“Shh, remember?”
“Dash it all, Harry,” she moaned as the throbbing tempo built. Every ounce of pleasure calcified down to one point. Like a bomb imploding on itself before the waves of devastation spiraled outward. “Harry…Harry…Harry!”
He muffled her impassioned cry, covering her lips once more. Her moans continued as he stroked her, his fingers parting her, entering and withdrawing to draw out her orgasm, wringing every last ounce of ecstasy from her. She contracted around his fingers, his arousal pulsing in time, begging him to take and plunder and ease the pain that would have brought him to his knees were he standing. Burying his face in her neck, he panted heavily trying to control the raging lust.
Then her lips were on his neck, licking the saltiness of his damp skin, and her hand encircled his throbbing erection once more.
“Please Harry,” the words whispered against his flesh. “Show me everything you wanted to do.”
Lifting his head, Harry met Fiona’s gaze seeing the yearning there, the surrender, and knew his own capitulation was imminent. He had to have her, needed her. There would be no turning back.
She would be his.
Hooking his arm under her knee, he lifted her leg around him as he settled between the paradise of her thighs. Pulsing heat lured him unerringly to her core and he nudged between her wet lips, pressing as she opened to him. Slowly he pushed deeper, letting her body adjust to his thickness but the effort to hold back left his big body trembling. Sweat beaded at his brow.
“Was this it, Harry?” she whispered in his ear, stroking his back. “Was this what left you shaking that day? Was this what you wanted to do?”
Ah, God! Harry thought. If she only knew what he really wanted to do, Fiona wouldn’t sound nearly that calm. His body cried out to ravish her, to pound into her with all the lust, frustration, joy, and love she had ever roused in him.
“I thought not,” she murmured as if reading his thoughts, lifting both legs high around his waist. “Show me, Harry. I want to know.”
He shook his head, knowing he should deny her. The last thing he needed was to frighten her with her with his fervor. Or hurt her. She was so tight, so damned tight.
“Harry, please!”
Fiona arched against him and Harry gave in, driving to the hilt with one hard thrust. She cried out softly but wrapped her arms around him, a welcoming embrace. All the pent-up hunger, all the cravings long denied poured out of him then, and withdrawing, he thrust again and again, harder, until he had set up a pounding rhythm. Lifting her leg higher, he drove deeper and deeper still into her scalding, silken depths.
Her supple body met his, matched him. Fiona was his, her chest against his, her arms around him. She was nirvana, a homecoming. Heaven.
The release was building in her again, different this time. Different because Harry was with her, taking them together. Tension coiled almost painfully, radiating tendrils of exhilaration down her thighs. Building, building, until that rapture burst more brilliantly.
Fiona sobbed at the force of the euphoria as she broke, crying out his name. “Oh, Harry! Oh my God!”
Arching against her, he plunged deep, flooding her with a torrid rush of heat that left her throbbing all over again.
“Fiona,” he gasped, kneading the back of her thigh almost painfully as he pumped his hips against her, the motion ebbing away until he was as drained as she. “Ah, my love,” he murmured, brushing kisses against her neck. “My darling girl.”
Rolling on to his back, drawing her with him until she was curled at his side, her limbs entangled with his. Holding her close, his lips brushed her forehead with a tenderness that almost brought tears to her eyes.
“Did I hurt you?”
Fiona shook her head against his chest. No, the pain she was feeling—while it had everything to do with him—was not the result of what they had just done.
“Did I hurt you?”
Harry chuckled tiredly. “I am conquered. Defeated.”
Chapter 32
I have seen neither hide nor hair of Harry for nearly three whole days. There can be no doubt that he is avoiding me. Kitty and Jack are having a small ball to celebrate the birth and christening of the Haddington heir, sweet wee Montgomery, in just a few more days. One waltz with Harry (if he will grant me one) and I shall know when I look into his eyes.
~From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh—Apr 1893
What was she doing?
Why?
You know why, her conscience answered. Remember? No denial.
Fiona listened to Harry’s heart beating steadily beneath her cheek. Solid. Regular. Not at all as unsteady as hers with doubt that set her entire being all a quiver. His flesh was warm against hers. Not chilled with the astonishment of what she had done—what they had done!—as hers was.
She had given herself to him. Not surrendered, not submitted but given wholeheartedly. Shared joyously. Not even in her wildest fantasies had she imagined the act would have so profound an impact upon her. It wasn’t just the physical. She had heard enough whisperings between her sisters-in-law over the years to know that it could be just as toe-curling and achingly passionate as it had been.
She had been prepared for that.
She could handle that.
No, what troubled her was how their passion hadn’t been shared just between their bodies. They hadn’t shagged, romped, fucked or any of the other crude words the younger lads used to describe it. And whatever she wanted to believe, it had been than an acceptance of desire.
No, Harry hadn’t merely caressed her flesh, but her heart. He hadn’t owned only her body, but her soul. They had been like one. She had seen within him, become one with him. Possessing him just as he had possessed her.
It had been desperate. Life affirming.
Harry had truly made love to her.
