Strathmere's Bride

by Jacqueline Navin

  “You went to the garden in this cold?”

  “I needed to think. Why is that important? Tell me what happened here. Rebeccah, she awoke?”

  He sighed and nodded. “She had a terrible attack. Bette came up to try to help, but she was soon in tears herself. She said it was the worst she’d ever seen. Rebeccah even got out of bed. She was running about.”

  Chloe’s free hand came up over her mouth. “The child needed me and I was not here. She must have been terrified.” Then she realized that Rebeccah had not been terrified at all when she had seen her. “What did you do?”

  Jareth shrugged. “None of the other servants would come. It was left to me. I had to do something, but I didn’t know…I shook her awake.”

  “Oh, no! You must never do that!”

  “Chloe, you saw her when you came in—she was fine.”

  Somewhat mollified by this incontrovertible fact, Chloe asked, “What did she say? Did she know why she was screaming?”

  His face went ashen again. “She said she was having a nightmare…about horses. They were chasing her.” He looked away, his expression bitter. “She was terrified, poor thing.”

  “Mon Dieu, I am to blame. I should have been here!”

  His hand cupped her chin and brought her face up so his eyes held hers. “Chloe, you are always here when the children need you. The fault is mine.”

  “The poor child,” Chloe said.

  “Yes, well, that poor child shaved a few years off my life, I can tell you right now. I thought I was going to go into an apoplexy myself if she hadn’t stopped.”

  Chloe couldn’t suppress her giggle. “You seemed to manage.”

  He looked at her, serious now. “Yes, I did. Now, are you willing to concede that I may have a thing or two to contribute to my nieces’ welfare?”

  “When this whole incident was caused by your dragging them to the pony trap when they are terrified—I do not think I shall, monsieur.”

  “You are absolutely right. I should have listened to you.”

  “You see it is true.”

  “I shall admit it if you will admit that I did well by the girl.”

  “Oh, very well, if you must have it, there it is.”

  “Say it.”

  She harrumphed. Then, very grudgingly and very quickly, she said, “Oui, you did well by the girl.”

  “Ah, it sounds so sweet when you say it like that.” His sarcasm made her giggle again. He took a step closer. She could smell the clean, musky scent of him. It went straight to her head, making her dizzy. She swallowed hard against her flagging strength.

  He spoke softly, his breath fanning her forehead. “Do you know what I thought tonight when the servants couldn’t find you?”

  “No,” she answered softly, distracted by the fullness of his lips.

  “I thought you might have gone. For good. Run away from us all in this crazy house—the children, my mother. Most of all me.”

  “I cannot leave.” Why was her brain refusing to function properly? The hand that held hers began tugging, drawing her closer.

  “Because of the children?”

  “Yes, and…”

  “Chloe?”

  “Yes?” She felt his arm go around her waist, supporting her. She relaxed against it. His body was so close to her—how had he gotten so close?

  “I want to kiss you.”

  She tried to sound flippant. “Go ahead. It is, after all, only a kiss.”

  “Ah, Chloe, it never was that, and you knew it all along.”

  His mouth came over hers suddenly, bold and hungry. He pulled her up tight and Chloe cooperated with his intention to move as close as they could, wrapping her arms about his neck and arching her body full against his. He groaned and slanted his mouth over hers, his lips moving, his hands moving, his tongue running along the seam of her lips to tease them open.

  It was as before. He had her in his arms, and it was where she wanted so desperately to be. She held back nothing as he poured all of the passion inside of him into that kiss.

  With her eyes closed tight, she felt as if she were spiraling away into the heavens, floating or falling— she didn’t know which.

  He broke away to nuzzle her neck, then her ear, while she gasped in air, trying desperately to clear her head. His breath titillated her prickling flesh and it was hopeless to try to think.

  “Chloe, I need you,” he said. “I tried not to. It is impossible, the two of us like this. You know it as well as I. But there it is, against all reason. I want you, Chloe. Dear God, I want you so badly, I’m burning for you.”

