He frowned and seemed to take an hour to respond. “Have you been inspecting my thumbs while I was unconscious, Miss Westmore?”
“I thought it would be less objectionable than stealing a kiss from a man who was incapable of protest.”
“Less enjoyable, though.” His head lolled toward her. “I’ll have you know I prize my thumb’s privacy.”
Clare stifled a laugh, relieved he appeared to be regaining the capacity for banter. “Perhaps your thumb wants me to know.”
“Very well, then.” His smile was weak but gratifyingly real. “Hoof knife,” he croaked.
It was a somewhat less heroic injury than she’d imagined. “Tell me how it happened,” she pressed gently, sensing it was somehow important to keep him talking.
“I was nine,” he said, his voice fainter now. “Father showed me how to trim a horse’s hoof. The horse objected. Ergo . . .”
A giggle escaped her lips. She had to imagine he was well on his way to a full recovery if he was lucid enough to quote Latin.
“He always wanted me to be a horseman like him.” His eyes swayed drunkenly over her face. “I didn’t have the heart for it, though. I kept wanting to fix the ones bound for the knackers.”
She squeezed his hand, wishing she had known him as that nine-year-old trying to please his father. But it would have been impossible to know that boy. It ought to be impossible for her to know the man. Without the miracle of a turned ankle, she would not be here now.
“I cannot imagine he would not be immensely proud of who you have become,” she told him solemnly, all amusement falling away. She knew she was proud of him, and more than a little in awe of his accomplishment. She remembered the words he had once tossed in her face, during the heat of their first argument.
I promise you, there are more rewarding and scintillating aspects to my life than wrapping the ankles of spoiled, fashionable young ladies.
He’d not been lying.
He’d not even been exaggerating.
He drew a deep, shuddering breath, as though trying to purify the residual chloroform vapor from his lungs. For a minute or so he lay quiet, as though resting again in the arms of the drug. But then he cracked open an eye. “I am not dreaming, then. You are still here.”
She hid a smile. “Yes.”
Both eyes opened. “Why?” He turned his head slowly toward her, as though his body had not yet caught up with the recovery of his thoughts. “Why did you even come here tonight?”
Clare bit her lip. No longer delusional, then. He had returned to lucidity—and apparently, mistrust—with remarkable speed. “I came to talk to you,” she admitted.
“What of your future duke?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
Clare looked down at her hands. How quickly they came to the heart of it. Perhaps chloroform was a sort of truth serum. She imagined she could use a bit of it now.
“Alban is not my duke, Daniel. He never was.” She hesitated, but he deserved the truth, and the version he knew still held too many hidden layers. She lifted her chin and met his impenetrable gaze. “He is my uncle, if you must know. I am illegitimate, and rumors to that effect are already spreading, thanks to Lady Sophie. And I imagine that changes things a bit where my future is concerned, doesn’t it?”
He studied her a long moment, as though he could dissect her thoughts down to the marrow. Or perhaps he was trying to gather his chloroform-scattered thoughts. “Christ, Clare.” He scrubbed a hand over his unkempt jaw. “Is that the only reason you came to me?” His voice sounded raw. “Because you are afraid no one else will have you?”
“No!” The blood pounded in her ears, each beat its own roar of denial. “I came tonight because I needed to talk to someone who knows me. Not the image I project to the world, but the person I am beneath.” She leaned forward on the chair, searching for the truth she suspected was still somehow buried in these brimming emotions. “I came because out of everyone—those I once considered friends, even my family—you are the only one who does. I came because I wanted to, Daniel.” She swallowed. “Because I wanted you.”
His hands snaked out once more, this time grabbing her wrists. “That is certainly highly agreeable of you,” he growled.
Clare found herself pulled toward him, off the chair and onto the bed.
And then his lips met hers.
Chapter 28
Until now Daniel’s recovery after each experimental bout of anesthesia had gone something like this: a slow, rising awareness, a regained capacity for movement, and finally—least predictable in terms of timing—a return to full sensation.
