“And I’m supposed to sleep next to you every night. And you used to sleep naked, in my arms, pressed against me. Can you imagine how I felt? I survived on very little sleep, I can tell you that.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Not oh, dear?”
She punched his shoulder. Then she stared at his coat buttons. They were brass, highly polished, and really rather nondescript, if the truth were told, but her look was one of fascinated interest.
“I want to know what you’re thinking, Arielle. But first, I think we should remove ourselves from the corridor. Would you like to take a stroll with me?”
The morning was warm, the light breeze warm. The scent of roses and hibiscus filled the air. They saw Joshua and Geordie in close conversation, and Arielle waved. Burke just shook his head when Joshua, that misogynist, grinned at her like a fool and waved back. Burke took her hand. “There is something I wish to discuss with you, but first, what were you thinking about before in the corridor? When you were staring so fixedly at the brass buttons on my coat.”
“I was thinking about how handsome you are and how well you are formed. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” He felt himself expanding on the spot. To hear her say that, it was more than any man could hope. It was certainly not what he had expected. He grinned at her as foolishly as Joshua had. “Thank you, Arielle.” He guided their walk toward the maple grove, a thicket of trees so dense and private that Burke had no doubt that every young set of lovers used it as a trysting place. “Now, let me tell you what I’m thinking. It’s serious, Arielle. Maybe too serious for right now. But you want me to give you a baby. And I think we have to resolve that before we begin our parental endeavors.”
He always mixed his speech with humor, she’d come to realize, even when he was at his most serious, and she warmed to it.
“You had no choice about our marriage,” he said after a moment. He didn’t look at her. “You were very ill and I decided that I wanted to marry you. Even if you died, I wanted you to be my wife if only for a little while.” He heard his own voice crack as he spoke and paused, trying to regain his control. “When the vicar needed your response, I ordered you to say ‘I do.’ Ordered, Arielle. You responded immediately to my stern tone, to my man’s command. I knew that you would. If I had been kind and good and gentle, you wouldn’t have responded to anything the vicar asked you. So, to get what I wanted, I used your fear against you. I used on you what Cochrane had used. Don’t misunderstand, I feel bad that I did it, but I’m not sorry. I wanted to wed you. I want you to be my wife until I die. But you had no choice in the matter. I want you to know that I won’t touch you sexually until you want me to. This, at least, is your choice. As I told you before, even when I was threatening you sexually, I had no intention of ever forcing you to do anything. I want us to be married in the most real sense of things, Arielle. But it is your decision.”
“Would you remain celibate forever if I didn’t wish you to touch me?”
He looked at her then. One brow arched upward a good inch. “Forever? Merciful heavens, you do know how to strip away the layers of things, don’t you?”
“Well, there was Laura What’s-her-name in London.”
“That was before we were married.”
“Well?”
“Probably not. Probably I would try everything in a man’s repertoire to seduce you. Wine, brandy, perhaps opium, diamonds, rubies, maybe even a puppy—”
She laughed. “Do stop that. You know I don’t want things like diamonds and rubies. As for opium, that’s awful. If I were drunk or drugged, I wouldn’t know what I was doing. I can’t imagine that would be any fun for you.”
He gave her a look so filled with hunger that she swallowed and quickly looked away at the small cluster of bluebells beside the path. She said, her eyes fixed on the toes of her shoes, “It’s very warm today.”
“Yes, but there is a light breeze.”
“Yes, there is. You know I am ugly.”
That drew him up. “What?”
“Ugly.” She looked up at him, straightly. “You’ve seen me without my clothes enough times to know how I look.”
He was tempted to pretend ignorance, to assure her that he thought her the most beautiful and perfectly made of women, which was indeed what he did think, but that wasn’t the point now. He had to go very carefully and, he knew, very honestly. “You mean the faint white lines from all the beatings Cochrane gave you?”
“Yes. You can see the—the marks if you look closely.”
“It’s difficult for me,” he said. “I see you naked and I see those marks and I feel such rage toward that old bastard that I would like to search him out in hell and kill him again. Then I look at you and I see the years of pain in your eyes, I see how deeply he hurt you, and I want to hold you and tell you no one will ever hurt you again, that you’re mine now, you belong to me. I want you to believe that the past is just that—in the past—and that you and I are together and we are the present and the future and it will be what we make it. That’s what I think about your so-called ugliness.”
“Why,” she said very quietly, her voice low and somehow distant, “didn’t you take me away with you when I was fifteen?”
He brought her tightly against him. “God, I wish I had, Arielle. I’ve thought it so many times, regretted so many times acting the noble and, I believed, honorable man. But I simply assumed that you would be here, a woman instead of a girl, yet still miraculously the same as you were at fifteen, and I would smile at you and we would wed and that would be that.” He shook his head at himself. “But it didn’t happen that way, and we cannot change the past. But we can look at it, then firmly put it where it belongs—behind us, and if not forgotten, at least no longer important.”
He kissed her then, a very gentle kiss.
