Healing Hearts (7 page)

“Must what, sweetheart?” he growled.

“Must do something…
more!
”

He stroked her again, the finger inside her penetrating deeper and faster, the swirling pressure of his thumb relentless over the nub where all her sensations seemed centered. He glided a second finger into her.

And then, suddenly, everything inside her completely shattered in a spectacular hail of pleasure and bliss. Her body arched and bucked as her muscles convulsed and her mind went blank. Torrents of pure delight broke over her, cresting, sweeping her away. This man. This beautiful man.
He
had done this magical thing to her.

After a long moment, she slit her eyes open and gazed up at him from beneath her lashes.

“
Oh.
Oh,
Adam.
That was beyond
anything.
”

Adam looked down at her, his smile brilliant. But strain knotted his brow. She sensed the tension that still gripped him, and touched his bare chest.

“Emma, I—” He shook his head and gently eased her hand away from his hot flesh.

“What’s wrong?”

She’d never allowed anyone such shocking intimacies as she’d allowed him. After the wondrous things he’d just done to her, she wanted him closer. She wanted him to envelop her in his strong arms, wrap his body around her, so she could satisfy him too. She wanted to slide her legs over his hips and rub her still throbbing sex against his hot, hard groin.

His face tightened, as he clenched his jaw. His set expression jarred her.

“I…will embarrass myself if you touch me again.” The rawness of his voice thrilled her. “Do you take my meaning, Emma?”

Emma’s face flooded with heat. Her gaze flew to front of his trousers. No denying the urgency of the huge erection tugging at the black cloth. She touched him deliberately. His cocked leaped, making the woolen material confining him twitch, and tearing an impassioned groan from his throat.

“Make love to me, Adam. I want to feel you inside of me.”

He arched away from her questing hand and ran a hand through his hair. “Don’t tempt me, Emma. I want you more than I can bear.”

She reached toward him, nudging open a button.

“Didn’t you tell me lust could be contained?”

Adam squeezed his eyes shut, as if battling for restraint. “To a point. That I’ve already passed. It’s been a long time for me, poppet, and I—” He sucked in a breath. “The way I feel about you goes well beyond lust, Emma.”

“I feel the same,” she whispered, suddenly in awe of him, of everything that was between them. And yet…so earthy and feminine and human, shimmering with the strength of her womanly power. She flicked a second button. The combined force of their mutual desire shattered the last tattered remnants of his control.

“Dear God, Emma. Are you very sure?”

“Beyond words.” Her voice shivered with her need. She gripped his shoulders and spread her legs for him.

Adam looked down at the glorious woman writhing beneath him. He wanted to take the time to savor her, but he could not. It had been too long. And he wanted Emma too much. God, how he wanted her. She deserved this moment to be wonderful and painless. But the way she moved and cried his name gave evidence of her own powerful need and desperation, her hunger like a living creature demanding to be satisfied. He was afraid he’d come the moment he drove into her.

“The next time it will be better, sweetheart,” he promised.

“Nothing can be better than this moment.”

“Such certainty.” He gazed at her and smiled. “Nevertheless, it will be. I shall make it so. Or die trying.”

Adam’s hands shook, but he somehow managed to get the rest of his buttons undone without popping any. He prepared her again, with deep, drugging kisses that made her relax, and with his hands and his tongue, until she was thrashing beneath him. And then he gripped the tender flesh of Emma’s thighs and guided himself into her hot, wet entrance. She felt like velvet, narrow and tight. Beneath him, Emma tensed. He pressed his mouth to hers again and her body ripened once more.

“I’m such a goddamned bastard,” he muttered, his voice hoarse. “I’m not going to be able to stop, sweetheart. Or go as slow as you deserve.”

“I want this. I want
you.
” She bucked upward against him, forcing him to move. With one sure hard thrust, he tore through her maidenhead. He seized her lips again, stifling her small cry of pain. In the next instant, he felt her soften, her passage slick and hot and inviting.

Suddenly, her inner muscles gripped him, drawing him all the way inside her until he was seated to the hilt. He thrust into her, increasing his speed. He drove into her again and again, flesh against flesh, bones against bones, all sensation centered at the site of their hungry joining.

