Except that was the last thing she wanted. Her hands skimmed down his back and cupped his bare buttocks. “So close,” she whispered urgently, the sweep of her breath near his ear raising gooseflesh on his neck and arms. “But I need you to move.”
Damn it, he could deny her nothing.
So he moved. One slow withdrawal followed by an equally measured advance. Then once more, a little faster, a little harder. Her inner muscles tightened around him, and he bit back a curse as he clawed for control. But there was no stopping now. Not when it was this good. For both of them.
He leaned in to kiss her beautiful mouth and fucked her in earnest, matching the tempo of his thrusts to the rhythmic clenching of her fingers on his arse. The world spun away, and there was nothing left in it but the two of them and the bliss building between their bodies.
And Laura was right: she had been close. Her climax took her swiftly and abruptly, like a sudden squall on spring day. One second, she was urging him on, and the next, she was shuddering around him. Unprepared for the erotic sensation of her body squeezing his cock while he continued to drive into her, his own orgasm rushed down his spine and into his balls. With an effort of will, he jerked his cock from her pulsing sex and finished with his hand, spilling his seed on her belly in thick, glorious spurts of pleasure.
His breath still coming hard, he rested his forehead against hers for a second.
“That…was…definitely—” she began, her respiration as uneven as his.
“Magnificent?” he suggested.
The corners of her mouth twitched. “Er, yes. But I was going to say it was fast.”
“Oh,” he said, mirth bubbling in his chest. “Well, I did warn you.”
“You did,” she agreed with mock gravity.
They looked into one another’s eyes quite seriously for several moments and then almost at the same instant, they both started laughing.
It was the happiest and most intimate moment of Geoffrey’s life. He wanted it never to end.
Hell and damnation, he was terrified.
Chapter Fourteen
They breakfasted on bread, butter, and cold tea. Laura was clad in her dressing gown and Geoffrey in naught but his drawers, a tacit acknowledgment that they intended to return to the bed once they had eaten.
Sitting across from her, his muscular torso on fine display in the warm sunlight streaming in through the windows, Geoffrey stared morosely into his teacup. “I really cannot abide cold tea in the morning. Couldn’t we heat the kettle and have hot, fresh tea? Just this once.”
Laura raised her eyebrows over the rim of her own cup. She did not particularly like to drink her tea cold, except on very warm days, but the Sabbath was the Sabbath. “Starting a fire to heat the kettle would be work.”
“Do you honestly believe the Lord Almighty will be out of sorts with us for building a fire to boil water?” He gave her a decidedly wicked grin. “It’s hardly the most outrageous thing we’ve done today.”
Heat rose in her cheeks…and elsewhere—goodness, but he was a fine-looking man—but she managed to take an unhurried sip of the tepid liquid before she responded. “I don’t believe the Sabbath is for God at all. I think it’s for us, to keep us from working ourselves to death.”
“Gad, that sounds like something my brother, Walter, would say. Have you been cadging his sermons?”
“I feel fairly certain this is a somewhat common theological interpretation,” she said with a chuckle. Dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, she added, “Also, if we built a fire in the hearth, Abigail would notice when they return from church, and she would want to know why.”
With a regretful sigh and a nod, her lover drank his tea.
My lover. The words sounded foreign to her, even in the privacy of her own thoughts, but also exhilarating and strangely liberating. She—Laura Farnsworth, a staid, respectable widow and the thirty-eight-year-old mother of a nearly adult son—had a lover. Not a husband, with whom she shared a publicly sanctioned bond, but a paramour whose attentions and devotion were hers and hers alone. She supposed she would tire of the novelty eventually. For the moment, however, the need for secrecy made her feel bold and interesting and more thoroughly alive than she had been in years. Or perhaps ever.
Ah, but wasn’t that disloyal and heartless of her? Surely she had been just as invigorated when she had been with Samuel, especially during the early days of their courtship and marriage. The intensity of those emotions had waned somewhat over time—one could hardly go about forever with one’s head in a romantic haze—but that just meant her feelings had deepened and matured, not that they had waned. Her love for her husband had been neither weak nor ephemeral. Yet here she sat, mooning over another man as if Samuel had never existed. As if an affair that could only be brief and casual was somehow superior to the steadfast love of the man she had wed. The very idea was absurd. Insulting to her husband’s memory, even.
And none of that mattered at all. Not when she had been given one last chance to indulge in being wanton and wicked with a man who made her body sing with pleasure.
Not when they had so little time together.
Three weeks. By then, the apples would have to be harvested or left behind, for the weather would turn, and any remaining fruit would be ruined. And when the harvest was over, this would be over, so she was not going to squander the days ahead of them in recriminations or regrets. No, she was going to live in the present, and be damn to both the past and the future.
With that thought, she settled back with her injured ankle propped on a pillow atop a chair and watched her lover consume his breakfast while she did the same. She committed every detail to memory. The way his hair glinted like a crown in the sunlight. The satisfied smile that curved his elegant lips when he took his first bite of buttered bread. The expansion and contraction of the sculpted muscles of his chest and arms as he passed the butter dish and bread basket across the table to her. And most of all, the soft but heated look in his eyes when their gazes met.
