Guilty Series (58 page)

Dylan pushed his cock into her, just a little way. “Are you sure?”

His voice sounded rough, brutal. He could hear it himself. No time left to be gentle.

“Do it,” she panted against his neck, giving orders now. “Yes, oh, please, yes. Do it.”

His hands tightened their grip and he pulled, impaling her on his shaft. Driving out the ghost of the man she had known before.
Mine,
he claimed her.
Mine.

Arms and legs wrapped around him, she followed his rhythm, crying out at her peak, tightening around him again and again as he held her buttocks in his hands and thrust deep within her, all his own passion finally unleashed in a rough, frantic cadence. With the hoarse cry of full possession, he came in a rush, his body jerking with the unbearable pleasure of his own release.

He leaned his head back in the corner, and she rested her forehead against his shoulder. He held her suspended, keeping himself inside her, and both of them were still. The whine in his head was a far distant hum, overpowered for now by his savage breathing and hers, and by the sweet warmth of her body enveloped around him.

After a few moments, he withdrew from her and set her on her feet again. “Do you want a tour of the place?” he asked, and kissed her mouth. He kissed her cheeks, her bare shoulders, her chin, her hair.

All she wanted right now was for him to hold her, caress her, move in her again. She shook her head and kissed his chin, snuggling up closer.

“No sense of adventure in you now, hmm?” He was smiling against her hair, she knew it from his voice. Suddenly, he lifted his head and took a look around. “I have an idea,” he said. “Don't move. I shall be back in a minute or two.”

He walked away, and Grace turned, leaning back against the wall as she watched him walk across the moonlit room, weaving his way amid the various odds and ends scattered about.

His body was magnificent, strong and solid. Beautiful in that utterly masculine way. She smiled, feeling as tipsy and delighted as if she'd had a bit too much wine, caught up in a blissful sort of euphoria that made her want to laugh and weep and do it all again.

She could hear him rummaging about in another room, and she wondered what he was doing. She didn't have to wonder long. When he returned, he was carrying a long, rolled-up tube on his shoulder, and as he drew closer, she could see in the dim light that it was a carpet.

“I thought there might still be one or two in here,” he said and shrugged, rolling it off his shoulder and onto the floor. He bent and held the fringed edge with one hand as he pushed the carpet away from him with the other. It unfurled, and when it was fully open, the edge at her feet immediately began to curl up again.

She stepped onto the thick Axminster to stop it, and the moment she did, she chuckled. He sank to his knees, shaking back his hair and looking up at her with a quizzical glance.

Staring down at her feet, she said, “I thought it was only men who left their boots on.”

He gave a shout of laughter, then tilted his head, thinking it over as he studied her. “I like it,” he said, then slanted her a wicked look. “But I think I'd like it better if you came over here and let me take them off.”

“Would you, now?” She licked her lower lip. She walked to the center of the carpet, sat down, and stretched out her leg toward him.

He moved closer, and sat back on his knees, taking her foot in his hands. He removed her short boot and tossed it aside, then took off her garter, peeled away her stocking, and settled her foot on the carpet beside his hip. He repeated this procedure with her other foot, spreading her thighs apart. But when he was done, he did not stretch out between them. Instead, he rested his palms on his knees and looked at her. “Your hair, Grace,” he said, his gaze lowered to the muslin ribbon that held her braid together. “Let me see it loose.”

She was melting beneath that dark, heated gaze. Her fingers fumbled with the end of her braid, where the ribbon lay against her bare breast. She untied the strip of muslin and began to unravel the plait of hair.

Dylan moved to stretch out and lowered his weight onto his elbows as he watched her fan her hair out loose around her shoulders.

“That,” he said unsteadily, “is a sight I've dreamed about a hundred times. God, I wish it was daylight, and I could see all the colors in your hair. Come here.”

