Arrows of Desire: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 3
Page 24
Yes. He’d found the well of love that his memory had temporarily stopped up. Intact, only closed by reason, now it flowed out to fill him with the emotion he should have trusted from the moment he’d met her.
Heat spiked up his spine, thrills of stimulation pushing him to find himself inside her.
Inside her he found the answers that had tantalized him ever since he’d learned about her existence. So simple, he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it before. The truth was in her.
Inside her sweet body. Hot and wet and his personal piece of heaven.
The urge to push became something he didn’t need to think about. It just was. The driving rhythm became part of him, as instinctive as breathing, and her responses natural. One heart, one body, they worked together, each striving for their peaks.
No, for each other’s. That was part of the secret. He wanted her to come far more than he wanted it for himself. Because they were so close, he felt the same emotion in her.
Not an emotion, an impulse, something that came from part of him he rarely communicated with. Barely acknowledged existed.
Dragging his mouth from hers, he gazed into her eyes. Yards of fabric were crushed between them, but he’d never felt so close to anyone in his life before. Had lovemaking with her been like this before?
His body tightened as he worried, and his mind returned to its normal pattern, together with rational thought, but not for long. Her passage clasped him, clenched and released, and it drove him insane. Reason dissipated, as useless as a puff of air in a thunderstorm. The needs of his body superseded that, overcame it, and he dove into blessed oblivion as his cock jerked and shot the first of his seed into her.
Again and again he came, helpless to do anything except cry her name. Her whimpers rewarded him, and the way she clutched handfuls of his shirt, as if to retain her balance after a fall.
He knew exactly how she felt, because he’d fallen too.
Portia let Edmund wrestle her out of her clothes. They accomplished the feat with not a little laughter, because her maid had dressed her well, tightened her laces perfectly. It took him some time to get her unhooked and unlaced.
She helped all she could, managed the knots on her garters and her shoe buckles while he was working on the laces of her stays. But every now and then she shook with laughter and had to stop.
“This is all so undignified!” Not that she cared a jot. “It must appear ridiculous.”
“Then it’s fortunate I’m the only person to see it,” he replied, “because I think it’s adorable. May I see you in this state of confusion far more often.”
Her heart missed a beat. Did he mean that?
Too relaxed and happy to concern herself with more, she gasped when he pulled on her laces and groaned, but not in pleasure. “What are you doing?”
“I fear getting you into a worse tangle. I think I knotted your stay laces. Wait.”
He fumbled at something, his coat swishing as he delved into the big pockets. She heard a snick, then another, followed by blessed freedom to breathe. “What did you do?”
He waved a blade in front of her. “Cut them. I’m sorry, I couldn’t manage them.” Her stays fell away, together with the shredded remains of her stay-laces. Some were still attached to the garment. He tossed them to the floor, to join her gown and stomacher.
The sight reminded her strongly of her wedding night, but she dared not ask him if he recalled the way they’d stripped so quickly and joined with each other so enthusiastically. Come to think of it, he’d had more finesse then. His urgent, primitive rutting tonight had sent her into ecstasy so fast and hard she hadn’t had time to think of anything else until now.
He dropped the blade and helped her out of her petticoats and then, finally, her shift. Again she was naked with a man who was nearly fully dressed.
“You didn’t even take off your coat.” She felt no embarrassment, sitting before him, her body still wet from their recent activity, her nipples hard, as if yearning for his touch. He glanced down at them. His gaze became more fixed, and he touched them, pulled the nipples gently between his fingers. “You are very beautiful. Has anyone ever seen this sight before? Because I fear I must kill them if they have.”
His sentiment made her laugh. “Only you. And my maid, when I bathe.”
“Then I must bathe you from now on.”
Unable to wait to see him again, and afraid he might take it into his head to leave her now they had done the deed, she shoved his coat off his shoulders. He helped, shrugging it off and then his waistcoat. She’d already undone the buttons. His shirt pooled about his thighs. After he’d unfastened his stock, that went next.
Purring in approval, she spread her hands over his bare chest and was gratified with his shudder. “Don’t do too much, my lady. Already I’m responding to you. Let’s at least get into bed before we do it again.”
She couldn’t wait. That became a reality when he stood and roughly pushed the rest of his clothes down his legs and away.
When she scooted across the bed, he climbed over her, straddling her, his cock already hard. “Can you do this? Can you take me again?”
“What do you think?” Modesty abandoned with her clothes, she slid her fingers between her legs and opened herself for him, letting him look his fill. And he did, gazing at the most intimate parts of her as if reaching the Promised Land.
“I want everything. To taste you and feel you come against my lips. To fuck you, like we did just now, hard and mindless, and then to make love to you, to pleasure you in every way possible.”
The words sank into her and became a part of her. He’d come back to her. At least they had this back. If fighting him brought her this reward, she’d never stop.
