Teresa Medeiros (41 page)

Maddened by the promise of heaven cupped in his palm, he pressed his fingers deep inside of her, shamelessly ravishing her quivering warmth.

It was then that he realized how still she was lying beneath him. He lifted his head. She lay shivering, her eyes shut, tears sparkling like gilt on her lashes. Dear God, she was going to allow him to do it, he thought. To take her in the punishing heat of anger. Her abject surrender was so alien to her proud nature that he felt something inside of him twist in anguish.

Was it any wonder she was confused? One minute he was berating her like a child, the next fondling her like a whore. He hadn’t the courage to treat her like a woman because that might mean losing her forever.

Blood pounded through his groin in a primal protest, but he knew to take her now would somehow be as cruel or crueler than rape.

She kept her eyes pressed shut as he wrapped his cloak around her and lifted her. Her arms crept around his neck
with a lingering trust that reopened a raw wound in his heart. As Justin strode through the parlor with his burden, Mrs. Rose’s clientele fell into an awed hush. Emily burrowed her face into his chest and he eased a fold of the cloak over her, shielding her from their stares and whispers. The footmen hastily stepped out of his way. Not a soul dared protest as he carried her into the sheltering darkness of the night.

Penfeld, God bless his proper English soul, didn’t utter a word of reproach when his wild-eyed master came pounding on his bedroom door near midnight.

“Please,” Justin said, holding out a warm, sleepy bundle. “Take her.”

The dire consequences of his refusal were clearly implied in Justin’s gaze. Penfeld adjusted his nightcap, set his chimneyed candle on his washstand, and gently removed Emily from his arms. A corner of the cloak fell back to reveal an angelic countenance, marred by grubby tear stains.

As they disappeared down the shadowy corridor, Penfeld waddling in his long nightshirt, Justin sank into the nearest chair and buried his face in his hands. When the valet returned after tucking Emily into her bed, Justin was gone and the wild, wistful strains of Chopin’s “Fantaisie-Impromptu” were pouring through the silent house.

Justin slammed the chord home, ignoring the unharmonious groan of the piano. His fingers tore over the keys, no longer content to coax or cajole. They plundered each note, driving the music into the air with the force of a blow. The fine bones in his hands ached. Sweat trickled from his temples. But still he played on, fighting to drown his own wild despair in the crashing magnificence of the music.

He had thrown open a window, hoping the icy air might cool his fevered senses. The night was moonless. A
single candle flickered on top of the piano, bathing him in a pool of fragile light. His battered fingers struck yet another blow, clumsy in their thwarted passion. The many faces of the women he had seen in that long day floated past him. Once he might have been the sore of man who could drown his desires in the perfumed arms of a stranger, but instinct warned him he needed far more than a shuddering spasm of relief to ease his longing for Emily. The music thundered to a crescendo. The shadows danced around him in macabre relief. In that half-beat of peace between one note and the next, he heard it—the faintest whisper of a sigh.

He was not alone.

His hands froze above the keys. Who in this household would be mad enough to approach him now? The candle guttered in a gust of wind, and the shadows closed in with the silence. The harsh rasp of his breathing was the only sound.

He swung around on the bench.

Emily stood like a ghost in her long white nightdress, clutching her ragged old doll. Her feet were bare and her cheeks still streaked with tear stains. A lump hardened in Justin’s throat. She looked very young, like a child creeping downstairs in the night for a drink of water. But there was no denying her eyes were the eyes of a woman, darkened in some unspeakable plea.

His emotions choked him. Why couldn’t he hold her? Why couldn’t he draw her into his lap and gently cradle her head to his chest? Why couldn’t he dry her tears on his shirt and promise her everything would be all right?

Because it would be a lie. And he hadn’t paid the price for his silence all these lonely years to start lying to her now.

If he laid his hands on her, he wouldn’t stop. The same hand that drew her into his lap would ease her nightdress up over her hips. The same lips that murmured soothing reassurances would cover hers as he laid her back on the
piano, parted her ivory thighs, and drove himself home in her honeyed depths. He didn’t dare touch her. He didn’t dare even look at her.

He turned his face away, feeling his jaw stiffen as if it were set in granite. “Go back to bed, Emily,” he commanded, hardly recognizing the hoarse voice as his own. “Now.”

He felt her hesitancy, heard the soft shuffle of her bare feet on the rug. Damn her. Why couldn’t she ever do anything the first time she was asked?

Knowing he had no choice, he swallowed the ruins of his pride and leveled the full force of his raw gaze at her. “Go to your room and lock your door. Please.”

Her lips trembled. A glistening tear slipped down her cheek, then another. The doll thumped to the carpet as she turned and fled. The blackness of the house swallowed her without a trace.

“I’m sorry, Em. I’m so damned sorry,” he whispered to the silent shadows.

His words were more heartfelt than she would ever know. He was sorry he had made her cry. Sorry David hadn’t lived to introduce him to his spirited daughter. David had adored them both. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been such a stretch to imagine him blessing their love.

But David had died, forever taking his blessing with him.

Justin picked up the doll and set her on the music stand. He smoothed her matted curls. “We’re old friends, you and I, aren’t we?”

The opaque blue eyes surveyed him without expression. He touched the piano, stroking first one key, then another, but the music had gone, leaving him in utter silence.

He rose and climbed the stairs, his tread heavy. His steps slowed outside of Emily’s door. He heard nothing from within her room, no sniffing or broken weeping, only a whisper of silence more taunting than an invitation. He
braced his brow against the door, choking back a groan. How long would it be before even locks would fail to keep him out? A week? A month? A year? Was he to betray David yet again by seducing his daughter? His hand clenched into a fist against the thick mahogany.