She did, her palms sliding up his long, strong body as she moved to spread her legs wide over his hips, and he laid his head back against the carpet. She grasped his thick shaft and lowered herself onto him, crying out when he pushed up to meet her and his erection pushed hard all the way into her. He was big and filled her in that one, quick surge, then he sank back into the carpet as he lifted his hands to cup and cradle her breasts.

She flattened her palms on his chest and rode him. He moved with her, their gazes locked together. One of his hands toyed with her breast as he brought the other down to where she joined to him, flattening his hand across her stomach, the edge of his thumb brushing her in her most pleasurable place. She rocked up and down on him in quick, frantic moves to reach her peak.

She came first, and he followed her, his body going rigid as he thrust up into her one more time, then shuddering as she collapsed down onto him. Her hair fell all around his face.

He began to laugh, an exalted laugh and no mistake. She lifted her head, smiling as she brushed back her hair and looked at him through the blond curtain.

“If this is virtue,” he said, his hands brushing her hair back to cup her face, “I could get used to it.”

Her heart was filled with a warmth and happiness she had not felt in years. She had forgotten how wonderful falling in love truly was. “Thank you,” she whispered and kissed him.

“What for, in heaven's name?” he asked as she pulled away and rolled to lay beside him.

“For—” She turned her face into his shoulder, oddly embarrassed. “I don't feel like a dried-up widow any longer.”

“You never were.” He pulled her against his side and kissed her hair, but he didn't tease. Instead, he just held her there for a long time, one arm a pillow for her head, the other wrapped around her.

She couldn't sleep now, she was too full of tumbling emotions for that. But she felt his body slowly relax, and after a time, he slept.

She smiled, watching him, her face only a few inches from his. Even when his features were softened in sleep, he still looked the scapegrace. She reached her hand to his cheek, then stopped without touching. She didn't want to wake him. Instead, she lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling of the cottage. This was to be hers.

It was everything she had dreamed of during three long years of trying to find her way home. It was cozy and comfortable. It had a garden and a dovecot and everything else she could want. Yet, somehow, in a way she could not define, something was wrong with it.

Dylan shifted in his sleep, and with a sudden pang, Grace realized what was wrong with her cottage. She stared at the white coving of the ceiling, and she knew that when this love affair was over, she would not live here, for she would not be able to bear it.

 

When he woke, Grace was gone. He felt her absence before he even opened his eyes, the scent of her still filling his senses. When he did lift his lids, he blinked against the bright, unexpected sunlight that poured into the room.

“Grace?”

His call echoed through the cottage, and he looked around. Her nightclothes, stockings, and shoes were gone, but the ribbon from her hair still lay on the carpet, a strip of periwinkle blue muslin. He picked it up, rubbed it between his fingers.

He had slept. The realization whispered to him, sudden clarity in the daze of waking up. He had actually slept—for hours, he judged by the sunlight pouring through the windows.

With her beside him, he had slept the way an ordinary man sleeps, restful, contented sleep. Peaceful. The noise was there, of course, but it was softer than it had ever been before. He had no headache. He felt truly rested for the first time in years. Dylan rubbed the bit of muslin in his fingers and felt as if everything inside himself was right again. He pressed his lips to the blue ribbon, then put it in his pocket.

T
he following night, Grace and Dylan camped out in the cottage again, but this time, Dylan was prepared. He brought a straw mattress for the floor, sheets, and a blanket, which would remain in here from now on. At some point, he would get the place decently furnished for her, but for now, these things would have to do.

He also brought fruit, wine, and the red silk bag in which he always kept a supply of French letters. He had brought one of the condoms with him in the pocket of his dressing gown the night before, but the moment Grace had kissed him, he had forgotten everything but the feel and taste of her, and he'd lost his head. To protect Grace from pregnancy, he had to remember to use them from now on.

He brought a lamp to the cottage as well, for he wanted to see Grace's body in true colors, not the silver and gray shadows of moonlight.

When he made love to her that night, it was with the fierce, hot intensity of absolute possession, driven until he was drowning in the waves of her passion, until she was sobbing his name as she came again and again.