The final piece of the sequence had sometimes taken a quarter hour or more.
Tonight he accomplished those steps in record time.
Perhaps it was the whisky he’d consumed first, that grand remover of inhibitions and good sense. Indeed, it seemed as though some of those milestones might even have been reversed, because his body was already stirring to life. Of course, the part of his anatomy in question depended on blood flow more than muscle strength, but how, then, to describe the sensation arcing through him? Was this a biologic response to the feel of this woman in his arms, warm and eager beneath his lips? Or was it her confession, the hope of what this might yet lead to, that banished the last dregs of sluggishness from his veins?
The scientist in him wanted to take a moment, write the observation down.
The beast in him firmly objected to that plan.
And so instead he kissed her. Kissed her the way he’d wanted to for two long weeks. He cupped her head in his hands and pulled her into him, invading her whisky-sweet mouth with a single purpose in mind. Not seduction—that was too delicate a term to define what he wished to do to this woman.
He wanted to consume her.
The sounds she made deep in her throat told him she did not object, and so he gathered his muscles and shifted their bodies until she was lying beneath him on his bed. He pressed his length down over the top of her as they kissed, marveling at how perfect, how right, she felt there. It seemed his body had known she would be a perfect fit from the start, and he was beginning to realize that fighting the objections of his conscience had always been an exercise in futility. She tipped her head back and gasped his name, until he could think of nothing but sinking his teeth into the skin of her beautiful neck and claiming her as his own.
But he needed to know. Know she understood who she kissed, and what this meant.
That there was no going back from the precipice over which they dangled.
And so, though his body raised a strenuous objection, he somehow summoned the strength of will to end the kiss and raise himself off her. “Clare,” he said, his voice hoarse and barely recognizable to his own ears. “Are you sure you want this?” He stared down at her beautiful, flushed face. “That you want me?”
“Yes,” she gasped, arching up to meet him.
The friction between their bodies made the breath hiss out between his teeth. He wanted her with a desperation that terrified him, but he was not so addled with lust that he couldn’t see those wants were selfish, at best. She was poised to relinquish five thousand pounds, when all he could promise her in return was a modest future.
His body might try to convince him otherwise, but his heart knew it needed to be said.
“I am not a man of whom your father would ever approve, Clare,” he warned. “I am only the son of a Gypsy horse trader.” He summoned his memory of her words from last night, the ones that had cut to the quick. “I am appalled you would set your sights so low.”
She stilled. “Daniel, I am so, so sorry you heard that.”
“Why?” he said, pushing himself more completely off of her and shifting to one side. “You only spoke the truth, after all.”
“But I would not have you believe it is a truth that matters to me. I am not proud of my behavior last night. I only said those things to dissuade Sophie from spreading further lies about you. She needed to feel there was greater danger in the
lie I would spread about her.” Her voice gentled to a whisper. “I know these things about you, and still my heart is pointing me toward you. It is my choice.” She linked her hands behind his neck, pulling him down into her. “I want you, Daniel.” Her voice reached into his ear, darkly seductive. “The man you are.”
They were the words he had wanted—needed—to hear.
And yet he pulled at this thread, determined to unravel her resolve before they did something she would wake up to regret. “I will never be more than a doctor,” he reminded her, though the gathering incoherence of his thoughts meant he was hard pressed to remember why this was a problem.
“A brilliant doctor,” she corrected. She reached toward him and her teeth nipped against the column of his throat, as though she was willing to take whatever pieces of him he denied her.
Christ, but he was helpless against her.
He’d never had a horse in this race for resistance.
He dipped his head down and ran his tongue in hot swirls against the inviting length of her neck. “There is also the small matter that I am Roma,” he whispered against the wicked heat of her skin. “You would be turned away from drawing rooms everywhere.”
