by Louise Allen
‘Certain?’ He stood up knowing his body was reviving, realising he was not ashamed when her eyes lowered to look at the evidence.
‘Yes,’ Laurel said. ‘Positive.’
Have I’ve fallen in love with him? she wondered as Patrick took her hand and helped her back onto the bed. Is this just lust and desire, gratitude that he has saved me? How do I tell? This is all so new and I was so frightened, and then he came and saved me. I don’t understand it, I just know I want him.
‘You are lovely,’ he said as he touched her cheek, then came to lie beside her. She hugged the realisation of her feelings in her heart. ‘I wanted you so much. Too much. I must have shocked you.’
‘It was exciting,’ she murmured. He did not appear to want to kiss her, or hold her yet. Perhaps they could talk a little. She snuggled against the pillows and he leaned back beside her, still in his shirt, his arm just touching hers. ‘It was like dancing.’ Patrick nodded, his hand curling into hers, sending shivers along her nerves. ‘Choreography that we had to make up by instinct as we went along.’
‘Making love is all about two instincts working together,’ he said. ‘I felt instinctively that we were attuned, that first meeting in Martinsdene. I opened my chamber door in the inn and there you were and I don’t think I’ve been breathing right since.’
‘You didn’t say anything,’ she said. ‘Or do anything.’
‘I was working. And you were a respectable young woman risking your reputation to help your friends. To have done anything would have been wrong.’ There was just the hint in his voice that told her that if she had not been a respectable unmarried girl, things might have been very different. He must lead an interesting life, she thought, sending him a flickering, speculative glance from beneath her lashes.
‘I wish I had been closer to them—Bella and Meg and Lina.’ Laurel curled round so she was close against Patrick’s side and could rest her head on his shoulder. They fitted well, she thought. It felt so comforting to have the warmth and solidity of a man to lean on. How long was it since someone had held her? ‘But their father, the Reverend Shelley, is such a tyrant. He did not encourage friendships of any kind. Meg was the most rebellious though, that is how I know her best. She was the one who would escape for walks and befriend the local girls like me. I was so happy for her when I heard she had run off with Lieutenant Halgate. You are sure he was killed?’
Against her cheek she felt him nod and sighed. ‘At least she is safe now, back in England. But Lina—I cannot bear to think she met this fate with no one to save her.’ Lina had always been the timid sister: how could she have survived this terror, this brutality?
‘And Arabella, the elder,’ he said, and Laurel suspected it was an attempt to distract her from Lina’s fate. ‘At least you found some gossip about her that I had not been able to glean.’
‘Only that she had been seen weeping in the woods, the day before she vanished. Only a week or so before when I met her she had seemed transformed—glowing with happiness, although she tried to hide it. I wondered if there was a man—but there couldn’t have been: no one saw or heard of one.
‘And it was so unlike Bella—she was always the calm one, the dutiful daughter, the one who endured their father’s bullying.’ She sighed, thinking of Meg and her two lost sisters and her own, startling, precarious, happiness. ‘Will you ever find them, do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I don’t give up.’
‘You can’t work miracles,’ she said, reaching up to touch his cheek.
‘Perhaps not.’ He looked down at her. ‘But I can recognise one when I see it.’ And he bent to kiss her.
Chapter Four
‘You taste good.’ The words were breathed against her lips. Laurel started to answer him and his tongue probed into her mouth. It was startling and intimate and all the aches and tremors that his body had stirred in hers came back in a flood.
How quickly she was learning the taste of him, the feel of him. How quickly her body was learning to respond. Laurel opened to him and kissed back, tangled her tongue with his to explore and to taste and to tease.
The rumpled sheets beneath her slid like silk as she moved, restless and yearning; her hands wandered, touched, experimented, savouring the novel feel of male skin at her fingertips. Patrick was smooth over hard muscle in some places and in others there was crisp hair to run her fingers through. Muscles, so clearly defined, moved as he shifted his weight until he was leaning on one elbow, bending over her, and Laurel closed her eyes, floating deliciously on sensation and trust and delight.
