A Kiss of Lies (36 page)

He took her hand in his. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She nestled down against his chest with a sigh, feeling wonderfully safe and cherished, knowing at last she was exactly where she belonged—with the man she loved and had always loved.

Christian watched sleep consume her, delighted that in her slumber, a smile still played on her beautiful lips. She looked happy, and his heart sang with the joy of it.

Tiredness mixed with hope saw his eyelids drooping. He hadn’t slept in over two days. With his fingers threaded through hers, he listened to the beats of their hearts and as sleep overtook him, he marveled at how perfectly in rhythm the beats were.

As the dream of his future life with Serena played out in his head, he knew that with her by his side, they would conquer any obstacle thrown in their path to happiness.

He was thankful that the biggest obstacle was gone—Peter Dennett.

For it meant Serena was truly his. Lady Serena Markham. Her name swirled through his brain.

He loved the sound of it.

He loved her.

And he’d allow no one to take her from him.

Serena awoke sometime in the night needing a small dose of laudanum. Christian came to, instantly awake. He mixed a small amount with brandy and made her drink it before he gently cleaned the wound and applied a fresh bandage.

“I’m sorry that your beautiful skin will be scarred. You may find you’ll have to wear a certain style of dress to cover it.”

“I’ve always found your scars rather sexy.”

Her words were slightly slurred. The opiates and alcohol had taken effect.

He was angry that such creamy perfection was marred, but at least he’d managed to save her life. That was what was important. His soul felt at peace for the first time in, well, forever. His mother would have been proud of him.

She rolled onto her side to face him, careful of her injured shoulder. Her naked breast pressed against him; her nightgown scrunched down to her waist from when he’d bandaged her wound. “Kiss me,” she whispered.

Her soft mouth was a temptingly short distance away. “Go back to sleep, darling. I can wait until you’re well.” Even though it would make for a very uncomfortable night, Christian thought, with his erection straining uncomfortably against his breeches. He hadn’t undressed before he’d fallen asleep, and he’d hardened the minute he’d woken in her arms. With her scent filling his nostrils, her luscious curves filling his hands, and then seeing her naked breasts when he’d attended to her wound meant he’d get no further sleep this night.

“Kiss me, please.” Her fingers traced the line of his jaw and brushed along his lips. “I want to make love to you as a free woman. Not as a murderess or an adulterer, but as your fiancée. Then I might finally feel clean.”

He heard the plea in her voice and his resolve began to crumble. “What about your shoulder?” He’d secured her arm in a sling close to her body so she couldn’t move it and damage the stitches.

She placed her hand on his chest and pushed him onto his back, rising over him to straddle his thighs. “I think this will work but you’ll have to help me undress you. My one free
hand can only do so much.”

And her
only so much
was to caress his rampant erection through his breeches. He groaned into the silent room. It had been several days since he’d made love to her, and he wanted her with a hunger verging on insanity. He wanted to claim her, mark her as his own, and wipe the memory of Peter Dennett from her mind. He wanted to love her, this woman who had chosen him, had wanted to be with him and who had risked her life to save him, burns and all. He’d do anything for her. Serena leaned down, her one bare breast pressing into his chest. “Perhaps now I’m scarred you won’t want me,” she teased.

“Don’t be ridiculous. A scar means nothing to me. I love you! You the person, the brave and courageous woman who for two years went through hell, and had the determination to claw her way back.”

“Touché. Now, I don’t ever want to hear you doubt how I feel about you again. You’d battled through unimaginable pain to survive, and I swore that if I had to go back to Peter, I too would be like you—brave and strong, strong enough to survive, and one day come back to you.”

In her drug-addled state she did not comprehend what she had confessed. “You came to the duel to offer to go back to him to save me?” Christian exclaimed in horror.

She tensed above him. “I’d have done anything to save you,” she said, cupping his face. “I would have killed him myself if I could. Peter was handsome as sin on the outside, physical perfection to be precise. Women threw themselves at him, yet he was rotten to the core inside. Every day I was with him, I wanted to die.” Tears fell from her eyes. “But you are so filled with love, kindness, and goodness, that it makes your outer scars invisible. You’re the most beautiful man I have ever met, and I count myself the luckiest woman in the world to claim you as my own.”