The second time, he did everything with exquisite slowness, kissing her face, her nose, her cheeks, and making leisurely explorations of her body, as if time had stopped everything just for them. He sought out the secret places that gave her pleasure, and he exploited them. The backs of her knees, the sensitive skin on the underside of each breast, the base of her spine, and the back of her neck. He murmured words to woo her, pretty compliments, suggestive remarks, and blatant sexual indecencies, until she was blushing all over and moving beneath his caresses in ardent, purely feminine agitation. He entered her slowly and teased her with his body, flexing his hips to barely move within her, increasing the power of his thrusts only when she demanded it of him, arching upward in frantic desire for completion.

Afterward, he asked her if she wanted to sleep, and when she shook her head, they went outside. He teased her about putting her nightclothes back on, but she looked at him with such shock when he almost walked out the door naked that he slipped on his Cossacks and his dressing gown. They lay under the stars in a patch of soft grass, where they listened to the singing of the nightingales and the roar of the sea. “I'm not sleepy either,” he told her.

“Is it because you are accustomed to sleeping during the day?” she asked.

“No. The time of day doesn't matter. I sleep only when I am so exhausted I can't stay awake a moment longer. I used to go out every night to drive myself to exhaustion.”

“That is a hard way to gain rest.” She leaned on her elbow and laid a hand against his cheek. “Do you know why you can't sleep?”

He didn't answer, and after several moments, she settled back into the grass and shifted the topic. “I always wanted to sleep outside at night and listen to the sea, but I wasn't allowed. This is heavenly.” She reached for his hand, entwined their fingers.

“My ears ring,” he said.

Grace turned her head. He was in profile, his face looking at the midnight blue drifts of a few clouds that passed over the moon and the stars, not looking at her. “That is why I do not sleep well.”

“Your ears ring?” She didn't quite understand what he meant. “When?”

“All the time.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “Twenty-four hours a day. It's not even ringing, not like bells or anything pleasant. No, it's a steady, unwavering whine. It sounds like an off-pitch tuning fork. The only thing that varies is the amplification. There are moments when I barely hear it. Other times, it is like a searing screech in my brain.”

She sat up and looked into his face, her mind skipping back over odd things that had made no sense at the time. How he would press his hands over his ears. His headaches. How he said he did not like the quiet in the country. She tried to imagine what it was like to live with a noise like that all the time, how intolerable it must be to lay in bed, trying to sleep with that noise in one's head, but she could not imagine it. She did know it would be torture.

“It was a fall from my horse that caused it. In Hyde Park, five and a half years ago. I was racing far faster than I ought, took a tumble, and hit my head on a rock. My left ear bled for two days. And then the whine started. God, I hated it. I still hate it. I can hear it now.”

Grace's hand tightened around his. “That is why you wanted to kill yourself, isn't it?”

“Yes. The noise was driving me mad. I could not hear music anymore. That was why I could not compose.”

“But this happened five years ago. You have published some extraordinary works since then.”

“No. I have not.”

“How can you say that? What of your opera,
Valmont?
Your Piano Concerto Fourteen? What of your Fantasia On Sunrise? What of those?”

“Grace, have you not guessed the truth? Those are old pieces, some of them going back to my boyhood. I trot one out every now and then so no one will know the truth. I wrote Fantasia On Sunrise when I was fourteen. That concerto I wrote when I was twenty, I just hadn't named it yet. I completed
Valmont
just one day before the accident.” He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He gave a short laugh. “Pieces I never thought were good enough to publish.”

“Not good enough? Dylan, they are beautiful.” Her heart ached for him, for what it must cost him every day. “Not good enough for you, perhaps, but they are not just for you, you know. They are also for the pleasure and enjoyment of the rest of us. Some people think
Valmont
is your best opera.”

He took his hands from his face and lifted one to brush back her hair. “Until I met you again, I had not written a single piece of music in over five years. Not one.”