Part 14 (1/2)
She blinked back tears and felt a new determination overtaking her. She went up on her knees and moved slightly behind Justin to wrap her arms around him, rest her cheek against his shoulder. He said he felt nothing, but she didn't believe him. No matter why he'd killed, he had to be feeling something. He was vulnerable tonight, or else he wouldn't have told her anything at all.
He needed her. She was sure of it.
”If not a lifetime, then just this one night? Please. Tonight we don't have to be who we are, or even who we think we are...or aren't. I can simply be your Magdalena, and you my Markos. Two simple people, living a simple life, one with no complications. Can't we pretend, just for tonight?”
He put up his hands, touching hers. ”Alina, don't do this....”
She would say it, all of it, now. While he was still here.
”Don't do what, Justin? Don't wonder what it would be like to lie in your arms? Don't yearn to have you touch me again? Don't long to kiss you, and hold you, and find out if you can fill this aching void inside of me I didn't know existed until you came into my life? Maybe you don't feel what I feel, or maybe you're lying to me, and to yourself. Maybe you're afraid that if you touch me, really touch me, you won't be able to leave me.
”Are we both to spend the rest of our lives not knowing if those lives could have been different, better? You say you have no life, Justin. Or is it that you're afraid of life? Is it the chance of feeling again that's so frightening to you? If I'm not afraid, then how can you-”
Smothering a curse, he pulled her forward onto his lap and crushed his mouth to hers, a move meant to silence her, she supposed. She believed she could taste the desperation in his kiss as his hands moved over her roughly, pus.h.i.+ng the blouse from her shoulder, digging his fingertips into her soft flesh.
She clung to him as he ravaged her mouth, kissing her half in demand, half in supplication. She grabbed at his jaw, holding him still, and returned his pa.s.sion with some of her own, biting his lower lip until she could taste blood and then plunging her tongue inside his mouth to join with his, duel with his.
His hand found her bare breast beneath the thin lawn of her blouse, and she cried out when he pinched her taut nipple, sending sharp spikes of desire down her body and to the heated ache between her legs.
She couldn't be still, couldn't have enough of him. In desperation she grabbed at her skirts and struggled to hike up the fullness of heavy fabric and the cotton slips beneath, taking his hand and pressing it to her bare thigh.
She whimpered against his mouth as he reached up and roughly tore her last undergarment from her. She grabbed onto his s.h.i.+rtfront and raised her hips instinctively, the tightening between her thighs so pleasurable, simply in the antic.i.p.ation of his touch. She knew what he wanted, because she wanted it, as well.
She couldn't know all that he knew; the unknown was still ahead of her, but she wasn't frightened. She welcomed it, all but begged for it. She spread her legs as wide as she could, her heels digging into the soft gra.s.s as she raised herself to him again. Touch, touch, touch. Take what's there for you, take it all, give back what you can. I'm here for you. Touch me. Love me....
Still with his mouth on hers, Justin ground his hand against her in an intimacy she encouraged, gasping with unexpected pleasure as he then stroked her, learning her even as she learned from him. She felt herself rising to some precipice, the same one she had fallen off the other night, only to be left wanting.
More. The word repeated itself inside her head. There has to be more.
She put her hand flat against his chest and pushed with all of her might, freeing herself from his grasp and quickly rising to her feet.
”Alina. Dear G.o.d, I've hurt you. I must be out of my mind.”
She couldn't speak, had no words to say what she needed to say. Her hands went to the long scarf tied about her waist, her fingers fumbling to undo the clever knot. The scarf had barely fallen to the ground before she was pulling the loose blouse up and over her head, tossing it aside as she reached for the b.u.t.tons at her waistband.
There was no shame, no thought of maidenly reserve as the skirt and petticoats puddled at her feet and she was entirely naked, standing there in the moonlight, offering herself to this man.
Still unable to speak, she took his hands and pulled him to his knees along with her. Her breath coming fast and hard, she tugged his s.h.i.+rt free from his waistband, pus.h.i.+ng back the material so that the b.u.t.tons strained in their moorings. She felt a frustration so great she nearly screamed with it.
”Please,” she managed at last, her mouth close to his. ”I want this for you, too. I'm not afraid, Justin. And I want no half measures. If we're to be together only this once, then let it be completely. Don't you need me? I need you, Justin. I need you in ways I still don't even understand. Help me. Let me help you...”
His clothing melted away somehow and she was now free to touch him, learn him as he was learning her. The ripple of his muscles told her when she was pleasing him, and that pleasure came back to her twofold.
”Two people,” he whispered as he took hold of her shoulders, easing her back onto her petticoats and following her down. ”We're just two people...”
His kisses were deep, and drugging. His hands touched her in ways not possible before, with an intimacy that bordered on wors.h.i.+p. He was becoming lost in her, and that's what she wanted for him.
He took her hand and guided it down between her legs as he whispered into her ear. ”Feel what I feel, Alina...touch what I touch. That's your heat, that's your agony, there lies your white-hot center. All the pleasure, all the longing. And just when you think you can't bear the pleasure anymore, that's when your body longs for mine. Inside you. Deep inside you. There. Right there. That's it, sweetheart. Touch yourself. Feel the silk of you.”