Evidence of late had shown that he cared for her, wanted her physically—even if it hadn’t been apparent two years before. He liked her company enough to propose marriage, but this was something more. Just as he had risked his own safety to protect her that day, he was demonstrating more than any words could relate. Was it love? Was it merely wishful thinking?
Did it even matter?
Was she willing to risk being wrong?
She needed time to think.
Fiona rolled away slowly, hoping to get out of the bed without disturbing him.
“Where are you going?” he asked sleepily, rolling with her. Reaching for her. His arm slid around her waist, tugging her gently back into his warm embrace. “Come back here.”
She resisted as much as she could without seeming as if she was resisting. “You cannot sleep with me there.”
Harry chuckled. His blue eyes lit with an inner warmth. “Of course, I can. Come here.”
Lying back against the pillows, his dark hair ruffled and bare chest and abdomen flexing, enthralling, the marquis was hard to resist. Her ambivalent thoughts demanded she try.
Fiona forced a smile. “Well, I won’t be able to once you start snoring.”
He chuckled again low in his throat, the rough sound sending a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature down her spine. “But I don’t snore.”
Swallowing deeply, she fought the impulse to fall back into the safe haven of his arms. “Of course, you do. All men do.”
“What do you know about all men?”
Fiona raised a brow at him. “I could not live in my house with all my brothers and their chums without learning a thing or two about your gender. Men snore.”
Harry laughed again. “What else did you learn? Or do you think you know all there is to know about men, then?”
“They spend a lot of time in bed.”
“With the women they love, no doubt.”
She swallowed again, this time forcing back the tightening of her throat. “Yes, it used to amuse me to no end how early they would go to bed and how late they would all rise, knowing what they were about.”
“
How did you know what they were about?”
“What I hadn’t seen with my own eyes, I overheard talk of. Even if I hadn’t learned all that before I was eighteen, Moira has books.”
He raised a brow. “Books?”
She couldn’t stop the smile that lifted her lips. “She believes a lady should be well educated on what she is getting themselves into when she marries.”
With a laugh, Harry tugged at her once more, forcing—ha!—Fiona down next to him until her back was pressed against his chest, knowing she was right where she really wanted to be. His arm slipped around her waist as he curled snugly around her. His bare foot ran over hers. For some reason that seemed more intimate to her than anything they had done.
“For which ever reason, be it books or a lifetime around men, I count myself blessed to share your bed. You were magnificent, Fiona,” he whispered, running his lips down the back of her neck. “Marvelous.”
Fiona closed her eyes, surrendering to his warmth but said nothing more but merely savoring the feel of his lips against her neck, his hand curling around her breast.
* * *
It would have been such a simple thing to lose himself in her once again but something Fiona had said, how she said it, bothered him.
“You said ‘used to.’”
Aylesbury lifted his head to look down at her but she didn’t turn to him. Instead she buried her head in the pillow, arching her neck as if the sight of her bare, inviting flesh would distract him. It might have just…if they hadn’t spoken.
“It doesn’t amuse you any longer?”
“No,” she said softly but didn’t add any more.
Lifting himself up onto one elbow, he forced her chin up so that she had to look at him. He read the saddened expression and wondered at it. “Would you care to add anything else?”
“No,” she began before meeting his gaze. Her eyes softened and she reached up to stroke his whisker-roughened cheek before her fingers curled and she scratched lightly against the stubble instead. “One by one, I’ve watched them marry. I hated being there, a part of it, yet still so separate. They couldn’t see it, probably wouldn’t understand it. The younger lads certainly didn’t have the same reaction to it, though James did. I think…No, I know that’s why he left. Why I wanted to wed just to get away from it.”
“You were jealous,” he realized.
“Not jealous,” she denied, then clarified at the same moment as he. “Envious.”
“Yes.” He nodded thoughtfully, understanding what she was getting at. “There is a difference isn’t there? You didn’t begrudge them their happiness.”
“No, I just wanted the same for myself because I’ve seen how much joy a life can have when you have someone to share it with, but when everyone has it and you don’t ...”
“You can have it, you know,” he said softly into her ear. His heartbeat leapt anxiously for what he wanted to say, knowing that despite how they had spent their evening, his Fiona might not yet be ready to hear it. “I know what you want, Fiona. I, too, have seen it. Watched it from afar and determined to have no less for myself. I know what it is and we can have it together. We can be like this”— he hugged her more tightly against him, molding her soft body against his hard length—“every night. We can have the happiness we have both been missing these past two years. We can have joy, intimacy. Love. If only you’ll admit that the feelings you confessed to me in that garden so long ago have not died. That they are still burning within you.”
Aylesbury shifted, turning Fiona onto her back so that he could look down at her, see fully in her eyes what was in her heart even if her lips would not speak the words. “I’m done denying it. I am done embracing the misery that has dogged me since I left you. My whole life since then has been devoted to finding Piper, but I haven’t truly lived in all that time. I’ve been torn between the future and my past, but I can’t continue to wait forever for one thing and lose the other in the process. I want to live again. I want to laugh. To love. With you. I love you, Fiona Blossom MacKintosh. Tell me that you feel the same. That you love me.”