He tore cry after cry of joy from her, the sounds filling him with such elation, his groans matched hers. Her legs tightened around his waist, her arms around his neck. He moved still more quickly, pounding into her, utterly lost.

“I love you, Adam,” she murmured. “I always have.”

He brought her to another orgasm. As he felt her muscles convulse around him, his world exploded in a blaze of heat and light. He poured himself into her in rapture, shouting out her name.

***

Emma drifted slowly back to earth. Adam’s head lay on her breast, and she could hear the rasp of his uneven breathing. Nothing, nothing, had ever felt so magnificent. She gloried in the small aftershocks, the weight of the man pressed against her. Her fingers sifted through the damp hair at the back of his neck.

“I wanted it to be better for you, poppet,” he said.

“I can’t imagine anything better than that.”

He smiled but shook his head. “We will just have to expand your horizons then.” He offered her a wicked wink. “With quite a lot of practice.”

After another moment, he untangled himself from her and rose from the settee. Leaning over her, he yanked her skirts down to cover her legs and rebuttoned his trousers. Emma’s disappointment was profound. She felt sleepy and aglow and wanted to feel Adam stretched out beside her forever. He’d said there’d be other times like this. She intended to hold him to that.

“I’ll ride to Canterbury straightaway,” Adam mumbled, his voice gruff. “If the archbishop obliges me with a special license, we’ll be wed as soon as I return.”

“Adam—”

“I don’t want to wait, poppet. And now our nuptials are a matter of some urgency.”

Before she could answer him, they heard the sound of voices through the French windows of the parlor and hastened to arrange their clothing. Emma was certain she looked like a harlot. When she touched her cheeks, her skin burned and she knew the heat of passion still colored her face. She twitched her skirts and ran a hand through hair made even more wild by Adam’s ferocious ravishing. He’d been as hungry as she. The memory of her name on his lips, the way he’d shouted it to the rafters when he came, made her smile.

She gazed up at him. His flushed face, tousled hair and fierce expression told the story of their recent activities.

Emma linked her hand in his, just as Mrs. Billings rapped on the parlor door and then bustled into the room without waiting for a response.

Emma and Adam exchanged glances. If the housekeeper had arrived but a few minutes earlier, Emma’s reputation would have been in shreds.

As it was, Mrs. Billings looked from one to the other with a knowing lift of her graying eyebrows. “You intend to do right, milord?”

“I do.”

“Mrs. Billings!” Emma gasped.

But the housekeeper merely nodded at Adam, apparently finding his answer acceptable. More pressing news consumed her at present.

“Yer father’s been found, Miss Emma!”

Barked orders, followed by the clatter and scuffle of boots, travelled across the foyer. In the next moment, a fellow in a caped greatcoat with salt-and-pepper hair and a military bearing burst into the parlor and swept past Mrs. Billings. The man had her father grasped by the back of his loosened collar.

An untidy beard covered George Whiteside’s florid face and his filthy clothes hung from his frame in disarray. He stumbled into the room and slumped into a chair nearest the fire, immediately holding his hands out to warm them, as if he thought they’d never lose their chill.

“Papa,” Emma breathed. Relief flooded her. She knelt beside her father’s chair and reached for his dirty hand, but he flinched away from her. His clothes and body stank.

“Do you know me, Papa?”

He remained silent and Emma feared his mind had gone to let.

“I know you, girl,” he rasped at last, his voice hoarse with disuse. “I’m too ashamed to look at you.”

A tear trickled down her cheek and she dashed it away with her fist. “Please, Papa. I’ve been so worried.” She tried to take his hand again, but he hunched his shoulders closer to the flames, blocking her out.

“Leave him be, Emma.”

Overcome with humiliation, she could not look at Adam. She rose and turned away, placing her face in her hands.

“Where was he, Garrett?” the viscount’s deep voice inquired.

“Maidstone Gaol, milord. Debt.”

Emma swayed on her feet. She felt Adam behind her and then his hand on her shoulder, steadying her. He pressed her head against his chest. None of this could be happening, she thought. She’d known her father was drowning his sorrows and grief and playing cards above his head, perhaps. But she had not guessed the true extent of her father’s indebtedness until he’d disappeared and the parade of creditors began pounding on the door. But even so…

“I don’t understand, Papa. We still have the manor. We could have sold the property and taken simpler lodgings elsewhere until we found a way to get back on our feet.”