  It was as if a bucket of lamp oil had been touched by a match. Her heart was seared by the heat of it. The graze of his roughened cheek against hers, the faint scent of his soap from his morning shave, the feel of his muscles shifting under her palms were like some dream.

  Everything she wanted, right in her hands.

  He said her name. It was a low, keening sound, born in the depths of his soul. Through a pleasurehazed fog, she heard his voice. “You don’t know what effect you have on me, do you?” She could only issue a small, pathetic sound and shake her head in response. “Do you know the things I want to do to you? Wild, uncivilized things, Chloe.”

  “Yes!” she gasped as his tongue touched her flesh.

  He made a sound, a kind of growl, and crushed her lips with his. Pulling away, still touching, he spoke harshly. “I don’t want to do this to you, Chloe. Stop me. I cannot, so you must. It is insanity and it is forbidden and for that very reason I am helpless.” He kissed her again until they were both breathless, his passion belying his rational words. Against her mouth, he whispered. “Stop this now, for God’s sake.”

  “I don’t want to stop.” She panted, letting the feelings flood her, remove her from the world of thought and lift her into the realm where sensation ruled. “Jareth, I love you.”

  He shook his head, his expression a mingling of pain and regret. “Don’t love me, Chloe.”

  She grasped his head in her hands, forcing his eyes to her. “You shall not forbid me this, your grace.” Softer, she said, “I do love you. And you love me.” He bowed his head, as if to demur to argue the point, but his hands gripped her tighter. When he looked at her again, his face was lined with leagues of want, but again his words were a plea for rationality. “Send me away. Do it, Chloe. You know it is the right thing to do.”

  Chloe closed her eyes, trying desperately to think. Why did he leave it to her? She was no more capable of sensibility than he—less so, perhaps. All she knew was that her body was on fire, and if they parted now, never to consummate this exquisite torture that pulled and twisted her insides, she couldn’t bear it.

  She could walk with him the few paces to her bedchamber and give herself to the man who owned her heart, or she could do what was right and proper, even required, and quietly tell him to go.

  But when had she ever let her head win out over her heart?

  In an instant, she was again in his arms. He embraced her, welcoming her back up against him with a hunger as great as if it had been years since they had last touched. She reached out, tracing her shaking fingers down the clean, angular lines of his cheeks, along his jaw.

  “I care nothing of what you say is the right thing to do. I want you to make love to me,” she said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  As desperately as he desired her, Jareth tried to resist. But when had he ever been able to resist Chloe?

  He fought nobly not to give in to the mad impulses in control of his will. Every inch of him screamed for him to take command of his runaway senses and leave her now before they had gone too far.

  Everything but his heart. That was not his own any longer. It belonged to her. This she had known, speaking with confidence of his love. But, of course, Chloe would know his heart. In so many ways, she knew that part of him better than he knew himself. Could she feel how it soared with her in his arms? Did she sense the brilliant pressure in his chest at her kis
s, her scent, her lithe, supple body under his hands?

  He felt as if he were drowning in her and still he craved more. Chloe, who had never meant to seduce him but who had, with her subdued loveliness and purity and artless, wondrous spirit, held the balance of all happiness in one slender hand.

  Slowly, he disengaged the embrace, taking her hand and leading her to the room off the playroom that was hers, closing the door softly behind him and turning the lock.

  She stood in the middle of the room, that unearthly poise holding her body erect with expectation. A touch of apprehension was in her eyes, but it was gone after a moment, replaced by soft, limpid invitation. Its fleeting presence reminded him that she was a virgin, he was sure, and the passion that would have made him rough, frantic, needed to be contained.

  He went to her, taking her hands in his, summoning her to come up against him. He wanted to feel her body against his. His lips touched her forehead, gliding across the silken smoothness of her skin.

