The Shadow and the Star (41 page)

Her hair fanned across her face. She braced her hands against his shoulders. He hung above her, breathing hard, instinct and memories and desire driving him. His body was shoved against hers, exquisite sensation, so close, so close to explosion, her legs all along his with only thin layers of fabric between them.

The glowing stone frosted barely perceptible outlines in the room. She lay wide-eyed in his shadow, holding him off.

Her strength he could have conquered in an instant, and they both knew it. But she looked up at him with a sort of desperate dignity, all tumbled and sober. "I'm sure�Mr. Gerard—you would be sorry to behave dishonorably."

He could have laughed at an appeal to his honor at this moment. But her face… in her face he saw doubt and faith and earnestness, a wholehearted dependence upon him… and a sweet, impossible bravery: the heroism of small defenseless creatures facing peril.

In her weakness, she defeated him. He could not go on, and he could not let go.

He lowered himself with his arms around her, shaking, his face buried against her ear.

Leda lay without protest in his embrace. He was solidly heavy, and held her quite tightly, but that somehow seemed comforting rather than uncomfortable. After a long time, she felt a slow easing of the tension in his arms; he shifted, moving to her side, still embracing her but not so closely. Neither of them spoke.

Finally she drifted in and out of a strange sleep, constantly startled to find him there, constantly pleased and then confused by it. It was so singular. Rather wonderful, really.

In a dreamy way, she understood it; he'd asked to lie down with her, and who would have thought it to be anything more than an odd fancy? Who would have thought it could be so gratifying? She lay at an unfamiliar angle across the bed, without a pillow—waking to find herself snuggling into warmth, flinching at the hard pressure of his arm beneath her head. Whenever she started awake in that way, he moved his hand, brushing back her hair in a soothing gesture, and the natural thing to do seemed to be to nestle closer into the cradle of his arms and body and sleep again.

The alien stone had long ago lost its glow—it seemed like a dream by the time the faintest gray of dawn tinged the room.

Waking then from a sounder sleep, her first drowsy impression was of a black shadow beside her, too dark to discern a shape or detail. Then she distinguished form, comprehended the line of his leg, the length of chest, his arm curved over her. She blinked her eyes fully open.

He watched her. From six inches away, she could see his dark lashes tangled at the edges. His eyes were translucent gray, colored like the outermost perimeter of the winter dawn, the place where starlight became day.

His wakefulness, the way she was settled and sheltered from the cold by his body—she knew, somehow, that he had not slept for one moment.

A sudden consternation gripped her. She remembered something that had happened long ago in her schoolroom days—a maid and an illicit follower—something the cook had whispered to the man who brought the coals.
She sleeps with him
, Cook had muttered.
Don't think she doesn't, the little strumpet
. And soon after that the maid had been sent away in awkward circumstances that Miss Myrtle never would explain.

Leda stared into his dawn-gray eyes.

She had slept with him.

Dear God.

In the night she had felt that she'd been saved from something—in the daybreak she knew that she was lost far beyond anything Miss Myrtle had ever warned her against. He was in her room. He had touched her. Undressed her. He had kissed her in a way no man would kiss a respectable woman. She had slept with him.

She shivered convulsively. His arm rested on her shoulder; he tightened his hand for a moment against her neck, then opened his fingers and slid them through her hair. The mahogany strands fell away from his hand. He pushed himself up on one arm.

Gracious heavens. It was done already—and so little to it! She had slept with him. And she felt no different; no worse, no better—not even ashamed for it, not in her heart.

Belatedly, as he was moving away from her, she realized that he meant to leave. For no reason, with no sensible thought in her mind, she reached out and caught his wrist.

He looked around at her with a startling intensity, going still in the faint morning light. Again she thought of demigods, lonely deities born of the mountains and sky and sea.

She sat up, her hand on his rigid arm, not knowing what to say.

"I shouldn't have stayed." His voice was hard. "I'm sorry. You fell asleep."

The sash that held his black coat had loosened. She saw the base of his throat and the curve of his chest. Something glittered within the hidden folds of dark fabric. A weapon… violence and elegance; a master of both—and somehow she wished to reach out and draw him into her arms and hold him very near her heart.

