by Gwyn Cready
“I-I—”
She laughed, a rush of semiquavers that nearly undid him, and he turned to hide his emotion.
“Oh, Peter,” she said as if to an errant child. “There is paint on you.” And with a tiny sigh, she lifted her thumb and ran it across his cheek.
It was too much. He caught her hand to stop her, but the softness transfixed him. He held it, unmoving, between his palm and cheek, drinking in the heady warmth and cursing his foolhardy weakness.
“Peter.”
Small and pained, the word was like a bruise.
He kept his eyes closed, unwilling to see the look of shocked betrayal.
“Peter.”
This time the word was truer, deeper. It demanded his presence. He opened his eyes, and she looked at him, waves crashing in those sea blue eyes.
“I…must not,” he said, his mouth as dry as untempered pigment. “We cannot, I know.”
She pulled her hand free and laid it across his cheek. The last vestige of control left his head. In another instant he would be victim to a mindless, unrelenting urge. She must see the danger. She must.
But she paid no heed to the primitive need she’d aroused, for aroused he was. A primitive, carnal drumbeat pounded in his veins, and his hips ached to possess her.
She brought her face close, brushing a comet of sparks across his lips, and kissed him.
He groaned at the connection, her salty-sweet taste both a balm and a torture.
She was well schooled. Her tongue moved in his mouth like a whip, a plain invitation to the pleasures she offered and a shocking exposé of the pleasures she’d learned to bestow.
He wanted to strip her of those memories. He wanted to own those kisses, master that unapologetic mouth. There were ways to inhabit a woman from toes to forehead, leaving not a whit of space for rivals, to stir her slowly, make her a slave to her changing need, until her cries filled the room. But he also knew the price he would pay.
“Stop,” he said. “You don’t want this.”
* * *
But she did. It had been so, so long since she’d felt this, so, so long since she’d felt entirely at ease, the ground was slipping beneath her. She knew she should wait, had told herself as much no more than a moment before, but those lips had melted her resolve. It wasn’t a fair fight, though she was certain for Peter it wasn’t a fight at all.
His forthrightness, his unremitting honesty stripped her of any ability to object, and of any wish to. But with all the power, he must rule gently. He must not try to coax her beyond a few kisses. For if he did, they would both regret it.
A little more, she told herself. A little more. Peter will stop it before we’ve gone too far.
* * *
“Apparently I do want it.”
She laughed, a wicked, willing laugh, and Peter felt himself harden. He jerked the gown open, and she gasped. The sweet pink flesh tightened instantly. He drew his palm over its luxuriant stiffness.
“Tell me this pleases you,” he whispered.
Her lids came down. “Yes.”
He wished he could see her eyes. He wanted what he saw there to guide him. He pulled her close and their mouths locked. Hungrily he supped, his hands in her hair, her arms locked across his back. He could feel her need, more than mere carnality, and the storm of emotion it summoned in him was driving him to the edge of endurance.
“Did he hurt you?” He must know, and the taste of honey on her neck and ear made his need for the knowledge more urgent.
“Yes.”
“I hate him for that. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Does he love you?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will learn to endure it.”
He kissed her more and felt her tremble. If was as if she were coming to pieces, and he had to enclose her in his arms to protect her. Beyond them, the sky filled with light. One boom after another. He could feel reverberations deep in his chest and wondered if she could too. The crowds roared, and their joy floated out into the night.
He rose up and held her. “A night to remember.”
“Aye.”
He kissed her again, and she kissed back, hard and desirous, shaking him to the marrow. Drunk with an overpowering lust and joy, he brought his mouth lower and traced the edge of her shoulder. He ached to join with her, a soaring pain that ran up his back, squeezed his lungs, and bisected his heart. It was nothing but disordered, raw, terrifying need.
Her skin was warm and inebriatingly scented, and in a rush he was at her nipple, tasting at last what had haunted his thoughts this last hour. It hardened further at his touch, and he flicked his tongue roughly over the intricate bas-relief.
Desire screamed in his bones. Blindly he pulled, letting the urge take him, and her earthy, deep rumble frenzied him. The harder he pulled, the louder the sounds grew and the less rational his thoughts became.
His hands knew no master. Her hips ground under his brutish touch, and he desired only to tear them loose of the fabric that covered them. He fastened her hands at her back and bent her to his liking, jerking the bare breast upward. How he longed to plow her.
“Tell me,” he said, bringing his lips to her ear. “Tell me you want this.”
She did not answer, and he brought the nipple between his fingers and plucked.
She arched, a beautiful, rigid arch, and he plucked again. Her mouth fell open. Oh, how he wanted to employ it.
“You have not won me,” she whispered, eyes closed. “Not yet.”
He laughed and dropped to his knees. “Have I not?”
He rucked up the gown to her waist. In the blackness of the night he laid his palms on the amorphous patches of light that must be her thighs and brought his thumbs across the silky tufts at their nexus. Gently he rolled her bud. She gripped the railing, sounding her desire openly.
He would win her. She would rock every rooftop in London with the cries of her pleasure.
