The Sometime Bride (24 page)

Still Blas did not move. But out of the darkness beside her Cat heard a tune. His soft baritone humming the exceedingly naughty song he had been singing the first time she saw him, rattling over the cobbles in an ox-cart loaded with casks of wine. He was a Bad Man, her Blas. How could he use such a precious moment as a weapon against her? Cat’s face crumpled into a mask of pain. She turned farther onto her side, presenting her husband with nothing more inviting than her stiff back.

The tightness in her stomach must be the champagne, she told herself. This awful gripping
something
that refused to go away. This fluttering, demanding pull towards the unknown. It had to be the champagne. Why then was it so much like the wondrous burgeoning excitement she felt when they played their daring game? That flood of feeling that must be teased and teased and ultimately controlled until one of them finally gave in. Not to the demanding waves of sensation but to reality. Breaking the spell by running away.

Cat stifled a gasp as warm fingers feathered across her skin. On the soft mound of one buttock, a place where even Blas had never touched her before. Her body skyrocketed into panicked sensation. As his fingers traced small circles against her soft vulnerable skin, Cat clamped her jaws shut and remained frozen to the bed. After a series of butterfly caresses, the fingers climbed to the small of her back. She thought she would go mad. Cat tensed, gulped a lungful of air. But never moved. This was merely a new wrinkle on a well-known game. Her only defense was control.

His caresses remained light and teasing, until he reached her shoulders. At the base of her neck he moved into a different rhythm, kneading and pulling at the knotted cords of her shoulders and neck. Tears of frustration stung her eyes. He had no right to be so good at this. To be able to bring such exquisite pleasure. To drag such feelings from her when she wished to be a woman of marble. But of course he had had a great deal of experience. On how many women had he practiced these wiles?

Eyes tight shut, Cat concentrated on fanning her jealousy while his lips followed the movement of his hands, tickling her nape, her back . . . When his mouth reached that incredibly sensitive area at the base of her spine, she nearly raised right off the bed. Nearly. Never,
never
would she let him know what he was doing to her.

Blas swore to himself with considerable fluency. In Spanish, Portuguese, and basic Anglo-Saxon. He might as well be caressing a woman of stone atop a sarcophagus. Undoubtedly, stronger measures were called for. Yet . . . he had hurt her once. In mind and body. And he was not going to do it again.

At least she had not run screaming from the room. Blas grinned, struck by the absurdity of Cat ever doing such a thing. No matter what he did, she would never leave him. Persistence was the only key to unlocking the prize. His Cat was a worthy opponent.

In one lithe movement he tipped her over onto her back and shoved the bedcoverings down to her toes. A long finger to her lips shut off Cat’s sharp protest. Wordlessly, their eyes sought each other through the gloom. Blas loosened his grip on the soft silk in his hand, ruthlessly repressing the violent need which had brought him to the brink of stripping his young wife bare. A vision of the night he returned from La Coruña rose up before him. He had taken the virginity of a young woman he had sworn to protect. He would douse his arousal in the courtyard fountain before he would repeat the sin of that night.

He should leave the Casa, return to Spain.

He wouldn’t, of course. He had waited for this moment too long. She was his wife. Wed and witnessed in a proper Anglican ceremony, the ancient words sounding through the cozy parlor of the old farmhouse, joining them together. Irrevocably.

There was nothing anyone could do to part them. Not the laws of church or state. The war. His parents. Thomas. Cat was his. Even if she still seemed to think they were playing the Game with only frustration at its end.

But when he reached for the hem of her nightgown, he found his hand gripped in the velvet vise of fingers half the size of his own. Blas groaned her name aloud. “Damn it, woman, it’s you I want, not a handful of silk.” Instinctively, he held her down as she tried to roll back onto her side.

“
Beast!” she hissed. “Go away, I do not want you.”