”Justin...”
”I'm going to hurt you, kitten. I don't want to, but I am. But what you want lies beyond the now, what you're feeling now. What lies beyond is why we were created. G.o.d's joke is that you should feel pain this first time, and that I'd rather die ten deaths than hurt you.”
Alina's breath caught on a sob. She tugged her hand free of his and attempted to pull him up and over her body. ”I'm not frightened. Don't be frightened for me. Please.”
He kissed her, held that perfect kiss as he moved between her legs. When the pain came she barely felt it, and it was swiftly gone, to be replaced by a new fullness that, of all things, had her smiling against his mouth.
And then he began to move, his rhythm slow, careful, even as his short hard breaths matched her own, so that she bit at his shoulder in a new and different frustration, urging him on, her fingernails digging into his back. What she didn't know, her body did, and her body knew there was even more. Without conscious thought, she raised her legs and clamped them around his back, taking him deeper, wanting him even deeper inside her. ”We're not two people anymore, Justin, we're one. Don't hurt for me...I'm not afraid...”
He kissed her again and then pushed himself up on his palms, looking down into her face, searching for some lie in her words, so that she reached up and cupped his cheeks in her hands.
He began to move more purposefully, his thrusts deeper, growing faster, with more of his strength behind them. His gaze locked with hers, he ground against her, until her eyes widened and her breath caught and what he had called her ”white-hot center” pulsed in a glorious ecstasy that only increased as she felt his own body do the same. On and on and on, until he collapsed against her and there was nothing but the night and the moon and their mingled breathing.
And the tears that mingled on their cheeks. Because it had been so right. Because it had been so good.
Because they might neither of them ever feel this way again.
JUSTIN STAYED THE NIGHT in Sandhurst after he'd retrieved the Inhaber's answering letter from his friend at their arranged meeting place, for no good reason other than he knew he should stay away from the Romany camp...and Alina.
Briefly, he debated with himself the wisdom of traveling on to London, finding some way to confront the Prince Regent, but he knew that for what it was: a dangerous as well as fruitless enterprise. Even if he could convince the royal buffoon of what he knew, there would be no forgiveness. He'd threatened the man's life, and then publicly announced that he'd pocketed fifty thousand pounds in return for a worthless pardon. By now everyone in Mayfair knew about it, and those in the countryside, at their estates, were reading letters from their friends, recounting Prinny's latest scandal.
No. There was no possible way he could remain in England. As he'd told Alina as he'd left her outside her caravan, after they'd shared one last kiss, he had burned too many bridges.
And now he had committed the worst crime of all. He'd stolen Alina's virginity. He could spend hours over the bottles he'd taken with him to his small room at the run-down inn where he'd met with Richard, telling himself that he'd been temporarily out of his head. That the events of the day and the encounter with Phineas Battle had affected him more than he would ever allow anyone to know. That he'd needed a pair of warm arms around him, had desperately needed to be reminded that a part of him at least was still alive, was still capable of feeling. That he wasn't a cold-blooded murderer, but only a man doing what he had to do, and that maybe, just maybe, he deserved some happiness.
But in the morning, when the sun rose and his head throbbed and his mouth tasted as if something foul had died there, when the nightmare that woke him to feel his heart pounding so fast he thought he might die banished the memory of Erich's face, he saw the truth. He deserved nothing but the h.e.l.l he had made of his life.
He washed and dressed with some care, knowing Wigglesworth would not approve of even his best efforts, but at least he was once again clean-shaven and in his own clothes. He paid his bill and ventured out into the streets, a London gentleman on the stroll, swinging his cane idly as he sought out his breakfast and took in his surroundings, pausing to admire the facade of one of the many churches, lingering over a gla.s.s of wine at a quaint outdoor cafe. And all the time watching, a.s.suring himself he wasn't being followed.
He was back to playing the game he'd played for eight long years. And he hated it. Had he ever walked a street without having a care for his back? Had he ever smiled without first calculating the effect of that smile? Had he ever in the last long eight years been free to simply be?
Two people, just two people...
Enough! He'd detected n.o.body following him, and if someone did, well, he'd take care of that annoyance somewhere along the road. He returned to the inn and ordered his bay saddled for the ride to Basingstoke. There he would meet Alina and Luka, Wigglesworth and Brutus. There he would answer Lucas Paine's questions with careful lies and flatter the Lady Nicole into sharing something of her wardrobe with Alina before sending her on to Malvern Hall, another two full days' travel away.
He'd promise to join her there, once his business with the Inhaber was completed.
That would be another lie, the last he would tell her. Or was it to be the last he would tell himself? Because from the first moment she'd looked into his eyes, she'd found a part of him he'd thought long ago gone, and now she'd given him not only her body, but her trust, her belief that he was somehow better than he knew himself to be.
Was it his past that kept him away from all she offered to him? Or was it his fear that he could never be what she believed him to be?
How many shadows did it take to submerge a soul into eternal darkness, with no hope of redemption?
CHAPTER TWELVE.
”NICOLE, DARLING, PRECISELY what is it you think you're doing?”