Hadrian (15 page)

That she would ask was further encouragement. “You face the same choice as any engaged lady. You can marry me or change your mind.”

“And be a jilt as well as a Jezebel?” Her capacity for self-criticism was daunting. Why hadn’t Lily Prentiss addressed this tendency, when it was entirely unwarranted?

“My challenge will be to inspire you to become a wife, instead.”
His
wife.

Now, she tried to sit up, which flight Hadrian gently thwarted.

“Hadrian, I can’t let you do this.”

Very different from
I do not want to be engaged to you
.

“You can’t stop me.” This was the part that had kept him up past midnight, not clarifying his intentions, but puzzling out their implementation.

“I will call upon you,” he said, “making sure Lily chaperones us. I will ride out with you when your grooms are in attendance. I will escort you to and from services. I will stand up with you at the local assemblies and make sheep’s eyes at you when all the other couples announce their engagements. I will compose sonnets to you and offer them to the patrons of the local watering hole when I’ve overimbibed. I will—what?”

She was laughing silently against his side. “You would be a callow swain?”

“The most callow, while anybody was looking.”

“And when they weren’t?” Her laughter died, no doubt because his answer could hurt her badly.

“I would be a devoted suitor, Avie.” He hugged her, a
friendly
, devoted suitor. “If you wanted to anticipate the intimacies of marriage, I would do my best to make them pleasurable for you.”

This was the aspect of his offer that had occurred to him only as sunlight had inched across his bed. The intimate, feminine confidence Collins had taken from Avie must be restored, and an engagement would allow Hadrian to offer that to her.

“You’d anticipate vows I had no intention of taking?”

He would, because in a convoluted sense, he owed her that, but his answer had to be more honest than a simple yes.

“I want this to be a real engagement. I’m a man grown, Avie. I’ve seen all manner of heartache, mischief and loss among my flock and in my life. I don’t expect you to buy a saddle horse without trying him over a few fences.”

The analogy was borrowed from Colonel Devlin St. Just, a devotee of all things equestrian, and of his countess, to whom Hadrian had twice proposed.

In Hadrian’s arms, Avie seemed to grow smaller. “You mean, you can’t marry without being sure your wife can tolerate the steps necessary to conceive Harold’s heir?”

She’d tried to keep the bitterness from her voice, without success. More honesty was called for, lest she cultivate this wrong-headed notion.

“You doubt you can tolerate joining with me, Avie?”

“Any sane person would doubt that, Hadrian, given my past.”

“I know your past better than anybody,” Hadrian said, glad for a chance to remind her of the signal honor she’d bestowed on him twelve years earlier. “I know you can enjoy pleasure, as well or better than most.”

She buried her face against his throat. The heat in her cheeks suggested mortification, and that was the last sentiment Hadrian wanted to provoke.

“Shall I remind you, Avie?” He shifted her again, bringing her over him as he lay on his back, then scooting down, so the tree root no longer plagued him. He reached to the edge of the blanket, retrieved his jacket, and wadded it up under his head.

“We shouldn’t do this.”

“We should have done this more than once, twelve years ago. Kiss me, Avie, and I’ll remind you of the pleasure you’ve denied yourself while hiding alone at Blessings.”

Avis straddled Hadrian, skirts bunched, a thousand conflicting feelings fluttering about inside her, but acutely aware that beneath her, right beneath her, lay a man bent on seduction, and not just any man.

This was Hadrian, who had kept her confidences for twelve years, whom she’d sent away when she should not have let him from her sight. That was a lament for a different day, because his hand had found its way to her nape, urging her down over him.

“Kiss me, love, please.” He closed his eyes, as if to better absorb the feel of her under his fingers, or perhaps to give her privacy. Hadrian Bothwell was that perceptive.

Despite a welter of sensations and emotions, Avis wanted to kiss him. She’d enjoyed every kiss they’d shared. Every single one, back for twelve years. She started by kissing his cheek, and even that took courage.

Hadrian turned his head as if seeking light or warmth and pressed his lips to her cheek as well. By degrees, they teased their way to each other’s mouths, and then Avis let herself sink into him, into his mouth, his body, his warmth and strength, his scent.