“
Oh, yes, you do.” In the next instant Cat found herself naked, flat on her back with her husband’s face buried in her belly, blowing kisses into the navel which had given her life. She thought she might die of it. He had no right to touch her in such treacherous places.

Of course he did
. With my body I thee worship . . .

With a long series of nibbled kisses and warm breaths Blas worked his way up her body, varying his path to coax each rosy nipples to a peek. Though they were as tempting as they were succulent, he kept on moving. His quest ended with Cat’s ear. He blew soft puffs of life which radiated through her, melting the marble into soft earthy clay open to the master’s touch.

This might be the only night of love she would ever know, Cat thought. Blas could disappear back into his English lair . . . to whatever unknown world he had sprung from. But now . . . tonight, even if he was just a man who wanted a woman, she would still have this night to remember.

First, however . . . he must suffer. For all the days and nights of his long absences. For his indifference. His rejection. Ah, yes, Blas the Bastard must work harder for redemption.

And, besides, his efforts at atonement were so deliciously enjoyable. And, surely, no one could call it defeat. Wasn’t this what she had always wanted? Blas. Aware he had a wife. Offering love.

Blas was too experienced not to realize he had won. Even as Cat contemplated with smug satisfaction the effect of continued resistance, her delicate bones dissolved into molten welcome. She accommodated herself to the hills and valleys of him, the tensile strength, the vibrant warmth of him. Her body sent messages her mind had forbidden.

Blas’s chuckle rumbled through both of them as Cat wilfully turned her head away from the lips which drifted from her ear down to her mouth. Silly chit. Did she think to continue the game even after they both knew she had lost? Undaunted, his lips butterflied their way down the side of her cheek and kept on going. There were many ways to kiss a woman, and he would be happy to prove that her luscious mouth was not his sole quarry.

By the time he had nibbled his way to her breast, she was no longer able to stifle a sharp gasp as, this time, his teeth tweaked her nipple. Blas heaved his own sigh of contentment as, having survived the preliminary skirmishes, he now settled down to demonstrating his skill in the contest called love. At long last he had his wife where he wanted her. He approached her breast with all the concentration of a skilled general to a battle. He nibbled, licked, blew upon the wet tip, causing Cat’s muscles to quiver and clench from her womb to her toes. Her heart threatened to hammer its way through her chest. Blas pulled a good portion of her breast into his mouth and sucked upon it as if only this one thing could give him life. And when he had done all that he could with one of his wife’s amply rounded mounds, he turned his attention to the other, finding it as perfect as its twin.

Cat never remembered the exact moment she stopped trying to make her own rules for the game. One moment she lay there, ostensibly inert, and the next she had one hand twined through his long mat of hair, the other running up and down his back, urging him on. Surely, it must be a sin to know so much pleasure. To be overwhelmed by sensations she had not known existed.

Particularly, if one were not quite sure one was married.

Although it was a hot June night, Cat felt a chill when he abandoned her breast, but her loss was momentary as his lips continued their travel downward, pausing once again at her navel, her lower belly, her . . .
Ah, deus!
What was he doing? This
must
be a sin.

Blas groaned as Cat stiffened beneath him. With an effort he forced himself away from his wife’s most secret flesh. It was not necessary to teach her everything in one night. For a moment he sank his teeth into his lower lip, clenched his fists. Tonight was a far greater demand on his control than he had ever exercised in their Game. He had come so far, waited so long. And had no idea why she was so angry.

Gently, warily, Blas took his wife’s hand in his, leading her fingers to his swollen flesh. “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured. “Last time I hurt you . . . because you were a virgin and because you were not ready for me. Tonight will be different, I swear it. Touch me, Cat. Feel me. It will be all right, I promise you.”

He was hard and wet, throbbing with life. And terrifying. Cat thought she had forgotten the pain. Love conquered all, did it not? A whimper escaped her lips. She pulled her hand away, burrowed back into her pillows. She was an idiot. A coward.

She could not help herself.