He felt her breasts soft against his chest. He felt her arms go around his back. Then, to his besotted delight, he felt her lips part very slightly. He didn’t deepen his kiss, nor did he thrust his tongue into her mouth. Very slowly, he ran his tongue along her lower lip. Her taste was sweet, seductive, and he was hard and trembling with need for her. But he was a man, not an uncontrolled boy.
He felt the instant she responded. He felt her body change. It was as if something deep inside her loosened, opened, and he knew in that precious moment that she was no longer wary of him, that she no longer feared any part of him. Her lips parted more fully, and he nearly moaned with the pleasure of it when her tongue tentatively touched his.
“Arielle,” he said, his voice warm and deep.
Her arms tightened around his back. She rose onto her tiptoes to fit herself better against him. He felt her soft belly pressing against his sex, now hard and straining against his breeches. And he thought: She trusts me, at last she trusts me. And his kiss deepened and grew more possessive. She took his passion, his vibrant and urgent need, and gave herself over to it, giving him not only her own need but the suppressed feelings of that young girl so long ago.
Arielle had never before known that a kiss could be like this. Changing and deepening, teasing for a while, then so sweet she wanted to cry from the wonder of it. She felt the power of it in her heart, making her want to know him—his taste, the planes and angles of his body, the softness of his flesh, the hard muscles of his belly, all of him—and mixed with those elusive feelings were the stark, pounding sensations burgeoning in the pit of her stomach. It was a kind of ache, a strange compulsion to press herself against him, not to just know him but also to feel all of him, his maleness, to bring him into herself. And there was no fear, no hesitancy, only her sense of wanting and of discovery.
She moaned, softly, and both of them started. He raised his head just a bit and smiled down at her. “That is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in my life.”
He kissed her again. She felt his hands sweep down her back, drawing her even closer. She felt his hands cup her and lift her and rub himself against her. It left her feeling
hollow with near frantic urgency. She drew in her breath and moaned again.
He was kneading her hips, pressing and moving her against his sex, and she jerked, unable to help herself, and dug her fingers into his back.
“Burke.” Her voice was thin and excited.
He kissed her chin, her eyes, her lips, then lifted her into his arms. “It’s time I had my way with you,” he said, and she laughed and hugged her arms around his shoulders. He felt her head on his shoulder. He felt her trust flowing over him. He felt like a god, a king, and better than even that, he felt like a man and her husband.
He walked deep into the maple grove. It was silent and the leaves were so thick overhead that the sun could only penetrate in thin, glittering slices, cutting the still air in silver arcs.
He stopped finally and eased them both down, letting her feel the length of his body, his hardness, his size. “It is your decision. Do you want me, Arielle?”
She said nothing. He felt her fingers on the buttons of his shirt, then on his bare chest, gliding over him, learning him. She smiled up at him. “Just a moment,” he said and nearly ripped his coat jerking it off. He spread it on the soft mossy ground. “Clothes,” he said. “So many wretched layers.”
They undressed each other, or at least they tried to, with awkward movements and clumsy attempts that made them laugh. Burke thought, as he fought with some buttons on her gown, that he was a fool not to wait until they were in bed. He was still wearing his breeches, his boots tossed haphazardly atop her petticoat when she was naked. He stopped cold. He looked at her, all of her. Slowly, he reached out his hand and gently cupped her breast. He closed his eyes a moment, lifting her breast, feeling her. “So lovely,” he said. Then he cupped both breasts, smiling at her, his thumbs lightly caressing her.
He held her tightly against one arm, his other hand moving downward, searching, and he found her, and she was hot and soft and he groaned.
“I feel funny,” Arielle said, clutching his shoulder. “I feel very funny.”
She raised her face for his kiss and he obliged her. He tasted her rising desire as his fingers stroked and caressed her. He felt her move against his fingers, and it was natural and giving. When he was breathing so heavily he couldn’t bear it, he removed himself from her. She looked at him, her eyes slightly glazed, her lips parted, her breath coming in short gasps. He wanted her to know that he would still stop if she wished it. She stared at his face, saw the tenderness in his eyes, his urgent, naked desire for her. “Burke,” she said very quietly and opened her arms to him.
“You won’t ever fear me,” he said, leaning over to kiss her. As his tongue gently slipped between her lips, his fingers again began to caress her, and she cried out, her hips jerking upward.
He knew then that no matter how urgent his own need, he would control himself. He kissed her breasts and felt her response. “You like that,” he said, his breath hot against her flesh.
“Just a little bit,” she gasped. Then he took her nipple and suckled, and she thought she couldn’t bear it. The feelings were too much, too strong, too intense. She cried out yet again into his mouth. His fingers were now rhythmically stroking her and she found herself moving naturally against them, pressing upward, showing him what she wanted. When her body bowed, arching desperately, when the sensations were nearly painful, she cried out his name, lost in the pleasure of her body and the pleasure that was in him as well.
He watched her as she climaxed, watched every reaction, felt her release flow through him. She’d looked so surprised. So wondering. She was his now. Forever.
When she quieted, he lifted himself over her and without a word, without warning, came into her in one powerful stroke. As he broke through her maidenhead he kissed her, clasped her tightly against him, and absorbed her cry of surprised pain. When he was deep inside her, when she sheathed him, held him tight and warm, he eased down on his elbows above her. Her skin was slick with perspiration and he breathed in the air, feeling it swirl through him, the smell of the sweet mossy ground, the smell of the maple leaves, the smell of their sweat, and the smell of sex.