Him.

Her body came alive over his, until the hard ridge of his arousal felt good, pressing against her sex. Even through their clothes, even knowing such intimacy was naughty, Hadrian felt good to her, and when he arched up against her, he felt even better.

“Kiss, Avie,” he reminded her when she merely hung over him, focusing on the place where their bodies met. When his mouth found hers again, he became ravenous, and she gloried in his passion. His tongue invaded, his lips and teeth consumed, and yet she wanted to be closer. When his hand closed carefully over her breast, she pushed against his palm, beseechingly, shamelessly.

Memories of Hart Collins’s assault slunk at the edges of her awareness, bringing with them echoes of pain, humiliation, shock, and grief. Avis beat the memories away with a cudgel of pure, keen rage. For twelve years, she’d managed, coped, and compensated in isolation. For twelve years, she’d allowed herself no intimacy with anybody, shared no confidences, indulged in no affection.

Damn Hart Collins to the coldest circle of hell for all the ways he’d ruined her life. Avis would not allow a selfish, violent, puerile thief to steal the beauty from what Hadrian offered now.

“Easy, love,” Hadrian whispered against her throat. “You can stop me, Avie. Any time. You say so, and I’ll stop, but I won’t want to. Ever.”

He nuzzled her breast, and frustration had Avis growling. And then, blessedly, his hand on her thigh shifted her skirts away, so she could be closer still.

“Hadrian,
please
.”

“No begging,” he said, undoing the drawstring and bows that held her bodice together. “You may command me all you please, but no begging.”

Hadrian’s hands were not the elegant, pale appendages of a pampered gentleman. Shearing had taken a toll, the bright sunshine of approaching summer had too. His knuckles had been scraped, and a blister was healing between his right thumb and forefinger.

As he unlaced her bodice, then set to work on her jumps, his hands were beautiful.

“I want to hurry,” Avis said, both because she might lose her nerve, but also because Hadrian had bestowed upon her the great gift of honest arousal.

“I want to savor the unveiling of your treasures, my lady. We’ll hurry soon.”

Good God, how did a woman endure such consideration? Beneath Avis’s dress and jumps lay her chemise, and that too sported a plethora of tidy bows.

When all those bows, hundreds of them surely, had been patiently untied, Hadrian lay back and didn’t so much as push her clothing aside.

“More kisses,” he said, his hand drifting along Avis’s thigh. “As many kisses as there are leaves on the budding rowans. Kiss me as deep as that endless, bottomless pond, as hot as the summer sun on your bare neck at mid-day, as passionately—”

Avis kissed him, lest he prose on for the length of a Sunday sermon. Still, he teased her, with his tongue and lips, and so enthralling were his kisses that Avis took long moments to notice that his hand was stealing along her leg, frothing up her skirts.

“Patience is not always a virtue, Hadrian Bothwell.” Avis tugged on his hair even as she settled right on his falls and tried to find relief in simple pressure.

He might have laughed, or groaned, she didn’t care which. She took his free hand and pressed it over her bare breast.

And that was an entire universe of fascinating sensations.

Heat—Hadrian’s hands were warm—and tactile impressions. His calloused palm cupping the tender underside of Avis’s breast, then gentle, knowing fingers teasing at her nipple. If Hadrian’s palm was warm, his fingers were lit spills, igniting glory across the night sky inside her. Avis’s breathing deepened as Hadrian’s hand rode the rise and fall of her chest.

“Tell me what you need, Avie.”

He kissed the slope of her breast, a sweet, lazy tease for which she would get even, some fine day when her reasoning powers had been restored. Avis bent forward and took her weight on one hand so she could lever up enough to give him room to touch her.

Touch…her…right…
there
.

Bless him, he understood what she sought and brushed his thumb through her curls—more damnable deliberateness, but in a promising location, at least. In the last functioning quadrant of her rational mind, Avis grasped that Hadrian was being patient and considerate, giving her time to panic, to change her mind, to reconsider.

She nearly hated him for his kindness, and then the pad of his thumb grazed over that particular spot she’d never had the nerve to explore on her own, and the intensity of the resulting sensation nearly struck her dumb.

