He kissed her between her legs, and her eyes shot open. “Wh-what are you doing?”
When she tried to pull her thighs together, he wouldn’t let her. “You need to read more naughty books, dearling.” His eyes glittered. “You had your dessert. Now let me have mine.”
And he lowered his mouth to her most private part again.
“But . . . but . . . Pierce . . . ohhh . . . ”
She’d had no idea. The way he was kissing her . . . there . . . seemed decadent and wild and . . . so very delicious that she curled her fingers into his hair to hold him close.
His response was to kiss and suck and tease until she thought she’d go out of her mind with need. It wasn’t long before she could feel her release building, feel it growing and lifting . . . “Pierce . . . oh, dear heaven . . . please . . . ”
“Not yet, dearling.” Dark eyes alight, he moved up over her. “This time we’ll go there together.”
And he entered her with one silken thrust.
Oh, it was magic. He was inside her, around her, driving her once more toward a glorious madness. How would she give this up? How would she give him up? He felt part of her. With him, she was herself and it was right. He liked her just as she was.
But he didn’t love her, and that would kill her in time. Because she could never be with him, day in and day out, without telling him she loved him.
She did. She loved the dear, complicated man. And she knew, just as she knew everything else about him, that he wouldn’t want to hear it. So she would show him tonight, instead.
As he drove into her over and over, she kissed his chin, his throat, his mouth . . . anything she could reach. She wrapped her legs about his hips when he urged her, and she gave herself up to the act that until now she’d always thought awkward and embarrassing. Because with him, it was neither of those. It was like . . . like . . .
“Are you flying yet?” he rasped as he thundered into her, each stroke bringing her nearer loftier heights.
It was like flying. Exactly. “Yes . . . ” she choked out. “Oh, Pierce . . . ”
“Fly then, dearling,” he murmured as he drove her higher and higher. “As high . . . as you can . . . ” He stared down at her, his eyes darkening with an emotion she’d never seen in them before.
Longing. She recognized it because that’s what she felt, too.
He brushed his lips against hers, then whispered, “Just make sure you take me with you . . . ”
And with one great plunge, he sent her soaring into the heavens.
She clasped him to her as he, too, reached his release, and for one precious moment, they vaulted into the highest heights together, wrapped in each other’s arms without a care in the world.
Then slowly they tumbled to earth. And to her surprise, that was precious, too—for although he rolled off her, he didn’t turn over and go to sleep. He drew her close, then held her and kissed her and made her feel like something more than a bedmate.
And as he nuzzled her neck with infinite tenderness, the words she’d fought not to say just spoke themselves.
“I love you,” she whispered into his ear. “I love you, Pierce Waverly.”
22
To Pierce’s shock, his heart sang at the words. He would never have expected them to sound so wonderful. Then again, he hadn’t expected sharing a bed with Camilla to be so wonderful, either.
It made no sense. He’d been with plenty of women—more experienced women, younger women, more accomplished women. He’d shared the beds of actresses and whores, opera singers and duchesses, and never once had it been an act of such sweetness that it damned near brought him to tears.
Never once had any of them said those words to him afterward.
Oh, God, didn’t he know by now that love was just a word? That it meant nothing?
Except that he couldn’t believe Camilla would lie to him. He knew who she was, from tip to toe. She would never say such a thing lightly.
But that didn’t mean it was real.
He drew back to stare at her. “Don’t.”
The pain in her eyes was swiftly covered by belligerence. “Don’t what? Love you? Or say that I love you? I can stop the latter, but I can’t stop the former. It’s too late for that.”
With his blood pounding through his veins, he took her hand and kissed it. “Look, I know that you think you feel something—”
“I don’t think I feel anything.” She snatched her hand from his. “I know what I feel, Pierce. Don’t try to tell me otherwise.” Pulling out of his hold, she sat up to throw her legs over the side of the bed.
He looped his arm about her waist to keep her there, then pressed a kiss to her back. “Don’t go. Not yet.”
She sat there, her body stiff against his arm, but as he sat up beside her, she let out a long, shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. I knew you wouldn’t want to hear it. But I couldn’t help myself.” A wry note entered her voice. “It’s been the curse of my life that I speak my mind even when I shouldn’t.”
“That’s what I like about you,” he assured her. Even when what she said set him on his ear. He stared down at her bent head, feeling a welter of confused emotions, not the least of which was hope, damn it. “But I can’t . . . I don’t . . . ”
“I know, my lord,” she said, the formal term cutting him to the heart. “It just had to be said.”
She started to rise from the bed, but he pulled her down onto his lap. “It’s not what you think.” When she wouldn’t look at him, he turned her face up to his. “I’m not capable of loving anyone.”
She cupped his jaw, her hand infinitely gentle. “I don’t think that’s true.”
“Ah, but it is.”
He debated a moment, but the melting look in her eyes decided him. She deserved to know what sort of man she was taking up with. Reaching over to open the little drawer by the table, he drew out a much-creased and worn letter and handed it to her.
When she cast him a quizzical glance, he said, “It’s the last letter my mother ever wrote me at school, right after I was sent away.”