She squirmed beneath him. “I do not care, as long as you do not stop.”
He kissed her again, more tenderly this time. Unclenching his hands, he smoothed the damp hair away from her face. “I will follow your lead, then, and not stop unless you tell me to.”
He waited, and when no protest seemed imminent, he trailed his palm up her abdomen, registering again the damp clothing that still lay between them. That, at least, was a problem that could be fixed. His fingers set to work on the mother-of-pearl buttons of her bodice. “Praise Hippocrates,” he breathed as the fabric obligingly parted to reveal the transparent chemise beneath. “You are not wearing a corset tonight.”
She shuddered—though whether due to the air on her chilled skin or his irreverent observation, he couldn’t tell. “You once mentioned they promoted an unhealthy posture.”
“I thought you didn’t listen to me,” he said, lowering his head to press a kiss to the erotic curve of one clavicle, lingering a moment in the hollow of space it created.
“I always listen,” she sighed into his touch. “I just don’t always agree.”
But she was agreeing to this. He could feel her skin warming beneath his lips, knew she felt the tug of attraction every bit as much as he did. It was in the small, encouraging sound she made as he slipped the thin straps of her chemise from her shoulders and pushed the fabric down to her navel, the way she gasped in pleasure as he blew lightly across the pebbled skin of her bared breasts.
And ah, good Lord, her breasts. Hadn’t he known she was an anatomist’s dream?
They rounded enthusiastically in his palms, and the nipples peaked against his thumbs as they brushed across them. She felt alive in his hands, and he marveled that a woman so finely made might entrust him with her keeping. “God, Clare. Do you know what you do to me?”
“No,” came her choked whisper.
“Well, from the start, you’ve rendered me far more insensible than chloroform.”
There was a beat of silence, of held breath. And then an easy breath of laughter escaped her lips, as if she didn’t quite believe him but had no choice but to take him at his word. “I am less easy to regulate, I imagine.”
He chuckled in return. The sound of her laughter was like a beautiful drug, and he was firmly in its thrall. With his fingers, he traced the delicate pattern of veins visible just below the skin on her breasts, marveling with the knowledge that each one carried blood now heated by his touch. “Ah, but didn’t you know? I am willing to experiment until I achieve success.” He leaned over to blow a trail of warm air across one pert nipple, and as her head thrashed from side to side, he bent lower, drawing her into his mouth.
A cry wrenched from her throat, but he refused to be diverted from this path. He was more than willing to use his mouth as an implement of torture in pursuit of this pleasure. Not his own pleasure—hers. He wanted her to realize there was far more here to discover. And damn any regrets she might have on the morrow, he wanted to be the one to show her.
He gathered her wet skirts in his fist and dragged the fabric slowly, slowly upward.
“What are you doing?” she gasped, causing him to still.
“I will stop whenever you want,” came his clenched reply. He forced his hands to still. Waited for her to catch up. To decide. He would wait forever if he had to, because her trust in this—in him—was too precious to squander, no matter the insistent drum of desire in his veins.
“I don’t want you to stop.” She squirmed beneath him, her hands busy about her waist. “I want them off.” And then she was reaching behind her and the heavy mass of damp fabric was being unfastened, shifted. Removed. His breath caught in his throat as the clocked silk stockings that stalked his dreams slid into view, and then, above them, he was treated to the pale perfection of her thighs.
Time seemed to still.
Or perhaps it was more that she did, treating him to this first intimate glimpse of her.
Christ, but she made him feel inarticulate.
There was no word—in the English or the Latin—that could be applied.
He smoothed a hand across the damp cotton of her bunched chemise until his fingers met soft skin. God, but her bones intrigued him. They always had, even when she’d sat straight-backed and hostile, sniping at him from the wallflower line. But they had never tempted him more than now, the hidden lines of her laid out, quivering in wait of his personal discovery.