“The manor is mine, poppet.”

Adam’s soft words made her whirl around to face him in fury.

“You played cards with a man too foxed to know what he was doing? You let him gamble away our home?”

“I most certainly did not. The manor was never his to wager, sweetheart. You are tenants. The land’s always been mine.”

“We are not landed gentry then.”

“’Tis a long-term lease that entangles our families for generations. But your father was never free to sell it or gamble it away. Word of what he was trying to do reached me and some of his worthless vowels came into my possession. I told you this morning that was one of the reasons I’m here.”

The shock of this revelation made Emma’s stomach churn. “You deceived me!”

Adam’s face paled, but a brief spark of anger flashed in his eyes. “I didn’t.”

“You can turn us out whenever you choose—just like Farraday!”

Tight-lipped, Adam shook his head. “I can’t. I won’t. Good God. Do you think I would ever do such a thing? Particularly after what has transpired between us? I am not Farraday, Emma. Can’t you get that through your beautiful head?”

“Papa, Papa. Say something!”

“I’m sorry, m’dear.” George Whiteside’s shaggy head lolled on his chest. “’Tis true, ’tis all true.” He stared at the fire and then turned, suddenly alert. His rheumy eyes narrowed. “Why’s Riverton calling you ‘sweetheart,’ Em?”

“I—he—”

Her father nodded and crooked a bony finger at the viscount. “My pockets may be to let, Riverton, but I’m still the girl’s father. I expect to be asked for my consent.”

“Do you?” Adam asked tensely.

“You will look after her more properly than I have been able?”

“I will try.”

“And this is what you want, Em?”

“Papa…” She lapsed into silence with a shake of her head.

But her father apparently read more in her expression than she was able to put into words. He glanced at Adam with a nod. “You have my blessing then.”

Emma gasped in horror as her father nodded off and began to snore.

“Your father needs tending, Emma. Bed, bath, food. Keep him away from drink.”

“How dare you tell me—”

“His lordship is right, child,” Mrs. Billings interrupted. “Me and Jemmy’ll take care of Himself.”

“Miss Emma.” The youth came in and pulled his forelock. He hoisted the broken man to his feet. Between them, Jemmy and his mother hauled her father from the parlor.

Adam broke the tense hush that descended on the room. “Did you see to it, Garrett?”

“’Twasn’t a great deal, Major. The purse you gave me covered the amount with more than enough to spare.”

“Good man.”

Emma’s stomach tightened as the man in the greatcoat handed Adam a clinking leather pouch. How would she repay him? Adam had sent his man to find her father and pay off his debts
before
they’d made love. Even before they’d met on the cliffs this morning. How had she
ever
hated this man?

Garrett’s use of Adam’s rank rather than his title made Emma recall the scars on Adam’s body. She shuddered as a lump rose in her throat to join the knot in her belly. He was such a fine, decent man.

“Adam, I—” She did not know what to say to him.

“Glad enough to do it, my love.” His voice was gruff. “Sorry ’twasn’t sooner, to save you such hardship and pain. I did not know the extent of your troubles until you came out of hiding this morning.”

Adam gripped Emma’s hand and tugged her forward. “Emma, this is Oliver Garrett, my batman on the Peninsula. Still my right hand.”

Garrett bobbed his head. “That’s why I slip sometimes, miss, and call his lordship ‘Major.’”

“Makes an interesting valet, does he not?” Adam kept his tone light, but Emma suspected the bond between the two men was profound. The viscount confirmed her guess. “He saved my leg. Refused to let the field surgeon take it off.”

Emma blanched, horrified at the thought. She owed Garrett a great deal, she thought, extending her hand to the man.

Instead of taking it, Garrett bowed. “Your humble servant, miss.”

“And he doesn’t yet know of our betrothal.”

Emma blushed. Clearly, everyone who had entered the parlor this afternoon guessed what they’d been doing on the settee.

Garrett shrugged. “Hard to miss the way you’re looking at the young lady, milord. Expect it’s only a matter of time ’til you’re leg-shackled.”