She felt shy again; more than a little nervous, if truth be told. Already, lovemaking was more overwhelming than she had ever imagined—and she was still a virgin. She knew it would hurt and she would have to be brave about that.
Patrick’s mouth found hers again, and she slid one hand into his hair, worried that he might stop kissing, even for a second. While he kissed her she did not have to think, only to respond and feel. His free hand moved down, found her breast and moulded it, catching the nipple between his fingers, tugging and squeezing until the pleasure had her whimpering against his mouth, arching her body, wanting to feel his weight over her again.
‘Impatient?’ he said wickedly, raising his head.
‘Desperate,’ she panted. And it was true, even if she felt a cowardly anxiety for the frightening part to be over.
‘Hmm. These things shouldn’t be rushed.’ Patrick slid off the bed, leaving her to sit up with a gasp of protest.
‘It is all right for you,’ she said, frustrated indignation overcoming the tattered remnants of modesty. ‘You’ve…. You’ve…’
‘Come is the word you are looking for,’ Patrick said, opening drawers and rummaging.
‘Oh.’ Blushing, she stored that away. ‘What have you got there?’
‘Things to play with,’ he said, turning with a grin, his hands full of silken cords. ‘Things to deal with impatience.’
Laurel eyed him suspiciously as he padded across the floor toward her, his hands fashioning two loops as she watched. He was going to tie her up. Her wrists felt the ghost sensation of the cords that had tethered her to the pillars. This is different, she reminded herself firmly. This is Patrick.
‘Do you trust me, Laurel?’ he asked, sitting beside her.
‘Yeeess,’ she said, drawing the word out into three doubtful syllables that had him laughing. She had not seen him laugh before. It took years off his age, revealing a carefree, amused man without, it seemed, a worry in the world. She found herself smiling back as she offered him her hands. Trust. ‘Yes.’
He looped the soft silk around one wrist, threaded it through the rail of the headboard, then captured the other. ‘Now then.’ He slid to her feet, making her arch up to try and watch him. Defeated by the ropes she fell back. ‘Are you ticklish?’
‘No. Oh! Oh, that is my toes—why does it feel so good…’
He sucked each toe, his clever fingers caressing her instep, her ankles, until she was wriggling, torn between laughter and something else entirely. He shifted until he was kneeling between her feet and then began to lick, slowly, thoroughly, up her legs, his tongue curling hot and wet behind her knees to make her gasp, his hands pressing her thighs apart until she lay shamelessly open to him. She tugged, tried to free her hands and could not. What was he doing? Surely he could not get any satisfaction from this?
‘Patrick! Set me free—I want to touch you.’ And then she understood: he wanted to touch her just as much. He wanted more than simply that final culminating pleasure: he wanted hers as much as she wanted his. Making love. She had never realised why it was called that before; she had thought it just a pretty euphemism.
‘I know. You will just have to be patient.’ He was laughing, she could hear it in his voice.
‘This is torture!’ she protested, gasping with the impossible pleasure of it and whatever was twisting, knotting, inside her. She tugged, but the silk held her fast and that, in itself,
was exciting. She was powerless and he could do what he wanted. But he was eager and aroused and she had done that to him—and that was her power.
The licks turned to kisses and tiny nips as he worked up her thighs, his fingers sifting into the tangle of hot, moist curls, opening her there, too. ‘Oh!’ It felt shamefully intimate. She knew she was blushing, could feel him looking at her. Does he get pleasure from looking at me like this? Do I please him? He will stop now, she thought, come up the bed and… ‘Ahh!’ A long finger slid between the secret folds. She felt how wet they were and blushed deeper, even as she writhed with the pleasure of it.
The finger slid into her, then another, flexing and stretching and caressing the tight channel. It was almost pain, but not quite. It was unbearable and yet she could bear it—somehow. She want to press down, to tighten around him but did not dare. In a minute it will not be his fingers, she thought, feeling the flicker of fear again.
Then, as she lay there, quivering with an apprehension that was part pleasure, part trepidation, he kissed her, deeply, intimately, so that she arched up from the bed, sobbing, and his lips and his tongue were at the core of her, driving her up into delight until, when the world stopped spinning, he was lying over her, his lips on hers.
