Teresa Medeiros Read online

  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.

  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 quaki
ng 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?”