She shivered slightly at the lovely thought of several more hours in his company. However, a very naughty gleam of satisfaction now lightened those sable eyes staring boldly back at her and she couldn’t bear to let him think he’d won this battle of wills. “We ought to agree on the number of times then.”
One hand on her hip, he shifted her closer. “Afraid I might exhaust you, Mrs. Phillips?”
She pursed her lips. “So that I know when I’ve paid in full for my painting.” A bright shaft of sunlight stealing through the breeze-blown curtains made her squint. “It’s only fair.”
“Fair? He feigned confusion, a sportive grin tugging on his lips.
Groaning, she fell back to the pillow. “What was I thinking? What would any Blackwood know about playing fair?”
“Precisely.” She felt his hand sliding between her thighs, toying with her.
“You’re such a boy!”
“I hope not.”
“Then answer my question. How many times must I put up with you?” The last word ended on a sharp gasp as he entered her with his finger, exploring her damp, soft flesh.
Again he evaded answering. “How many times did my father have you?”
Her lashes flickered as he moved his finger deeper. “He never did. I told you, it wasn’t like that. He was a friend.”
His answer was instant. “Why did you let him paint you like that then?”
“He paid me. It was a business arrangement.”
He slid his finger partially out then added a second. “Like ours now.”
“Not like…not like this at all.” She gasped as his fingers skillfully found her core and gently massaged. Eyelashes fluttering shut, she gave herself over to the sensations coursing through her body, radiating from that one tiny, hidden place inside her. Just as she thought she would expire, he slipped his fingers out of her, left her quivering, melting.
“I may not be capable again just yet,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her parted lips. “But there’s no reason for you to wait that long.”
For the next ten minutes, he kept her on the brink, administering just enough pressure with his fingers to keep her floating, then retreating again, making her pant softly, helplessly. He touched his wet fingertips to her nipples, squeezing them lightly, playfully.
“Look at you,” he muttered. “More beautiful now than when he painted you. I can make you glow.”
“Adam.” It was the only word she could manage.
But she felt the bed dip and feared he was leaving it. She squirmed, shook her head, and opened her eyes, staring foggily at the young man on her bed. He was kneeling, looking down at her, the lines of his face sharply carved, his mouth taut, gaze fervent and covetous.
“Adam!” She parted her legs, touching herself, so close to falling over the precipice into Heaven.
He watched her for three seconds and then he pulled her hands away. She fought him, gasping, needing to finish.
“Tsk, tsk, Mrs. Phillips. Such a fuss!” Slowly he moved between her legs, slid his strong arms under her knees and lowered his head. “Leave it to me. I know what you want.”
Writhing, crying out, she forgot all about the neighbors when he placed his mouth to her sex and masterfully drove her up into the clouds.
Chapter Five
A few hours later, she rose from the bed in search of food for them. She had no idea of the time, but the sun languished below the treetops, fading into a drowsy pink flush. Across the green the tavern lights were already lit.
Leaving him asleep in the bed, his tousled head turned away from her, she quietly pulled on her chemise. He made no movement, no sound to show he heard or felt her leave the bed, and she tiptoed carefully from the room. The house was quiet, even the usual creaks and groans of the old beams seemingly at rest this evening.
Making her way down the stairs and into the narrow passage, she caught her dim reflection in the long mirror above the console table. She was a ghostly apparition in her white chemise with her hair tumbled over her shoulders in wanton disarray. But she also looked young, nineteen perhaps. He did that to her. It was as if all those dull, unhappy years were washed away and she was back again, a young girl, imbued with hope and romantic expectations. She smiled guiltily at the idle fancy and hurried to the kitchen.
He wasn’t staying. In the morning he’d be gone, and she’d told him never to come back again, so there was no point letting other foolish ideas crowd in. It was difficult enough now to keep herself from singing with all this strange giddiness thrumming through her bones.
She lit an oil lamp and took it with her into the larder where she assembled a hasty feast of cheese, left-over steak pie, cake, and ale. Working quickly among the shelves and the muslin covered pots, she was completely unaware of any other presence until he said, “Need help?”
Adam, barefoot, dressed only in his trousers, stood in the larder doorway, forearms pressed to the wooden frame as he leaned in, looking for her. She almost dropped the lamp.
“I didn’t hear you come down.”
“I thought perhaps you were running out on me.”
“Why would I do that?”
He said nothing, merely looked at her, devouring her slowly with his crow-black, pitiless eyes.
Evangeline handed him the oil lamp while she carried the tray out into the kitchen and set it on the long table. There they sat on this extraordinary occasion, in their scandalous state of undress, with no cutlery and no plates, hungrily consuming the first meal either of them had ever fully enjoyed. Alone together they forgot the long-instilled nursery rules about no elbows on the table and bringing a glass perpendicular to the lips. In fact, Adam drank directly from the ale jug. The impropriety only made it all that much more delightful.
Watching him in the amber, smoky light, she thought he, too, looked younger. Although, of course, he had a head start on her. Naked from the waist up, he resembled a savage from an old illustrated encyclopedia she had as a child. The light gleamed across his wide shoulders, accentuating the hard muscle, drawing her eyes across and then down, reminding her of those wondrous hours already gone.