That speech was the culmination of everything she had ever dreamed of hearing from his lips. she stared up at Harry’s handsome face, his vivid eyes warm with feeling. He looked softer, more relaxed. Happier. Because of her.
Because he truly loved her?
“You love me?”
“Of course, I do. What do you think this has all been about?”
Many things. Love had been the least definite of all them.
“Have you anything to say?” he asked when she remained silent.
Though she knew what he was asking for, Fiona hesitated in making any sort of profession in return. Recent events aside, given their awkward past, it was difficult enough for her mind to accept that all that she wished for was coming to fruition. Her heart was even more restrained in naïvely accepting his words, no matter tempting they were.
Searching for the words, any words, to fill the sudden silence as it fell and her mind blanked, her lips parted only to be covered by Harry’s as he stole away anything that might have been said with a quick, hard kiss.
“Forget I said that,” he said, releasing her to roll out of the bed. “Listen to me, Fiona, I will not ask you again to marry me, nor will I push you into saying something you are not yet ready to confess, but you, with all your experience with the male species, should know that we are not infallible. We make mistakes. Have I not expressed my regrets enough for you? Haven’t you forgiven me for being such a fool?”
Her gaze faltered ever so slightly, but it was enough.
“It’s still not enough for you, is it? Bugger it, Fiona! I’ve been trying to prove myself to you. What more do you want? What are you running from? Because I’m pretty sure it isn’t me.” He laughed humorlessly as he yanked on his clothes. “Well, while you’re pondering everything that I might have said or done while in a drunken state two years past, you might want to also consider that today I fought for you. I would do it again and again to prove myself to you. I would give my life for yours. That is how dearly I love you.”
“But why?” she whispered. “I’ve done nothing but browbeat you since coming to London while you’ve been nothing but patient. I’ve been entirely unreasonable.”
A more genuine chuckle escaped him then. “As long as you realize it, then all hope isn’t lost. But to answer your other question, I will tell you this. I’ve always been charmed by your company. Even these past weeks, you’ve been a lively conversationalist with a quick wit. You are athletic and active. We always got on quite well there.”
Fiona frowned and parted her lips to speak, but Aylesbury sat on the edge of the bed pressing a finger to her lips before she could speak. “That is only what drew me in the beginning. You are like that tempting piece of chocolate in more ways than one. Beneath that shell of obstinacy and satire you are caring of your family and loyal to a fault.” He teased the fine hairs at her temple before tucking the silken strands behind her ear. “You have an irresistible vivacity, a passion for life like no other. You live each day, pressing convention. I find that incredibly alluring. And you’ve given that life back to me. Surely you can see that all of that is worth loving?”
Hers lips parted at the softly spoken compliment but Aylesbury wasn’t finished. The corner of his mouth kicked up.
“Unfortunately, you’re also too bloody smart for your own good, ruthlessly competitive and infuriatingly tenacious but even while it exasperates me to no end, I cannot help but love that about you as well. You always stick to your guns…even when it is not in my favor.”
“Harry, I…”
“No. Say nothing now, darling girl.” He brushed a soft, lingering kiss across her lips. “I’d rather give you some time to mull what I’ve said before you argue with me about it.”
“Who said I was going to argue about it?” she asked, propping herself up on one elbow.
“I know you better than you might think, perhaps bette
r than you know yourself. Consider that when you begin to doubt my words,” he teased, crossing the room—not to the door but to the open window overlooking the square. Leaning out the window, Aylesbury assessed assessing his options. “I know you will be before my feet hit the ground.”
“Won’t you stay a while longer?”
He swung a leg over the windowsill and paused, raising an eyebrow. “After the day I’ve had, I have no desire to get the beating I deserve tonight if I walk out that door. I will wait until tomorrow when I’m well rested.”
“Harry…”
“Good night, my darling, and please tell your brothers what happened. They have the right to know.”
With that, he dropped out of sight. Dragging the sheet around her, she dashed to the window watching Harry work his way down the wrought-iron fretwork that decorated the railings of the small Juliet balconies that fronted the windows on this floor, down to the larger balcony on the second and then dropping onto the hedges that lined the walk.
Once he reached the ground safely, he looked up with a silent salute as if he had known she would be watching before walking leisurely away.
Fiona watched him go, confusion warring with yearning before she turned away replaying his words—much as he predicted—over in her mind.
Never noticing the eyes that watched them both.
Chapter 33
Sweet Piper, where are you? You haven’t answered my letters in weeks! I shall be coming home after the Haddington ball. I promise this time.
Have you ever wondered, dearest sister, how one could possibly be so dreadfully content in torturing oneself?
~From the correspondence of the Marquis of Aylesbury—Apr 1893
The Glenrothes Townhouse
117 Eaton Square
Belgravia, London, England
The next morning
“She’s not at home?” Aylesbury asked. “Please tell me that is nothing more than the standard society euphemism and she really is here.”
All You Could Ask For Page 142
