At least Charlemagne isn’t angry with me, she thought, as she lowered herself onto the sofa that was set at a comfortable angle before the fireplace. “At least you don’t act like a sullen boor,” she confided to the cat. Cradling him on her lap, she stroked his silky black fur. His rumbling purrs provided some small measure of consolation but not nearly enough.
No, not enough at all, she thought, a lump forming in her throat. Swallowing against a sudden rush of tears, she decided that a hot bath and a warm cup of tea might be exactly what she needed to soothe her ragged nerves. Gently placing Charlemagne aside, she stood and rang for Penny.
At precisely two minutes to seven, attired in an evening gown of lustrous primrose satin, she went downstairs to the dining room. She presumed she would be treated to more of Adam’s brooding man-silence over the meal—if he showed up for dinner at all, that was. It wouldn’t surprise her a bit if he refused to join her again as he had for nuncheon earlier today.
But less than a minute later, Adam appeared, taking his usual seat at the head of the table. In a slightly more amenable humour, he made desultory conversation. Briefly, she considered discussing her side of Michael’s visit yesterday but decided against it, far too weary to face any more confrontation at the moment. Instead, she confined herself to ordinary, impersonal subjects, relieved when the meal finally concluded, and she could excuse herself to go upstairs.
Weighted down by exhaustion, she let Penny assist her into her nightgown, the servant blowing out all but a single branch of candles on Mallory’s night table before bidding her good night.
Mallory had just settled between the sheets, when the connecting door opened and Adam strode inside. Sitting up, she held the coverlet to her chest as she watched him pad barefoot toward her.
His tall, powerful frame was clad in a black woollen robe, the drape of the fabric doing little to conceal the fact that he was naked underneath. Blending neatly into the room’s heavy shadows, his hair gleamed dark as ebony, his saturnine complexion arrogant as a pirate come to claim his bounty.
She bristled, her hurt returning over the way he’d shut her out last night and again today. Even in his anger he ought to have at least listened to her side of things. Yet here he was without so much as a by-your-leave, ready to climb back into her bed as though nothing had happened.
She waited for him to say something, even her name. Instead, he drew to a halt bedside the bed and reached for the tie on his robe.
“So you’ve decided to join me tonight, have you?” she said. “Well, you can turn right around and go to your own bedroom because you’re not sleeping in here tonight.”
He paused, his eyes sweeping over her. “That’s all right, because sleeping isn’t what I have in mind.”
“You’re not doing that either!” Tugging the covers higher, she crossed her arms over the top of them.
“If by that you mean tupping you, I most certainly am.” Leaning over, he gave the covers a hard yank that pulled them completely free. With a flick of his wrist, he sent them sailing to the foot of the bed, leaving her exposed. “Take off your nightgown.”
As if her easy compliance were already assured, he unfastened his belt and shrugged out of his robe. In a leisurely move, he laid the garment across the back of a nearby chair, then climbed into bed—large and naked and clearly aroused.
“You aren’t undressed yet,” he remarked. “Do you need help?”
“No, because I am not getting undressed.” She crossed her arms over her chest again. “You don’t scare me, Adam Gresham, and I won’t be bullied. You’ve been absolutely beastly to me ever since yesterday when—”
“—When I caught you kissing another man?”
Some of the colour drained from her cheeks. “I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me.”
He glowered, his countenance turning more menacing and piratical than before. “And there’s a world of difference in that, is there?”
“Actually there is,” she stated, suppressing the need to shiver. “Michael kissed me before I had any idea that he intended to. He assumed the two of us were still engaged and didn’t realize that so much had changed while he’d been away. He didn’t know that you and I are married.”
“And prior to his wrapping himself around you like an eel and kissing you for all he was worth, you never thought to take a moment to enlighten him of that little fact?”
“Of course, I did,” she declared, ignoring Adam’s razor-edged sarcasm, “but he wouldn’t let me finish. He kissed me before I had an opportunity to explain. I was ending it just as you walked in.”
