A Lady's Wish (8 page)

“You did not seem deterred last night. But perhaps you only intended to tease.”

His eyes glimmered. “Perhaps.”

“And I . . .” She gathered her courage. “I was not entirely unhappy about it.”

A crease appeared in his brow, but he did not speak.

“Say something,” she whispered.

“Why didn’t you tell me yesterday that you are not married?” His voice sounded gravelly.

Her eyes went wide. “The occasion for it did not arise.”

“You might have.”

“I might have, yes. When you appeared on the road I could have said, ‘Good day, sir. Although we have not met in nine years I would have you know now, before you assist us with our carriage, that I am a widow.’ ” She lifted her brows. “Would that have sufficed?”

He seemed to breathe in deeply, and the corner of his mouth tilted up.

“Here again is the girl I met that day, quick-tongued and certain of her own mind.” He scanned her features. “Yet more beautiful now than she was then.”

She knew not where to look. Only he had ever spoken to her like this, and she had forgotten how it confused her. But she had not forgotten how it made her deliciously agitated inside.

“You needn’t flatter me,” she whispered. “I have already suggested to you that I am susceptible. As I was then.”

“Susceptible to teasing and flattery?”

She lifted her gaze. “Susceptible to you.”

He took another breath, a bit ragged it seemed. Then he gripped her hand and pulled her to the parlor. She stumbled after, he shut the door, and like that first day—that only day—his hands came around her face and he lowered his mouth to hers.

Chapter Seven

H
e had never forgotten the texture of her lips, the sweet humidity of her breath, the taste of her tongue or scent of her skin. In every woman he had touched since then he had searched for glimmers of her and found none. Now he took her mouth beneath his and fell into sunlight again.

As on that day so long ago, she met him eagerly. But in the intervening years she had spent as a married woman, one thing about her kiss had not changed. He drew away and looked into her upturned face, her cheeks aglow. She was so beautiful to him and he held her in his arms again as he had dreamt. But this could not be right.

He could not mask his incredulity. “You have not been kissed?”

“Wha—what?” Her hazy eyes were fixed upon his mouth, her breaths quick. She wanted to be kissed, but she possessed no skill at it whatsoever.

“Did your husband never kiss you?”

Her brows cut downward, the pleasure slipping from her face.

“Are you insulting me?”

“Observing. In astonishment.”

She ducked out of his embrace and halfway across the chamber, pressing her palms to her cheeks.

“No, he did not kiss me. At least not—” Between her fingers her face flamed. “Not like you did.”

He stared, and probably his mouth hung open. Alongside the incredible satisfaction that apparently she had only him with whom to compare her husband in this matter came a sort of sticky nausea.

“But you have two children.”

She cast him a sharp look. “It does not require the attachment of mouths to conceive a child, Captain Acton.”

For a moment he could not speak. This was too unbelievable to accept. He finally managed words.

“Was he
blind
?”

“Are you trying to be cruel or is it merely an unfortunate byproduct of your incivility?”

He moved toward her; he could not remain distant watching her eyes so fraught with distress. He reached for her and she flinched back but he curved his hand around her delicate jaw and into her hair. Her eyes were wide, lashes fanned about the blue, her nostrils flaring slightly and lips parted. Nik’s breaths slowed through pure wonderment. How a man could gaze upon this and not wish to kiss every inch of it, he could not fathom.

“Was he disinterested in women?”

Her eyes shot wider yet. “No. He was quite fond of me in that manner.” Her gaze shifted away. “Quite,” she whispered.

Red washed across his vision. “Men can behave as beasts.”

She ducked her head again. “He was not a beast. He did not beat me or employ force. He was only . . . cold.” She was breathing heavily. “I cannot believe I am speaking to
you
of this.”

He threaded his fingers through her hair and touched his lips to her brow. God, how he wanted to feel her in his hands and upon his lips forever.

“Not all men are cold. You inspire quite the opposite in one man in particular.”

She remained perfectly still in his hold. “Despite my lack of experience with kissing?”

Where silken skin met satin hair, he drew in her scent of honeysuckle and woman. “That can easily be amended.”

“I hoped you would see it that way.” She went onto her toes and pressed her lips to his.

What she lacked initially in skill she more than made up for in enthusiasm. Her mouth sought his and Nik forgot that she knew nothing about kissing in the sheer pleasure of teaching her how.