He didn’t know what to say. He finally understood what a treasure he’d found in Serena. She was the daughter of a duke. A woman of incomparable beauty, who, if she chose, could have all of society at her feet, yet she wanted him and would marry him, a man the rest of society could hardly bear to look at.

She tugged at his shirt. “Now, if you please, clothes off. I’d like to demonstrate just how beautiful I find every inch of your body.”

How had he come to deserve a woman such as this? He decided to send Simon Penfold and his father, the Duke of Barforte, an extremely large gift. He even wanted to thank the villain
who was set on ruining him. For if not for her deception, he would never have been in Canada and been able to meet or help Serena, and she would never have been there to save him from a life of self-pity and self-loathing.

He was lucky, very lucky. Immediately after Waterloo, when he’d lain in mind-numbing pain, struggling for life because of his horrific burns, he’d thought God had turned against him. But he hadn’t.

“I’m a very lucky man,” he whispered into the darkness.

“I beg your pardon?” Serena said.

Christian chuckled. “No. I beg your pardon. I’m terribly slow at getting naked.”

Christian’s pulse beat heavy in his groin at her answering seductive, languorous smile. Together they hurried and fumbled to get rid of his shirt, breeches, and underclothes.

Straddling his body once more, Serena purred. Holding his gaze she leaned down and lapped at his nipple exactly like a cat. One delicate, tiny hand caressed his burned right shoulder.

Christian gripped the sheets with his fists as she slowly let her mouth and hand roam over his chest and stomach, moving tantalizingly toward his groin. He half rose off the bed as her lips brushed the head of his cock, and a deep groan escaped into the room.

“God, that feels so good,” his voice was hoarse as he lay back down, happy to let her pleasure him.

Her answer was to take him into her mouth and run her tongue around the sensitive head of his member. She began to suck and he closed his eyes, willing his body not to surge into her mouth. Her hand found his sacs and gently squeezed them. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, as her mouth worked its magic on him. She felt like heaven. Her mouth was hot and wet upon him. So good, it was almost painful. He wanted to come so badly.

His hips lifted. He couldn’t help it. But he was worried about jostling her shoulder. He half sat and tried to lift her gently off him but her mouth clamped down firmly on him.

“Christ, Serena. Please … have pity on me. I can’t take much more,” he gasped.

She lifted her head and licked her lips. “I could become addicted to the taste of you.” Then with sultry eyes, she rose and moved up to straddle his groin. Maintaining eye contact, she guided him into her sleek, wet entrance and sank slowly down, taking all of him deep within her body. He fought every screaming impulse to surge into her.

She was extremely tight and hot. It was almost too much. He gripped her hips, trying to
hold her still, his breath coming in gasping pants.

She tried to move, fighting his hold. “Love me, Christian. I’m free. Make it feel like it was my first time with you.”

“Making love to you always feels like the first time.” And he surged into her, his hips lifting and withdrawing, careful not to jostle her shoulder. His powerful strokes, moving in and out of her tight sheath, sent pulses of pleasure to every corner of his body. Egged on by her moans of pleasure, he knew he wouldn’t last much longer.

He reached down to where their bodies joined and found her hardened nub. She ground down onto his fingers and threw back her head, her mouth open in a silent scream.

As her climax rose, he felt her tighten around him, milking him, and he gave a roar as his own release powered through them both, filling her womb with his life-giving essence.

She collapsed limp against his chest, small sighs of contentment escaping from her half-open mouth.

They lay there, thoroughly sated, staring at each other and stroking each other’s bare skin. He kissed her occasionally on her forehead, her eyelids, her nose and cheeks.

“I love you, Christian.” She gave a small sob. “More than words can ever say. Thank you for your patience and understanding. But most of all thank you for loving me.”

“I’m the lucky one. I have you.” He enfolded her in his arms. “My fiancée …” He loved saying the word. “I love you, sweetheart.”

