Teresa Medeiros (42 page)

She felt her tender flesh stretching to sheath him. Shamed by her inadequacy, her voice broke on a groan. “I can’t, Justin. Oh, God, you’re too much. I can’t take all of you.”

Shifting her hips with his hands, he proved her wrong, driving upward until every throbbing inch of him was cloaked in the taut, velvety folds of her body. His lips caught her cry, drowning it in his own.

This wasn’t the way Justin had planned it—panting, half undressed, pinioning Emily against the headboard, but when had life with Emily ever gone as planned? He fought the urge to move within her, wanting to give her body time to adjust to his invasion. His tongue soothed her swollen lips, sworled in tender apology through her mouth even as his body exulted in her exquisite gloving. A tear trickled from beneath her dark lashes.

He caught it on his tongue before it could reach her dimple. Her luminous eyes opened.

“No tears,” he said softly. “You promised.”

She kissed him gently, a smile trembling on her lips. “No tears,” she repeated. As proof of her pledge she braced her palm against his chest and arched her back, taking him both higher and deeper than he would have ever dreamed possible.

A guttural groan escaped him, but even through his haze of ecstasy he saw her flinch. He caught her hips in his hands and eased her flat beneath him, determined to banish all memories of pain from her mind or die a glorious death trying.

As Justin began to move deep within her, Emily felt her body surrendering to his sweet sorcery. He braced his weight on his hands and ground his hips against her, both consuming her and making her whole with each silken stroke. She clung to him, unable to remember a time when he had not been a part of her. Her hips rose to meet each of
his bewitching thrusts. This sensation was different from the earlier ecstasy he had given her, fuller, darker somehow, and fraught with all the perils of surrender. Small, helpless noises escaped her throat until finally, drugged with pleasure, she could do nothing but lie beneath his powerful body, spread for the slaking of his desire.

“Emily,” he muttered in evocation against her lips. “My sweet, sweet Emily.”

He reached between them and touched her then. The gentlest touch of his fingertips set off a quaking tremor. Just when she thought he couldn’t get any bigger or harder, he did, and the tremor became a shuddering explosion. Their lips crashed, fusing in the desperate need to silence their screams as all the passion he’d kept locked inside came roaring from his loins, spilling hot within her.

Groaning, Justin collapsed against her and buried his face in her curls, breathing hard. She rubbed her lips against his stubbled cheek, tasting the salty wetness, and knew that this night they had both broken their vow.

Tingling ribbons of sunlight caressed the exhausted muscles of Justin’s back. He was drowsing in the warm sand beneath a cobalt sky, lulled by the whisper of the waves against the shore. The sand was powder-fine and soft, so soft he could feel himself sinking painlessly into its feathery depths. He drew in a lungful of its fragrance—a musky vanilla like the purest and most potent of aphrodisiacs.

He rolled to his back and stretched, savoring the ache of his sated muscles. He didn’t want to open his eyes. He wanted to sleep for another week. Warmth bathed his face.

Where was he? he wondered. Where were the heavy bed curtains that smothered the light and kept the fresh air at bay? He forced his eyes open to find himself gazing up at the scalloped half-tester over Emily’s bed.

He sat up abruptly, pulling the sheet to his waist. It wasn’t the waves he had heard but the soft shuffle of Emily’s hands as she folded her undergarments into a carpeted
valise. Her back was to him, and she wore nothing but his discarded shirt. The dawn light cast a buttery halo around her curls.

“What are you doing?” he said. His untried voice sounded gruff, even to him.

“Pudding is very fond of your stables,” she said calmly. “I believe I shall leave him to Jimmies care. Do you think I might have a cat at my new lodgings? Miss Winters always detested them. I don’t require a lot of room, you know. Daddy and I were always happiest in our more modest apartments. My fondest memories are of our little cottage at Brighton.” Her hands faltered. “I’ve never been a mistress before. I hope I shall be a good one.”

It took Justin’s bleary mind a moment to sort out her ramblings. When he had, he rose, leaving the sheet behind, and padded up behind her. He slipped his arms around her waist and drew her back against him. She couldn’t meet his eyes, not even in the full-length looking glass fixed between her wardrobe doors.

Touched by her unexpected shyness, he rubbed his bristled cheek against her temple. “And where do you think you’re going?”

