Seven Wicked Nights (43 page)

No great surprise, the front door was locked. The groundskeeper lived in West Aubry and had no need for access to the house. His steward visited but twice a year to see to any interior maintenance that might be required.

Rain beat down while they tried every other entrance and found each door locked and barred, every shutter closed. Short of breaking a window or kicking in a door they weren’t getting inside. In the abstract, he was pleased that Wordless was so well protected, but at the moment, he was inconvenienced at being denied entry to his own damn house. Both of them were shivering now, with no sign of the rain letting up and the cold getting sharper.

“The stables?” Portia said.

He nodded and took her hand while they dashed along the gravel drive that led to the stable block only to find the grooms’ quarters locked up as tight as the house. They took refuge in the long stone archway of the stables, eight stalls on each side. The block emptied onto a courtyard with the carriage house at the far side. That was locked tight, too, he discovered.

Back in the archway between the two rows of stalls, they stood side-by-side, dripping water onto the paving stones. He stamped his feet and made a largely futile attempt to brush water off his coat and out of his hair. “At least we’re out of the wet.”

“Yes.” She stared at the rain beating down on the courtyard and cascading from the gutters.

“Tell me why you’re so unhappy?”

“I shan’t. Not more than you’ve guessed.” She shook her head. He’d give anything to have her look at him. “You’ll only think less of me than you do already.”

“She rubs my nerves raw, too, sometimes.”

“Oh,” she breathed. “Awful man.”

“True.” In the silence he stamped his feet some more and managed to dislodge some of the mud that clung to his boots. “It can’t come down like this for much longer.”

“Yes, it can.”

He’d lived here long enough to know it could rain like this until tomorrow. “Listen to us.” He rolled his eyes even though she wasn’t looking at him. “Talking about the weather like two old ladies.”

She shrugged, but halfway through the motion, she shivered. Without thinking, he put his arms around her. She didn’t come close.

“Take pity on me,” he said. “I’m cold.”

After a moment of resistance, she leaned toward him. He eased closer and tightened his arms around her. “Better. Much better.” He rubbed his hands up and down her back. She rested her head against his chest, and he slipped his hands underneath his greatcoat and rested them in the small of her back. He wanted to tell her he’d forgiven her, that he’d never forgotten a moment of their time as lovers, but that seemed…unwise.

After a moment or two of standing like this, she lifted her head and stared at the waterfall sluicing off the roof. The courtyard’s central gutters overflowed. The noise was near deafening. “I don’t think it’s going to stop.”

Like her, he stared at the water. “We can wait a while yet.”

“Hob will worry,” she said. “Magnus, too. They’ll wonder where we’ve got to.”

He continued to stroke her back. “Five minutes. Then we’ll go even if it’s no better.”

With a sigh, she settled against him, tucking her hands between them. Five minutes later, the rain hadn’t let up.

He forgot all about the cold and the damp as he brushed away a tendril of dark red hair that had stuck to her cheek. She pushed away, and he did the strangest, most contradictory, selfishly male thing imaginable. He brought her close instead of setting her back. She lifted her chin and gave him a quizzical look. The world dropped away. This was Portia. His Portia, and whatever had happened between them, no matter how they’d changed, nothing had changed at all.

He lowered his head to hers.

Chapter Five

F
OR THE SPACE OF
half a heartbeat, he told himself he wasn’t going kiss her. It would be stupid and wrong of him, and it would destroy the safety of the friendship they’d carved out for themselves during their years of letter writing.

His chest was so tight with tension, he could scarcely breathe. He was seventeen again, and his brain was overset with lust and desire and emotions too big to name. His cock was hard with the joy of holding this woman in his arms and at the prospect of being inside her. At long, long last.

Northword didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Nor did she. In no way was that fact lost on him.

Her mouth brushed his. Barely there. For an instant, he didn’t react. He couldn’t. Surely, she had not meant that invitation. She was going to marry someone else, wasn’t she? Except she didn’t step away, and he didn’t want her to. She relaxed against him and she made a sound that was not quite a moan yet was soft and edged with need.

Almost no contact between them, yet his blood pounded in his ears. Their first time had been like this. Needful. Soul shattering. He burned in the moment, in her, in the heat of having his arms around her again. Familiar. Blazingly alive. She felt good in his embrace. Right. For the first time in years, he was whole.

She rested a hand on his upper arm, light at first, then fingers gripping. It was sweet, the way she leaned against him, sweet in his arms, and he wanted her so badly he hurt. Jesus, she felt good, and he’d been too long without sexual satisfaction because he was imagining doing a good deal more than her practically chaste kiss.

That condition could not and did not last, a kiss that did not reflect the tension zinging between them. In the initial days of their relations, they’d kissed for hours, what seemed like hours, before he’d brought himself to touch a hand to more than her cheek. It wouldn’t be the same now. Couldn’t be. The soul-stealing pleasure of his first time was just that. First. And therefore memorable. He knew about women, now, thank you very much.

Even during that year between, he’d known how the world worked. So had Portia. They knew what it meant for her to be Portia and him to be the future Northword. He’d been to bed with her, they’d been lovers, and in his thoughts, he was already imagining sexual relations with her.

There was nothing innocent about his desire. Nothing at all. There never had been, not since that long ago day he’d realized his feelings for Portia were more than friendship. Not since the day he realized she felt the same.

She kissed him again, her lips parted this time, and he took what she offered. Somewhere in the back of his head he had the thought that she hadn’t opened her mouth in order to invite more from him, but to draw breath. At the exact same time this was flitting through his thoughts, his mouth was open, too, and he was kissing her without restraint. Not in the least politely. Her mouth softened underneath his, matching, accepting him, answering him.