  “I can give you nothing, Chloe. The irony is the world would deem you unworthy to be mine, but it is I who do not deserve you. Even if I were still simply Jareth Hunt, unencumbered and uncommitted by this title I so loath, I would not deserve you. You are…” He lowered his head to study her lips, those full, kiss-reddened lips that fascinated and taunted him to madness. “You are like no other woman I have met.” He gave m to the temptation of those lips, brushing soft, feathery kisses at their corners, murmuring, “You are…sunlight…and laughter…and freedom…and dreams. And stars, Chloe. Holding you, loving you like this, it is like dancing on the stars.”

  Flinging her arms around his neck, she was kissing him feverishly, pressing her body so he could feel her, belly to belly, breasts crushed against his chest, her left leg nearly fully wrapped around his right. He slipped his hand to her bottom and pulled her up tighter, but he was frustrated by the encumbrance of their clothes.

  Uninhibited kisses rained upon him, kisses that left him breathless and scorched with need. He pushed her backward, to the bed, breaking away just long enough to lay her down upon it, to stretch out beside her, to gaze down at her face, stained with desire and nearly stopping his heart for just a moment before their mouths came together again.

  Was he truly holding her in his arms? It seemed impossible, yet it was exactly where he should be, as if he had waited an eternity to find his way home and now here he was.

  Her body was warm under his hands. He had wanted to go slowly, but that particular feat of control seemed beyond him. His fingers moved deftly over the simple fasteners at the back of her dress, greedily slipping inside to glide over the exposed flesh.

  She wore no corset, and the knowledge of this sent his poor abused brain into a dizzying spiral. His loins tightened, hardened, pressing urgently against the confines of his clothing. He pulled her dress over her shoulders and down her arms, wrestling it smoothly over her hips, until it was gone. He heard a soft clump as it hit the floor where he had tossed it upon the bare boards.

  Wild lightning threaded through his body as his hands slipped under her chemise. It was simple linen, not so fine as the undergarments of the ladies who had graced his bed in the past had worn, but her skin was softer than the most expensive silk. Leaning back on his heels, he wrapped his hands about both of her hips, sliding upward, fingers meeting across her tiny waist, then further to cup her breasts and finally sweep off the flimsy garment over her head.

  His breath hissed through his teeth as he gazed at her before him, more glorious than he could have imagined. Slim and lithe, her body was small. Rounded hips flared gently under an absurdly tiny waist to give way to long, long legs finely shaped and lean.

  She watched him watch her, her teeth caught on her bottom lip to show her discomfort and reminding him that as much as he could gaze at her in this state forever, she was unused to intimacy. But not unaffected by it, he noted, seeing how her cheeks were flushed crimson. Her chest rose and fell in quick, tremulous pants.

  Then she denied all his tender, gentle impulses when she grasped his hands and brought them to her breasts again, arching against the contact. A low groan tore from the back of his throat.

  Of course, Chloe would be an uninhibited lover, he thought joyously. He surrendered to the blinding urgency coursing in his blood.

  He was on her in a flash, kissing her and ripping open his shirt at the same time.

  “Your touch is like flame, mon amour,” she gasped against his mouth.

  He nearly collapsed from the pleasure of those words. Impatient now, he rolled from her and stripped, not bothering to do any more with his clothing than toss them into a heap on the floor.

  When he stretched out over her again, he chuckled low and soft against her neck. She stiffened. “What is so funny, s’il vous plait?” she demanded.

  “I was thinking how shocked my head valet shall be when he sees my clothes. I hate having a valet.”

  She grasped his chin and turned him to face her. “You are thinking about your valet at a time such as this? Incroyable!”

  He slid down her body, an inch at a time. “Shall I show you, mademoiselle, of what I have been thinking? Obsessing upon, more likely, until I thought the madness would rip me into shreds.”

  Cupping her breast, he lowered his mouth over her nipple, smiling against the taut tip when he heard her gasp. Her breasts were small, round and high, perfectly shaped to fit in his hand. The dusty tip strained against his lips, tempting his tongue to venture out and stroke it until she squirmed.