Emily felt her gaze drawn inexorably upward, captivated by the spell cast by their reflection. The contrast was stunning. Justin’s dark hair next to her burnished curls. His feral, naked grace against the rumpled folds of the shirt. She watched in fascination as his bronze hands glided over the white linen, unable to forget the feel of those hands on her … and in her.

She drew in a shaky breath. “Your mother … your sisters … we mustn’t expose them to my tarnished reputation.”

He cupped her breasts in his reverent palms. “Is that how I made you feel last night? Tarnished?”

Emily thought of all the times she’d been made to feel less than she was. She met his gaze boldly in the mirror. “No. Not tarnished. Cherished.” She laced her fingers
around his. “Did you know you have the most amazing hands?”

His slow, lazy grin melted her bones. “I always knew practicing those infernal scales would pay off someday.” He nuzzled her throat, sending a shiver of delight down her spine. “You’re not going anywhere, angel, except back to bed.”

She lay her head against his shoulder, baring her throat for his sweet plundering. “There’s no time. What if Penfeld comes looking for you?”

He nudged his hips against her rump and began to gently ease the shirt upward. “I assure you, this won’t take nearly as long as I’d like.”

Peace reigned at Grymwilde Mansion for the first time since its master’s return. The only explanation Justin offered for Emily’s brief disappearance was that she had become “lost.” Only he and Emily knew how close she had come to being eternally lost. His family was too wise to press for more. They were all reaping the benefits of his sunny disposition.

The parlor rang with laughter and music at all hours of the day. Justin and Emily played endless rounds of cards with Lily, sang warbling duets with Edith, and helped Millicent pick out the tangled threads of her embroidery. Each morning Herbert and Harvey marched off to their new offices at Winthrop Shipping, proudly displaying the handsome leather writing cases given them by their brother-in-law. Finally, bored and grumbling, Harold even took himself off to apply for a position at the Exchange.

If this was yet another manifestation of His Grace’s mysterious brain fever, whispered the servants as they counted their generous bonuses, it was a pleasant one indeed. Only Justin knew he had been possessed by a different sort of fever altogether.

Penfeld was gazing out the bay window overlooking
the garden one afternoon when the duchess came sailing up.

The two of them stood in silence, watching Justin and Emily romp around a frozen fountain, Pudding hard at their heels. Their antics brought such a breath of spring to the dead garden that the duchess wouldn’t have been surprised to see a blush of green come creeping over the trellises before their very eyes.

As they watched, Emily darted behind the naked spines of a hawthorn bush, her cheeks flushed with laughter and cold. Her escape was cut short when Justin caught a handful of her hood in his fist and dragged her back over his arm. The laughter faded from Emily’s eyes and she went still. He inclined his head, his lips hovering so close over hers that the mist from their mouths mingled.

The duchess sucked in an audible breath.

At that moment a jealous Pudding stood on his hind legs and thrust his pug nose between them. Penfeld pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed at his brow.

They must have seen the flash of white, because both of them looked guiltily to the window. Emily broke away from Justin’s arms and waved cheerily before kneeling to bury her face in Pudding’s brindle coat.

Penfeld tilted his nose in the air and sniffed. “Heartwarming, is it not, to see a man taking such an active interest in his responsibilities?”

The duchess eyed the portly valet through narrowed eyes. “Oh, deeply affecting. Deeply.”

The game was on. Justin and Emily played it with relish. By day they appeared the very model of propriety with no one the wiser if her foot climbed up his calf beneath the shelter of the tablecloth, or if he slipped her an extra card beneath the loo table. The interminable moments ticked away, measured not by the swing of the pendulum in the long-case clock, but by longing looks and stolen kisses until finally the hour came when Emily
might politely smother a yawn into her handkerchief and climb the long, curving stairs to bed.

She would lie trembling on tenterhooks of anticipation until the house fell silent. Then the telltale creak of the unlocked door would come and Justin would slip into her bed and arms.

With the pleasure of Emily’s company by day and the delight of her lithe young body by night, Justin felt he had died and gone to heaven. He was in thrall to her tender possession of his heart and body. He had never in his life imagined such sweetness and passion at his fingertips. She was a miracle, a marvel who brought the same enthusiasm and adventurous spirit to her lovemaking as she had brought to his life.