“
Listen to me, Cat,” Blas said with only the smallest quaver to betray what his patience cost him. “I am going to touch you and love you in every way I know until you are certain in your mind as well as your heart that I am not going to hurt you. Do you understand what I’m saying? I am not going to hurt you. Nor am I going away. We are going to stay right here until you feel, right down to your toes, that what we are doing is right and beautiful and meant to be. And when I’ve shown you what exquisite pleasure it can be, we’ll rest awhile and do it all over again. I wanted tonight to be perfect, but it doesn’t have to be. We have tomorrow and all the rest of our lives. So, come and be my wife. In all the best that
wife
can mean.”

It was as close to a declaration of love as she would ever hear from him, Cat thought. The only mention of a possible future together which had ever passed his lips. All else became unimportant. When his fingers traced her inner thighs, she smiled into the darkness. When he parted the lips of her cleft, she welcomed the invasion. She arched her back and moved against his fingers, astonished by the building waves of something far beyond her wildest imaginings. There was room in her only for this mysterious entity, this awesome, incredible something which took her out of herself, out of time and space and into some fantasy of unknown and inexplicable delight.

Ah, no, he could not leave her now!
The parting was brief, his fingers replaced by what had seemed so impossibly huge and hurtful. There was no pain, only a gentle pressure as he moved farther and farther inside her. Exactly where she wanted him. Exactly where he belonged. When he began to move inside her, Cat knew everything he had told her was true . . . and yet, it was far more than words could ever describe.

Blas dug his nails into his fingers, using pain to keep his body in control. He would not hurt her, would not frighten her, would not give in to the frenzy to spill his seed in her until she had taken her full measure of pleasure from this night. When he felt the waves of convulsions ripple through her, Blas held her tight, murmuring words of love. Then, and only then did he give in to his need, plunging hard inside her only twice before he was overwhelmed by the little death, the stuff of dreams. The night exploded into showers of sparkling color. His tanned body, glistening with sweat, fell heavily onto her petite frame. He buried his soaking waves of black hair in her shoulder and knew he had truly come home at last.

In the morning Cat told him about Major Martineau. For if she did not, someone else would.

Blas had been leaning on one elbow, quietly studying the perfection of his wife’s sleeping form, indulging in the satisfied glow of knowing he had finally done something right. That never again would he have to restrain his need for her . . . that, God willing, she would be with him forever. Her eyes fluttered open. She gave him a lazy, tantalizing smile, and he knew her thoughts were the same as his own.

And then the loving green eyes clouded as Cat realized she must tell him he was not the only man to sleep in her bed. A shudder shook her small frame. Steadying her nerves by reaching for Blas, she pressed her fingers against lips opening to question her change of mood. “There is something I must tell you,” she whispered.

He kissed the tips of her fingers . . . and waited. Before she was three sentences into her tale, Blas was gripping her arm so tightly it was all she could do to keep from crying out. “You must understand!” Cat interjected. “He did not touch me. Not in that way. Truly, Blas. Truly he did not!”

He unleashed her arm and bounded out of bed, pacing the room like a lion at bay, muttering something which sounded like “bleeding bugger,” but Cat thought she must be mistaken. If it was English, the words had no meaning for her. “Tell me,” he rasped. “Just tell me.”

“
How can I talk when you are so . . . raging? Like a bull in the arena.”

“
Finish it!”

So she told him, choking out the story, warily gauging his reaction to her every word as he stomped up and down, his emotions as naked as his body.

In the end he came back to the bed, sinking down beside her, locking his gaze to hers. “And that was all there was to it?”

“
Yes.
Absolutamente
, yes.”

Whatever Martineau was, Blas admitted, the man was shrewd and clever. And absolutely right that Blas the Bastard had been in a good many situations where the aid of a woman meant the difference between life and death. Nor had he ever taken sexual favors which were not freely offered. He would grant Martineau the courtesy of being of similar mind. That his Cat would have offered her favors never entered his head.