With a groan of surrender, he came down on top of her, surrounding her with heavenly male heat. His shaft pressed against her stomach, branding her forever. He took her lips with a voraciousness she could only respond to. Curling her arm around his neck, she held him close and kissed him, opening her mouth to the invasion of his tongue. He seemed desperate, but after months of inactivity, she felt much the same.
Had he taken lovers in his sojourn in London when he hadn’t known of her existence? She daren’t ask because the answer might just kill her.
He drew away and stroked her cheek, his touch gentle. “No,” he said. “We’re as close as two people can get. I can feel your emotions and I think I know what you thought just now. You were afraid and distressed. I don’t ever want you to feel that. And if the question was about anyone else, no, there’s been nobody else. Even though I didn’t remember you, I couldn’t settle with any other woman. No, not Susanna either. The duchesse held her apart, as a kind of reward. I never achieved the reward, and now I’m glad, because I have the ultimate reward in you.”
She melted. Gazing into his eyes, she saw sincerity there, and heat so high it would burn her. She wanted that conflagration, every bone in her body drawing closer to him. “And I you. I was a virgin until you.”
She wished she hadn’t reminded him when a tinge of wistfulness entered his gaze. But when she pulled him to her and kissed him, desire roared up anew. Opening her legs, she raised her knees and held his body between her thighs, his cock finding its home as he shifted to place it between her legs.
Winding her hand into his hair, she cupped the back of his head while she lost herself in their kiss. He tasted her mouth, swept his tongue inside to take possession, to learn her.
Make love to me, Edmund, she said, mind-to-mind.
With all my heart.
He pushed inside her. Finally he came to the place he belonged. The sense of rightness overwhelmed her. Curling her legs around his waist, she pressed on his buttocks with her heels, urging him on.
He pulled away from their kiss, smiling, his eyes feverish, sweat beading his brow. “I love a demanding woman.”
/> Portia refused to read too much into his words. Enough for now that he’d chosen her and wanted to be with her. With one hand still buried in the silky lengths of his hair, she slid the other down his sweat-slicked back. He watched her, his gaze intense and fierce. No doubting that he wanted her. She’d never stopped wanting him.
He invaded her, and she gave in to his demands and added some of her own. Her arousal steadily built, and with every deep, masculine thrust he pushed her closer to the edge. More and more until she could taste the need, even though he didn’t kiss her again. He watched, his pale eyes made dark with passion, until she threw back her head and cried out, helpless in the torrent of need that took her over with a relentlessness she welcomed.
Each spike of passion forced her further up. They exchanged no words, and truthfully, Portia doubted if she could remember any, or utter them coherently, in her mind or through her lips.
He jerked, gave an essentially male “Ungh!” sound and came, flooding her as she clasped him to her, holding him while he rode his own peak.
Edmund dropped his head onto her shoulder, his breath heating her flesh as he panted heavily. She was equally out of breath, not only because she had a man weighing much more than her sprawled over her body.
With a dark, throaty chuckle, he reached behind and unclasped her legs. Loosening them, she let them slide down his body until he could roll over. She didn’t let go. She never wanted to let go again.
His first words took her plummeting back to earth. “I love you,” he said.
She would have shoved him away from her, except that he held her too tightly for that. “Don’t indulge me. A few days ago you said you didn’t know me. How can you love someone you can’t know?”
“And yet you love me,” he murmured. He traced a line along her spine. Despite her newfound anger, she shivered in reaction.
“Yes, I do.”
“And you don’t know me. You thought you were marrying a country gentleman.”
“A wealthy one. One who had diamond buttons on his coat.”
He had the temerity to laugh. “Did I wear those? They’re strictly for court normally. I really must have wanted to impress you.” His smile disappeared. “Although now I know why. Will you let me explain, or must I prove it to you?”
“What? That suddenly you love me?” She had to admit she’d love the proof, but she could not carry on if he thought she was such an idiot.
This conversation should take place with her decently dressed so she didn’t feel quite so vulnerable, but he held her tightly. If she really wanted to get away, then he’d let her, but then she had no doubt that this conversation would cease. And then she’d never know.
So she just said, “Explain.”
He nodded. He continued to caress her, as if compelled to do it. She knew how he felt, but she kept her hands firmly in place, one on his back, the other tucked against his chest. He made her feel protected, but not in the restrictive way her father practiced. Only that he wanted to take care of her and ensure she came to no harm. She couldn’t let him get away with telling her he loved her.
“When you came to me, I was confused. I was sure I had no wife and that you were some kind of witch. Because I wanted you badly. Even then I felt drawn to you.”
He smiled ruefully and reached down to pull the sheets over their cooling bodies. “I was angry. My body betrayed me by reacting whenever you were near, so I wanted to get away to think. Or rather, to try to remember. After Stretton—Bacchus—struck me and rendered me temporarily insane, he nursed me until I recovered. He is older and more experienced than I. While I was still unconscious I fretted, so my man gave me false memories to replace the blank in my mind.”
