How can you still not see? You are beautiful for the sacrifices you made.” She shoved his coat off and touched her lips to the skin exposed above the fabric of his white shirt. “You are beautiful for the courage to survive such pain and despair.” She slid his shirt up and the cool night air slapped his skin. Shame licked at him. With his disfigured body and missing eye, he was the beast Society whispered of and she deserved more than to lie with a monster. He made to pull back but she pressed her lips to his chest and the fight went out of him on a sharp exhalation. Lily stretched her arms up to divest him of his shirt. She tossed it to the floor and then froze.

  The clock ticked away the moments. Seconds stretched onto minutes, which may as well have been hours. Never before had he been so exposed before another and, now with her eyes trained on the red and white puckered flesh, he was open to this slip of a woman in ways that left him shaking.

  “Oh, Derek,” she whispered. His body went taut as she moved, braced for her flight. He’d not blame her. He understood the horror, the fear, and yet, he’d mourn her loss the way he mourned the loss of that very flesh.

  Except… A hiss slipped from his teeth. “What are you doing?” he rasped.

  “Shh.” Lily touched her lips to the scarred and marred skin.

  His body convulsed at that tender caress. “I am a monster.”

  “You are a man and a beautiful one,” she said quietly, trailing kisses over the burns that had nearly ended him and the ones he’d spent so many years wishing had finished him for good. Better to die on that field, than to return to this cold, lonely world where all feared him and most whispered of him.

  Only, she did not. She touched him and spoke to him in ways that reminded him of all the wondrous reasons that life was worth living. Derek closed his eye and raised trembling hands. He cupped her neck as she continued to move her lips over his body. “Men are not beautiful,” he whispered.

  Lily paused in her ministrations and looked up. He wanted to cry out in protest and plead with the last vestige of his pride for her to continue. “No. Most are not.” She placed her mouth against the flat disc of his nipple. “But you are.” He’d thought her a siren or a temptress, but the truth was she was something more. She was an angel who’d come to heal. A rusty smile turned his lips up, unrestrained and painful for the lack of use. And this from a man who’d embraced the dark and commiserated with the devil all these years.

  Lily froze and with a question in her expressive eyes met his stare “What is it?”

  “It is—” Everything. You are everything. You are hope and happiness, and the taste of living, and I am a man long starved, aching to feast on that offering. “For the first time, I feel alive,” he said quietly.

  Chapter 18

  How were their thoughts a mirror harmony of one another’s? This was the first he’d felt alive? Being here in his home and in his arms, this was the first she’d ever felt alive, as well.

  Because of him.

  She’d lain with two men and neither of them with their hurried, thoughtless touches had caused this liquid heat to pool between her thighs and fueled her with desperation to know…more. Lily lay back upon the smooth surface of his desk and held her arms up.

  Unhesitantly, Derek covered her in one fluid motion. His lips were everywhere; working over her neck, her breasts. The drag of his mouth teased with the promise of more, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. Then he laved the sensitive tip of her breast and she screamed, her voice echoing off the high ceiling.

  As he worshiped that tender bud, heat spiraled through her and the throbbing grew to an incessant, inexplicable ache. One she did not understand; one that left her oddly empty and desperate, and frantic for surcease. He made to pull away and she wrapped her arms tight about him. “Don’t,” she rasped. Derek offered her the first taste of passion, a passion she’d never imagined herself capable of and she selfishly wanted it to go on forever. “Don’t stop.” How many entreaties had she made in her life? This, however, was the most meaningful. This was the pleading that had led Adam and Eve to that fabled fruit. It was driven not of despair and fear but of a pulsating rapture and bliss that threatened to consume her and one she desperately craved.

  “You are perfection.” Derek’s breath stirred against the swollen nipple. “You are all things beautiful.” He layered his cheek against her breasts. “Your beauty reaches to your soul.”

  His voice gravelly and tender words, rolled together raised tears. She’d spent so long hating herself that she’d begun to believe herself ugly in all the ways that mattered. Uttered in that gruff tone, she could almost believe he saw perfect in her imperfect soul. Would he still see my soul as beautiful if he knew what brought me into his life? Lily jerked.

  “What is it?” He picked his head up and probed her with his eye.

  She gave her head a shake. “I—I want to know all of your touch.” Despite the others to come before him, this was the first time she’d spoken those words in truth. With the one bumbling time she’d known George, there had been pain and awkwardness. With her protector, she’d simply been a receptacle for his lust. He’d not cared of, or about, her pleasure.

  Unlike Derek.

  Love suffused her heart. I love him. My God, I love him. Later there would be time for the proper terror. For now, this moment was all that mattered.

  “And you shall, love.” Her heart caught at that endearment. A slow, seductive grin curved his lips, hinting at the man he would have been years earlier; a rogue, a charmer, who could capture hearts and bodies and leave a lady quivering with the force of her desire. And irrationally, even with her own sordid past, she hated every single one of those women for having known pleasure at his hands, wanting this exchange to be just as special to him as it was to her.