How long had she drifted? she wondered, floating down to earth to find him freeing her hands, leaving the rope looped over the headboard.
‘I…I came?’ she asked, trying out the new word.
‘Yes.’ He flopped down on the pillows next to her, looking smug. Laurel gradually surfaced through the ripples of pleasure, a wicked idea coming to her. She rolled over onto one elbow and found that his head was resting on his loosely clasped hands. She took one, kissed the pulse point, leaned over and kissed the other wrist.
Patrick’s lids closed and he made a sound like a purr. Like lightning she whipped one loop over his right wrist, one over his left. He opened his eyes with an outraged roar and she wriggled off the bed, half terrified by what she had done. ‘Let me go!’
‘Don’t you trust me?’ she teased. His eyes as he looked at her seemed strangely unfocused and she realised that he was finding this extremely arousing, whatever he might say. One glance down at the powerful erection rearing up from the tangle of dark curls confirmed it. ‘Methinks you protest too much, sir,’ she said, trailing one finger up the length of him before she ran to the dresser.
‘Of course I— Leave that alone!’ But she was already digging into the open drawer.
‘What is this? Oh!’ Laurel dropped the intricately carved ivory object back into the drawer with a thud. Why would anyone want… No, don’t think about it.
Feathers. She picked up a handful and regarded Patrick thoughtfully over a bouquet of them. Sauntering back to the bed, she dropped them one after another onto his struggling body and watched the effect. Yes, that was a most satisfactory response. If she brushed the ostrich plume down his chest he moaned and his nipples hardened. She lifted it from his body and let it drift down her own torso. When she opened her eyes, panting slightly, Patrick’s were fixed on her. He licked his lips as though they were dry. His eyes promised things she could only guess at. He had played these games before, that was quite clear.
Laurel dropped the plume, got her unsteady legs under control then went back to investigate further, pulling out another drawer.
Books, with pictures. She leaned down and thumbed through. Her mouth went dry. Oh, my. Perhaps not. Not yet…
The next drawer was full of coiled leather.
‘Oh, no. Absolutely not,’ Patrick said as she pulled out a long whip, its thong trailing across the floor. His hands clutched at the rope in a futile effort to break it as she gave an experimental flick. The crack made both of them jump.
‘No,’ Laurel agreed with some feeling, dropping the whip. Then her fingers found a mass of soft ribbons and she pulled it out. Not ribbon: long shreds of suede were attached to a handle. She eyed it with interest and came back to the bed. There was so much to learn about her own body, about his, but she was beginning to grasp the basic principles. Caress, tease, titillate.
‘Don’t you dare,’ Patrick warned, straining against his bonds. His body, Laurel thought, was magnificent. Dressed, he was tall and lean and moved elegantly. She was still fascinated by how, naked, that leanness revealed itself as hard, fit muscle.
‘But you can’t do anything.’ Laurel trailed the ribbons over his feet, up his leg. She bent over and blew, sending the feathers into the air and removing his last protection. She trailed the suede strips higher, watching his muscles tighten and bunch, his erection grow in the nest of dark curls.
‘You like this,’ she stated when he growled at her and she flicked the implement, raining dozens of feather-light blows across his groin and stomach. ‘Oh, yes, do not deny it. Perhaps I should get that other whip after all.’
Patrick moved so fast that she had no chance of escape. His legs came up, caught her in a tight grip that pulled her to him, trapping whip and feathers between them. He succeeded in catching one loop with the opposite hand and twisted the wrist free. Then she was under him.
‘Wicked,’ he said and grinned. Then the amusement faded away and they lay there, silent, reading each other’s eyes. ‘You are sure?’ he asked after an aching minute. ‘Laurel, my darling. You are quite sure?’
‘Yes.’ Never more sure of anything, Laurel thought. Then she saw the expression of possessive tenderness in his eyes and was suddenly shy. ‘Patrick?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, sounding as though he understood. He rolled off and began to kiss her—slow, drugging kisses—as his hand stroked lower until he was cupping the mound between her thighs. Laurel gasped as she pressed against his palm, aware that she was hot and wet and aching for him. ‘It will be all right. See—your body knows what to do.’