“Have I got a crumb on my nose?” he asked suspiciously after he had polished off his first piece of bread. “Or butter on my chin?”
She had been staring, of course. And why shouldn’t she? Brushing aside the embarrassment she would normally feel at being caught in such a faux pas, she grinned at him and waggled her eyebrows. “Just enjoying the exceptionally fine view.”
“Oh,” he breathed, a little self-consciously, she thought, as though her open admiration put him off balance. It was very endearing. “Well, in that case, we are doing the same thing. Do you know, when I woke up that first day and saw you, I thought you were an angel?”
And now it was her turn to be flustered. Her cheeks flushed at the flattery, but she kept her composure and shook her head in mock sadness. “Your eyesight must have been quite out of focus if you took me for a sexless being.” She gestured at her bosom which, even beneath the loose fabric of her night dress, was quite clearly graced with a pair of distinctly female attributes. “To say nothing of an ageless one,” she added, thinking of the fine lines that had been adding up around the corners of her eyes and mouth over the last decade.
“I was right!” He smacked his palm on the table in triumph. “You have been cribbing my brother’s sermons. Or at least sitting in the same theology lessons. One of my first thoughts after I woke was that Walter would tell me you couldn’t be an angel because you were clearly a woman.”
Her lips twitched. “I feel fairly certain this is another standard interpretation of the scripture, and therefore not your brother’s personal insight into the word of God.”
“Be that as it may, he’s the only clergyman whose insights I’ve ever paid much attention to. Not that I’ve any expectation that will do me much good in the hereafter. Which is why I was quite taken aback to wake up in a very soft bed in a mostly white room with no idea how I’d gotten there.”
She remembered that day—another Sunday, fittingly perhaps—with the perfect clarity
that only accompanied the most pivotal moments of one’s life. Remembered her joy when he had woken and she had finally seen his eyes for the first time and had been certain he would not die. “You thought you were dead,” she guessed.
A grim smile flashed across his features. “At least until the pain in my head kicked in. But when I first saw you, sitting next to me in a shaft of sunlight and looking as serenely beautiful as the Madonna, my first thought was that I was in heaven and you must be an angel. And to be honest, I am not completely certain I was wrong.”
Laura gestured at the room around them. At the rough-hewn wooden beams of the ceiling and the inelegantly whitewashed masonry walls. At the large but plain fireplace with its unfinished pine mantel and the modest plank table and chairs at which they currently sat. Serviceable but simple. To Geoffrey, who had obviously been raised in wealth and luxury, her home must seem humble indeed, if not downright squalid. “No foundations of precious stone or walls of gold hereabouts, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, darling,” he murmured, frowning and shaking his head. Abruptly, he rose from his and strode around the table, where he kneeled beside her chair. Looking up at her with eyes as soft and inviting as a pile of autumn leaves, he clasped her free left hand in his and brought it to his lips. “Even a man as poorly catechized as I am knows heaven is the place that, when you arrive, you never want to leave.”
And then he scooped her up and carried her back into the bedroom.
* * *
“How are we going to do this?”
Geoffrey was in the process of donning his clothes in anticipation of the return of the rest of the household from church. Shirtless, he sat in the chair beside the bed, lacing up his boots. His eyebrows drew together in puzzlement, indicating he didn’t understand the question, so Laura clarified.
“How are we going to find another opportunity to—” she caught herself just in time to avoid saying make love, because that seemed both pretentious and presumptuous, and instead finished, “—do this again?”
His gaze swept appreciatively over her naked body, covered but not actually concealed by the sheet she’d pulled up over her breasts in an attempt at modesty, and fresh desire coiled up in her belly like a clock spring. He raised an eyebrow inquiringly. “When would you like to do this again?”
Right now.
And how she could think that when they had made love—yes, she would allow herself those words in the privacy of her own thoughts—twice since breakfast and she ought to be as sated and languorous as a well-fed kitten, she did not know. Though, in truth, she supposed it might have something to do with the fact that Geoffrey was so very thorough and skillful a lover that she wasn’t sure she could ever be completely satisfied. She would always want more.
But “right now” was not an option. So she said, “As soon as we can manage it. But the question is, how can we manage it under everyone’s noses without them finding out?”
Geoffrey finished the laces on the second boot and rose to his feet. As yet unsecured by suspenders, his trousers threatened to slip to his knees, but he grabbed for the waistband and tugged them back into place. The movement caused his chiseled abdominal muscles to flex in a most distracting fashion. Retrieving his shirt from the back of the chair, he drew it over his head with one hand, threaded his arms through the sleeves, and began to tuck in the tails. Laura tried not to feel disappointed at the sudden obfuscation of his admirably sculpted torso. It really was quite shallow of her to enjoy looking at him as much as she did. “I could come at night, after they’ve gone to bed,” he suggested. “We could have an hour, at least, and I could return to the barracks with no one the wiser.”