"You didn't sleep," she said.

He gave a caustic chuckle and looked away. "No."

She did not want him to leave. The morning was coming; she did not want it to come. What she would do, what she would say, how life would be changed… it still seemed impossible. She had slept with a man. He had kissed her.

She did not feel properly guilty at all. She felt—feminine. A little shy and flustered. "Must you go?"

His eyes lifted to hers. "Why should I stay?"

The harshness in his tone perplexed her. It was as if he accused her of something. She moistened her lips and spread her hand across his forearm, sliding her fingers over the fabric, feeling the strength beneath.

His muscle flexed under her palm. "Tell me yes or no."

"Yes," she said. "Stay."

He did not move toward her, nor away. "Last night… you said yes. You said you wished it. And then—God." He blew out a rasping breath.

She blushed at the bald mention of last night. His hands on her, his mouth. She should be ashamed, and instead she felt… flattered. Excited.

Oh, was this what it was to be a strumpet? To be a fallen woman? To be selfishly glad that when he was lonely he had come to her instead of Lady Kai?

She could not bring herself to be vulgarly bold, even cast as a strumpet. Really, she could not seem to think of herself in that way at all: as one of the blowsy shopgirls who winked at cab drivers and cried, " 'Aven't yer got a kiss for me, gov?"

It just did not seem as if it were the same thing, to wish for Mr. Gerard to kiss her again.

The chill in the room went through her gown, now that she was no longer sheltered by his nearness. She shifted, drawing the down-filled counterpane around her shoulders, and glanced at him hopefully. "It's quite cold, don't you think?"

She held the counterpane up to her mouth, peeking over it to see whether he understood the hint.

He sat unmoving, leaning on his hand. But he didn't draw away.

She grew wildly venturesome at the meager encouragement. Tentatively, she reached out and touched his hair. She drew her fingers down his cheek, fascinated by the faint prickly stubble there. Last night—had it felt so last night? How remarkable; how exotically appealing a man could turn out to be. She remembered that Mrs. Wrotham had very carefully preserved her late husband's razor and brushes in a rosewood box. Personal things, that had had no particular meaning, no very clear reality, to Leda until now.

She had always wondered a little why the gentle old lady would so cherish a razor, while at the same time using the much-respected book of sample letters that Mr. Wrotham had written for an incidental doorstop.
Because of this
, she thought now. Because in a few short hours, a man's face was different to touch.

She bit her lips together, overwhelmed suddenly by emotion: empathy for gentle, fluttery Mrs. Wrotham who treasured her husband's razor; a mysterious tenderness for the man who did not move beneath her hesitant caress, whose only response was a deep tremor, a motion within stillness.

She leaned forward, touching her lips to the corner of his, as he had done to her. Maleness: her tongue found him both smooth and bristly, with a heated tangy scent. She opened her mouth to sample more, and brought up her hands to explore his hair.

The tremor in him grew to hard stiffness. He gripped her shoulders with a rough sound. He turned his face into hers, capturing her mouth.

For an instant she felt nothing but stirring excitement in it. Then his strength took control of her; forcing her backward and down into the pillows. He sought within the disarray of bedclothes, dragging her gown up; his fist tangled in her hair, holding her fixed as he kissed her face: everywhere on her face, her throat, down the open length of her gown.

He shocked her. She had no time to protest before his full weight came over her, pushing her deep into the bed. His leg shoved between hers, his body pressed against her thighs and her tummy, his hand dragged and yanked at the fabric between them—then the heat of bare skin against bare skin in the most appallingly intimate place—and something—something else—what?

He moved as if he would overwhelm her with his body, his breathing savage and quick in her ear, his movements raising waves of a teasing, extraordinary stimulation from the mortifying spot where he pressed her. The electrifying feeling flushed through her: a rising, thickening pleasure, drawing her muscles taut, making her body arch toward him instead of away.