When she would have protested, he laid a finger over her lips. “No, listen. I have a faun as a valet now. Much more manageable.” He removed his finger, watching her closely.
“You didn’t love me. You don’t.”
“I did and I do. I spent every day after I met you worrying and fretting. If I loved you, shouldn’t I remember you? Why had I married the daughter of a Titan? Was I enchanted? The thoughts went round and round and I couldn’t sleep for worrying about them. That is, until tonight.”
He touched his lips to her forehead, then her mouth, but didn’t linger. His hair lay on his shoulders and over the pillow in untidy strands, full and fluffed up, just as she remembered from her honeymoon. The remembrance clogged her mind.
He stroked her back as if gentling a wild animal. “I wanted to make sense of it. In that I was forgetting myself and what I can do, all the duchesse taught me while I was her pupil. Love doesn’t bow to reason—it supersedes it. When I started to make love to you, the answer came to me. All I had to do was let go. So I did. It flooded back.”
This time when he kissed her, she responded, gave herself this moment. When their lips parted, clinging as if reluctant to separate, she said, “Sank into the passion?”
“Yes, I did just that. My body remembers you even if my mind does not. With that came the rest. I fell in love with you once before. Now I do so again, but instead of an enchantment, this time it’s all me. Body and soul, my love. I don’t know you properly, but I did once. I have to trust myself, that I chose wisely. I do not remember before, something that will never cease to cause me grief, but if I continue to search for the memories, I’ll miss what we have now. We will get to know each other all over again.”
She could hardly believe it, but what he said made sense. Love and reason were not comfortable bedfellows. Love happened whether the moment was right or not, whether the people were suitable matches or not. She’d fallen in love with him even though she meant not to. “You spent three weeks before our wedding getting to know me. We didn’t make love, not until our wedding night.”
He tipped up her chin with a finger. “I can believe that. You have an essential sweetness that I might have been afraid to break if I made love to you hastily or clandestinely. Although I can’t promise you that I’ll be good now we’ve tied the knot.”
“Then you accept it?”
“A record of our wedding will be in the parish records, and otherwise.”
“At the house. At the Grange.”
He smiled. “Ah yes. I can guess why I bought that too. As well as wanting to be close to you, that is, and make you happy by moving in close to your family. They mean a great deal to you, don’t they?” He didn’t wait for her answer. “I would have wanted somewhere away from my mother and a place of strength from which to fight her. I had recently learned that my mother was a Titan. She wasn’t the more benevolent kind, like your father, either.”
She snorted. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw him on a smuggling run.” She halted and grimaced. “I don’t suppose you remember that either, do you?”
“No.” He grinned. “It makes sense. Your father, being a Titan, will have a strong urge to control and rule. His solution is ingenious. If illegal.”
“You won’t tell anyone?”
“No. Why should I concern myself with the occasional barrel of brandy or bundle of French lace?”
She swallowed. “It’s a lot more. Enough to affect the economy, that’s for sure. And occasionally the contraband isn’t so innocuous.”
He fixed her with a curious gaze, his head tilted. “You will tell me, but another time. I want to know. Everything,” he said with firm emphasis. “Can you believe I love you?”
Warmth flooded her, sent from his mind to hers, and despite her doubts she sighed and leaned into his embrace. Everything waited there for her. “I don’t know.”
“It’s a start.”
She read no uncertainty in his mind. “What do we do about the duchesse and her ward? Are we really married?”
“I have a solution, but I don’t know if it will work or not. The existence of that precontract makes our marriage technically illegal.”
“You really want to?”
“I really want to.” He smiled down at her, his expression soft, the Edmund she knew, not the haughty duke who still seemed a stranger to her. They kissed again, a promise and a beginning. She’d never tasted anything so wonderful in her life before.
“Now for the Duchesse de Clermont-Ferrand. She has a contract between Susanna and myself, but that is the least of our troubles. She’s Venus, the goddess of love, and she can create a lot of problems for us if she chooses. I owe her a great deal. I don’t want to reward her kindness by hurting her. Where my own mother kept me ignorant of my true identity and would have continued to do so, the duchesse showed me what I am and what that means. I would have accepted tutelage from no one else, but in another time, she was my mother. In different bodies. She was jealous of you because she wanted me for Susanna, but she did me a great service.” He paused, gazing at her as if to find answers in her face. Perhaps he did, because he went on. “I will talk to her and try to make her see reason. Like many of the gods, she has a streak of vanity a mile wide. Perhaps I can appeal to that.”
“Flattery?” She stroked his back, traced her fingers along his backbone.
“If it works.” The slight movement indicated a shrug, but it wasn’t visible.
They were lying side by side, but now he rolled onto his back, bringing her with him. “Do you like this room?”
Startled by the sudden change in subject, she nevertheless looked around. “Yes.” It was well furnished, but not a room she would remember particularly. Except that Edmund had made love to her here. She still didn’t know what to believe. Did his flattery extend to her? Had he told her what he knew she wanted him to tell her?