Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
O f course he would be here, leaning against the horse’s backside, hands shoved into pockets, head tilted back so he could stare at the moon.
Emma stared, too, but at him. The long, lean length of him, the thick dark hair, the pale profile, still stubbly in the growing evening gloom. Her sisters had risked scandal to bring them together, and the magnetic need drawing her across the garden whispered— they were right to do so, take something for yourself for once.
Take him.
He stiffened, whipped around, that her only sign she must have made a sound, and before she could take another step, he was at her side, head bowing just a bit to rest against hers, hands catching hers up and squeezing. The perfect miracle of a moment.
Dropped just as quickly as it had coalesced. He stepped back, and distance whooshed between them.
She hated it.
“I want to leave,” she whispered.
“Where?”
“Anywhere. With you. I”—she ventured a shaky step forward—“have been thinking.”
“About?”
“Joining a certain book club. I find myself much in need of an education. And”—she licked her lips—“suddenly without a teacher.”
His hands curled into fists one finger at a time, then he set his steps toward the garden gate.
“Where are you going?” She hurried after him.
When he reached the gate, he stepped through, slamming it closed between them but leaning over close enough to kiss should she wish.
She did wish, even with every window looking down at them.
“I am going to the Hotel Hestia on Conduit Street. You might remember it from our brief stop yesterday. An hour before midnight, there will be a hack waiting for you in the mews behind Clearford House. If you step into it, you are mine. Do you understand? It is your choice, and you have hours to consider. But once that hack rattles off into the night, once you step into The Hestia… no turning back. And once we close the door behind us, Lady Emma Blackwood, the door in front of us is opened, and we step through it together. Yes?”
He did not wait to hear her answer, and the stout clip of his boots echoed through the crisp evening air.
When she entered the Macintosh townhome, she spoke with Aunt Georgie only vaguely. Had anyone seen them? No. Were there whispers? None had been heard. Was her reputation safe? Only time would tell.
When she waited for her bath, she looked out the window in the direction of the mews. And when the house soaked into silence, stillness, she downed a plain gown, soft slippers, and a black cloak, then crept into the darkness of the night.
The hack was waiting.
The trip was short.
And a man made, entirely it seemed, of shadow and moonlight stepped out to help her onto the street in front of a hotel where windows glowed with the almost otherworldly allure of candlelight. Samuel. Her hand fit perfectly inside his, and his arms felt like home, warm and safe. And when the door of the hotel room on the second floor closed behind him, she threw her cloak and met the eyes of the man she would build a future with.
No more storms in Samuel’s gray gaze, only silver bright and sparking. He pinned her against the door, his hands engulfing either side of her face, digging into her hair as he kissed her hard and thorough and said, “I’m going to marry you, Emma.” A laugh, joyous and lusty. “I am going to make you my wife, and no one can stop me.”
“Good.” She scratched at his throat, delightfully free of a cravat. “Excellent. Because I am going to marry you. You will be my husband, and no one can stop me .”
“God, I adore you.”
And she adored being adored. By him. Only by him because only he knew how to do it, only he had been made to do it.
She loved him. Such simple words. So difficult to say. But she would say them. Somehow. Some way. Because she had been made to love him, too, was the only woman who would know how to do it right.
For now, the words stuck in her throat, so she kissed him, pressed him back, away from the door, unwilling to be trapped, even beneath such a hard, enticing body. He moved where she willed, and he opened where she wished, curving his neck to the side as she explored the strong length of it. No cravat. How curiously exciting. New territory to explore. So much new territory.
And she would see it all, touch it all tonight.
He explored her, too, his fingers seeking pins in her hair and tossing them aside. His hands fisting around long strands and tugging her head back so he could kiss up the line of her neck, over her chin, back to her lips, where they breathed together, tongues tasting, tangling.
The buzzing sensation crawling across her body as her belly tightened, as the place between her legs ached. She knew this feeling—a new acquaintance, but one she hoped to come to know intimately and often.
And she remembered well how buttons could give way to delights. So, she found those marching down his waistcoat, and when she freed them, he shrugged the garment off his body.