  He returned his attention to her body. He swirled his tongue around her navel and her hips shot off the desk. “Derek!” How could such an innocuous movement have this maddening effect on her senses? The softness of his mouth on her belly like satin dipped in sunshine with a power to burn her from the inside out. He continued on. His mouth hovered above the apex of her thighs. Lily pushed herself up on her elbows as he rubbed his cheek over the curls shielding her from his attentions. “Wh-what…”

  “Shh,” he whispered.

  And then a keening cry ripped from somewhere deep inside her as he buried his face between her legs and thrust his tongue into the hot, wet heat created by his mastery. He moved his expert mouth, like a skilled swordsman with a rapier. Desire drained the energy from her limbs and her arms went out from under her, and she gave thanks for the hard surface at her back. She laid there, a bundle of thrumming nerves as her pressure built in her belly and spread lower to that place he now worshiped, capable of nothing but feeling. She was burning from the inside out and that blaze had driven back anything but that deliberate thrust and parry of his tongue. Derek thrust his tongue once more in a masterful invasion and an agonized groan spilled from her lips. Lily tangled her hands in his hair, holding him close. She’d served as a vessel for other men’s lust, but never had a single one of them taken the time to awaken her body as Derek did now.

  She wanted him to both stop and go on forever. She wanted him to continue nibbling at the nub of her womanhood and thought she might die from a blissful explosion if he did. Passion swamped her senses as a thick cloud of desire darkened her vision, and then her body was climbing higher and higher in a way it had never soared before, and if he stopped, she would shatter into a million sha
rds of nothingness. And then he drew back. “No,” she cried out, thrusting her hips wantonly, pleading with her eyes to bring her whatever gentle gift he’d dangled before her.

  “Shh,” he whispered, dragging his mouth up the inner seam of her thigh, trailing his lips in a shameless promise up to her breast. “Trust me?”

  Her eyes slid closed. “I—” Lily’s words ended on a shocked gasp as he stood and shoved his breeches down.

  The protest died on her lips as he kicked them aside and then captured her in his arms. Cradling her against his chest, he limped across the room and then sat in that leather winged back chair he’d occupied a week, a lifetime ago? Upon her arrival here. He adjusted her so that her legs straddled his hips.

  A strand of sweat-dampened hair tumbled across his brow. Lily brushed it back. How had she ever been afraid of him? How had she seen a monster and beast when he possessed a tenderness that made mere men heroes?

  He cupped her neck and pulled her forward to avail himself to her mouth. They thrust their tongues in a matched rhythm and in a desperate bid to be closer to him, Lily pressed herself to his chest.

  He slipped his hand between her legs and she moaned into his mouth. Derek only deepened their kiss, swallowing that sound. His fingers continued their delicious dance within her so that she was rising higher once more, so near to attaining something she’d never known before…but she wanted more of him. She wanted more than the explosion of passion but rather wanted to know that explosion with him buried inside her.

  She parted her legs and came up on her knees over him.

  “Lily,” he rasped drawing back.

  “Shh,” she whispered as she took control of their loving. She slid forward and he shot his hands out. Clasping her hips he guided her down on his long, thick length. She slid her eyes closed at the absolute fulfillment as he stretched her, sliding inside until he was buried so deep she no longer knew where he began and she ended.

  Lily leaned close, savoring the pulsing of his shaft as it throbbed against the walls of her womanhood. A dark lock fell over his damp brow and she brushed it back, taking a moment to study him. His chest rose and fell rapidly and he clenched his eye tight as though he suffered the greatest pain. Her heart hitched. And yet, it was that very greatest pain, the kind where ecstasy and agony melded so reality ceased to be and only inexplicable feeling remained. She layered her palm to his cheek and he opened his eye. Her own passion and aching desire reflected in the sapphire depths. Then, with their gazes locked and no words between them, Lily began to move. She undulated over his rigid shaft, lifting her hips in a slow, deliberate rhythm that wrenched a groan from his throat. He clenched his eye tight, as though in blissful agony, and she knew because it was the most delicious kind of hurt and she wanted to forever know it with this man.

  Lily increased her speed, rising and falling over him. In and out. She bit her lip, wanting that elusive gift he’d held out, wanting it desperately.

  Then he raised her breast to his lips and suckled the engorged bud.

  A scream spilled from her as he worshiped the sensitive, swollen tip. He was relentless, sucking, drawing it between his teeth, and then he shifted his attentions to her previously neglected nipple. He rolled it between his thumb and forefinger, gently tugged at it, and with those movements, her pleasure spiked. He brought her up higher and higher once more so that all she wanted was to explode and then collapse into the promise of his touch.

  It fueled her movements and she ground against him with a franticness born of desire for him and his skilled ministrations.

  “That is it,” he groaned and claimed her lips again in a hard kiss. “Come for me,” he demanded.

  “I never…” knew this. For this magical meeting of their bodies, uttering those words slapped her with the reminder of who she’d been.

  He held her gaze. “You never what?” The eye that held hers belonged to an unrelenting military man who’d not have his questions or wishes gainsaid. He was possessed of a strength and power that liquefied her to the core, all the more.

  “I never knew it could be like this,” she whispered.