Christian whispered a quote from Marcus Aurelius, the Roman leader and his favorite philosopher. “Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.”

Serena had all his heart and always would. Nothing else mattered.

The next morning, after they’d slept late, Christian helped Serena bathe. It took much longer than the three men waiting downstairs would have liked, but then they’d never seen Serena naked. She was a goddess; her beauty would tempt any man, and Christian had no willpower where she was concerned. When Serena invited him to join her in the tub, who was he to decline?

Over an hour late, and leaving the bedchamber floor soaking wet, the couple finally arrived downstairs with Christian carrying Serena in his arms. They entered the drawing room and he placed her gently on the settee.

Serena was pleased to discover the men had held breakfast back for them. Hadley gathered some bread and eggs for her, along with a cup of strong tea. “Do you need help in eating?” he asked.

“If you could put some marmalade on the toast, I’ll manage.”

Over a jovial breakfast, the men teased Christian about becoming a mother hen, laughing at the way he fussed over her, ensuring she was comfortable and that she had enough to eat.

The moment she’d finished her meal, and as she sat comfortably sipping her tea, the mood in the room turned somber.

“I’ve thought about this all night and I hate to say it, but this mystery starts with you.” Maitland’s words sent a chill through her. “If you know something, we have to work out what that may mean for us and our safety.”

Serena set her cup down with a shaking hand. “What if the man was simply making that bit up? I mean, I’ve thought about it too, and I can only remember meeting your fathers once, when I was ten years old. My father had some sort of party, at Wilton House, on our estate.” She rubbed her forehead, “It wasn’t a ball. In fact, I don’t remember seeing many women there. Father seemed to keep them hidden away.”

The men shifted in their seats and looked at each other. Christian cleared his throat. “I think it was a party where the women were perhaps paid to attend.”

Serena’s mouth fell open. “You mean they were … they were …”

“Women of ill repute,” Christian finished as the others nodded.

“Well, I can’t remember my father holding another such event—not at Wilton House, anyway.”

“Then perhaps something happened at this function that dissuaded him from ever holding another. That would make sense,” Maitland said dryly. “Whatever occurred, you’re somehow connected.”

Serena chewed her bottom lip trying to remember anything about the week just after her tenth birthday. She sighed and with palms upturned in defeat admitted, “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything.”

The men all started talking at once, arguing over what the next move should be. They grew louder as they each tried to talk over the other, and a small memory began to grow large in her mind. She’d seen this exact scene play out before. She remembered a group of men, a vastly different group of men, arguing viciously.

“Stop!” she cried out. The men became silent immediately. Serena leaned forward. “I remember when I was young, that there was a terrible argument one night. I was spying, as usual. Some of the men came to blows. Arend, your father was the most upset, and he left Wilton House that very night. I remember he tried to persuade Grayson’s father to leave too. A young girl was being led into one of the rooms as he left. His parting words were, ‘What you are doing dishonors the word “dishonorable.” It is beneath contempt. Perhaps the French got it right—the aristocrats are diseased.’ ” She grimaced. “I screamed at his words. I thought there was some horrible disease in my house, and I didn’t want to die in agony like my mother had. Father saw me, of course, and I was dragged upstairs to my room. I wasn’t allowed down again until his guests had left.”

The men sat looking at her in silence. Tears began to well in her eyes. “I’m not a girl of ten anymore. They did something to that young girl, didn’t they?”

Christian moved to sit beside her and folded her into his arms. “It’s more than likely, yes.”

Maitland jumped to his feet and paced the room. “The bastard—my father …” It was the most emotion Serena had ever seen him display. “This has to be the incident. I remember my father coming back from the week at Wilton House and locking himself in his study for days. He drank himself into oblivion. I simply thought he’d lost everything at the gaming tables. But this—this makes my stomach churn.”

“What is
this
? We don’t really know what happened.”

Hadley looked pointedly at Serena and said, “I can hazard a very good guess.” Serena glanced at the men and saw their reluctance to discuss the topic in front of her. But they had an idea about what they believed had happened at Wilton House all those years ago. Quite frankly, given her own experiences, she didn’t want to know.