Shirtsleeves only now, and he appeared to be in a race with her. Her bodice sagged. When had he untied the tapes of her gown? He’d dragged her chemise up, whispering it between her body and her stays, so he could pull it down her arm and kiss the round of her shoulder while his hands seemed everywhere all at once—back and breasts, jaw and backside. Her limbs quickly turning heavy and slow, and her entire body at risk of dropping into the door at her back, giving in.
Not yet.
She walked him forward, tugging at his shirt, pulling it loose from his waistband, shoving it up until he reached for it, too, his hands crossing in front of him to grasp the hem, finally a glimpse of warm skin and taut muscle and—
Heavens.
She rocked away as if burned. She’d never seen a naked man before. Wasn’t this… wasn’t this a momentous occasion.
He stilled, let the hem of his shirt drop, covering the bewitching stretch of skin, and bent low to murmur between them, “Too fast, luv? Slow down?” He straightened and cursed, crossed the room, leaving her in a cold void, wanting his warmth. “Apologies. I’m a nodcock.”
“You are,” she whispered. He wasn’t.
“We will slow down. We will even… we will wait. Until we are wed. Until you are ready. Until—”
“I catch my breath. Wait until I catch my breath, Samuel.” She followed him, stopping at his side to look out the window with him, latching on to his arm to feel him solid next to her. “That is all.”
He caught her lips in a kiss. “Whatever you desire, everything you desire, I will give it to you.”
No man had ever asked her what she desired; no man had cared to know; no man, likely, had known she even possessed desires of her own.
This man did.
Happiness like soap bubbles popped along her skin, made her giddy, made her tease. “Hmm. Can I have… a room just for sewing?”
“Which one? Doesn’t matter. Take them all.”
“Can I continue making matches?”
“If it is what you wish to do.”
“A puppy?”
“What kind shall we get?”
“Twelve kittens to match our sisters.”
He groaned. “If it pleases you.”
She laughed, inhaled for courage, and nudged him so he faced her, tangled her hands in his shirt. “I wish only to be able to lean on you as often as you lean on me, to keep our sisters safe and happy, and that we will”—heavens, this was bold of her—“never sleep apart once wed.” Falling asleep to the sound of his movements in the room last night had felt a bit like bliss. Knowing he was so nearby, watching, protecting. And that knowing had knit a heavy blanket about her, rocking her into a deep sleep.
She drew a line down the length of his nose, then brushed the pad of her thumb across his lips. “It is silly, but—”
“You have it. Everything , Emma, it is yours. I meant it.”
Her chemise felt frail between her fingers as she pinched the gaping fabric at the bodice above her stays. And her skin beneath, hot and alive as she inhaled the warm air. As much as her soul had needed his gifts, her body needed his touch. She glided her knuckles across her breasts, breathing deeply, then leaping and catching hold of the hem of his shirt.
Ready now. To see a naked man. She almost laughed. But then almost became reality, and he wrapped his arms low around her back to keep her upright. Then she peppered kisses along his jaw and on the tip of his nose, and then finally, she threw up his shirt. He disappeared for a white-linen moment, then reappeared, the cockiest grin slanting crooked across his face.
Men… looked like this? Golden and massive in the leaping shadows of the fire, hard where she was soft, and cut like diamonds where she fluffed out like a pillow. She traced those muscled planes, those cuts, connecting the few small moles dotted across his skin at the collarbone, ribs, and hip. Her fingers traveled a zigzag that made him hiss and made his hands bracketing her hips flex, dig into her flesh.
She brought the storm back to his eyes.
And built a storm inside herself, too. He must have known. Those talented hands at her hips spun her around, made short work of her stays, and soon they dropped, and he spun her again to face her, to hold her gaze as he raked her shift up her body and off, tossing it away. A natural response, her arms flinging slanted across her body, hiding.
An insistent reaction, his eyebrow arching high, his hands peeling her arms away. “What I want, Sweetness, is for you not to hide from me.”
“How will I know what you want? What you need?” Doubt creeping like cold fingers across her skin.
