by The Impostor
Her chill was complete now, all through her. “Ah,” she said faintly. “It felt rather… relevant to me.”
“Completely without bearing on the future.” Then Dalton relented, facing her with apology in his eyes.
He reached one hand to tug gently on her raveling braid, turning her to the light.
Her face in the candlelight was pale and drawn, a stranger’s face, really. But the flashing hazel eyes were pure Rose. “I’ve asked myself a thousand times… why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t I see Rose in the Widow Simpson?”
“I took care you shouldn’t.” Her words were a mere breath. If he’d been standing three steps back, he wouldn’t have heard them.
“Perhaps. Or perhaps I wanted my fairy maid so badly that I didn’t want to see.”
Slowly she reached up and drew his hand from her braid. Her trembling fingers told the story that her rigid stance would not. She was as troubled as he. As anguished. As alone.
He took her face between his palms. “Who are you really?” His voice was hoarse even to his own ears. With his fingers he stroked dangling strands of damp hair from her temples. “All those faces. Are any of them real?”
She gave her head a tiny shake. “None. Or perhaps… all. I cannot say for sure.”
“So there is some hope?” His thumb stroked away a tear. He doubted she knew she was crying. “My Rose is in there somewhere?”
“I don’t know. In the end, it seems I am only Clara after all.”
“Clara,” he said, testing the name. Would Clara touch his heart? Would she soothe that dark place inside him that he’d never known existed until Rose showed him the way?
Could he afford the price? His life was already complicated beyond the telling of it. Could he devote enough of himself to her to keep her by his side?
More to the point, did he dare divide himself at all? It seemed the choice lay between Clara or England. Never both.
“Please try to understand, Clara. I cannot truly give myself. I simply cannot afford the distraction.” He stopped. Yet he had already begun an affair—with Rose. When he spoke again his voice was regretful. “I can see how you might misunderstand the situation, but you must admit the circumstances were partly the cause. We were in a forced intimacy in the cupboard that got the better of our reason. It was simply an aberration, a misdeed that—”
“A misdeed? An aberration?” She stood awkwardly as the cloak tangled in her feet. In a fit of impatience, she pulled it off, then threw it to the floor. “You take what happened and you shrink it down to nothing so you won’t have to admit what you did to me.”
His jaw dropped. “I? Did to you? I recall you begging—”
She held up her hand to stop his words. “You did something that no one else has ever truly managed,” she hissed. “You with your silver eyes and your lying passion.” She was shaking with emotion. “You—”
She stopped, panting, choking on tears that she refused to allow.
He stood and stepped closer, until all she could see were his fine eyes. “I what?” His voice was low. Intense.
She couldn’t bear it. She hated him more than she’d ever hated anyone in her life. She needed him so much she couldn’t breathe. She shoved at him violently, pushing him away. Her pain welled up in a vanquished cry.
“You broke my heart!”
She’d thrown the cloak down between them like a challenge glove. It was a challenge Dalton couldn’t resist.
Logic, cold reason—how could they withstand the influence of this changeable enchantress?
He swooped down on her like a raptor, enveloping her in his arms, pulling her close for his devouring. His lips came down hard on hers, his hand in her hair rough and unbelievably full of need. He’d thought to conquer her, but from somewhere within him welled a hunger so powerful that he would have crawled in order to have her.
Almost angrily he fought it back, even as her hands came up to pull him closer. She wrapped her arms around his waist and slathered her body on his, as hungry as he.
Then they were down on the cloak. She tugged at his shirt, slipping her hands beneath it to warm them on his hot skin. His belly was hard and rippled beneath her touch, so she touched it more.
His mouth was greedy on hers and she fed off him in her turn. He rolled her beneath him, pinning her gown to the floor as his thighs parted hers. Unable to stop long enough to pull up her nightdress, he satisfied himself with rubbing the length of his own fully clad erection into the cleft between her legs.