“Denton told me he was in there with you for a half hour at least,” he said in cold accusation.
Bloody butler, she cursed. Next time she saw Ned and Claire, she might have to tell them to have the man sacked.
She gestured with a palm. “Michael was telling me what happened during the battle and why everyone thought he was dead. How he was held captive by the French these past months, then finally freed by Wellington’s troops only a couple of weeks ago.”
Adam’s brown eyes took on a flinty cast. “I don’t care if he was dragged down to Hades by the devil himself and escaped to tell the tale; he didn’t have any right to kiss you. And by God, madam, you should never have let him.”
“I told you I didn’t let him,” she pleaded, her voice breaking. “It just happened. I’m sorry, Adam. Truly I am.”
“Good,” he told her in a stern voice. “Then you can start making it up to me. Take off your nightgown.”
Her gaze flew to his. “But—”
“Fine. I’ll do it.” Reaching over, he took hold of the neck of her garment, then rent it in two, the cloth tearing like a piece of tissue.
A gasp shuddered from her lips. “Adam!”
“That’s better,” he said, stripping the remnants from her body and tossing them aside. “Now, you’re just the way I want you.”
Taking hold of one of her ankles, he tugged her down so she lay flat on her back. Leaning over her, he banded her wrists inside his fingers and pulled her hands above her head. His dark gaze met hers—lethal, intense, and so compelling that she had no chance of looking away, even if she’d wanted to do so.
“You’re mine, do you hear?” he said on a harsh rumble. “Mine and no one else’s.” He curved his other hand against her cheek before roving lower, sliding his fingers along her throat and shoulder before curving his palm over one of her quivering breasts. “I don’t care if Hargreaves has come back from the grave; I’ve claimed you now, and it’s with me you’ll stay. You’re my wife, and nothing on the face of this earth will ever change that fact.”
Without giving her time to respond, he crushed her mouth beneath his, painting her lower lip with a hot, wet stroke of his tongue before delving inside. She yielded, enthralled, as she always was, by the sheer power and breathless intoxication of his touch.
At length, he broke away to scatter fiery kisses over her face and neck, while lower he flicked his thumb across the most sensitive part of one nipple in a way that caused the tips of both breasts to draw into taut, aching peaks.
Arching upward, she twisted against his hold, yearning to be free so she could kiss him as she willed, so she could run her hands in wild circles over his body.
But he refused to loose her, maintaining his gentle, yet unbreakable bond on her wrists. With kisses and caresses that provoked a delicious, almost desperate kind of torment, he played upon her like a maestro at a symphony, stoking her desire, igniting a hunger she could not contain. She gasped, limbs straining again as his fingers glided downward, shuddering against the scorching passion that threatened to turn her blood and bones to ash.
He captured her mouth again in a series of hard, fervid kisses, plundering with ravenous touches that spoke of a deep, unquenchable need.
“I gave you up to him once,” he muttered, as he buried his lips against the curve of her throat, “but never again. This time he’s the one who can do without you. He�
�s the one who can step aside.”
Something about the words broke through the passionate haze that enveloped her, making her pause. “W-what do you mean, step aside?” she asked, fighting the impulse to forget all about talking and do nothing but feel. “When was it…when did you ever give me up?”
He stilled above her, their laboured breathing the only sounds that filled the air. Long moments passed, emotions flickering over his face like flashes of lightning in a storm-tossed sky.
“Years ago,” he said.
“Years?” Her brows angled low. “But I…I don’t understand.”
Suddenly he released her wrists and glanced away. “I’ve wanted you for a long time, Mallory, far longer than you know. But that isn’t important right now,” he told her, meeting her gaze again. “What matters is the fact that nothing is going to change between us just because he’s back. I am not going to let anything get in the way of our marriage or our happiness. Nothing.”
“And nothing will,” she said in an impassioned voice. “Truly. I haven’t said so before, but…I love you.”
