by Gayle Wilson
The hours crept by, but she forced herself to work her way through the pile of invitations that had accumulated, unopened and unanswered, during Raven’s absence. Her hands trembled suddenly if she allowed any of the images to form in her head—Raven standing in the doorway last night, or his mouth against her breast on the morning he’d left. Her body reacted to that last memory, the sweet, hot ache of desire tormenting her.
She entered the dining room that night with that same fluttering anticipation. It had taken her an hour to decide on the gold satin gown, which seemed to create answering highlights in the upswept auburn hair and to give a glow like candlelight to the clarity of her skin. The mirror in her bedroom had been complimentary, and she entered the room with the same provocative smile she had practiced before its reassuring reflection.
She allowed Edwards to seat her, never questioning that Raven would join her. He always informed her when he was going to be absent from the dinner table, and today she’d received no such message. It was probably taking longer than he’d anticipated to dress, given his injuries. It was not until the first course was served that she realized something was wrong. She turned to Edwards, standing silently behind her chair.
“Mr. Raven—” she began, only to be interrupted.
“Mr. Raven has dined, madam,” the butler said simply, but there was something—some unexpressed thought—behind the impenetrable calmness.
“He’s already dined?” she repeated, all the pleasant expectancy collapsing. “Here?” she asked.
“In the kitchen,” Edwards affirmed. For some reason, a dark flush was beginning to stain his cheeks.
The answer she sought should not come from her majordomo, Catherine realized in embarrassment. Whatever had compelled Raven to desert his own table would be better explained by the man himself. Not waiting for Edwards’s help, she pushed back the heavy chair in which she was sitting and rose, leaving her napkin and the untouched food. She didn’t notice the small smile Edwards allowed before he directed removal of the first course.
Catherine walked purposefully to the room where her husband had been sequestered most of the day. The office was as dark as the morning she’d made this same journey, clad only in her night rail, to find Raven in the chair behind the desk. The master suite that connected to hers was also empty, the counterpane stretched smoothly over the huge bed. There had been no preparations for occupation of this chamber tonight. Which meant, of course…
Without allowing herself to think about the possibility that Raven might not welcome her intrusion, she retraced her steps down the upstairs hallway to the door of the small chamber in which, until last night, he had slept since before their marriage. She listened briefly at the door and then, knocking softly, she entered without waiting for permission.
The two men occupying the room looked up in surprise. The valet had just removed his master’s waistcoat. He stood behind Raven, frozen by the shock of her unexpected entrance.
“Thank you, Browning. That will be all,” she said, holding her husband’s eyes, daring him to countermand her dismissal.
The valet looked quickly to his employer, and never glancing at him, Raven nodded, his gaze unmoving from Catherine’s face.
She was made aware that the valet had left by the click of the latch. They were alone, but still the silence stretched.
“Did you come to ask me something, Catherine?” Raven inquired. She had come here the night before she was thrown. Before their agreement to rethink the contract they had made for this most inconvenient marriage of convenience. Before he’d left on the journey from which he’d almost not returned.
“No,” she said. “I didn’t come to ask you anything.”
“Then… ?” Raven allowed the question to trail off.
“I have been waiting to be with you all day. At dinner, if you couldn’t break away from business before. And then at the table, Edwards said you’d eaten. I had so looked forward to having dinner with you, Raven.” She broke off that confession, fighting childish tears of disappointment.
“I ate in the kitchen,” he said.
“Why? Why didn’t you tell me? I could have joined you.”
“No,” Raven said simply. The firm line of his lips tightened, but he didn’t explain. His eyes fell, and his hands began a small upward movement, the palms turning. Suddenly the gesture was halted and the bandaged hands were allowed to slowly return to his side, but his eyes didn’t lift to her face.
“I don’t understand,” she said, but she knew something was wrong.
“Someone had to help me,” he admitted softly. He had hated the dependence. Hated every mouthful Edwards fed him, the butler’s features carefully arranged in the mask of the perfect servant. But Raven would have hated even more to have Catherine watching. To see him helpless as a child.
Of course! Catherine thought. What a fool she had been not to have realized all the restrictions those damaged hands would impose. But she should have been the one. It wasn’t fair that someone else had been allowed to help Raven.
“Who?” she asked, fighting jealousy. “Who helped you?”
Raven’s eyes came up at whatever was in her tone.
“Edwards, of course. I think he felt it was his province.” The small, controlled smile that was uniquely Raven’s touched the line of his lips.
“It wasmy province,” she said bitterly.“My place, and you denied me that right. And what about after dinner, Raven?”
“Forgive me—” he began, but she cut him off.
“You’re still avoiding me. And I can’t imagine why. Given what you said last night.”
She paused, waiting for him to deny what she’d suggested. “Raven?” she said softly.
There was no response.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “It’s not that you don’t want me here. You told me last night…”
He looked up at her hesitation, reading in her breathless whisper the sudden fear that she might be wrong. That he might have changed his mind.
“I want you,” he said, his features still perfectly controlled, the stern line of his mouth now giving nothing away.