It was torturous pleasure and she tore her mouth from his to gasp aloud. Her fingers fumbled as she searched for the buttons of his trousers. Eagerness and heat drowned out the warning cries of her mind. Only her heart and body were allowed to speak in this moment.
She gave up on his trousers and shoved her fingers into his hair, holding him close so that she could do to his mouth what she wanted to do to the rest of him. He groaned her name, her real name, as his hands cupped and massaged her breasts. His fingertips found her nipples, tugging and teasing until her eyes closed and her head dropped back to the floor.
Dalton took his kisses to her breasts, sucking and nibbling on her through the fine batiste of her nightdress. She felt his fingers curl over the neck of her gown, she heard the fabric rip—and only arched her back to ease his access.
Shoving her fingers into his hair, she held his head as he lovingly savaged her breasts. His lips, his teeth, the sharp burn of his incipient beard all combined in a storm of sensation that made her dampen and throb for him.
“Oh, God, Clara… “The ramble of his voice between her breasts vibrated directly through her. “I meant none of it. Forgive me.”
“Dalton… “Her whisper was lost in his groan as he released his erection from its buttoned prison. She reached for him, not satisfied this time with ladylike discretion. She wanted to touch him, to take him in her hands.
Thick, hot male filled her grasp. She spared the grateful thought that it was a good thing she already knew he’d fit, or she’d have worried.
Going quite still over her, he shuddered as she stroked his erection gently. “Clara, I can’t… I need … “But he made no move to pull away. She reveled in his pleading tone, in the knowledge that he would give her this small control.
“I need,” she whispered back to him. “I need to see you. All of you.”
He opened his eyes to read her face. She didn’t turn her determined gaze from his. Smiling slightly, almost shyly, he rolled from above her to lie upon the cloak at her side, closer to the fire.
Clara rose to one elbow next to him, one hand reaching to take possession of his thick member once more. “Will you do as I say?”
He chuckled, half in alarm. “Really, Clara, you are the most outrageous—”
She kissed his lips closed. He deepened the kiss hungrily and protested no more. She pulled back very slightly. “You have much to learn about me, Dalton Montmorency, Lord Etheridge,” she murmured against his lips. “As I do about you.” She kissed his rough jaw and bit him gently on the chin. “You first.”
“God help me,” he sighed, then sent her a hot look. “You next.”
Swallowing, Clara almost backed away from what she might be unleashing from within them both. Then her imagination blessed her with some of the lovely wicked possibilities and the heat within her bloomed beyond recall.
Slowly, she reached for his hands and unwrapped them from her hair. “You may not touch me yet. I am going to learn you so well I could draw you in the dark.” She pressed his hands to the carpet at his sides. He made as if to raise them. “No,” she said firmly, “or I won’t do this.”
She bent to take his flat male nipple between her lips the way he had done to her. His breath left him in a whoosh and she saw his hands flatten themselves to the floor.
I am going to learn you. I will know you so well that I will never forget an inch of you.
This was a moment stolen out of time—an interlude of forever in this high windo
wless chamber snug against the rain. Why was it always attics?
He tasted salty and male to her tongue. She lapped his other nipple. The same. Her position was awkward so she rucked up her gown and straddled his stomach. He groaned and flexed his body beneath her.
“No drawers,” he gasped. She pressed him firmly back to the floor.
“Of course not. I never wear knickers to bed.”
If she’d thought his gaze was heated before… she looked away, that she might not see the black hunger she had made. She was almost frightened, yet so very aroused. She ducked her head down to his chest to avoid his eyes.
She plowed her fingers through the dark mat on his chest and gently bit his collarbone. “No more mystery,” she whispered. “No more lies.”
“No,” he growled in return. “No more lies.”
‘Tell me then, Dalton. The truth. Tell me what you want.”
He looked away. She raised her hands to his jaw and turned his gaze back up to hers. “Tell me.”
His breathing deepened and his chest rose and fell between her spread thighs. “I like—I want your mouth.”
