Part 17 (1/2)
He slid the gown from her shoulders, baring her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her nipples were taut, revealing her arousal, as did the increasingly rapid rise and fall of her chest as her breaths quickened, shortened. He'd barely touched her, and she was already responding. The pleasurable coil in his gut tightened.
”Justin, please...” She pressed her hands against his thighs. ”But you're going to insist, aren't you?”
”Oh, yes. I really must insist. Tell me, kitten. Tell me all that you feel...all that you yearn for.”
”This is my punishment for avoiding you. Very well. But I don't know how to describe what it's like for me. I...I yearned for this feeling I'm feeling now. There's...there's this almost pleasant thickness that begins just at the base of my throat, and it seems somehow connected to...other parts of my body.”
He nuzzled the side of her neck, his blood running hot. ”Yes...go on....”
”There's this... A strange sort of antic.i.p.ation of your touch, as if I'm somehow already feeling your mouth against me, your tongue stroking me, your fingers pinching me lightly as you rub at me, again and again, making me grit my teeth and beg you for more, beg you to feed this hunger that robs me of my breath and- Yes. Yes, like that. Oh, Justin...”
He lowered her all the way back onto the soft cus.h.i.+ons, suckling at her budding nipple, playing her with his hands and tongue, glorying in her unashamed moans of pleasure as she cupped her own b.r.e.a.s.t.s for him, raised them to his mouth as if offering him the gift of her, a gift he greedily took.
He kissed her heated flesh, easing her gown down, pressing a kiss against her flat stomach as she lifted her hips, helping him free her of her garments.
He'd dreamed of this, lain awake thinking about this, nearly lost his mind envisioning this moment. She'd been a virgin, she wouldn't have understood such undiluted intimacy. She might not understand now, but she was fearless, he knew that. And she trusted him.
He probed her navel with his tongue, stroked her flat lower belly with his thumbs, was driven on by the way, once again, she instinctively raised her hips to him, her body telling him that it was ready for what he would do next...even if her mind still wondered.
He eased her suddenly taut thighs apart and sought her out with both hands, to find her wet and slick and swollen with desire. He knew what to do, how to stroke her, how to reach her, and when her thighs fell open bonelessly, he knew he'd moved her past the point of any lingering modesty. When he finally brought his mouth to her, she reacted with a low moan of pleasure, not shock or dismay.
Like spreading the petals of a delicate, exotic flower, he fully explored her, finding the white-hot center of her and then sealing his lips against her, stroking that center of her pleasure with his tongue before sucking it into his mouth, feeling her small explosions as they rippled through her body and his.
She was still for long moments, pressing against him, blatantly prolonging her enjoyment, before she seemed to come alive with a fury that surprised him. She reached down for him, pulling at him, her fingers curling into his back as she urged him upward.
He was powerless to resist.
Now he was the boneless one, somehow turned onto his back as she knelt beside him, tearing at his b.u.t.tons, whimpering softly as she divested him of his clothing, and then pulling him back across her body as she collapsed once more onto the cus.h.i.+ons.
There was a fierce desperation in the kisses she pressed on his face, his throat, his chest, in the way her fingernails dug into the bare flesh of his back, the way she moved her body beneath his. She needed him. She'd been pleasured, but not fulfilled. She needed him for that. She needed to feel whole, and she couldn't do that until their two halves were joined.
She didn't say the words, but her actions told him all he needed to know, all he'd never hoped to experience. His woman. Wanting him, only him. Needing him...as he needed her, only her.
Her sigh when he sank into her nearly unmanned him, and he felt tears stinging at the backs of his eyes. She took him into her, held him tightly, brought her legs up and over his back in order to take more of him, all of him. She gave herself even as she invited him to take what he needed.
And all he needed, all he'd ever needed, all he would ever need, was her.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
ALINA LAY WITH HER HEAD on Justin's gently rising and falling bare chest, listening to his steady heartbeat. Beneath the coverlet he'd pulled across them earlier, her hand rested at his waist, her left leg drawn across his as she melded against him, into him, imprinting him with her body, branding him as hers.
She loved when he touched her, reveled in the sensations he so easily aroused in her, exulted in his loss of control as he plunged deep inside her, briefly taking them both out of the world and into a fleeting realm of delight surely no two other humans had ever known.
But this was somehow even better. Lying here with him as he slept. The thickness at the very bottom of her throat, the fullness in her chest, were not the stirrings of pa.s.sion, of need. This was an ache of love, filling her up with an emotion that encompa.s.sed every feeling she'd ever had, and then doubled it.
She would protect him, comfort him, hold him when he was ill or in pain. Her arms would cradle his children, the milk from her b.r.e.a.s.t.s would give them sustenance. He was hers, always hers, and she would die for him, live for him, be nothing without him.