He knew a great deal more about kissing than he had ten years ago, but he was trembling just as he had then. They fit together, the two of them. He was taller since the last time she’d been in his arms, but she was still a good height for him, and she still made his heart too big for his chest.

The next thing he knew, the last of his restraint melted away, and he had her pressed against the stone wall of the archway, her head between his hands, his tongue in her mouth. Desperate for her. Desperately aroused. She kissed him back, her fingers gripping his upper arms in order to bring him closer. Familiar heat spiraled through him.

This.

He wanted
this.

He rested his pelvis against her, and yes, he was hard and that seemed exactly how things ought to be. He filled his fingers with her wet hair and sent his hat tumbling to the flagstones. He pulled back so her head was at a better angle.

Lust rattled him, shook away everything but the two of them. All his adult life, he’d missed this immersion of his senses, and he was not, not going to let this pass without living every minute and second.

In the moment after their mouths separated, she gasped, a groan of desire that laid waste to his lingering reservations. The breath left his body. Whatever this said about his character, he wanted Portia to come undone. As a point of pride to prove to her she’d been wrong to let them end. He wanted her to fall under his spell, to believe in her soul that no other lover would do but him. He pulled back, just his upper body and not much of that. Enough to kiss the rain from her cheeks and watch her eyes open. Unfocused and half-drunk with the same passion that filled him.

She set her palms on either side of his face and said, so softly the tremor in her words barely registered, “How I’ve missed you.”

Yes
. The word roared through him.

This
.

He reached blindly past her and found the top of the nearest stable door. He fumbled it open and had just enough of his brain functioning that he thought to snatch a blanket hanging from a peg on the wall and spread it over the straw. Everything at Wordless was at the ready for the viscount to make use of his long neglected estate; clean blanket, clean straw. Thank God.

They dropped onto the blanket in a tangle of limbs and lips and, even, laughter. His lower back hit the blanket, and she was right here, kneeling between his upraised and spread apart knees. Her focus on him sent his heart pounding, and he propped one hand on the blanket and pushed up to loop an arm around the back of her neck and bring her in for another long, carnal kiss.

Outside, the rain beat down on the roof and cascaded onto the flagstones. All that faded away. There was no more cold. No rain. Nothing but the two of them. She offered her mouth. He accepted wholeheartedly.

With his free hand he adjusted their position so she straddled his hips. Kissing her still, he worked his hand underneath her skirts, pushing away damp-to-wet handfuls of that awful pink gown and her underskirts. She gave him the access he wanted.

His fingertips slid along her thighs, then up to cover her sex. Her pubic hair was as sparse as ever, almost nothing there. He pushed a finger between her legs. Slippery wet for him. Her gaze locked with his when his searching fingers slid along her. He knew how to touch her. He’d learned her. Memorized her. And he was better at this now. He was a much better lover than he had been. She set her hands on his shoulders and surrendered to her body.

“I missed you,” she said again. “I thought I would die from missing you.”

“Good.”

She swallowed hard just once, a reaction that echoed through her body as she opened to him. He dropped into a sensual haze. Everything aroused him, from the slide of his fingers on her, the sound of her sigh that turned to a moan, his anticipation of what would come.

While he kissed her, tongue in her mouth, tasting and taking, he found the core of her and that particular spot that would bring on a build to unbearable tension. She groaned when he backed off, and her eyes snapped with frustration. He gave her a smug grin because she knew what he was doing to her and why. He laughed before he licked a trail of raindrops from her cheek and moved his fingers in her. So tight. She tensed, and he waited for her to relax.

“Has there been no one since me?”

Her eyes slowly focused. “I wasn’t waiting for you, if that’s what you mean.”

He pushed his fingers further into her, into that soft, tight heat. “We can argue about that later. Right now—”

“God, Crispin.” The words came from her throat in a rush as she bowed toward him, hands pressed on the top of his shoulders, hips rocking into his palm cupping her sex. He watched her, felt her passage clench on his fingers.

There wasn’t a damn soul anywhere near so he had the rare, great pleasure of neither one of them having to be in the least discreet. He thought he might have one more chance to pull her from the brink before she came, but her fingers dug into his shoulders, and she left him to fall off the cliff he’d constructed with her, her breath shuddering. He stroked, pressed, and she threw her head back and completely, utterly, with heartrending passion, surrendered to pleasure.

She belonged to him. He felt her tighten around his fingers, and he damn near lost all restraint, he wanted inside with such ferocity. He sailed beyond lust, beyond arousal. Exactly as it had been with them every time before. Despite the words he’d never written to her, he’d bared his soul to her in his letters and kept her close in so doing. He had indulged in a fantastically ironic game of revenge. He’d wanted her to know exactly what she’d given up and to regret that for the rest of her life.

“This is what we’re like.” The words rasped from his throat while she was still coming down from her climax, her head bowed to his shoulder. “You and I. It’s not like this with anyone else. Just us.”

While she clung to him, and he stroked away the last spasms of her pleasure, he used his other hand to unfasten his coat and the fall of his breeches and free himself from his clothing. With one last stroke along the folds of her body, he slid his palm to the curve of her backside and brought her up and toward him, and when his cock was at her entrance, she lifted her head and caught her lower lip between her teeth as she answered his upward thrust with the lowering of her hips.

An inarticulate sound burst from him. Heat. Slick dampness. Tight, almost too tight. She didn’t relax around him because she’d not done this with anyone but him. He held back his urge to push hard. Slow at the start was good, too.