Paling a little, she opened the fragile parchment and read the lines that had been etched on his soul for years. The lines that ended with And always remember, I love you very, very much. With many kisses, Mother.
“I kept it at first to sustain me through the difficult times.” His voice hardened. “Then I kept it to remind me how little the words mean.”
She glanced at him, tears filling her eyes. “I’m not lying to you when I say them, and I suspect that neither was she.”
“Perhaps not,” he managed. “But that makes it even more obvious that love is just a meaningless fiction. At least I’m wise enough to understand that. And I can’t feel something I don’t believe in. I might have believed in it once, but not anymore.”
“Because of your parents abandoning you, you mean.”
“Not just that.” There were times he hated how deeply Camilla saw into him. “But I’ve experienced too much in my life, witnessed too many unhappy marriages, and . . . ” He forced a smile. “It’s like Jasper believing in flying reindeer. Once you’re around real deer enough to know they don’t fly, the magic disappears.”
“On the contrary,” she said softly. “Believing in love isn’t like believing in flying reindeer. It’s like believing in rain. Or summer. Or Christmas. Love is real and steady and absolutely essential to any kind of life. Not believing in it doesn’t make it any less so.”
Fighting the seductive appeal of her words, he rasped, “For me, it does, and that’s what matters.”
He braced himself for more of an argument, but she merely shook her head at him. “I know. That’s why I didn’t intend to say the words.”
The regret in her voice knifed through him, and he caught her by the chin so he could kiss her, soft and deep. “It doesn’t change anything. Wanting you, having you want me, is more than enough for me.”
“Is it?” She stared into his face, her eyes luminous in the fire
light. Without her spectacles, she looked even more like a maiden waiting for love.
And it hit him suddenly how unfair he was being, to ask her to give up a future with any other man just to be his mistress.
But she’d had her chance at marriage, and she hadn’t liked it. That’s what made the two of them so perfect for each other. They were peas in a pod and wanted the same things, whether she admitted it or not.
Didn’t they?
“Camilla, I—”
A knock came at the door, and he froze. A glance at the clock told him it was long after midnight. No servant would be up here at this hour.
Camilla leaped from his lap. “Oh, Lord, Maisie must have guessed I was here. Something must be wrong with Jasper!” Guilt suffusing her features, she hurried to put on her shift, then her drawers.
Swiftly, he rose and began to dress, too.
The knock came again. “Open the door, Pierce!” his mother’s voice commanded. “I wish to speak with you!”
As the blood drained from Camilla’s face, he cursed under his breath. The main rooms downstairs in the dower house had special servants’ passages, but none of the bedchambers did. There was no escape.
“I’ll be there in a moment, Mother!” he called out as he jerked his trousers on. Somehow he had to draw her away so Camilla could leave without being seen.
Camilla was still frantically gathering up her clothes and grabbing her spectacles when the door swung open, and his mother entered.
Bloody hell. He’d forgotten to latch the door.
Mother took in the scene with a look of pure horror. “I knew it!” she cried. “I went looking for Camilla, and Maisie said she’d thought she was with me. So I went to the drawing room and the study and found no trace of either of you. That’s when I knew.” Her gaze met his accusingly as Camilla stood fixed in the middle of the room. “How could you?”
“My lady, please, it’s not how it seems,” Camilla said.
“No?” she choked out. “Because it appears to me that my son has just finished seducing you.”
Pierce glared at her. “How dare you—”
“You have every reason to be angry with me, Pierce,” his mother went on fiercely. “But to use Camilla as a weapon against me is—”
“A weapon?” Only with an effort did he keep from tossing her bodily from his room. “Not that it’s any of your concern, Mother, but she chose to be here. We chose to be together.”
“A woman in Camilla’s position is unable to choose such a thing,” his mother protested. “Do you really think she could refuse you? You’re her employer, so any association of that kind between you gives you all the power, and you know it.”
He stiffened. He did know it. And the worst of it was he would do it again if he had the chance.
“You paint your son more ill than he is, my lady,” Camilla put in. “He never demanded anything of me, never took advantage. I really did choose to be with him. I know you probably think it very wrong of me, but—”
“I don’t blame you, my dear,” his mother told her softly, then nodded to Pierce. “I blame him.”
That was the last straw. “You have no right to blame me for anything, ever,” Pierce hissed as he advanced on her, not caring that he wore only his trousers. “You gave up the right to dictate to me when you abandoned me.”
“I did not abandon you!” Mother cried. “I acted in your own interests.”
That was a new twist, and the ludicrousness of it infuriated him. “Oh? How so?”
Her lips tightening, she glanced away and said nothing more.
His temper rose into fury as the festering sore of twenty-three years erupted. He bore down on her with ruthless intent. “Were you acting in my interests when you ignored the letters where I begged to be allowed to come home? Or when you kept me from learning how to run the estate I would one day inherit? Or even when you shattered every real feeling I ever had by telling me—”
He broke off with a curse. “I refuse to do this anymore. I don’t care what your reasons were. Nothing you say can make up for what you did.” He turned to where Camilla was watching them both, her expression clearly torn. “Camilla, go gather your things and Jasper’s. We’re leaving for London now.”