There was pa.s.sion for his body, and she'd gloried in it. But this was a pa.s.sion for him, for Justin, the man. The way he smiled at her with his eyes as well as his mouth, a smile that seemed reserved only for her. The way he teased her, even how their wills clashed. His affection for Brutus, and his amused tolerance of Wigglesworth's antics. The loyalty he inspired in his true friends. The way he walked, as if the world belonged to him, the way he took her hand in his as if that was the most natural thing in the world to do.
The way he cared, when he did everything to show that he did not.
Alina drew in a breath, let it out in a shuddering sigh. What was she going to do with him?
”Kitten?”
She smiled against his chest. ”You know, Justin, it's a good thing they weren't puppies in that barn. I've learned to tolerate kitten, but pup would have been quite unacceptable.”
His low chuckle pleased her. As did the way he put his arm around her and pulled her close against him. ”I thought you were the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. You don't know what it took for me not to join you in that hay and cover you with kisses. But then I remembered what I had to tell you.”
”Do we have to talk about any of that now? Life was still so uncomplicated that day, before you told me about my uncle, the Inhaber and your ridiculous notions.”
He pushed himself up against the cus.h.i.+ons, drawing her along with him. ”I beg your pardon? I never have ridiculous notions.”
She rolled her eyes; clearly even the best of intentions couldn't last, for she longed to box his ears. ”Yes, you do. And since most of them come from some ridiculous notion of protecting me from you, I believe I have the right to say whether or not they are ridiculous.”
He wrapped a coil of her hair around his finger before letting it drop onto his chest. ”I believed I was protecting you from my unworthy self. The past had just come rus.h.i.+ng up into my face, along with all its attendant demons, and I thought the past was all that was left of me. Not enough to build a future on, and not fair of me to impose on you, either. You looked at me with such innocence and trust, as if I were some fairy-tale knight in his polished armor. I wasn't, kitten. I'm not. Your Inhaber knew it.”
Alina pulled the coverlet along with her as she sat up, facing him in the moonlight. She couldn't really see his face clearly, but she knew he was wearing that maddening mask of indifference he tried on with everyone, fooling most of them she was sure, but not her. Never her.
”What does the Inhaber have to do with your demons, as you call them? Are you telling me you know him? You've met him? What does he know?”
”No, we've never met. But what happened couldn't have been coincidence. He's heard of me, somehow, about my time in Bohemia.”
She was rapidly running out of patience with him now. ”Justin, if the Inhaber knows something about you that upset you so much that you refused to honor our betrothal because of it, I have the right to know what that something is, and if you continue to be so cryptic, I will probably hit you.”
He was silent for long moments, during which Alina wondered if he was going to continue to be so stubborn and how she'd ever find a way to get through the walls he'd kept about him, obviously for years.
”Let me begin at the beginning, when I was not much older than you are now, kitten,” he said at last, and she nearly cried out in relief. Nothing he might tell her could possibly be worse than not knowing. ”Please don't think of anything I'm going to say as putting forth excuses. There are no excuses.”
”Will you hold my hand while you tell me?” she asked quietly, putting out her hand to him. She was already crying silent tears when he took that hand in his and squeezed it softly.
And then he told her.
He'd been wild in his youth, wonderfully well-named. Blessed with an ancient t.i.tle, nearly bottomless wealth, a pleasing countenance and several varied talents that meant that most anything he attempted came easily to him-perhaps too easily. You don't value what you don't earn.
He'd excelled at school, kept up an easy friends.h.i.+p with most everyone he met, and when he came to London he came to conquer it. And did. He could outfence, outshoot, outfight and outride anyone, including his teachers. He didn't seem capable of losing at cards, or with women. His was a charmed life, a gift from the G.o.ds, and he enjoyed it to the top of his bent...and then beyond. Until the pleasures began to pall, the achievements coming too easily.
So he married, as this seemed the next logical thing to do. He chose a young woman who was nearly equally popular within the ton, a beautiful woman who would look good on his arm. Together, they would continue to effortlessly swim through life, hosting b.a.l.l.s and perhaps the occasional musical or literary evening, but otherwise go their own way.
But she'd been indiscreet. Not once, but several times, leading to that misty morning and the reflexive shot that ended Robbie Farber's life and changed Justin's forever.
Within days he was in Brussels, then Vienna, and from there into oblivion. Until, months later, sunk in drink and despair at his lost life, he was approached by a man bearing a letter from his widowed mother. There was a way, she'd written, a path not easily traveled, but he wasn't without talents that could be valuable to the Crown during this terrible time. If he did as he was told, made himself valuable to the war effort, there would be a pardon at the end of his service.
He'd resisted, argued that he'd rather fight in the army as the lowliest field soldier, but in the end he'd agreed. With every other door closed to him, he had no choice but to go through the only one left open.
The French welcomed him, the banished and disgraced Englishman with the ready wit, the deep pockets, the pleasing countenance. Oh, yes, when they conquered the English he would be delighted to take them on a tour of London. He taught the ladies bawdy songs, played and drank deep with the gentlemen. Money, his own, ran through his hands and into theirs, and they liked him all the better.