Late one night the drowsing peace of the house was fractured by the crash of heavy furniture and breaking glass. A herd of feet stampeded to Emily’s door.

Harold’s fist rattled the mahogany panels. “Hullo there, gel. Open up! What’s going on in there? Are you all right?”

Emily swung open the door, her cheeks burning, to face a nightcapped mob that included Penfeld, Justin’s entire family, and a few of the bolder servants.

She brushed back her tousled curls, laughing nervously. “I’m my clumsy old self, I fear. I must have been having a nightmare. I seem to have fallen out of bed and overturned the nightstand.” She reached up to smooth the ribbons of her nightdress, then realized in horror they were trailing down her back because her nightdress was on backward.

One of the wide-eyed housemaids tried to peer around her at the carnage. “I’ll fetch a broom, miss, straightaway, and clean up the mess.”

“Oh, no,” said Emily hastily, narrowing the crack between door and wall. “That won’t be necessary. I’m really quite exhausted. You may clean up in the morning.”

Justin’s mother rested her fists on her ample hips.
With her iron-gray ringlets wrapped in rags, she resembled a matronly Medusa. Emily lowered her eyes, fearing the duchess’s accusing gaze might turn her to something worse than stone.

“Where’s my son?” she demanded. “I would have thought a crash like that would have brought the dead running.”

Penfeld quickly piped up with “My master is a very sound sleeper.”

They all stared at him. Emily couldn’t stop her own mouth from falling open at that preposterous falsehood. But even in his tasseled nightcap and long nightshirt, Penfeld’s dignity was so profound that no one dared challenge him.

“Harrumph,” pronounced the duchess skeptically.

She charted a course for her chambers, the skirts of her brocaded dressing gown frothing in her wake. One by one the others trailed away.

Penfeld was the last to go. He gallantly tipped his nightcap to Emily and gave her a knowing wink.

She closed her door and twisted the key. “Why, that pompous little scoundrel. He’s known all along.” She clapped a hand over her mouth to smother her giggle.

The door of her wardrobe swung open and Justin emerged, her satin dressing gown wrapped around his waist. He plucked a stray ostrich feather out of his hair.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said. “I didn’t lie. I
did
fall out of bed.”

He wagged the feather at her. “Like you fell off that boat in New Zealand?”

“Oh, no. That wasn’t the same at all.”

“Thank God.” He bent to graze her lips. He trailed the feather down the curve of her back and she moaned softly. “I despise this need for silence. I wish we were in New Zealand now, lying on the beach with nothing but the moon and stars to hear us.” His voice lowered to a
husky whisper. “I’d like to spend all night making you scream.”

She buried her mouth in his chest. “What did you have in mind? A complete recitation of Penfeld’s tea collection?”

“Why don’t I just show you?” He gently guided her around until she was kneeling in the plush cushions of the window seat. The curtains of Brussels lace tickled the tip of her nose.

Her voice caught on a tremulous note. “Justin?”

“Mmm?” he answered, kneeling behind her and pushing the backward nightdress up.

“If we fall out the window, I’m going to leave the explanations to you.”

“My pleasure, darling.”

As the dressing gown fell in a shimmering satin pool around their knees, Emily arched against him, knowing the pleasure was all hers.

Justin wrapped a gossamer curl around his finger, then freed it, watching it spring back against Emily’s cheek. She mumbled something in her sleep and wiggled deeper into the pillows.

The watery light of dawn crept across the tangled sheets. Justin despised its arrival. He hated dragging himself out of the warm cocoon of blankets and sneaking through the drafty old house to his own barren bed. A pain seized his heart. Emily looked so sweet and warm with her cheeks rosy with sleep and her curls rumpled. He didn’t want to leave her. He realized with a shock that he never wanted to leave her.

He wanted the right to spend all night and all day in bed with her if he chose. He wanted to escort her to the countess’s fête that afternoon and show the whole world that she belonged to him.

“Oh, David,” he whispered. “What have I done?”

David had once given her to him. After all those years
of self-imposed exile, would he still find him worthy of such a prize? Justin knew if his friend were alive today, he would have gone to him on hands and knees if necessary to beg for her hand.