His mother turned ash white, which gave him a moment’s twinge of conscience, but he ignored it. She had no say in this. She’d given up that right years ago.
But Camilla hadn’t moved.
“Go on, dearling,” he commanded her. “I know it’s late, but you and Jasper can both sleep in the carriage. Bring Maisie, too, if you need to.”
She swallowed hard, then said, barely above a whisper, “I’m not going with you.”
He gaped at her. He couldn’t have heard her right. “Of course you are.”
“I can’t,” she said, her voice a little firmer. “My place is here.”
“Your place is with me!” he ground out.
A tear escaped her eye, then another. “Pierce, you have to understand—”
“No!” he cried as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. “Damn it, no, I don’t have to understand a bloody thing!”
She couldn’t be doing this. He wouldn’t let her.
He strode up to grab her by the arms. “You belong with me. We belong together. You owe her nothing, no matter what you think.”
Tears were streaming down her face now, and she clutched her pitiful bundle of clothes closer to her chest, as if to use them as a shield against him. “It’s not about your mother.”
“The hell it isn’t! You’re choosing her over me, because you’ve got some idea in your head that being at her beck and call is more respectable, more—”
“I’m not choosing either of you,” she said in a tortured whisper as she pulled free of his grip. “I’m choosing my son.”
That caught him by the throat. It was an argument he felt powerless to refute. But he tried anyway. “You know he’ll be better off in London.”
“As the scorned son of your mistress?”
He glowered at her. “No one would dare to scorn him, or you. Not with my power and fortune behind the two of you.”
“And after we no longer have you?” she asked softly. “What becomes of us then?”
Her logic was inescapable, and he hated her for it.
“Or what happens when you marry?”
“I will never marry,” he vowed.
Tears sparkled in her eyes. “You say that now, but you can’t promise it.”
He scowled. “If you want promises from me, then come with me to London. I’ll have my solicitor draw up whatever legal document you require to ensure that you—”
“It has nothing to do with money!” she cried. “I can’t risk your coming in and out of Jasper’s life at your leisure. Small children don’t understand such things. You of all people should know that.”
The words hit him like a blow to the gut, making him want to strike back. “I know that you said you love me. You claimed that the words were real.”
Though the blood drained from her face, she didn’t waver in her stance. “They are, and I do. Which is precisely why I can’t go with you. I love you too much to be just your toy for a while.”
“You wouldn’t be my toy, damn it!”
But he could see from her face that no argument would sway her. Once Camilla made up her mind to do something, she stayed the course, even if that course drove a stake through his heart.
How dare she show him heaven for one brief, glittering moment, and then snatch it away, leaving him alone once more?
Always alone.
“Fine,” he choked out, steeling himself against the hurt that rent his heart.
She thought to force him into marriage, did she? Well, the days when he could be jerked about by other people’s whims were long gone. Never again would anyone force him into doing anything.
“To hell with you.” He looked beyond her to where his mother had gone still as death. “To hell with both of you. I’m leaving this ho
use, and I’m not returning. So I hope you’re both very happy together. Now get out of my room.”
When they just stood there, staring hollow-eyed at him, he marched toward them. “Out, damn you!”
His mother fled at once, but Camilla paused in the doorway to glance back at him. “I know you’re angry, Pierce, and I understand why. Your parents tore a hole in your heart when they abandoned you, and you’ve been trying to mend it ever since. That’s why you’ve had a string of mistresses—not because you wanted to show your parents they hadn’t broken you but because you kept hoping to find someone who really did care about you.”
“Shut the hell up!” he cried, fighting the truth in her words as furiously as he fought to ignore the compassion on her face.
“Well, you’ve found that someone. I truly do love you. But until you put the past behind you, you won’t be free to love me or anyone else.” She hitched up the bundle of clothes in her arms. “If you’ve learned anything from your parents, it ought to be this—love works only when it’s mutual. Otherwise, eventually it becomes exactly what you call it—a meaningless word. For both parties.”
Then she walked out.
He stared blindly at the door, willing her to come back through it, to change her mind, to throw caution to the winds.
But he knew better. She would never do that. Not for him. No one ever did.
And it was time he stopped waiting for it.
• • •
Camilla stood in the countess’s sitting room as the house was thrown into an uproar. Pierce had given orders for his coach-and-four to be readied, and the entire cadre of servants had been roused to do all the myriad tasks required for a trip.
His mother wouldn’t look at Camilla, and Camilla wasn’t certain if it was embarrassment or disgust that kept her so distant.
At the moment, she didn’t care either way. She was numb from the inside out. She should have known that her heart-stopping plunge into pleasure would end like this. Anything that wonderful never lasted.
Ruthlessly, she stifled the tears that kept threatening. She refused to cry in front of her ladyship. That would come later, when she was alone. No doubt, regret would come with it, too.
’Twas the Night After Christmas Page 22