A quiver ran through her midsection. An hour alone with him in secret, every night! She would have erotic memories to sustain her for decades. But… “What if Joseph notices you’ve left the barracks?”
Shoving the last handful of his shirt into his trousers, he pulled the suspenders over his shoulders and perched on the edge of the bed beside her. “Joseph? He sleeps like the dead.” His lips quirked at the corners, and he let out a low rumble of laughter. “Well, to be fair, he sleeps like the dead if the dead snored loud enough to wake the other dead. Either way, he is unlikely to wake in the night, but even if he does and finds me gone, I doubt he will think anything of it. I am not the most tranquil of sleepers and usually wake up at least once in the night. I’ve left the barracks on more the one such occasion, and Joseph has never remarked upon my absences.”
“And if Daniel or Abigail should encounter you entering or leaving the house?”
“Do you think that is likely? Are either of them often up and about in the middle of the night?”
Laura shrugged helplessly. “I’ve no idea. When Daniel was young, he would sometimes have trouble sleeping or waken with a nightmare and come to my room, but he hasn’t done that in years. Still, he—or Abigail, for that matter—could be pacing the house half the night and I would not know it, since I do sleep solidly most of the time.”
Clasping her nearest hand in his, he wound their fingers together. “I believe I can slip in and out without detection, but it is up to you. ‘Tis your reputation and respectability that are at stake, after all.”
With a sigh of resignation, she nodded. “But then we are back to having almost no time together at all. And I really do not think I can get away with staying home from church for more than one more Sunday on account of this.” She wiggled her bandaged foot from side to side in illustration.
He squeezed her hand gently. “There is another option, if you would rather not take the risk.”
“No,” she said sharply, her eyes suddenly stinging. “I would rather chance disgrace and discovery than end it before we must.”
His expression turned reproachful, but his gaze was soft and earnest. “That’s not what I am suggesting.”
Laura stared at him for ten full seconds in incomprehension before she finally accepted that he could only mean what she thought he meant. Even so, she could not credit that she had understood correctly. “Are you asking me to marry you?”
He let out a shuddering breath. “I believe I am, yes.”
Her heart lurched fitfully, as though at the center of a tug of war.
The idea of a brief and secret dalliance had appealed to her, and not just because carrying on with a man who was not—and never would be—her husband made her feel wicked and wanton and womanly in a way she had not for years. The forbiddenness of it all was definitely a draw, and she could not deny that the threat of being caught added a certain spice. Even today, when she’d been certain there was virtually no chance of anyone catching them, the remote possibility of such an event had heightened her pleasure.
Just as important, however, a temporary affair did not force her to think about the future and all the questions it posed. Such as what she would do when Daniel reached his majority and took over the farm. He would never turn her out, of course, but it would be awkward living in the house that had once been hers when he was master of it. She had built the cider business from the ground up after Samuel’s death, and yet, because she was a woman—a mother and not a father—she was expected to simply hand over the fruits of her labor to her offspring without regret or resentment. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Daniel to have the farm. Not that. Never that. But to be deprived of her central role in its operation and relegated to a mere advisor simply because he had achieved a certain age seemed…unfair. Samuel would not have been forced to do that. Why should she?
And how much more fraught would those questions be if she remarried? The farm was successful now because it needed only to support a small number of people year-round, and all of them were able-bodied adults. She had hoped that before Daniel turned twenty-one, the farm would become profitable enough that she could afford to purchase the adjacent property, which had been for sale for the last four years, and thereby double the size existing orchard. Expanding the farm’s capacity and yield would allow it to support a large
r number of people, but even then, she was not sure it would be enough to support Daniel, a wife and children, and her and a husband, especially once they became too old and enfeebled to work.
Of course, Geoffrey mightn’t intend for them to stay in America. He might mean to return to England. But she wouldn’t even entertain the implications of that possibility, because doing so was simply avoiding the most fundamental question of all: Do I want to marry Geoffrey Langston?
Laura had never seriously considered the matter before now, but she had taken it as an article of faith that she would remain a widow. Not for lack of opportunities, but for lack of interest. Samuel had been her one true love—or so she had believed—and no other man could measure up to him. Their marriage had not been without struggle and conflict, but she doubted any marriage was. And making up after their disagreements had been rather glorious.
But Samuel’s death, for all the grief and loneliness it had brought her, had one positive effect: it had freed her from the need to defer to her husband’s opinions. Although he had been coming around to her proposal for converting the farm to cider production in the weeks before he fell ill, the fact was that after he died, she no longer needed his approval to do as she felt best. She had moved forward with her plan and turned a floundering farm into a moderately prosperous business in a matter of years.
Now, after a decade of having an extraordinary amount of autonomy and authority for a woman, was she really prepared to become the legal and social subordinate of another man? When she’d married Samuel at the tender age of nineteen, she’d had no freedom or power to give up. Now, however, she was perfectly aware of the potential costs to her independence of choosing to become any man’s wife, even a man she had fallen head over heels for.
Sleeping with the Enemy: Lords of Lancashire, Book 4 Page 11