She kissed him. “You have it. But that’s not what you mean, is in?” She kissed her way back down his neck and down the central valley of his hard chest. “Here?” she murmured into his skin.
“Yes—no—”
Clara bit him just above his navel as she ran her hands over the marvelous ridges of his stomach. “Here?” She kissed her way down the tantalizing dark trail below, neatly maneuvering the lower half of her own body past a certain very large obstacle. Dalton groaned and twisted as she floated over his erection with only the trailing hem of her nightgown touching him.
“Clara,” he warned, his voice a black growl.
She was pressing his control, she knew. The exhilarating feeling of authority became tempered with the desire to truly make him lose control. Only once had she caught a glimpse of the unleashed male animal within him. When first he’d kissed her after she’d made her offer in the moonlit attic… then, for mere moments, the facade was gone.
If there was only this one night, then by heaven, she wanted the real Dalton for her own. Not Monty, not Lord Etheridge. Dalton—hot, harsh, run riot.
It would cost her. She’d never reach him unless she released herself. No Rose, no Widow Simpson. Could she do it?
His tension-dampened flesh rippled beneath her palms and he began to grind his teeth in resistance to her.
“No.” She ran her fingers into the waist of his trousers and drawers and stripped them from him. He moved to help her with his boots but she shot him a warning glare that made him lie back, laughing breathlessly at her ferocity.
Then he lay naked before her, every grand male inch of him. Hers, if she dared.
“You said you wanted my mouth.” She ran one hand up a thick-hewn thigh as she crawled back up him. “Now where might that mouth go?” she mused. She kissed one hipbone. “There?” She kissed the other and tasted his skin in a slow stroke of her tongue. “There?”
“You are an imp,” Dalton groaned. “You are a fiend sent to devour me.”
“I’m not an imp. But I am hungry.” His stiff erection twitched before her gaze. He would never say it but she knew. I want to learn you.
She lowered her mouth to the swollen head of his member. He gasped, digging clawed fingers into the carpet threads and flexing his body upward. She pressed both palms over his hipbones to steady him. Opening her lips, she tasted him.
Salt. Musk. Sharp, tangy male. He pulsed against her lips. Fascinated, she took the entire head into her mouth, running her tongue curiously around the swollen shape.
Experimentally, she created suction, the way he had with her nipples.
Dalton nearly came up off the floor in one full-body spasm. He felt his mind slipping sideways. “Oh, God!” Not a curse but a prayer.
Her mouth was hot and wet and apparently naturally talented. Dalton had never experienced this particular pleasure before. Always so circumspect, always aware of his place, his proper cog in the great machine… never allowed himself this shivering ecstasy.
She pinned him more fiercely, pressing him down with her small hands as if she could actually keep him from rising. Yet, he would not stop her slow exploration for the world. Intrepid, even in this.
What a woman.
Not his woman, not past this night.
Tomorrow he would send her safely away until he could ferret out the rogue member of the Royal Four. But for tonight…
His thoughts swam away in the riveting eroticism of her wet mouth on him.
Tonight…
His body tensed, his breath shortened. The pulling, stroking exquisite torture never let up, in fact it deepened. He couldn’t hold out much longer—
She gently raked her teeth across his flesh, by design or accident. The crescendo of sensations tore him from the dangling threads of his control, sent him spinning into animal darkness …
With a growl he was up and she was down. He tore her gown up and off her in a savage swipe even as he pressed his knee between her thighs.
Wait. Slow down. The last small protest of his civilization died away when she answered his primitive tactics with the tightening of her sweet thighs around his waist and a hoarse “Yes.”
He drove into her with all the power of his coiled body, until she threw her head back with a gasp full of torment and wonder.
The hot tight slide of her body around his wrapped his mind in darkness and driving hunger. Each thrust was deeper and harsher still. Each withdrawal was faster and more torturous. He wanted to drive himself into her until the friction set them both aflame and they burned to ash… together.
