Tangled (32 page)

She was facing the window. She did not want him to see her. She closed her eyes tightly as he took a step back.

And then he took both her hands in his and raised them to the top button on his nightshirt. No. She tried to pull her hands away.

"Yes," he said fiercely. "Yes, Rebecca."

She kept her eyes closed. Her fingers felt as if they were ten thumbs. She paused when she had opened the bottom button. But she knew what he wanted, what she must do. Drawing air into her lungs became a conscious effort.

His shoulders were warm to her touch, firm and muscled. But the fingers of her left hand brushed over a hard ridge. His scar. She opened her eyes as he shrugged out of his nightshirt and let it fall to the floor. Ah. Ah, dear Lord, he was beautiful. So very beautiful. She thought she might cry, and bit her lip.

He touched only her head, one hand cupping the back of it, the other raising her chin so that he could kiss her. She opened her mouth without waiting for the demand of his tongue and consciously resisted the instinct to quell the feeling, to school herself to be submissive. She allowed herself to feel. To feel the soft warm moistness of his mouth against hers. To feel the hardness of his tongue invade the cavity of her mouth and circle her own tongue before stroking over the sides of her mouth and the sensitive roof.

The rawness of the sensation it created terrified her for a moment.

She heard herself moan.

And then his mouth was moving down over her chin and along her throat to nuzzle the racing pulse at its base. His hands circled her breasts lightly, like the lick of flames. He held them cupped in the dip between his thumbs and forefingers and lifted them.

She let her head fall back. It felt so good. So very good. And she did not have to fight the feeling. He did not want her to. And he was to be obeyed. He had said it was not sinful. Man and woman were created with bodies. What God had created could not be bad.

She felt his lips against one nipple and then his tongue.
She gasped. And then cried out with shock and desire and clutched at his hair as he sucked hard. She felt a gush of milk to both breasts. And panted with embarrassment.

"Yes," he said. "Ah, yes." And he moved his head to the other breast and sucked gently. "Ah, yes." His face was over hers again and he kissed her wide-mouthed. She tasted the sweetness of her own milk.

"I want you," he said, straightening his arms down along his sides and drawing her against him at last. "Tell me you want me too. Say it."

"I want you," she said. Her need for him was pulsing between her thighs and deep inside her.

"Where?" he asked fiercely against her mouth. "Where do you want me?"

She could not answer him. She could not say the words aloud. Or even think them.

"Where?" he insisted. "Tell me."

"Between my legs," she said. "Inside me."

"Yes," he said exultantly. "Yes. Come then."

She was pulsing with longing, sore with the aching of desire. She was beyond either embarrassment or horror at her utter wantonness.

She did not know how she would wait a moment longer. She did not know how she would bear the pain of his entry into such aching soreness.

He laid her down on the bed and came immediately on top of her.

She spread her legs and arms without waiting for him to do it for her.

"No," he said, finding her mouth with his. "Touch me, Rebecca.

Touch me."

She brought her arms about him, rubbing her palms hard over his shoulders and back, feeling the muscles, feeling all the masculinity of him. She could feel him poised and hard at her entrance and felt aching and empty and ready to explode with longing. Her hands moved downward, trembling.

"Please." She knew it was her own voice, sounding drugged, sounding utterly wanton. But she was beyond the point of being able to control it even if he had not commanded her not to. "Please. Give it to me. Give it to me, David."

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He reached down to hook his hands beneath her legs and lift them over his own. She twined her legs about his powerful thighs and felt them open wider and push upward.

"This?" His voice was low against her ear. "This is what you want?''

She was frightened suddenly. She was utterly defenseless and wide, wide open. And tilted so that she knew there would be nothing to hold back. Nothing that would not be touched.

"Yes." Her voice was a gasp. "Yes. Oh, yes."

There should have been pain, he was so deep. There was pain. One that would surely drive her mad. There was no drawing back from it, no avoiding it. Her legs were imprisoned about his. He was holding her buttocks with strong, spread hands.

"And this?" He withdrew slowly and pushed in hard and deep again.

She could hear sounds, whimpering sounds, which she was powerless to control.

"And this?"

It became an agony. There was nowhere to hide. No part of herself into which to withdraw. It was too late for that. And there was nothing gentle about the endlessly repeated inward thrusts or about the speed at which they pounded at her central pain. He showed her no mercy at all. Only the demand that she give all. And—more terrifying—that she receive all.

And then she was clawing at him, drawing blood from his back, though she did not know it. Something was happening. Something was going to happen. Something so alien to her experience that she fought it with blind terror.

"No!" She tore at him. "No!"

"Yes." His face was above hers, his eyes heavy-lidded and intense with a passion that compounded her terror. "Yes, Rebecca. All of it.

All of it."

The pounding had stopped but he would not withdraw completely. He would have no mercy. Always, slowly, relentlessly, came the deep inward push again and again and again, and the prolonged pressing against her pain

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until the last vestiges of control vanished and everything broke apart.

Everything.

She cried out.

He was saying something against her mouth.

And moving firmly and deeply again.

And sighing and murmuring into her mouth.

But everything had broken apart and body and soul were flung into a free fall beyond her control and beyond her caring. She let herself fall and cared nothing for the landing. Only the freedom mattered and the abandonment to something beyond herself. It did not matter when she landed or where or whether the jolt of the landing would kill her or merely bruise her. The fall was everything.

She fell, locked with the body of the man who was falling with her.

"It can be beautiful, you see," he was saying sometime later—maybe a few seconds, maybe a few hours later. "Not just when there is love, but even when there is not, provided there is affection and commitment. There is both with us, Rebecca, isn't there? There is affection."