Laurel wrapped her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in the angle of his shoulder and neck and he laughed, a low, husky sound as his weight shifted over her. She opened for him, wondering at the way her body made a cradle for his, wondering at how slow and careful he was being after the urgency of their lovemaking before.
This was the moment she had been frightened of, she realised, aware of him nudging against her. But this was Patrick and this was right, her body knew. Her mind was still capable of surprise though, she found, gasping at the pressure, the intimacy, the heat. Her hands slid down to his waist, holding him, urging him on when he seemed to hesitate, just at her entrance.
‘Laurel?’
She was not certain what he was asking. Permission? His eyes frowned a little, his jaw was rigid with tension. But she said, ‘Yes,’ trusting him, and he took her mouth as he surged within her, filling her utterly, sweeping away the moment of pain with his strength. He was still again and she struggled to deal with this new feeling, with the fullness, the awareness that they were joined. Tentative, she found new, unused muscles and squeezed.
‘Laurel,’ Patrick said again in a voice she had never heard him use, his hips moving under her hands as he thrust into her, catching her up in his rhythm, making her gasp and sob with the intensity of it. ‘Come with me, Laurel. Come with me, my darling Laurel.’
And sensation splintered and she heard his voice mingling with hers and she was flying, clasped close to his body, and then sinking down, limp and replete and safe in his arms into darkness.
Chapter Five
Laurel woke to the sensation of cool and dampness. When she opened her eyes she found Patrick sponging her body carefully with a linen towel, his face intent, his hands gentle. ‘You’re awake.’ He dropped the cloth back into the basin and she saw he was draped, Romanlike in a sheet.
‘Yes.’ What was he thinking behind those warm hazel eyes? Regret? Disappointment at her lack of skill? Or did he remember their lovemaking with pleasure? She found herself too shy to ask. ‘What time is it?’
‘A quarter past three. We’ll need to wait a little longer—to four perhaps. I rang the bell and someone came�
�it took a while, but they were fully awake.’ He gestured at a side table. ‘I ordered wine and some food and I asked for something for you to wear.’
‘Really?’ Laurel wriggled up against the pillows. ‘Didn’t they want to know why?’
‘I implied that I wanted the fun of taking clothes off you again.’ Patrick grimaced and held up a skimpy gold silk gown and a pair of fragile kid slippers. ‘This is what they brought. Not exactly the thing to wear to escape notice on the streets, but better than the rags of that shift and bare feet. You can use the shawl you found in here earlier, as well.’
He busied himself at the table and came back with wine and a plate with a chicken leg and some bread and butter. ‘When did you last eat?’
‘I don’t know,’ Laurel said ruefully as she reached for the meat, her mouth watering. ‘There was a rather ghastly pie at an inn where the stage stopped. Since then, I haven’t had much appetite. I tried to force something down because I needed the strength.’ Most of it had come straight back, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
‘How the devil did you get here, anyway? I know you wanted to go to Falmouth to find work and see Meg, but how exactly were you tricked into coming here?’ Patrick filled his own plate and came to sit at the foot of the bed.
‘I got off the stage at the Belle Sauvage inn and I was looking around to see if I could work out where to go for the next stage and this respectable woman offered to show me,’ Laurel said through a mouthful of bread and butter. ‘The next thing I knew I was bundled into a carriage with the blinds down.’ She swallowed, controlling the remembered panic. ‘I bit someone.’
‘Good,’ Patrick said, leaning over to fill up her glass. ‘I am sorry I shouted at you and said you were foolish. These people are plausible and ruthless—it was not your fault. So they brought you here and you saw me and thought the worst.’
‘I thought…’ Lie, don’t let him know you doubted him, something said inside her. But this was Patrick: she couldn’t lie to him. ‘I thought—just for a second—you had come to rescue me. And then I realised that was impossible. I thought you were one of them, one of the men who would… I am so sorry.’