Clara was on fire. She was fire, surely Dalton could see her glow… the pleasure of his forceful invasion was dark and seething, part exquisite pain and part wicked appalling fulfillment. She wanted his mad heat, his dangerous power. This dark anguished core of him was hers. Hers alone of all the world. She needed him to explode for her like a volcano too long dormant.
Her own explosion was almost upon her. With his fists entwined in her hair and his arms wrapping her immobile for his raw possession, she could only grasp mindlessly at his wide rippling back as his fierce thrusts forced her higher.
Higher. God, she’d never known she could go so high–
He threw his head back, his face tight with ecstasy above her. The look of him, the wild sweltering power of him, took her breath away, firing her with new possessive lust. He was a beast. He was her beast.
A rumbling harsh call came from deep within his chest, resonating through her fading awareness. Dear God, so high—
He swelled within her with his final plowing thrust and she was gone—spiraling up and out of herself in a wash of light and trembling ecstasy. Higher. She couldn’t breathe—she didn’t care—dimly she heard her own cry resound in the small chamber in unearthly harmony with his.
Limp, perspiring and trembling, Clara’s body slowly regained contact with her mind. Her heartbeat boomed in her ears—or was that his? She couldn’t tell where he ended and where she began. They lay entwined before the fire—panting, spent and far too blissful to sully the moment with a single thought.
Their hearts slowed together and their breathing softened and they slept—not hunter and hunted, not named, not defined. Merely man and woman—together.
Chapter Twenty-one
Dalton rolled over onto something clammy and unpleasant. He fumbled for it, then pulled it from beneath himself with a grunt. Slitting his eyes, he peered at it.
A slipper. Clara’s slipper, blackened and ruined from her run across the rooftops.
Clara.
He bolted upright to cast a searching gaze about the office, then saw her. She was sitting tailor-fashion not three feet away, watching him.
Her smile of greeting warmed him within, until he saw the shredded nightgown she wore. Then his gut went cold. “My God. Oh, no.” He scrambled to her side. “I—Clara, what I
did to you last night—oh dear God.”
There were faint scratches on her shoulder and her neck was reddened by the burn of his beard. He swallowed as he saw the small marks on the top of her breast, one pink dot for each finger of his hand.
She followed his gaze downward. “Ah. I should tell you that I do mark easily.”
He wanted to take her into his arms but he didn’t deserve to touch her. “I can’t believe… I wouldn’t hurt you for the world—” Yet he had. He’d taken her roughly, on the floor like a rutting beast. He sat back on his heels, unmindful of his nudity, stricken to his core with guilt.
“Dalton, I already told you… you didn’t hurt me.”
He shook his head. “I did. I used you shamefully.
I—”
Something struck him on the nose. He caught it automatically when it dropped. A strawberry? He looked up to see Clara poised to toss another fruit at him—an apple.
“Now this … “she mused. “This might hurt.”
“Clara, I know you’re angry. I’m sorry, oh God, I’m so sorry—”
The apple struck his shoulder with some power. “Ouch!” He rubbed the spot with his other hand. “Stop. Please talk to me, Clara.”
“Oh, are you interested in my viewpoint? I thought you were too busy wallowing in misplaced guilt.” She picked up a grape. “This is small, but I think with enough force I should be able to lodge it in your ear. Hold still.”
“Misplaced? My guilt is well aimed. Just look at you!”
She considered him for a moment, then smiled and popped the grape into her mouth. “Look at yourself,” she said around it.
Not understanding, Dalton looked down. His first realization was that he was entirely naked. His second thought was of the old saying, “You should have seen the other fellow.”
He was a mess. Teeth marks and the round red suction marks of her mouth were all over him. He became aware of a stinging sensation on his back and rolled one shoulder forward to look.
Welts the size and position of fingernail scratches decorated his back. “Oh, bloody hell.”
She peered around him for a look. “Ah, I remember that.” She grinned. “Want to do it again?”