He brought his mouth to the bloom and kissed her, a slow, quivering kiss that sent a howl through his brain. She tasted of spiced summer fruit, and he drank deeply, paced by the rhythmic rocking of her hips.
Her fingers threaded his hair, urging him on, but he had better use for them.
He pulled free and waited until she opened her eyes.
“Show me,” he demanded.
For an instant she was confused, but when her eyes flashed understanding, he saw the explosion of desire that accompanied it.
“No,” she whispered, fearful.
“Aye.” He rubbed his chin along her thigh, their gazes still locked. “You showed me in the studio. Show me here.”
Two trembling fingers came down. He kissed them as they found their home, and he exalted in her moan. She moved slowly, but the lightest touch of his lips showed him the rhythm—her rhythm—and he supplanted her.
He was hard, harder than he’d ever been. The brush of his linen was like a sword’s thrust. He feared for his control and prayed his oblations would not leave him undone before he began.
Quick, hungry noises rose in her throat, and he paled. He must serve her as she deserved to be served. His balls, as tight as stones, pounded between his thighs. He needed to split her wide and plant his seed, perhaps in a single brute movement. It was a battle between his consciousness and his cock, and his cock was winning.
She fretted and cried, tightening around his tongue. He could bear no more.
He stood, jerking her from the balustrade.
He pressed her against the balcony wall, heedless of the hiss she made when her flesh met the cool brick. He flailed with his buttons. In an instant his breeks and linen were around his ankles.
He opened her skirts and lifted her knee. He knew the angle that would heighten her pleasure and pressed her to it. Her bud throbbed under his thumb, and her eyes were lik
e a wolf’s, alight with hunger. He grasped her waist and entered her with a thrust so fevered he swore he felt the brick behind her.
He plowed her hard. Eight, ten, twelve times. By the twentieth he prayed for his soul. It was a shameful, inelegant performance, but in half a dozen more thrusts her cries began to lengthen.
He stepped back, kicked his breeks free, and jerked her into his arms.
He could wait no longer.
* * *
His chest was hard, and every bone in her body ached. Her legs felt like putty, and she was glad she didn’t have to walk these last steps. He carried her to the seducing couch and dropped her roughly. He removed his shoes and stripped off his socks. Then he put one knee on the cushion, took the high-backed frame in his hand, and entered her.
With exquisite, hammering blows he filled her.
Her mind left. Only her animal instinct remained, and she anchored her foot wantonly on the arm of the couch, jerking her hips to meet him and letting the fire stoke her already scorched loins. Second peaks were rare, apocalyptical occurrences for Cam. Only twice in her life—never with Jacket—and both times she’d shamed herself with her willingness to abandon propriety for her need.
Her gown, still knotted, revealed both breasts openly. When Peter’s eyes came to rest on them, she drew a finger slowly across a nipple, feeling the luscious jolt. His eyes widened, and the pounding quickened.
“More,” he whispered.
She grasped each peak and plucked, and wild desire blossomed on his face.
He reared back, satyr-like, and drew the snowy shirt from his body, still driving himself into her. His chest was broad and taut, and a thick bronze pelt ran down to his thighs. He was more muscular than Jacket and thicker inside her. A Germanic god. And she had no greater wish than to have him bring her this second, otherworldly gift.
She felt the wave—enthralling and suffocating. Her breath caught, waiting for the world to explode. And just as the cataclysm began, he brought his stroking fingers to her. She launched into nirvana, her limbs searching for purchase. He caught her knees and gave one final, penetrating blow. She could feel him lose himself inside her. Again and again, he shuddered, each movement lengthening her ecstasy.
After a long moment, when the reverberations had slowed, he collapsed beside her, pulling her hips close and cupping her breasts. She was damp, and the cool November air from the open doors blew the faint perfume of their joining from the room.
Victories all around, yes?
She curled the toes still tingling from the action. Yes.
Yes?
Yes, dammit. Yes. From her tousled hair to the thump-thump of her heart to the mind-blowing serenity of her limbs, she had gotten everything she could have possibly wanted out of the exchange.
So why did she feel like crying?
The low table beside them held a drawer. He opened it without looking, pulled out a blanket, and with a flip of his arm, covered them both. The cashmere was crimson, like the couch, and the silk edge matched the pillow under her head.
Tools of the trade.
She’d offered herself shamelessly, and he’d used her just as she’d offered. There would be no more sittings, no portrait, no patient siege. The castle had been breached with nothing more than a well-used battering ram. And she herself had hurried to let down the drawbridge.
If she returned, it would not be to be painted or courted. If she came back, they would simply fall into bed, and in a few months the desire, satisfied, would fade. It would be just like the relationship she’d had with every other man in her life.
She was not one to wallow. She’d had her fun. She’d thought Peter would wait. He hadn’t, but neither had she. Now it was time to get the information that would help her with her book and get home.
The glow receded, replaced by a familiar emptiness.
