The Passionate One (36 page)

Slowly, the taut
line of her mouth relaxed as he plied her with soothing caresses. He brushed
her shoulder in slow, ever-widening circles, moving gradually to her breast.
She sighed, a sweet sound of abandonment. He found the tip of one breast and
rolled the nub between his thumb and fingers, watching her face intently.

She inhaled
sharply. Her shoulders arched off the bed; her breasts rose in an unvoiced
overture. He made no attempt to withstand the offer. His mouth closed on her dark,
ripe nipple, sucking gently at first but then more greedily, lifting and
kneading the other plump breast.

It was more than
Rhiannon could bear. All the words, the terrible names, the warnings and
castigations she had been chanting like a charm against his enchantment could
not save her. She did not want to be saved.

His mouth pulled
forbidden sensations from her while his hand fondled her other breast into
peaked and ready arousal. The hardness pressed against the vee at the top of
her thighs rubbed with intimate promise, swirling into a rush of titillation.

Unable to resist,
she combed her fingers through his long, tangled black hair, stroked his face,
and felt the rasp of his unshaven cheeks. He drew harder, deeper. A throaty
purr vibrated from deep in her throat.

The sound caused
him to release her. His eyes flashed up to meet hers, black and unreadable. For
a timeless moment she stared into their depths and then he lowered her
shoulders to the bed. Slowly, like a prowling beast, he moved up over her, his
legs on either side of her hips. He braced himself on his arms, suspended above
her, his hair falling forward, masking his features. The only sounds she could
hear were the pelted spatter of rain on glass and her own harsh breath.

He suddenly pushed back,
knees spread wide, and rested on his heels. His gaze locked on her mouth. He
grasped his shirt bottom and pulled it from his breeches and over his head.

It had been dark on
Beltaine night and thus she’d never fully seen what she’d clutched and stroked
and petted and strained to join. And when he’d fought he’d been filthy and
battered. Now, finally, she did.

For the first time
she saw how beautiful he was, more beautiful than her imagination had allowed.
His hips were narrow and his shoulders broad, his body taut and lean. His clear
skin sheathed hard muscle and long, clean bone. Her gaze dropped and fled. The
evidence of his arousal strained the fabric of his breeches.

His gaze followed
her own. “Yes,
boidheach,
readied, hard and urgent, for pleasuring
you, for pleasuring myself. For passion’s sake.”

“No other reason?”
she whispered, trying to ignore the sliver of uneasiness his words had caused.

If he heard he gave
no indication. His eyes were nearly black with arousal, focused and intense. He
stretched out his hand. Purposefully, he ran his knuckles in a long, drawn out
caress starting from the base of her throat, moving slowly between her breasts
down over her belly to the thicket of soft curls between her thighs. She
writhed beneath the gentle contact, trying to remember what she’d asked and
why.

“Need there be
another?” he whispered hoarsely.

She did not answer,
for his fingers had found her nether lips and were gently stroking the silky
interiors. Moments and hours, he played upon her body, stroking and urging,
nibbling and licking, tender kiss and sharp nips ending just the pleasure side
of pain. She lost herself in the vortex of sensation, liquid with want, the
agitated sounds of constricted pleasure humming from her throat, foretelling
her crisis.

Finally she could
take no more, she held up her arms, her eyes wide and unseeing. He fell upon
her like a sea eagle on a dove, jerking his strained breeches away, unerringly
finding the moist cove he’d so thoroughly prepared. He entered in one long,
sense-shattering slide.

She caught her
breath, instinct and need supplying what befuddled memory withheld, and shifted
her hips to accommodate the length of him. She would surely die. It felt that
good; it promised that much.

“Rhiannon,” he
gasped, grasping her hips in his big callused hands, the scarred wrists shining
like a strand of milky pearls in the dim light. “This time it counts.” His gaze
held hers until finally she surrendered.

“Aye. It does.”