She was a quick learner, and she learned with her entire body. In response to his urging her lips parted, and he tasted her as he had dreamt of tasting her again for years. She was hot and wet within, her tongue supple and tentative, and he took her gently at first, then deeper, until they were locked in the kiss. His cupped her face then her shoulders in his palms, savoring the beauty of her slender shape. She spread her hands upon his chest, her fingertips pressing in as her hungry mouth opened to allow him entrance. He stroked her heat and damp beauty and she moaned lightly and brought her body against his.

He had been waiting years to touch her again. She responded so readily. And swiftly he wanted a great deal more than kissing. He drew away from her lips but his heart pounded and she must be able to feel his desire now.

Her lashes fluttered open to reveal cornflowers veiled in haze. Her lips, dark pink and tender from his kisses, parted upon a little sigh. “Did I do well?”

“Too well.”

She licked her lips and he restrained the urge to drag her against his arousal. Instead he slid the tip of his tongue over her full bottom lip then took it between his teeth. She moaned, a soft sound of pure want, and opened entirely beneath him, and Nik found himself in a hired parlor preparing to strip a woman naked and lick every part of her before she could tell him nay. She slid her hands into his hair and accepted his mouth on the curve of her throat where her fragrance maddened him as it had before. Just as then, he knew he must halt this. Before he lost the will to halt.

But good Lord it was hard halting. And he was hard, and she wasn’t making it any easier, pressing her sweet thighs to his and shifting sensuously like a cat seeking caresses. Her slender hands slid inside his coat, grasped the waistband of his breeches, and she rubbed against him, another moan slipping from her. He felt it in his mouth upon her throat and in his aching cock, and he pushed her back into the door and let himself feel her like she wanted to be felt. She obliged, spreading her knees, gripping him tighter and whimpering in surprised pleasure.

“Dear God.” He grasped her arms and pressed his mouth to her cheek. “We must stop this,” and recommence in a more private location, preferably without a carriage waiting to steal her away from him again, and preferably with his ring upon her finger. He wanted her, he had always wanted her, and she clearly wanted him too. Fate could not be so kind. But it seemed fate was offering him another chance with this woman, despite the shortcomings of character and position in the world with which he had been born, yet perhaps because he had worked so hard to remedy those.

“But— But I— I do not want to stop.” Beneath his coat her hands slid up his back. She pressed her breasts to his chest, her belly to his, her entire intoxicating body, nuzzling his jaw. “And this time it is
my
carriage waiting and
my
life and I can do what
I
wish.”

Amidst the crush of desire to help her do what she wished with alacrity, Nik had to smile. He drew back to look into eyes wide with defiant beauty.

“It is indeed.” His throat was thick.

“Is it what you wish?” Her breaths came fast.

He brushed a silken autumn lock back from her brow, the sensation of her skin like a drug. “Most assuredly.”

“Good, because I hoped you would assist me with something.” Her throat constricted in a lumpy swallow. “I need a man at the present and I would like it to be you.”

He froze.
At the present?

“To assist you further upon your journey?”

“No. For another purpose. I would like a night of— of— of.” Her lashes dipped. “A
night
.”

“A night?” was all he could manage aloud.

“Only a night.” She spoke quickly yet quite firmly. “I shan’t expect more. Calanthia told me you are setting off to sea again shortly which suits me well since I only have need of a man for this one night. A single night and I shall be satisfied.”

Abruptly it became difficult to draw breath. He released her and stepped back. He had, it seemed, been dreaming again. She was a titled lady and he may as well still be the penniless youth whose flattering attentions she had enjoyed and who she left waiting while she ran off to marry a baronet. A war hero might do for the Miss Chapels of society, but apparently not for Lady Morgan.

“A single night.” His voice came forth unevenly. “Like that single day?”

“Well, yes. Although rather more involved, as it were.”

“You cannot be serious.” He could not bear it if she were.

“Of course I am. Don’t you see? It was providence that brought you here.”

“Providence.”

“Yes, providence. And perhaps a degree of coincidence. You see, I know— I
knew
after I had been married some weeks and learned—” She broke off, momentarily flustered. But she regained her purpose swiftly. “I understood what you must have wanted from me that day. And I can see it in your eyes that you still do.”

Nik’s palms went cold. “What do I want from you now that I wanted then?”

“To . . .
be
with me.”

Even as he wished to strip her beautiful body of clothing and
be
with her as soon as possible, nausea rose in him again.

“Is that what I wanted?”

Her brows snapped down. “Don’t look at me that way. I am not perfectly naïve any longer. I am a widow and may speak of such things, if I wish, with a man who wants it as I do.”