As he splayed his fingers to ease their tension, the door swung open without a sound.

Chapter 29
 

H
ardly daring to breathe, Emily lay back on her pillows and watched the crack between door and frame slowly widen. A man appeared, his lean form silhouetted against the light from the corridor candles. Time swung back to a barren attic room and a thousand other lonely nights. Her heart thundered. Her shadow lover had finally come to her as she had always known he would.

He closed the door behind him and twisted the key in the lock. The click of the tumbler echoed in the silence. He came toward the bed, measuring his steps as if drawn into a web he no longer had the will to resist.

He braced his hands on each side of her head. His eyes asked the question her unlocked door had already answered. “I’ve waited so long for you.”

“Not nearly so long as I’ve waited for you,” she said fiercely, entangling her fingers at his nape and pulling him down to her.

Their lips met and mingled in sweet communion,
soothed not by the salty balm of the sea, but by her tears. Justin traced the curves of her cheekbones with his thumbs. “No tears, angel. No tears tonight.”

His mouth came down on hers to seal their vow. She clung to him as they rolled across the feather mattress, entangling the sheets around their limbs. A hoarse groan escaped Justin as he realized she was naked beneath him, just as she had been that night on the beach. They had wasted so much precious time getting here from there. But this was no time for regrets.

Tonight he would bury his dark secrets in her tender body until there existed for them no past and no tomorrow. Only tonight. Only he and Emily, destined to love not in sunlight, but in the ebony cloak of night. His tongue flicked softly across her dimpled cheek. His lips grazed the curve of her jaw, then glided downward to the milky smoothness of her throat.

Emily clawed open his buttons and ran her hands over his chest, marveling at the masculine mesh of bone and muscle. She felt the flat disks of his nipples harden in response. Justin had breathed life into the phantom who had once haunted her girlish dreams. She couldn’t get enough of him. She wanted to feel the weight of him crushing her. She wanted to drink him in through her fingertips. She felt greedy and selfish and fierce like a mewling baby tiger, blinded by the explosive light of its first sunrise. The walls of her pride were crumbling beneath its heat.

She tugged at his hair, bringing his face to hers. Her voice broke on a whimper as she said the words she’d bitten back for so long. “Love me, Justin. Please.”

He touched two fingers to her bottom lip. “You never have to beg me, Emily. Never.”

Then he was sliding down on her into a darkness that heightened every sensation. His warm hands cupped her bottom, lifting and coaxing. A sudden burst of shyness made her clamp her thighs together.

He brushed his lips against her silky triangle of curls, then blew softly against the wet spot his mouth had made. His voice was a husky whisper, half command, half prayer. “Trust me.”

He’d never before asked that of her. How could she deny him now? Her head fell back against the pillow and her legs went limp, giving him dominion over far more than her body. Moaning, she bunched the back of his shirt in her fists. He was her lover, both demon and angel, giving her ecstasy untold, burying his tongue in her velvety folds, flicking and stroking until her womb convulsed in an agony of pleasure. Before she could shatter the silence of the sleeping house with her cry, his lips were there, both shocking and intoxicating her with the taste of her own forbidden nectar.

The tiny hairs on the back of his hand tickled her naked belly as he tore open the buttons of his trousers. His intensity both excited and frightened her. She shuddered, realizing she was about to learn the full measure of this man’s passion.

But her sweet torment at his hands had just begun. He slid his arm around her rump and lifted her to a half-sitting position against the headboard. His hands eased her thighs as far apart as they would go, exposing her fully. She felt terribly vulnerable and sinfully decadent. Even in the sheltering darkness she could feel her cheeks burn.

“Did I ever mention to you how very shy I am?” she whispered.

He touched her there, softly, eliciting a moan. “It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“Really?”

She could hear the grin in his voice. “No.”

A shudder of pleasure banished her shyness as he slid a finger from each hand up into her folds until they found the silky little bud nestled beneath. At the same time, his thumbs began to circle the taut, distended satin of her flesh below, laving her, pearling the hot, thick honey
around her melting core. Her world narrowed to pure sensation. An emptiness more gaping than any she had known yawned within her. Wild with need, she arched against him, pressing against his thumbs, wanting more, so much more.

Justin was half crazed from wanting her, but still he continued his exquisite torture. His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and he watched her face, entranced by the flickers of pleasure dancing across her features. She whimpered his name. Her teeth cut into the tender bud of her lower lip. Fighting for control, he clenched his jaw against the hoarse rasp of his own breathing. When he got to where he was going, he wanted her already there, waiting for him.

His deft fingers never ceased their maddening dance, not even when he rubbed the hard length of himself where his thumbs had been.

Emily gasped at the shock of it. Her eyes flew open. Justin’s face, darkened by passion, was very near to hers. His eyes sparkled as he pressed against her, sliding the very tip of himself into her, then withdrawing, taunting her with its promise. Both wonder and fear shook her as she realized his intent. When her first dark shiver of ecstasy came, this man was going to make her his own.

The flames of his fingertips licked her higher. His rigid manhood breached her again, probing gently, then pulling back, maddening her into a frenzy with its deliberate teasing. She writhed against him. Her hands tangled in his hair. When he bent his head and took her breast into his mouth, first gently sucking, then tugging at her nipple with his teeth, Emily broke. Pleasure raked her in shuddering waves and Justin thrust up into her, hard.

Emily muffled her scream against his shoulder. The pain was no less phenomenal than the pleasure. As her untried body clamped down in protest, Justin threw back his head in masculine ecstasy and gritted his teeth, pressing
into her inch by unrelenting inch. Sweat sheened his chest.