He began moving,
his teeth grinding together and his eyes clenched in extremity. Unbearable
stimulation, too rich a broth, too heady a brew, her body riding waves of
increasing desire, pulling her muscles tight with anticipation, forcing her
hips to rise, to accommodate more, to welcome the increasing power of his
thrusts. Her back arched, her hips bucked, and her mouth opened on soundless
supplication as her hands flew up to seek purchase against the storm of
sensation buffeting her from within.

They found Ash’s
rock-hard body. A sound like a growl vibrated from his throat. The muscles of
his arms and chest and throat stood out, straining and corded-over with dark
veins. He thrust forcefully, caught up in the intensifying rhythm, aggressive,
masculine, moving in her, taking her.

There. And
there.
All the swirling sensations condensed and
telescoped with dizzying speed to a single center.

Then it exploded.

Every inch of her
skin, every fiber, every bone flooded with rich, boundless pleasure.

There. There.
She panted, riding the tidal wave of feeling, absorbing it, shivering
with its aftermath. She clung to him, dimly becoming aware of the runaway
thunder of his heartbeat beneath her ear. He flung his head back, lifting her
and clamping her to him.

“Rhiannon.
Chan
urrainn dhomh ruith tuilleadh
.”
I cannot run anymore.
“For my heart’s sake. It always has been.”

Words had no
meaning here, the only truths were his arms and body, his kisses and his
strength. His words barely penetrated her thoughts, sweet verbal caresses when
her whole body was being stroked.

“Rhiannon!” He thrust
into her one last time.

His whole body
shuddered. A low cry of triumph surged from his throat. He froze, holding
himself deep within her, straining and raw and beautiful in the act of
completion.

Gradually the
rigidity melted from his body. His face fell forward into the lee of her
throat. His breath sounded harsh in her ear. With a small groan, he set his
shoulder to the mattress and rolled, pulling her over onto him. His forearm
looped about her waist, keeping her there.

He was hot and damp
and solid and she’d never felt anything so good, so perfect. Lush with
completion, she drifted, disjointed and detached from time and memory, his
chest her pillow, his body her bed.

“Sleep, Rhiannon,”
he murmured, stroking her hair from her temples. His breath was warm. “The day
will wait.”

She sighed, utterly
content, and nuzzled her cheek against the rising plane of his chest and,
beyond all expectation, fell asleep.

Rhiannon woke
slowly. The warm skin beneath her cheek rose and fell in measured cadence.
Ash.
She opened her eyes. It was still early, the room was still dark. A glance at
the boiling gray sky outside the window told her why. A storm had taken hold of
the coast. It might be days before it blew over.

She lifted her gaze
to Ash, studying him as he slept. She was startled by what she saw.

She’d always
thought of Ash as a man, fully mature and well into his prime years. But now,
with slumber erasing the jaded sophistication from his face, and his eyelids
hiding his bleak, world-weary soul, she realized that Ash Merrick was a young
man, a
very
young man. Perhaps no more than a few years her senior.
Tenderness filled her.

Being careful not
to disturb him, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and sat up. He
sighed in his sleep and flung one long, tapering arm out across the bed, as
though even in his sleep he searched for something. She leaned forward, intent
on bestowing a kiss on his bluish-cast cheek, but thought better of it.

She had to leave
him, before someone discovered her in his bed and told Lord Carr. She’d no
doubt that Ash’s father would use the information in some hurtful way. She did
not want to be another flail Carr wielded over his son. She wanted only to love
Ash.

She smiled sadly.
She’d been correct in Fair Badden to think she’d been prey to a girlish
infatuation. She’d been besotted by Ash’s black and white good looks, by the
forbidden danger suggested by his scarred wrists, and by a susceptibility to
his glib tongue and urbane manners. She’d been enamored of a mask, a character
Ash had created to hide the real man, a man so much more complex, so much more
vulnerable, and yet so much stronger than that play actor. A man in need of
love.

Well, Rhiannon
thought, he had her love if he wished it and even if he didn’t. She loved Ash
Merrick.