  A flare of masculine satisfaction lit that eye and then, caressing her buttocks with his strong hands, he rammed himself upward and he slid even deeper into her. She matched his movements. Sweat fell into her eye, stinging and blinding and she blinked it back needing to see him as her heart raced and her body raced ever onward, on to that elusive light.

  And then her body exploded about him and she was coming in long, rippling waves of white ecstasy so her body was reduced to a fire of pleasure that spread throughout her being. She was screaming and on a long, guttural groan he spilled himself, flooding her with his hot seed, and the pulsating length of him rang another blissful cry from her lips.

  Lily collapsed against him. Her breath came in quick, gasping spurts. Tears dotted her eyes as she buried her cheek against the hard wall of his chest matted with springy black curls. No man had ever cared whether she knew pleasure. For she hadn’t mattered. And in this, Derek had given her a gift. The gift of passion.

  When they’d come together, she’d convinced herself that theirs was just a meeting of bodies; a man and woman coming together of desire, wanting nothing more than the pleasure to be had in that intimate joining. Tears popped behind her lids and she pressed her eyes closed. Only she’d been wrong. A single tear escaped, lost against his skin, as reality intruded. For though he’d given her the gift of passion, she wanted something far more from this man—she wanted his heart.

  God help her.

  I love him.

  Chapter 19

  She is crying.

  Her tears trickled through the hair matting his chest. Derek fluttered a hand about her back. He’d been so alone in the world, he’d long ago ceased to believe there was another soul who could bear to be in the same room as him, let alone press their flawless body to his scarred one in this most intimate of ways. In his youth, he’d known how to soothe, cajole, and tempt. He was not that man. Using his body to bring a woman pleasure was a skill he possessed. Being anything more eluded him. For the simple reason he’d not had to be more—until Lily. Until she’d stormed into his life just a week earlier and made him yearn—for life and a kindred connection to another soul…and her.

  With Lily, he wanted to know the words to soothe her hurts. He wanted more than her body. He wanted to know the reason for those tears and how to drive them back.

  His chest rose and fell and he concentrated on his breathing and searched deep within himself to be more—for her, when he’d been nothing for anyone, in so very long.

  Derek settled his hands upon her back. Using one palm to hold her close, the other he ran up and down her spine in a smooth, rhythmic motion. Her tears came all the more, soaking him while her small, narrow shoulders shook from the depth of her emotion. And yet, not a sound left her lips and there was something gut-wrenching in her silent misery. How long had she been alone in her feelings?

  She brought her hands between them and curled them against her face.

  “Lily,” he whispered, wanting to take away her hurt, but not wanting to silence the deserved, cathartic cleansing of her tears.

  Her slender body shook like a fragile tree in a violent storm. And through it, he held her. She continued crying and the moments ticked by. Then on a shuddery sob, she stopped and curled on his lap the way a stray cat in search of affection might. Derek folded an arm about her shoulders and scooped her under the knees bringing her close. “Th-thank you,” she whispered.

  He stilled.

  “I—I did not believe it could be like this. I know I am a wh—”

  A strangled sound escaped him and he touched his fingertips to her lips, staying the remainder of those words. It was a sin that for the courage of her spirit that she’d only seen the darkest act she’d committed, an act of survival. And yet it should be, to her, as the most important part of who she was.

  “But it is true,” she whispered. �
�It is what I am.”

  Agony knifed at his gut. Those words uttered once more, in a decisive way where she’d played judge and executioner to herself for those acts. The same as he’d done to himself.

  How long had he spent hiding himself away from the world and living in these very walls perpetuating Society’s worst expectations of him? He looked a beast, therefore, he must be one. It had taken Lily and Flora to show him there were some who could see past the marks he wore upon his person and into the man he’d been and, more, the man he wanted to be.

  Derek continued rubbing small circles over her silken skin. “What you did to survive can never be undone,” he said at last. “Just as I cannot change what I did to—” His gut tightened. He’d not allowed himself to think of Christian, the Marquess of St. Cyr and Lord Maxwell in those lights any more since he’d been carried off the battlefield.

  Lily angled her head and looked up at him. “Your what?” she prodded with a gentleness that clogged his throat with pained emotion.

  “My friend,” the words came out gruff and harsh. Words he’d not uttered. His friend… Christian had been his friend, and hating so much what he’d been transformed into from that one unwitting accident, Derek had been unable to stomach the sight of either of the men he’d called friends.

  She cast a glance over at his desk. “The gentleman who wrote those letters.”

  He gave a curt nod. Before Lily, he’d have roared the townhouse down had anyone read those intimate missives. This, her knowing, had a sense of rightness. She belonged in his world and he ached to belong to hers.

  “Tell me,” she urged and just as though he’d known when she needed to weep, she knew he needed to share his life with someone.

  And God, he wanted it to be her. Derek drew in a shaky breath and searched his mind for a place to start. “We were young and foolish,” he began. Then, weren’t the two inextricably the same? In a man’s youth, he believed himself undefeatable and capable of nothing but greatness. One didn’t see their own mortality at the young age they’d been. Nay, man tempted fate with his recklessness, until fate ultimately proved the lie.