“Then why… ?” she began. “Why are you here instead of in the room we shared last night?”
“Last night,” he echoed. He shook his head slightly. “Forgive me, Catherine, but I don’t believe…” She saw the depth of the breath he took. “Last night I was exhausted, and our sleeping together then was possible. But tonight…” Slowly his eyes met hers. “I don’t think I cansleep with you tonight, my darling.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. What was different about tonight? He had held her last night, curled into the solid warmth of his body, held her as if he never wanted to let her go.
Correctly interpreting her unhappiness, Raven knew he would have to explain. Despite the painfulness of that confession, he would have to tell Catherine why he had come here and not to the bedroom where last night he had finally been allowed to touch the woman who had haunted his dreams since the first day he had looked into her eyes.
“Because tonight I want far more than to hold you,” he admitted softly. “And because that’s not possible.”
“Why?” Catherine asked, trying to comprehend.
Again a brief smile slanted the hard mouth, holding no trace of amusement. This time Raven deliberately lifted his damaged hands, held them out between them, palms up, as if they explained everything.
“Because of these,” he said, looking down on the bandages, fighting the bitterness and frustration. Abruptly he turned and walked to the bed, its smoothness marred by the stacked pillows.
“You’ll let Edwards help you. And your valet,” she said to the expanse of broad shoulders, “but not me.”
He turned at the pain she had just revealed, that had trembled in the strained confession. His eyes were full of regret at hurting her.
“I can help you,” she argued, unable to prevent the entreaty that echoed clearly in her tone.
“No
t with this. Not given our situation,” he said.
“I don’t understand. You could tell me what to do.”
He glanced up at that suggestion, his lips moving quickly in involuntary amusement.
He was laughing at her ignorance, Catherine thought. And against her will, the hot tears burned. She blinked to control them, but it was a battle she was destined to lose. She despised women who wept, but he could reduce her to tears with a smile.
“Catherine,” he said gently, comfortingly.
“Tell me why!” she demanded, swallowing against the building lump. Despite what he had said, he didn’t want her. Idon’t need a mistress, an echo in her heart taunted bitterly, but she knew now that there was no other woman. Raven didn’t lie. He didn’t lie! She closed her eyes tightly, fighting for control.
And felt his lips on her forehead, warm and sweet.
“There’s so much I want to show you. Things I’ve wanted to teach you since the beginning—” He broke off that thought, but his mouth touched against her eyelid, caressing, even as he continued. “All those long months I watched you. And I wanted you. Meeting you in the hallway on your way out to dance with some other man. Or to ride. And I thought only about making love to you. Slowly. Touching you.. leaching you towant my touch. Wanting to show you all my hands could tell you about what I feel. And now…”
He rested his chin briefly against the top of her head. And then he stepped back, the spell he had woven deliberately broken.
“Raven?” she whispered, the word as full of pain as his broken confession had been.
“I can’t. Don’t you understand? If we had been lovers… If I had taken you before… If you weren’t—”
“If I weren’t so inexperienced?” she finished bitterly.
“I don’t want to hurt you. You don’t deserve a clumsy lover. I don’t intend that for you. And so… we wait.”
“And if I don’t want to wait?” she challenged. She had to show him none of this mattered. He wanted her. All she had to do was convince him that what they both wanted was possible.
She closed the small distance he had created between them. He watched unmoving as her fingers lifted to the front of his shirt. She held his eyes, smoldering blue flames, as she began to unfasten the buttons. Finally she tugged the material out of his trousers to complete the task she’d undertaken.
She took a step backward to look at him. The soft cotton hung loosely from the massive shoulders. The ridged stomach and the deeply muscled chest were exposed by the opening she’d created, so totally masculine that something inside her shifted, aching with the realization of the difference between the hard strength of his dark body and the soft, pale weakness of hers.
Tentatively, she lifted her hand and, using one finger, touched the hollow at the base of the wide brown column of his throat. His skin was warm beneath the coolness of hers. She smiled at him, but the careful alignment of his features didn’t change. He was waiting. Watching her.
She let her finger slide downward, following the line of bone that divided the swell of muscle on either side, barely exposed by the opened shirt. Down to the concavity below his rib cage; down the channel that bisected his flat stomach. Gently into the small cave of his naval, her nail touching into the center and then downward again. Fascinated by the dark hair her fingers encountered at the top of the trousers that rode low on his hips. Having reached that barrier, she pulled her finger across the band that blocked its descent. To the right and then slowly back to the left.
His breath trembled suddenly, sighing through nostrils that were slightly distended. Encouraged by the evidence that what she had instinctively done had had some effect, Catherine slipped both hands into the gaping front of his shirt, moving them, palms flattened, to his sides. And then upward, skimming ribs and iron-hard bands of muscle, to the dark nubs of nipples that she could feel but couldn’t see. She turned her hands, allowing her fingers to capture the hard peaks between them, and the breath Raven took then was a gasp, his body jerking under her fingers.