How sad, she
thought, that she’d spent so many years amongst loving, gentle people and never
learned the simplest truth of that emotion—that the heart does not need reasons
to love, only the opportunity.

She’d never had to
earn Richard or Edith Fraiser’s love. She’d never had to be careful in securing
Phillip’s affection.

The thought of
Phillip ambushed her. How ill she’d used him! How grievously she’d wronged him!
She could never begin to make up to him what she owed—but she must. She would
never know peace until she tried.

She stood and
gathered her ruined nightgown about her as best she could. With one last,
lingering glance at Ash, she slipped from his room and down the dark corridor.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The stable was warm,
the dawn was cooled by sheets of rain, and young Andy Payne was as hot and
cocky as only a sixteen-year-old male newly initiated into the world of carnal
pleasure can be. His darlin’, Cathy? Carly? had left earlier and he’d dozed a
bit—this tupping business was most strenuous play—but now he felt quite up to a
cup of milk and a bit of beef.

Whistling happily,
Andy clambered down the ladder from the hayloft, leaving the stables and
heading for the kitchen building. The smell of baking bread was just beginning
to ride the gusting east wind. He followed it down the path between the
alehouse and the icehouse, and in doing so ran smack dab into a human mountain.

Andy staggered
back, staring up into a once handsome visage now ravaged by sleeplessness and
pain.

“Mr. Watt!” Andy
cried.

Phillip clamped his
hand over the boy’s mouth, hushing him in a low urgent voice before half
dragging him into some scrub larch fifty feet away. A half-dozen men
materialized from the brush and encircled Andy. Their faces were grim, their
clothes hard worn, their boots scuffed with travel.

Andy counted three
he knew besides Phillip Watt: John Fortnum, Ben Hobson, and Edward St. John.
The other two men were vaguely familiar but the glint of excitement in their
eyes he knew all too well from his years working his Dad’s tavern.
Troublemakers, this lot. Up to no good. He’d stake the guinea in his pocket on
it.

“What are you doing
here, Mr. Watt?” Andy asked, though he suspected he already knew, and that
knowledge lodged in the pit of his stomach and made it ache. “Where’d you come
from?”

“We’ve been here
three days, boy,” Phillip said tightly, “waiting for the chance to get word to
Rhiannon. Thank God you’ve come along.”

“But all you’d have
had to do is write her a letter and send it by courier. Or give it to her
yourself,” Andy said in bafflement. “She walks out on the cliffs each morning.
They aren’t keeping her prisoner, you know.”

“Ha!” Phillip’s
laughter was bitter, and bitterness from this man, whom Andy had always known
as a jovial, fine chap, was as odd as summer snow. “She’s watched day and
night. I’ve seen her guards. We all have.” He looked around at the others; they
nodded in curt concurrence.

“Is... is she all
right?” Phillip asked gruffly.

“Miss Russell?”
Andy asked. “Aye. She maybe lost some weight but she’s not being mistreated. I
think she’s mayhap lonely.”

Phillip’s lip
curled back in a sneer. “What? Even with Merrick—”

He bit off whatever
he’d been about to say and grabbed Andy’s hand. He thrust a single folded and
sealed piece of paper into it. “Take this to her. Give it into her hand and
hers alone.”

The look on
Phillip’s face sent Andy stumbling back. The others watched approvingly.

“Aye, sir.” Andy
gulped audibly. “Aye. Right away, sir.”

He knuckled his
forehead and backed away, scooting clear of the larch, apprehension chasing
him. Apprehension not only for himself, but for Phillip Watt, who looked as
changed as a man can be, and even more apprehension for Rhiannon Russell. Andy
hadn’t liked the look in Phillip’s eye when he’d asked after her.

Andy peered back
over his shoulders. The men from Fair Badden had vanished and— For the second
time that morning Andy ran directly into the tall broad figure of a man. Strong
hands steadied him and a smooth Scottish voice spoke from the darkness, “Now,
then, lad. Why don’t you be tellin’ me about your friends out yonder?”