  “You are wicked!” she gasped.

  Indeed, he was the wickedest man alive to take so freely what he could never repay—this sweet innocence of her trusting heart—but he pushed the flash of shame away and let his hand wander down to play among the soft curls between her thighs.

  His mouth covered hers again, alternately kissing her and murmuring words of love against her lips as his fingers touched her. He drank in her response, the movements of her body under his, her short little breaths hitching shakily under his mouth, her hands curling into the muscle of his back. He savored her pleasure, consuming it like a starving man suddenly finding himself seated at a feast.

  She pulled back to gaze into his face. “I…” she began, but never finished, for his fingers continued the warm, tantalizing path across her most sensitive part.

  “I want to give you pleasure,” he murmured into her ear.

  She strained against his hand, moving in rhythm with his strokes. His lips wandered, trailing kisses and nibbling at the graceful contours of her shoulders, her throat, her tiny, delicious earlobe.

  He felt her stiffen, heard the small, contained cry. Her hand clutched his wrist, squeezing it as she bucked under him until the storm had passed and her movements slowed. His hand stilled, stroking down her thighs.

  The expression on her face was one of dazed bewilderment, and it made him smile. “That was…that was…what was that?” she said.

  “That was me loving you, darling.” The need in his groin was growing painful. He pressed against her hip meaningfully, wanting entrance.

  Her lazy eyelids flew open and those stormy eyes settled on him with a degree of uncertainty. “There is more.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Only if you wish it.”

  “Your body joins with mine.” To his utter devastation, her small hand reached down and touched two fingertips against his swollen length. “Here.”

  He closed his eyes. “Yes,” he answered, his voice no more than a harsh rasp.

  Seeing the effect of her touch emboldened her and she experimentally ran her hand along his length. “No, Chloe,” he managed to say, snatching her hand away.

  “Show me how. I want you that way, Jareth.”

  “This is how I want to love you.” Shifting his hips, he was at her entrance. Her mouth opened and her head fell back, exposing the tender column of her neck. He hitched his hands under her knees to slide her legs around his thighs.

  He paused, his breathing r
agged. “Chloe, it may hurt you,” he muttered roughly, doubting his ability to refrain from plunging ahead.

  “Jareth, I am not a virgin,” she answered ın a trembling voice, too intent on the feel of him to take note of his shock.

  “What?” he said, stopping midstroke.

  She blinked. “Non! I do not mean that I have been with another man. When I was a little girl, I fell from my pony and bled, and my mama told me that was my virginity. She said it was a good thing, so it will not be painful for me my first time.”

  He leaned into her, touching his forehead to hers. “Will I never learn to not allow you to shock me?”

  Light, taunting touch trailed down his back to the hard muscle of his buttocks. “I do not mean to, you know.”

  Then he couldn’t speak anymore. He pushed her down, sheathing himself fully with her, sealing himself in slick heat. A soft mew escaped from her throat, as gentle as a kitten’s cry. The sound inflamed him. Blood pounded in his ears as he withdrew and surged forward again. Blissful sensation left him trembling. As he thrust, she moved under him, matching his movements, her hands running over his shoulders, his arm, down his back. He thought she might climax again, but this first time, when his body was filled with delirious longing, he could not wait.

  His release hit him with unprecedented force. Pleasure exploded in his brain in a shower of light. He heard his own voice cry out her name, hardly recognizing the low, guttural cry as his own. Her slim body under his arched to receive his last thrusts as the ecstasy faded into sharp ripples of sensation.

  Slowing, stilling his motions, he turned his face into the curve of her neck. Chloe wrapped her arms about him, holding him closely, tightly, until his breathing slowed.

  He rolled to his side, wrapping her up tight against his side. Touching her jaw, he said, “That was the worst thing I ever did, but I cannot regret it.”

  She looked appalled. “The worst?”

  “I mean, you lovely creature, that giving in to… I should never have allowed this to happen. But it has, and I am not sorry for it, though any decent man would be.”