He walked a slow circle around her, connecting the dots strewn across her with his own hungry fingertips—the cloud of freckles across her shoulders, the mole high on her backside. “I’ll tell you, show you. I will not always have to, I think. Since we’ve met, you’ve known me better than anyone, owned a piece of my soul. You’ll know, luv,” he whispered in her ear. “But if I am wrong, and you ever find yourself lost, just do anything.” He stood before her again, his hands settling around her waist, his muscles bunching. “Because it is you, Emma, and everything you do is perfect. For me.” He picked her up, held her high as she braced her hands on his shoulders with a laugh that felt like life. He spun her, grinning up, his joy a light that would break through any storm. When he lowered her, it was to the mattress, and she was open and bare beneath his starving gaze.
He tackled the buttons of his fall. One. By. One. Until his trousers slipped low on his hips. Then fell, pooling in the floor around his feet. He stepped out of them, settled a knee on the mattress next to her thigh, rubbed his hands up and down her arms, her shoulders, her neck, as—what had the book called it?—his man’s yard rose up between them.
Not an actual yard. Thank God. But still significant to her untrained eye. No fear scorched her desire, though. She’d already tamed that beast.
“You smile like you won something grand.”
“I am something grand.” The words ridiculous and conceited, but oh, how he made her feel just that way.
His eyes flashed. “That’s right, Sweetness. You are.” And he tipped her chin up to take her mouth, pushed her shoulder back to crawl over her body, to claim her.
Could he claim something that had already been given?
Semantics. Uninteresting, useless.
Much more fascinating, the way he rocked his body into hers, his shaft pressing into her belly. Much more consuming, the way he cradled her head and kissed her hard and demanding. Much more alluring, the way his skin felt beneath her palms—warm and alive like hers.
The kiss shifted direction like a wind, a gale one moment then a summer breeze, long and sweet and slow the next, making Emma sigh.
While his seeking hands made her moan. Naughty hands. Thorough hands. Learning every bit of her. She must learn as well. The slope of his neck, the curve of his spine, the hard muscle on either side, perfect for digging fingernails into. And every roaming inch she conquered, he gave her something back.
A hiss at her nails along his neck.
A groan as her fingernails scored his muscle.
And when she dared to lay flat her palms over the hard, rounded muscles of his backside, he jerked and moaned her name.
“Like that,” he breathed. “God, just like that, Emma.”
“And like this?” She squeezed.
And he growled. A peculiar reaction that shot a thrill through her; it made her shiver; it left her wet and moaning.
And when his kissing lips found her breasts, all sound caught in her throat, her back arching, her hips pressing against him, needing, needing—
He knew what for. He brought his knee up, grinding his thigh against her center, and when she rolled against him, he growled again, needing, needing—
She knew exactly what, and it proved a short trip from the lovely rounds of his backside, around the stone-hard muscles of his thighs, to the stiff length of him digging into her belly. Less hesitation now, than before, in wrapping her hand around him. And when he slammed his hands into the mattress on either side of her, throwing his head back as some guttural sound ground in his throat, her hesitation disappeared entirely.
“Now what?” she asked against his mouth when she surged up to kiss him. Her body cried out for more, her breasts aching, her belly clenching as she bent her legs and dug her heels into the mattress. And she knew what more was. His fingers had imitated it, his tongue, too. But… but…
He bent his head to lick a circle round her nipple. Really, to drive her mad, to drive her higher. She drove him higher, too, with a single flick of her tongue across the head of his shaft, with the slow drag of her hand up and down it. He slipped a finger inside her. Yes . And he rubbed a circle around that nub in her curls between her legs that felt so indescribably perfect when he did just that .
“Are you ready?” he whispered, deep near her ear. “I can wait.”
“Do not wait.” She placed hot kisses along the line of his neck, clawing at his back, wiggling against his thigh, needing to go higher, no matter how high she had already flown.
“You’re in control, luv. Position me between your legs and help me go where my fingers were.”
Yes . She did as he asked, her heart pumping loud in her ears, his mouth moving over hers with barely controlled restraint. His hand worked diligently at her center. If he was restraint, she was wild abandon, writhing, begging for what only he could give her.
The fall. Off the edge and over the cliff and into his arms, into that future they would share, stretching out in kisses and laughter, in tears and holding one another while they fell.