Something shattered on his countenance. “Mal. My God.” Curving a warm hand against her cheek, he pressed his lips to her temple, her cheek, her mouth, kissing her with an ardour whose devotion could by no means be in doubt. “Do you? Really?”
Her mouth turned up in a smile. “Yes, really. The feeling has been coming on so gradually these past few weeks that I didn’t recognize it at first. But I do now.”
Briefly, he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were shining with a vivid intensity. “I love you too, so very, very much.”
He took her mouth again, kissing her with a sweet, leisurely thoroughness that sent her senses whirling. At length, he let her come up for air. As she recovered, her mind somehow returned to the subject—or rather the person—who had led to this moment.
“So you see,” she murmured, “you have no need to worry or to be upset about Michael. Seeing him yesterday was a shock, I admit, one I’m still trying to reconcile after believing him dead for more than a year. Of course, I’m happy he’s alive, yet sad to be the source of new grief for him. But we didn’t know he would come back, and as you said, his return has nothing to do with us. It doesn’t change anything between you and me.”
Adam threaded a hand through her hair, letting the strands sift through his fingers. “So you’re over him then? You don’t have feelings for him anymore?”
She hesitated before answering, her earlier confusion returning along with an undeniable surge of guilt. Before Michael had gone off to join the fight, she’d loved him as deeply as any woman could love a man. Yet so much had changed since then, most particularly her feelings.
She loved Adam now.
She was Adam’s wife.
And until Michael’s return yesterday, she had been happy—in a way she had never imagined she could ever be again. But now Michael was back and clearly still in love with her. She cringed at the thought—sad and torn and remorseful over the pain she was surely causing him. Pain she knew he had not foreseen and in no way deserved.
Turning away from such disturbing thoughts, she gazed into the comfort of Adam’s eyes. “Whatever was between Michael and me, it’s over now,” she said with utter honesty. “Whatever I may once have felt, you are my husband. You are my life.”
His rich brown gaze shone with a new light. “As you are for me. So, you won’t mind agreeing, then, never to see him again.”
“What?” Involuntarily, she tensed beneath him.
He stroked a palm over her shoulder and along her arm. “I don’t want you seeing him again. I know you may think it harsh, but I’d rest easier knowing you weren’t continuing to maintain a relationship with a man who used to be your fiancé. Seeing you kissing him yesterday made me insane.”
“I told you what happened and that he kissed me.”
“Fine. He kissed you. I never want him doing so again.”
“He won’t,” she reassured.
“No, he won’t because you aren’t going to see him again,” he said, his gaze locking with her own. “I want your pledge, Mallory, as a commitment to our union and our love, that you’re done with Michael Hargreaves. If he writes, you’ll send back his letters. If he seeks you out, you will make your excuses and go on your way.”
“B-but Adam, I owe him some sort of explanation at least. I can’t just cut him off completely, not without telling him why.”
His hand stilled. “He’s a bright boy. Believe me, he’ll know why.”
Her brows drew close. “Well, I—”
“A clean break is best,” he told her in a brisk tone. “You said yourself the relationship is over.”
“And it is. But we were engaged once, and I’ve hurt him, however unintentionally the injury may have been done. He has the right to a proper good-bye.”
Adam’s jaw flexed with reawakened temper. “He has no rights where you are concerned. Not anymore.”
“I realize you’re still angry about yesterday, but there’s no need to be—”
“Need or not, I want you separated from him. So, will you agree?”
She paused, emotions warring in her breast like a pair of opposing armies. How could he put her in this position? How could he expect her to act in such a cold and irrevocable way? None of them—not she or Adam or Michael—had done anything wrong, and yet she felt as if she were being forced to hurt one man in order to satisfy the other.
Surely Adam knew she loved him. Had she not just said so? Had she not just told him he was everything to her now? That she was his wife and nothing about that would change.