He lifted himself on his hands. For an instant she looked up at him, her lips parted in hot chagrin—and what he did then amazed her. The peculiar pleasure of his pushing contact began to hurt—she shrank downward with instinctive avoidance, but he seemed not to realize it; his eyes were closed; he came fully against her—
inside
her!—with a powerful move, an aggressive thrust in a place she could not even name.

And it
hurt
. It hurt them both, for as she let out a sharp gasp, he arched his head back and his whole body wrenched and shuddered. A sound like an anguished groan vibrated in his throat. He held above her, forced into her, the muscles in his shoulders and arms and chest taut with strain.

Leda realized that she was making little sounds of distress with each breath, frightened whimpers, choking back astonishment and panic. The moment of frozen violence seemed an infinity.

He let go of an explosive breath. His body eased its rigid tension. He sucked in air as if he had been sprinting hard, lowering himself onto her with shivers she could feel running through his arms, with rhythmic shudders that pressed him into her in smaller convulsions.

It hurt still. It was very uncomfortable, burning in that secret place, joined with him. He did not look into her face, nor relieve her of his weight. But he rested his head in the pillow next to her ear, stroking her hair, over and over. "Leda," he whispered. "Oh, God—Leda."

And she thought hysterically:
How stupid I have been
.

This was it. This.

Now…
now
I am a fallen woman.

He knew she was crying. Through the pounding of his own heartbeat, he felt rather than heard the little twitch of each sobbing breath.

Shame and passion consumed him. In his mind, he rose and left her, ending the offense—ending it, at least, if he could not change it. But his body only closed around her, his arms enfolding her; already he wanted to move in her again.

Instead he kissed her and spoke to her, trying to comfort her when he didn't even know what he was saying. He kissed her eyes and the tears on her cheeks; he kissed her bared shoulder where the gown was pulled down tight against her arm. He said her name, and tried to say that he was sorry, to explain, when there was no explanation but himself. He could not control himself; he could not.

She felt… delicious. Lush and erotic beneath him. He knew from her tears that he'd hurt her, and it unnerved him that he felt such exquisite pleasure.

"Oh!" she murmured, as if it surprised her when he pressed into her again.

He rose onto his elbows, nuzzling her cheek with his lips, drying her salt tears with his tongue. She closed her eyes as he kissed her lashes and brows.

The sight of her with her throat bared: pale skin and her hair thrown loose all around on the pillows… luscious, erotic, exciting… renewed fire washed through his veins. He tried to console her, but the consolation became sensual, his kisses harder and deeper, in places that he longed to taste.

He put his hand beneath her breast, lifting it, bending his head down to savor the soft roundness beneath her gown. A vivid recollection of how she had felt beneath his tongue last night made him open his mouth again, licking flannel against her skin.

She made a small sound, a faint half-protest, shifting beneath him. And then—he felt some of the rigidity flow out of her, and a new, lithe tension take its place.

His tongue found the tip of her breast, circling it, dampening the flannel. She made a sharper move, a quick sob and a shiver beneath him. The gown fell fully open, exposing her nipple to him: round and gorgeous it was, deep pink against white.

The smoldering fire in him flamed. He pressed his lips against her breast as he pressed himself harder into her. His mouth opened and he drew his tongue ardently across the plump nub. He pulled it between his teeth, and she made the sweetest sound he had ever known in his life—a gasp that was not pain at all.

His hand came up to cradle her other breast, to caress and taste them both, while she kept her eyes closed and made those small, constricted noises.

He knew what caused her pain; it was his invasion of her—and in some deep and corrupt part of him, he understood that this other caressing could assuage the hurt. Old lessons, half-forgotten, from a place in himself that he hated.

But she was arching beneath him, so beautiful in her rosy warmth that the shame and anger burned away, fell into dust beside the reality of her in the silver light. He held her and pushed deep again, with that rush of pleasure and lust surging through him, drawing him upward to the flash point.

He began to move more forcefully, closing his eyes, caught in the intensifying sensation. It took longer this time, grew stronger; each thrust added height and exquisite heat, until he forgot to breathe… forgot to see or hear or think… forgot anything but the passion that engulfed him and burst into her like the shock of black powder set alight.