“Look at me,” he said.
She opened her eyes.
“No more pain.”
Arielle raised her hand and lightly traced her fingertips over his face. “No, there isn’t any. You’re beautiful, Burke.”
He quivered, his eyes closing against the incredible feelings she roused in him. She was so tight and small and—He gritted his teeth. “Don’t move. Please, don’t move.”
“All right. Burke?”
“Yes?”
“You are so deep inside me. This intimacy business is a very strange thing.”
“Oh, God,” he said, trying desperately to control himself, but it was too late, far too late. He’d wanted to try to bring her with him again, to give her more pleasure, to give her more of himself, but he felt himself heaving and jerking in his need, felt himself shattering over her and into her, pouring his seed deep inside her and giving her all that he was, promising her all that he would ever be.
And she took him and held him and welcomed him.
Eighteen
“Burke?”
He tried to gain control of his breathing and managed to grunt.
“What happened to me?”
He came up on his elbows, relieving her of his weight. Her hair was tangled about her face, her eyes were luminous and vague, and her mouth looked so tender he leaned down and kissed her. He tried to ignore the very real fact that he was deep inside her and he wanted her again.
He saw her brow furrow.
“What happened to you? Now, that’s an easy question to answer. You seduced me.”
She smiled at that and moved just a bit to accommodate him more easily.
“Don’t.” He sucked in his breath. “Don’t move like that, Arielle. It does things to me.”
She tightened her arms around his back. “And that would mean, then, that you would do more things to me.”
“Exactly.”
“Burke, what happened? It was like pain, only it wasn’t, and I wanted more and more and then I felt like everything inside me just blew up, and I wasn’t really me anymore but you were there and with me and part of me, and it was, well, it was wonderful.”
He couldn’t speak for a moment. Finally, as he stroked her hair from her forehead, he said, “That is what lovemaking is supposed to be like between a man and a woman.” He thought of the succession of women whose beds and bodies he’d visited, and shook his head. “No, not really like that, not really so very intense. But that is what it is supposed to be like between us, Arielle, because there is love. Never pain or humiliation or dominance or any of those things. Just giving and taking pleasure and more pleasure, like some sort of magical bonding. Now, I don’t want to squash you into the moss.” He eased out of her, feeling her flinch slightly.
She raised her hand and pressed it against his chest. “Even sweaty you feel marvelous.” She breathed in deeply. “And the smells. The smell of man, the smell of Burke—”
“And the smell of Arielle, lavender and sweet and sweaty and earthy and covered and filled with the smell of me.”
“Yes,” she said. She missed him, the fullness, the sweet pressure. Then she felt sticky and wet, and she brought her thighs together.
“Hold still, sweetheart.” He reached over and pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket. He wiped his seed from her, holding himself back with all the inner strength he possessed. He had to wait; he had to give her time. She’d responded so wonderfully to him. He hadn’t expected it, at least not before he’d begun kissing her, and after he’d begun, he simply hadn’t thought about it, which was probably just as well. If he had thought about it, he would probably have been so worried about hurting her that he would have frozen up and been anything but natural. But they’d both been natural. He thought of the fantasies he’d had of her for three long years, those sometimes stark images that were replete with the intense sexual plea
sure she would give him, and now, now that she was his, it had happened and it was so. But what he hadn’t imagined was the searing, nearly violent need deep inside himself, the core of himself that he hadn’t known was lacking until she filled it with her real self, not with the girl of his fantasies and dreams who had merely sustained him for those three years.
He said, his voice deep, so deep and tender that it filled her, “Will you stay with me now?”
She looked away from him, over his head, at the glittering spears of sunlight. She told him one truth, one that neither of them could deny. “I would have no place to go to. Nesta and Alec are no longer in Boston.”
“True, but they will be traveling soon to Northumberland, to Carrick Grange.”
“No, I wouldn’t go with them. I shouldn’t like to be a poor relation, and since I have no money, that is what I would be.”
He waited. She looked up at him finally, and her eyes were questioning. Of herself, of him he didn’t know. “I think,” she said at last, “I think I want to stay with you.”
He reached over, his fingertips lightly touching her breast. Soft, she was so soft. Slowly, he lowered his head and tested her. He suckled and caressed until he felt the answering response in her. He smiled and blew gently on her heated skin.
“Do you know something, Arielle? If I had taken you when you were fifteen, married you—doubtless against your father’s wishes, and you can be certain you would have felt very guilty about that—and brought you with me to the Continent to be an officer’s wife, you and I would have been vastly different with each other. You would have been open and loving and sweet and very, very young, and I probably would have acted something like a benevolent parent, loving you certainly, yet seeing myself as responsible for raising you and thus ordering you about and treating you more like a child than a woman and a wife.
“I can’t imagine that you would have liked that very much, at least after a while. Who knows? Perhaps you would have kicked me out, taken my horse, and left me with just the tent and Joshua.”
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