And yet he was insisting she turn her back on Michael in the most callous fashion, not allowing her to offer even a word of explanation or an ounce of sympathy over the love they’d shared and lost.
Still, if Adam needed her reassurance, how could she refuse? He’d lost so many people in his life, she realized—his mother and sister to tragedy, his father to a life of vice and dissipation. Perhaps he feared to lose her as well even if he had no need to be afraid.
“Very well,” she said. “If that is what you want, then I shan’t see Michael again.”
“You swear,” he challenged.
She glanced away, silently begging Michael’s forgiveness for hurting him again. “Yes, I swear.”
Primitive satisfaction lit Adam’s face, his eyes glittering with a passion that was almost savage in its intensity. Without giving her time to anticipate, he caught her wrists in his grasp again and stretched them high above her head. Swooping down, he claimed her mouth in a way that left no doubt of his possession.
She shuddered with delight, her eyelids sliding closed. They flashed open again seconds later as he reached low with his other hand to unerringly locate the most vulnerable spots between her legs. Before she could do more than gasp, he began touching her with devastating skill and a seduction that was nothing short of astonishing. Rousing her desire to a feverish pitch, he turned her need back upon her double fold, bringing her to a stunning climax that shook her all the way to her toes.
She barely had time to catch her breath from the first wave of ecstasy when he began driving her toward another. “Oh—oh—oh, God,” she wailed, her hips bucking beneath the fearsome assault of pleasure.
Utterly merciless, he brought her to completion yet again, using nothing but the touch of his hand, as he willed her body to accept his dominion and the dark onslaught of need that threatened to cleave her in twain. Gasping, she was helpless to resist, completely enthralled and totally abandoned to the force of his ardour and her own raging needs.
Shaking, her thighs wet from having peaked so many times, she thought he must surely be ready to take her and find his own pleasure.
Instead, he slid down, hooking one of her legs over his shoulder before he placed his lips against her. She moaned as sensation sparked within her again.
“I’m the only lover you’ve ever known,” he said in a voice rough with pa
ssion. “I’m the only lover you will ever know. By the time I’m through, you won’t be able to imagine being touched by any man but me. You’re mine, Mallory. All mine, now and forever.”
Suddenly she understood exactly what he was doing. He was branding her, marking her as his own in a way she would never be able to escape. Already she was bound to him. After tonight, she feared she would be enslaved.
Then he returned to his ministrations, kissing and licking and suckling her with an intensity that brought her not just to the brink but beyond.
Without recognizing that the sound came from her own throat, she wailed, peaking with such force that her mind literally went blank, her body quaking from the violence of her rapture. Her heart thundered out a rapid tattoo, her breath coming in ragged pulls between her lips, as she lay too limp and delirious with pleasure to move.
Rising over her, Adam dropped kisses in a wandering path across her body, paying particular attention to her stomach and breasts, which he paused to suckle with a lascivious and utterly shameless enjoyment. She didn’t know how it was possible, but her passion soon awakened again, leaving her yearning for his full possession.
Retaking her lips, he kissed her with a raw, unquenchable hunger that left her nearly frenzied. Her fingers twisted into his hair, pulling him closer so she could have more, her tongue tangling with his in a fervid game of hide-and-seek. Sliding one leg up around his hips, she prepared herself to take him in, his erection hard and ready where it arched between then.
But moments later he eased away, flipping her over onto her stomach so that she bounced lightly against the mattress. Reaching for a pillow, he thrust it under her belly, then grasped her hips and angled her so she was resting on her elbows and knees.
She gasped as he inserted his knees between her thighs and spread her wide, leaving her completely vulnerable and at his mercy. His hands slid up to fondle her breasts, squeezing them in the most delicious way inside his wide, capable palms. He caressed her nipples, evoking a long, low moan from her throat that expressed the new depth of her need. She shuddered and bit her lower lip, her flesh burning as if she’d been tossed into a pool of flame.
Wicked Delights Of A Bridal Bed Page 26