But he hadn’t asked her to stop. And the shuddering breathing she could feel vibrating under the smooth, golden skin she was touching was exciting, revealing a power she hadn’t realized she could have over this strong body. Her hands smoothed upward, finding the line of collarbone, following its rim outward to the knot of bone at the top of his shoulders. She opened her hands, lifting, thumbs up, until they caught the material of his shirt and peeled the edges open and then down, pushing it off his upper arms so that his chest and shoulders were exposed. Skin—golden velvet that she had touched once before—stretched over muscle and sinew, sleek and tawny like the hide of a great cat, warm and smooth under her fingers.
At his small, quick inhalation, she looked up into his face.
A tiny nerve jumped at the corner of his mouth, but his lids had fallen, hiding his eyes. Her palms skimmed down the outside of his arms, thumbs pausing to caress the sensitive skin inside his elbows, but his shirt was in her way. She unbuttoned one cuff and eased the sleeve over the bandaged hand. And then the other, allowing the lawn garment to fall, discarded, to the floor.
“Catherine,” he whispered, a plea.
“Do you want me to stop?” she asked, not really worried any longer that he might deny her. Might deny them both.
“No,” he said hoarsely, surrendering. “Don’t stop.”
Smiling, she bent her head, and as he had the day he had introduced her to passion, she touched her lips to the small nipple rimmed with brown against the surrounding bronze. Again his body jerked. Reacting. His hand came up to find the back of her head, cupping gently to strengthen the contact between them.
She nibbled, teeth delicately teasing, her tongue at the same time tasting the dark warmth. She suckled, pulling the hard nub, lifting even the brown ring that surrounded it into her mouth.
His hand found her shoulder, and he asked, his voice ragged with the unevenness of his breathing, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me?”
She slowly lifted her mouth away from his chest. Looking down, she could see the moisture her tongue had left on his nipple glinting softly in the candlelight.
“Tell me,” she commanded, using her thumb to wipe away the trace of dampness that was almost too intimate to contemplate. He flinched at the movement of her finger across the hardened nub.
“Damn bloody bastards,” he whispered. He rested his forehead against the top of her head, his eyes still closed.
“Tell me what to do,” she suggested.
He hesitated so long she thought he intended to deny them both the release they so desperately needed. Whatever happened between them, whatever awkwardness was inevitable, she knew they could wait no longer. They belonged to one another. And only the joining of bodies remained, necessary to complete the joining of spirits that had already taken place.
“Tell me,” she urged. She turned her hand and slid her palm downward toward the barrier she’d hesitated to force before. This time she pushed her fingers between the slim, hard belly and the material of his trousers. She could again feel the coarseness of the dark hair under their sensitive tips, and then the unfamiliar contours of his body. Almost involuntarily, it seemed, he pressed into her touch, arching upward into her hand. Wanting her. She hoped that desire would be strong enough to overcome whatever reluctance he felt about making love to her.
Please want me enough, she prayed silently. Her fingers slipped farther downward, exploring, entreating.
“Catherine,” he breathed against her hair.
“Tell me what to do,” she whispered.
“They fasten at the sides. There’s a flap. To close the front. Help me, Catherine,” he begged softly.
“Of course,” she said, her fingers quickly moving to unravel the mysteries of masculine attire. “Of course I’ll help you, my beautiful Raven. You had only to ask.”
When she had tugged the tight trousers down, kneeling to slip them off his feet, she found herself grateful that th
e valet had already undertaken the job of removing the Hessians. She glanced up to find the sapphire eyes considering her, watching her exactly as Aunt Agatha’s tabbies regarded the sparrows they stalked, safely separated by the glass of the windows.
“And the rest,” he suggested. She hesitated, realizing the incongruity of his near nudity compared to her fully dressed primness. She was afraid that if she allowed him to sense her reluctance, he’d again retreat behind the excuse of his hands.
Reaching up blindly, she stripped the knit undergarment down the slim hips and over the muscles of long thighs and calves. As he had with the trousers, he stepped out of it at her guidance, the tips of his fingers pressed into her shoulder for balance. She found herself nervously smoothing both garments across her lap with hands that shook. She was afraid to look up, and she was certain he must know what she was feeling.
“Catherine,” Raven said softly, a command.
Steeling herself, she raised her eyes, slowly skimming upward from broad, bare feet, finely, made, to ankles and shapely calves, and then to his knees, the right one slightly bent with his stance. Bravely her gaze moved to the deeply delineated muscles of his thigh and finally higher. Her heart rocketed into her stomach at the evidence of how much he wanted her. And then she forced her eyes away, upward to meet his. She expected amusement at her obvious fascination with his masculinity. She had known, of course, from a childhood spent on her father’s country estate, what to expect, but until faced with the startling reality of Raven’s body, she had not known how very little she understood. She should be frightened by his sheer size, she supposed. But this was Raven. And she could never be afraid of Raven.
She smiled at him, a small, trembling, upward slant of her lips. And suddenly it was all right. Nothing mattered but that she was with him, and she knew he’d care for her with the same protective tenderness he’d always shown. When his lips lifted in response to her smile, she felt none of the resentment his amusement had always caused. Not even when the teasing note in his question lightened the tension that had been between them.