He lifted her leg and pressed a kiss to the delicate curve of her stocking-clad ankle, her instep, her toes, at last giving in to this urge that seemed to have possessed him since the first time he’d seen that clocked silk. He took his time, gauging her reaction, even as his teeth clenched from the strain of holding back. “You still do not wish me to stop?”
“No,” she breathed. “I want you to hurry.”
He focused his attentions now on the pale skin just above where those stockings ended, brushing his cheek across her inner thigh, deliberately scraping his day’s growth of beard at this most sensitive point. “Why should we hurry?” he asked, pressing his mouth there next. She tasted sweet, of flowers and vanilla, and the merest hint of salt. “Perhaps I am content to linger here awhile.”
He felt her fingers tangling in his hair, trying to pull him back to her. “Because I may die if you don’t kiss me. Or I may kill you. Either way is bound to be a problem.”
He shook free of her hold and then brushed a hand reverently across the dark curls that guarded her entrance. “Kiss you, hmmm?” He swept a finger against her labia, the folds delicate and pink as the inside of a shell. Her body stiffened—not in denial, but in welcome, and he knew a startling jolt of possessiveness that he was the one to whom she was giving this gift.
He carefully explored her with a finger, making her nearly buck up from the bed.
“Daniel—” she gasped.
“Shhhh, love.” She was unbearably responsive. Ready. He wanted to shuck his clothing and abandon the leisurely pace he had chosen. But she was inexperienced. Innocent. She might not understand what came next, but she was trusting him to show her. His experience as a physician told him this first joining would be painful for her, and he wanted her to enjoy this part of it, if nothing else.
And so carefully, deliberately, he lowered his mouth to her and gave in to the beast.
OH GOD, OH God, oh God.
Surely no gentleman would do such a thing.
Surely no lady would enjoy such a thing.
And surely she would rather die than stop.
She felt pulled under by the overwhelming feel of him. Not only the sensation of his mouth, there at her core, which was vivid enough. She could still feel him elsewhere. Everywhere. The scrape of his chin where it had ravaged the sensitive skin of her cheek, the vivid warmth of his mouth where it had
fit against hers—even his hands had left a lingering trail of sensation, her toes still tingling from his attentions. She felt as if no part of her had gone unscathed, as though he’d seen through every layer, every secret, and had methodically—expertly—stripped her bare.
And she was greedy enough to want more.
His mouth was a thing of torment, but it was a torment so sweet she could do nothing but give herself up to it. His tongue found a place along her seam that made her hips lift from the bed and her breath wind tighter and tighter. She felt a coiling deep inside, a place at once impossible to reach and impossible to ignore.
And then without warning her body pitched forward, flying, falling.
It was like nothing she had ever felt. Pleasure was far too bland a word for it. She felt unraveled, the breath spinning ruthlessly out of her, the world receding to a distant point.
And then it was gone, rolling away like ripples on water.
She lay a long moment, too stunned to move. How did one recover from a surprise like that, the realization your body held such secrets? Perhaps the sensible thing would be to gather the scattered pieces of the armor that had once held her together.
But in this boneless state of wonder, she couldn’t even think of where to begin.
Dimly, she became aware that Daniel had somehow shed his own clothes and come to lie down next to her, his arms gathering her close, her back to his bare chest. He buried his face against her neck, and she felt his own strained breathing, in and out.
“What . . . was that?” she found the courage to ask.
“The scientific name for it is orgasm.” His breath lay hot against her neck, and she closed her eyes, reveling in the feel of it. “But the French have a far better name for it. They call it la petit mort.”
The small death. An apt description.
She drew a shaky breath. “I never imagined . . .”
And she’d certainly never read about it in the Times.
His chin tickled the sensitive skin of her ear. “Your body is fashioned for this, Clare.” He demonstrated with a hard slide of his body against her vulnerable core. The motion sent heat jumping again in that hidden, mysterious place. “Fashioned for me.”
Diary of an Accidental Wallflower Page 28