Twenty-one
Part of Peter wanted to laugh or sing or grab her by the shoulders, roll her in the cashmere, and tell her how happy she made him. But the other part of him was terrified. He had used her ill. His performance had been loutish at best, brutish at worst. He had taken a gentlewoman, an affianced gentlewoman whose feelings for her husband-to-be had been made clear to him, and lowered her to the level of a courtier. However pleasured she might have been, no woman, in the sober light of day, would thank a man for that.
Unless, of course, her feelings for her husband-to-be were not what he imagined.
He stroked the satin skin of her hip and tried to keep his heart from haring off in three directions at once. Already he was constructing the inducements he might offer the Executive Guild to break a centuries-old ban and let him stay.
But she was so quiet, so still.
Everything depended on the next words from her mouth.
He settled his face into the edges of her hair, trying to lose himself in the gentle, clean smell without disturbing her. He wanted to kiss her, to seek reassurance in her touch, but he was afraid to move.
She sighed and heaved herself from the blanket. He saw her shoulder rising above the gown, straight and unforgiving.
She did not turn.
She stood and drew the flaps of the silk tight around her. He watched, feeling the sudden coolness of the room, as she made her way to the fire. She stooped to pick up her purse and fiddled with it abstractedly.
“It sounded like a most amusing story you were telling earlier,” she said. “I’d love to hear the end of it.”
“An amusing story?”
“The one about Giselle…and Van Dyck.”
The hair on Peter’s neck bristled. Another question about Van Dyck. Surely this was a coincidence. He thought of Mertons’s warning.
“It wasn’t amusing at the time,” he said slowly. “As I said, it made things difficult between him and me.”
“A bit of an intrigue, I suppose.” She gave him a sparkling look of encouragement. It was the first time she’d met his eyes since they finished. “It would have to be with a woman named Giselle.”
But Mertons had said the writer was a man, a man named Campbell Stratford—His stomach dropped like lead. Campbell. Cam. She’d said her name was Cam. He was the one who’d expanded it to Camilla. Camilla, the mortal who ran so fast she could be in two places at once.
He couldn’t have been so stupid. Surely she was the woman she said she was. But Mertons had only read the book. He hadn’t met the author. It would be the most natural mistake in the world to assume Campbell was a man.
A thousand thoughts raced through his head, but none of them took him anywhere except right here, to this bed, a witness to the destruction of his dreams.
“Giselle…” He shook his head, hoping, praying he was wrong and she’d allow the subject to pass.
“Van Dyck must have been such an interesting character. I’d love to hear a story or two.”
He was glad he hadn’t eaten, for he thought he might be ill. He rolled onto his back and closed his eyes. He thought of the plan to trick the writer Mertons had constructed. Peter would never have imagined he’d have to implement it with the woman he’d just made love to.
“Would you?” he said. “I’ve got a few tales that would curl a listener’s hair.”
She pulled a ringlet from her tousled mass, lifted a brow, and they laughed.
* * *
Stephen, who had been sitting at his desk attempting to fix a particularly ill-prepared printing plate, cast a worried glance down the hall. He had been made privy to a range of sounds this evening, including some that could only be described as indelicate, and he would have just as soon been standing at the riverside next to his fellow revelers with a bottle of ale in his hand, but nothing would have induced him to leave the watching of the stairs to anyone else. Nonetheless, the silence above him seemed ominous, especially given the most particular set of noises that had preceded it.
<
br /> His experience, while not broad, was consistent, and silence, such utterly perfect silence, did not fit his notion of proper postcoital relations. Which is why when the sudden sound of laughter rattled through the floorboards above, he released a breath he hadn’t even been aware he was holding.
Saints be praised. Peter has found his savior.
Twenty-two
Mertons paced his small room, furious. He’d been banging and shouting for half an hour, but the room was in the lowest floor of the house, and if anyone heard they remained unmoved.
The cunning fox was probably plying Peter with her wares now. If Peter were not smart enough to see a trap when it was laid for him, surely he wouldn’t divulge an iota of information on Van Dyck, not when the sole purpose of their trip here had been to save that idiot’s reputation.
The lock turned and Mertons started. It was an apprentice from Stephen’s troop of apes, though this time, one smaller than a barn, which gave him hope.
“Master wants to see you. Says it’s urgent.”
“I should think so.”
Mertons took the stairs two at a time and pelted down the hall. He listened for the signs that the woman had been subdued but heard nothing. The thought of a gag brought a small smile to his face.
The office was empty, and Mertons was just about to try the studio when the side door banged open and Peter, wearing a rumpled shirt and a stormy, unrested face, flung a canvas so hard into a scrap box that he knocked the container several feet across the room.
“What on earth…?”
Peter silenced him with a molten glare, collapsed into his seat, and dropped his head in his hands.
“The deed is done. Take me back.”
Twenty-three
Cam typed quickly, despite occasional breaks to wait out a spell of Jeanne resettling herself with a sleepy sigh on the long office couch or to wipe the lens of wetness from her eyes. She’d been working hard since she’d arrived back in the twenty-first century a few hours earlier, and she wasn’t going to stop until she was done—especially because stopping meant she’d have more time to think, and thinking was the last thing she wanted to do after leaving Peter’s bed with her tail between her legs.