“Again.” Avis anchored her free arm around Hadrian’s shoulders and held on, as that wonderful touch glided across her slick flesh again and again, the pressure minutely increasing each time.

She remembered not to beg, but twelve years ago, Hadrian had made sure she at least knew the pleasure her body was capable of.

A breeze stirred the green canopy overhead, and dappled shadows shook and danced on the blankets, as desire shook and danced through Avis. The sun was a perfect benevolence, the scent of new grass and wildflowers a delicate fragrance. For a moment, Avis savored the sheer perfection of the setting Hadrian had chosen, for here in a high, secluded glen, she could be free of past and future, and give herself up to the joy of his skilled loving.

She soared, free of all save the pleasure Hadrian lavished on her with such tender determination. When she thought his touch would leave her, he merely slowed his caresses, letting sensation thicken and redouble as it reverberated through her anew.

She had missed this transcendent affirmation of the goodness of life, missed it badly, doubted it even existed but for the one experience of it so long ago.

Avis would have hung over her lover, panting, except he urged her down onto his chest, and she went gratefully. She even slept, though she would have sworn Hadrian had kept up slow, easy caresses on her back, neck and hair the entire time.

“You’ve undone me, Hadrian Bothwell.” She’d desperately needed undoing and hadn’t dared admit that to herself.

“Simply arguing my point.”

“Your point?”

“Will you marry me?”

What came out of her mouth was not an argument, but a fear. “I’m a shameless wanton.” Shameless, at any rate. Two lapses in twelve years probably did not amount to wantonness.

“I’ll take that for a yes, because I am a shameless wanton too, and wantonness is a challenge better tackled with a partner.”

How articulate he was, and—despite his casual humor—how aroused. The arousal ought to disquiet her, but this was Hadrian.

The best she could do was to sit up, straddling him. “I cannot marry you.”

“Not yet,” he said, so agreeably. “You’ll consider my suit?”

He might have offered her another tea cake in the same tone. “My judgment is not sound in these matters, Hadrian.” Particularly not when she was distracted by the evidence of his unsatisfied arousal.

He smiled, a universe of male wickedness and even a touch of smugness in the curve of his mouth and the light in his blue eyes.

“There’s nothing wrong with any part of you, Avie.”

“God help me.” She looked down at his long male fingers so competently setting to rights the clothing she’d forgotten was askew, giving him a fine view of her breasts.

“All I ask for is an engagement, Avie.” He left a few buttons undone, which was well advised, because Avie was quite warm. “One that serves several purposes and can be put aside when you please. You’ve sent me packing before, and I went then.”

“You finished university then. You’ll be on the neighboring estate this time.” She was delighted this was so, also worried, for she knew well the path to his door.

“You have many neighbors you do not see,” Hadrian reminded her. “I can join their number, but I won’t like it.”

“You won’t be humiliated when I reject you?”

“I make it a policy to be fast friends with all the ladies who reject my suit.” Hadrian petted her breast through her clothes. “I come with references in this regard. An appalling number of them.”

“Two is not appalling.”

“Neither is deciding we do not suit when we’ve hardly had a chance to know each other for twelve years, but Avie?”

“Stop that.” She covered his hand with her own and pressed it closer to her breast.

“I will leave the field, so to speak, when you command it, provided you are safe, but we’re friends, aren’t we?”

“We’re something.” She climbed off him, because the discussion wanted rational thought, which was in short supply when she roosted upon her suitor. He let her get only as far as his side, where he bundled her against him with gentle insistence.

“We’re friends,” Hadrian reiterated. “We have a past, a present, and a future, and a little thing like a failed engagement would not cost you my friendship.”

“Until you take a wife.”

“That wife could be you, though I’m in no hurry to remarry, and being engaged to you will keep the local predators at bay.”

“Is this your plan? To flaunt me in church and send the hopefuls packing?” Hadrian would never be so cavalier, least of all in the churchyard.

“Believe it is my plan if that soothes your nerves,” he said, a touch of coolness in his tone. “I’m offering for you because I want to marry you.”

He meant it, the demented man.

“Because I’m lonely.”