“You are not speaking of anything. You have not yet used any words to the point.” He controlled his tone with the greatest effort. If she were any other beautiful widow he met upon the road he might oblige her. But, no. Not now that he had found his Isolde again. No other woman now would do. But not like this, only for a moment as he’d had her before. “If you are not the naïve girl you were, then say the words so we have no misunderstanding between us now, as apparently we did then.”

“I want you to . . .” Her voice fluttered.

“To?”

“I-I want . . .”

He moved to her again, grasped her upper arms and bent over her head.

“You want me to make love to you for a single night?”

Not looking him in the eye, she nodded. For a moment of silence he held her and told himself it was the last time. Dreams were for careless youths, not grown men. Not for him any longer.

“If you cannot say it, Lady Morgan,” he finally uttered as the despair of years of wasted hope washed across him, “my guess is that you should not be doing it.” He loosened his grip and she sagged against the door.

“Are you that sort of man, then?” Her voice seemed brittle. “The same as my husband? I never imagined it after the way you teased me that day, and last night. And the way you kiss me.”

“The same as your husband?”

His voice was deliciously deep and menacing. He stood so close. Patricia longed to reach out and touch him again, to make him continue kissing her. But his jaw was hard now, his shoulders rigid.

“Trust me, Lady Morgan, when I take my bride to bed I will not leave her longing for kisses while I do my duty upon her.”

She knew not why her cheeks should flush at his plain speaking. She only knew that this had gone horridly wrong.

For all that was holy, she did not understand men! All Oliver had ever wanted of her was her body to lie with. Now, despite every lesson she had ever learned in ladylike comportment, she was offering this man precisely that, and he seemed
angry?
But perhaps he imagined she was trying to inveigle him into a permanent arrangement. Everybody knew rogues avoided that sort of commitment. She must be perfectly clear.

“I do not want
duty
from you. Far from that. I want . . . pleasure.” There, she had said it aloud, and it did not even matter that her cheeks were like lit coals and her body like someone had taken a warmed poker and slid it beneath her dress to touch her quite intimately. It felt spectacular, and she simply must make him understand. “For a night,” she finished on a whisper.

The door rattled. She leapt away from it.

“Tricky!” Calanthia rushed in. “Aunt Elsbeth is missing!”

“Missing?”

“I have searched everywhere. She is not here.” She twisted her hands together.

“Do not fret, Miss Ramsay.” His voice was even now. “I will instruct the innkeeper to allow you to look into the private chambers and Mr. Rum, your coachman, and I shall search the public rooms and outbuildings. Your aunt will be found, never fear.”

Calanthia’s lower lip trembled. “Oh, thank you, Captain. You are very good!”

He nodded, cast a thoroughly contrary glance at Patricia, and left the parlor. She took a deep breath and followed him.

P
atricia and Calanthia searched the inn from kitchen to garret. In the foyer once again, Callie put her hands to her face.

“It is all my fault,” she groaned. “I only left her alone for several minutes—ten perhaps—to speak with . . .” Her cheeks colored and her gaze darted away.

“To speak with whom?”

“A gentleman watering his horses without, if you must know. But it seems he was with a party of people, and the young lady called him by his given name, although she had an unattractively large nose. But I suppose very nice men don’t care about that sort of thing. In any case, I came back inside and discovered Auntie’s absence. I feel positively wretched!”

Patricia could not very well reprimand Callie for her flirtation in the yard when she herself had been engaged in a much more flagrant indiscretion in the parlor. Flagrant and delectable and heart stopping and
would her longing for him never cease?
No. She was destined to yearn hopelessly for him forever, it seemed.

“Well, nothing can be done for it now. We must find her.”

“Thank you for not reprimanding me.” Callie’s voice was thoroughly subdued. Patricia drew her sister into an embrace and stroked her bright locks.

“You are full of admirable spirit, my dear, and I am not the dowager or even Mama to chastise you.” Her hand stilled upon Calanthia’s hair.

She was most decidedly not her mother or the dowager, and she might feel all the feelings a woman could feel
at once
. She needn’t cordon off pleasure and passion into one night. Why hadn’t that occurred to her before? Perhaps because she had never before ached to kiss a man from sunrise to sunset to sunrise again?

“No doubt Aunt Elsbeth has only gone to a shop in the village. We will find her,” she murmured, heartbeat speeding. He had not rejected her. He had kissed her with knee-weakening ardor and said he wanted her right up until she declared she only needed him for one night. Perhaps . . .

Perhaps she was the greatest idiot alive. She must have misunderstood him. Perhaps his teasing when he believed her still married stemmed not from roguishness, but . . .
What?
She did not know! She only knew that his kiss felt as honest and true as it had years ago, and as thoroughly passionate.