Thank goodness they still had until morning. Then it would be over. There would be no regrets. They would go their separate ways and have this pleasant memory shut away in their minds like a love knot kept in a silver locket.
Love knot? Her heart slowed. Why would she even think of love? Why let that word in? This wasn’t love. It was lust and Adam Blackwood getting his way. A few hours ago she’d even considered it blackmail, although she couldn’t now, with any good conscience, refer to it any longer as a crime. He was too skilled, too stunning, too generous a lover…
This, she thought helplessly, is this what he did to other women? Made them forget themselves so utterly they forgave him anything, let him treat them abominably just because he was so talented in bed. She forced herself to remember why they were there together in the first place. Because he refused to return her painting unless she succumbed.
That was blackmail, wasn’t it? How could she forget and forgive?
So he gave her the most heart-stopping, breath-stealing orgasms. That was hardly an apology for his behavior.
He swigged ale straight from the jug again and a little of it dripped down his chin. When she leaned across the table to wipe it for him with the sleeve of her chemise, he caught her wrist in his long fingers, brought her palm to his lips, and kissed it, his eyes melting hers.
* * * *
Adam felt another twinge in his heart. She was a wild, elfin creature from another world this evening, dark hair strewn about her shoulders, her skin translucent, soft, smudges of light caressing the side of her face, as if she was partially gilded with gold leaf. The air between them was balmy, heavily laden with passion already spent and more yet to come. He panicked. What if he never stopped wanting her? It wasn’t good to give a woman so much of himself, or to want so much from her. He’d hoped tonight to cleanse himself of this desire, but there was too
much of it. The more he used up, the faster it multiplied. It was as if she was engraved on him somehow, and when he was dead and rotting, her name would be found scratched into his bones.
He must be sickening for something, he decided. Somehow she’d bewitched him. He was probably not the first man to fall victim to her wiles.
She retrieved her hand and reached for another slice of pie, not looking at him. Most women, in his experience, were easily won and equally casually lost. But not Lina. She was not most women. She was not any woman he’d ever known. By nationality and upbringing she was so different from him.
She might as well be from another planet. What else could explain the magic in her slightest touch? The spell she cast over him with the barest hint of a smile?
Anxious to settle his careening thoughts, soothe his too-rapid pulse, he did something he never did with a woman he bedded. He sought conversation. If she told him nothing with her eyes, he would steal it out of her with words. The old-fashioned way, he thought, bemused. Thank God his brothers couldn’t see him now or he’d never live it down.
“Why did you let my father paint you, if he wasn’t your lover?”
Her right eyebrow quirked. “This again?”
“Convince me he wasn’t your lover.” He needed reassurance. Other lovers had never troubled him before because his relationships with women were brief, transient, careless. He wasn’t sure yet what this one was, but he knew it was none of those things. Refusing to be categorized in his orderly mind, Evangeline Phillips floated about like a butterfly, teasing with her beauty and just out of reach. Still. Even after all they’d done that afternoon.
She licked her fingers and he felt a jolt of lust, inexorable, predatory. Like a hunter watching a hind through the trees, admiring her beauty while she cropped gently at the leaves in that fleeting moment before she became aware of his closeness and the danger at hand.
“I was twenty-three years old,” she said finally, “widowed, homeless, and absolutely penniless thanks to my first husband and his profligate son. Your father helped me, stood by me when I hadn’t a friend in the world and all society closed me out.” She looked down, long, silken lashes fluttering wearily. “Your father knew what that was like, to be ostracized, but he was always a rebel and it didn’t matter to him. I tried not to let it matter to me. He promised me that if I shed my clothes and posed for him, I would learn what it was to be free of that caring, to shake off the burden of conformity, as he called it.”
He studied her face, those uniquely colored eyes full of secrets, the slender nose and somber lips, the small rounded chin and high cheekbones. “Did it work?”
She wrinkled her nose, laughing lightly. “No. I was too cold without my clothes. Couldn’t wait to put them back on again. I didn’t feel free. I felt vulnerable. I knew then that I wasn’t cut out to be a rebel. But I was glad for the money he paid me. I don’t know what I would have done without your father’s kindness and generosity.”
Adam snorted. “My father was a dirty old devil. Doubtless he tried to seduce you.”
Now her eyes were guarded again. “I…don’t know. Perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” he exploded.
A slight flush colored her face. “What did I know of seduction? Or even of men at that time in my life? I’d had one, mostly disinterested, husband and a few silly flirtations before I married. If Randolph tired to seduce me he was very subtle about it.” Then she allowed a small grin. “Unlike his son.”
He smiled sheepishly, scratching the six o’clock stubble sprouting on his chin. “Subtlety is not my forte.”
“Indeed.”
“Just as well, or growing up competing with my elder brothers, all taller, louder, and better looking , I’d never have gotten what I want,” he pointed out.
She considered him for a moment, her eyes unexpectedly warm. “I suppose there is some benefit from the straightforward approach, if one has the arrogance for it.”
“Oh, I have that.”
“Heaps of it.”