He had removed himself from her body though he had kept his arms wrapped about her so that when he moved to her side she turned with him and lay against him. They were both damp all over and both still panting. He pulled a sheet and blanket up over them even though it was a warm summer night.

She was too lethargic to answer him. Too drowsy to think about what had happened and how it had shattered all that she had been taught and had experienced in her twenty-five years.

Affection? Was this what affection felt like? And commitment?

Was this what committing oneself was like? Was this what being married was all about?

With my body I thee worship.
She could hear his voice repeating the words after the vicar at Craybourne Church.

She felt worshiped. Carnal and frightening as it had been, she felt worshiped.

And drowsy.

And exhausted.

234Mary Balogh

And wonderful.

She slept.

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Sometimes when she was alone she would go off into deep thought. Or sometimes when she was busy, even when she was with other people, she would pause in what she was doing and go off into a dream that would take her beyond her surroundings.

What had it been like with Julian? she wondered. What had their courtship been like? And their marriage? Sometimes it frightened her a little that she could no longer remember quite clearly. All she could remember was a dream of love and a dream of perfection. Though she had never had a proper home with him. Or anything useful to do with her time. Or a child. And she had never enjoyed their conjugal relations.

And yet there had been the love and the feeling of perfection. And the conviction that life could not go on without him, or if it did because life could not come to an end just because one willed it to, then life could have no further happiness to offer. No further love.

Sometimes she felt uneasy and guilty about the happiness life had brought her not so very long after Julian's death. And she was happy.

She could no longer deny it. There was Stedwell and all the busy routine of daily life there. And all the busy preparations for the picnic and dinner and ball in August, on their first wedding anniversary.

There was Charles, her little bundle of joy. The bald and blue-eyed son who could and did make her heart ache with love.

And there was David. She never tried to put her feelings for him into words, even in her mind. She knew only what she did not feel for him. But he was important to her. Oh, far more than that. He was central to her new life, to her contentment, to her happiness.

Without him it would all crumble. Without him there would be no one with whom to share the joy of a life she had not expected to find again after Julian.

David was her companion, her assistant, her advisor, her friend.

Her child's father. Her lover.

Julian had been her love. David was her lover. She sometimes worded it that way in her mind. There was a difference though she did not analyze what it was. She did not want to know. She felt a little afraid to know though she did not stop to analyze the fear either.

David was her lover. The companionship and friendship were made personal and precious by the physical bond between them.

What happened between them in their bed at night was something secret, something that only they shared, something that she had stopped feeling guilty about. It was her duty to please her husband.

She pleased her husband by being pleased herself.

She allowed him to please her. She learned actively to please him.

And in the process she discovered the wonder of her own sexuality.

And the wonder of focusing that sexuality on one man. On her husband.

Julian had been her love. She would always remain loyal to that knowledge. Her heart would be his for as long as she lived. Part of her would always be buried with him on the Inkerman Heights in the Crimea.

But David was her lover. And David was alive and warm and wonderful. She no longer thought about his past. His past was not her concern. He was her husband now, in the present, and would be for the rest of their lives.

Now, in the present, he was her friend and her lover.

She gave in gratefully to the temptation to be happy.

Until the day of the picnic.

Only the older people could remember the picnic and ball at Stedwell, though at one time it had been an annual tradition. But in the past it had always involved only the members of the gentry. This year, in reviving the tradition, the viscount and viscountess were also renewing it, making it an event for everyone.

There were to be outdoor games for the energetic— croquet, cricket, tennis, bowling, quoits, races for the children. There were to be canoe rides on the river. Those less energetic could stroll about the lawns or sit viewing the other activities or even wander indoors. Tea was to be served on the terrace.

In the evening there was to be a grand dinner—in the dining room for the gentry, in the ballroom for the lower orders. Later there was to be a ball. David and Rebecca had rejected the idea of having dancing outside for the lower classes. It was time everyone learned to mingle for certain events, they agreed.

Extra gardeners, cooks, and house help were hired for the week or so prior to the big day. It was a busy and anxious time—anxious because the weather could not be made to order and it had been a summer of unsettled weather. Alternative activities in the ballroom had been planned, but it would not be nearly as much fun to have everyone crammed in there during both the daytime and the evening.

But anxiety was put to rest when the morning dawned cloudy and dry but with the promise of opening out into a beautiful day.

Rebecca sat in the rocking chair in the nursery, feeding Charles, who was sucking with his usual enthusiasm and gazing up at her, wide awake and serving

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notice that he had no intention of going back to sleep for a long while.

"Slow down," she told him. "Papa says you are getting fat. Just look at those cheeks." She tapped one of them with her forefinger.

Her son paused long enough in his breakfast to favor her with a wide and toothless smile. He sucked for five more minutes before deciding that he was full but very ready to play. There was a great deal to do, Rebecca thought. There would be precious little time to spend with him. She set him on her lap and bent over him to rub her nose against his until he smiled again.

"Here comes Papa," she said, hearing the door open behind her.

"Have you saved any smiles for him?"

David set a hand against the back of her neck—a characteristic gesture—while he leaned over and tickled his son beneath the chin.

"I suppose you ate your breakfast to the last drop," he said. "Those cheeks are going to burst one of these days."

Charles gazed solemnly up at him before grinning widely at the joke.

"Happy anniversary," David said, turning his head to look down at Rebecca. "A present for you." He set a small parcel in her hand and then lifted the baby from her lap.

She had bought him a new watch chain, but it was still in her dressing room. There were small diamond earrings in the box, a perfect match for her Christmas pendant. "How lovely," she said.