When she gave him a full, genuine smile, it swept through him, knocked him off balance. He tried to regroup his thoughts. Had to pace himself or she’d wear him out at this rate. With difficulty, he made his face solemn. “Why didn’t you go home to your family in America after your first husband died and left you with nothing?”
She lifted her right shoulder in a half-shrug, the chemise drifting down her arm. “I couldn’t go back, couldn’t bear it. My father thought all his dreams for me were fulfilled when I landed an English aristocrat. I never wanted to spoil his illusions, couldn’t let him know how unhappy I’d been. I thought, perhaps, if I straightened everything out, got back on my feet again, I could return one day and it wouldn’t be so bad.”
“But you’re still here.”
“My father died. My mother remarried. My brother and I never got along and his life had moved on without me. No one wanted me back, a burden. So I grew accustomed to things here. It was quiet, peaceful, ordinary.”
Ordinary? He was amused. Nothing about her was ordinary, yet she thought a woman like her could fit in and fade away in such a place. She said she was no rebel, but she was wrong. He’d seen it in her from the beginning, watched her trying to repress it. “Then you married Phillips.”
She shot him a cool glance. “Yes.”
“Why marry him?” He knew why. He wanted to hear her confess.
Shockingly, she did. “He was safe and ordinary, like this village.”
Smug, he laughed. “So you settled for dull and dreary.”
“I didn’t settle.” She bristled, shoulders back. “I had several offers at the time and I chose him.”
“Offers? What other offers?”
“Oh, you’d be surprised.” She stood and walked to the large welsh dresser against the wall. “He wasn’t the only man in the village who wanted to marry me, and several still do. Now that I’m out of mourning, I have my share of suitors.”
Adam’s desire to laugh faded quickly. He glared at her, wondering if she deliberately sought to make him angry, but she was solemn, bringing a glass to the table and pouring herself some ale.
“Surely you wouldn’t marry again at your age.” He meant that she was no young, naïve girl anymore, anxious not to be left on the shelf, but it came out wrong. Had he heard himself, he would have realized his mistake, but his mind sparked with deafening jealousy while a serpent-like possessiveness writhed sensuously around his innards. Never having known either emotion, he dealt with it badly, clumsily.
Her lashes flickered and she sucked in a sharp breath. “Why wouldn’t I marry again?”
His anger mounted. “Why would you?”
She brought the glass to her lips and sipped, very dainty and ladylike. “There is security in marriage, respectability.” Raising her dark lashes she flung a hot glare above the rim of her glass. “Even for a woman of my advanced years.”
When she was rolling around in her bed with him, he thought acidly, she wasn’t very concerned about respectability. But he was good only for this sport. He wasn’t safe enough for anything more. She, the woman with shifty eyes that were never still, didn’t trust him when all he’d ever said to her was honest, perhaps even too honest. Almost from their first meeting he’d spilled his thoughts to her, let her know how much he wanted her. He should have had more restraint. No wonder she thought him a boy.
“Not that I have any need to explain my reasoning to you,” she added. “Who, when, and where I marry is certainly no business of yours, Adam Blackwood. What do you know about marriage? I’ve heard you proclaim you will die a happy bachelor.”
It was true, he had said that many times. But now he was getting married, seeking something secure in his life, finally. Just as she was. He wondered if he should tell her about his engagement. No, perhaps this wasn’t the ideal moment.
“I’m inclined to think you made the right choice by remaining unwed,” she said, briskly brushing crumbs from her chemise. “If only women wer
e entitled to enjoy sex and not be consumed with guilt, then perhaps there wouldn’t be so many miserable marriages.” Looking up, catching his expression, she carefully softened her words. “Don’t frown.”
He hadn’t realized he was frowning.
“Let’s not quarrel,” she said gently.
Why not? Because she wanted to keep him in a mild, obliging temper so he would continue to make love to her for the next few hours until dawn. Like her personal stud horse. He could see her nipples peaking through the thin chemise as she stood to clean up the wreckage of their supper. Respectable indeed! The woman was a seething, stifled bundle of passion waiting for someone to rip apart her corset laces and let her breathe. She could pretend he forced her into it, but her response in bed was not that of a meek, cornered woman. He wouldn’t want her this badly if it had been.
He liked tending that hidden fire, watching it burst from a smoldering glow to an effusion of blistering flame.
And he didn’t care to think of any other man one day having that pleasure.
“I want to know whose been sniffing around,” he exclaimed abruptly, surprising even himself with the venom in his tone.
Her eyes widened. “I said I don’t wish to talk of it.”
“I want to know.”
“You want a great many things, young man.” She seemed breathless, but she recovered, smiling. “Most you can have tonight. But not that.”
Fortunately, before he completely lost his temper, he remembered the wealthy and virginal Miss Hawkesworth, his carefully chosen bride. He could hardly blame Lina for her practical choices when he, too, made his choice with logic rather than passion. It wasn’t his plan to find a sexually exciting, desirable wife. Indeed, that was a mistake, as his brothers always warned, pointing to their father’s volatile marriage as evidence. For needs of that nature, a man kept mistresses, but never married them. That was where their father went wrong, giving his heart to a woman and letting her break it. Let her break all their hearts when she abandoned them.
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