Fell together in every way.
He wanted her to ride him. Wanted her creamy thighs parted around his hips, and her rising up above him, glorious. And all his. One day. And such a quick learner. One day soon.
But for now, he waited, brushing the head of his cock against her opening.
She moaned, her eyes going glassy. She was so close. But she struggled, still, to grasp what she needed.
Did she need permission? Permission to take something for herself, to put her pleasure first?
Forget permission. He demanded it.
“Come for me, Sweetness,” he said, the head of his shaft teasing her opening while his fingers teased that little pearl hiding in her curls. “Come, Emma, scream for me.” He bit at her earlobe and curled his hand away from her for a breath, for two. “Tell me what you want.”
She cried out, a sound of loss as she urged him back to her. Needing his touch? Good.
He gave it to her, demanding at her ear in tones so low only she could hear, “Take it, Emma. Now.”
And she did. She fell, she screamed, and she tumbled mind and body into perfect pleasure. He watched her fall. It drove his own pleasure higher, the fluttering of her eyelids as they closed, the tangled red ropes of her hair spread like vines in every direction, her plump mouth parted on his name, her lush body arching and as she writhed, as he stroked into her.
Tight. Wet. Perfect.
But her so still, so suddenly. Needing him.
He brushed the hair off her face and brushed kisses along her jaw. “Scared, luv?”
She shook her head.
“Touch me. Where it pleases you.”
Her hands hesitated inches above his body, then settled against his skin, and he could breathe again. She smoothed palms down his back and over his arse, she caressed love into his arms and shoulders.
“Now tell me where you like me to touch you best.”
She inhaled. She exhaled. She said, “B-behind my ear.”
He nuzzled her there, licked and kissed until she laughed and relaxed and shivered.
“My breasts.”
“Me, too.” He set his face between them and kissed the little valley there, nibbled along the lovely bottom curve of one until he found her nipple, then he loved that, too, his other hand caressing her other breast, rolling the other nipple to a perfect peak. He held control tightly. Damn but he needed to move. Control a physical pain, a necessary urge. Yet he would not. Not until she wanted it. But every breath taken under restraint produced a crack in it.
Another inhale, another exhale, and she moved first, rolling her hips against his. The relief immediate, profound, rushing through him like flood waters through a small stream. She urged him on again, her nails digging into the muscle of his arse.
Slowly, slowly, he dragged out of her, thrust back in, watching her eyes, her lips, her cheeks, for any sign of pain.
Saw none. Only… curiosity, only the gentle parting of pleasure on her lips.
So, he went back to kissing her because that’s all he wanted to do. Kiss her and rock in and out of her, pulling all the way out before slipping back in again and again.
Until the last stroke put a final crack in his control, and the flood drowned him. The small kisses became one hard one, all teeth and tongue as he thrust into her harder and faster, and she lifted her hips, clumsily at first, then with clearer rhythm until, finally, she whispered his name against his lips.
And he shattered.
No, nothing so damn destructive. Who the hell had words for what happened. But his body knew right when it felt it. His heart knew right when hers beat against his own.
He collapsed against her. Damn. Too heavy. He rolled to the side, taking her with him as he’d done in the carriage, too tired to drag them both beneath the blankets, too tired even to kiss. Just damn… glad she was in his arms. Damn ecstatic she was his.
How long had he waited for this woman without knowing her? That’s what he’d been doing. He knew that now. Waiting. All those years, worth it now he knew her, now he had her.
And all the years they would risk discovery and scandal and pain? His sisters and hers? That worth it, too?
He hugged her more tightly and faded into sleep.
Tried to.
She popped up and rested her weight on her forearm, drew a line down his forehead and nose and tapped his lips. “Wake up.”
He opened his eyes. “Why?”
“I thought I was sleepy at first, but I’m not. Oh.” The rising pink of her cheeks even visible in the flame-lit shadows of the night. “I’m not dressed.”
“No, Emma, you are not.”
She wriggled out of his arms and crawled beneath the blankets.
He followed her, tried to tug the covers back. No use hiding now he’d seen her.
She held on tight, though.
“Vixen,” he laughed.
“Cold,” she countered.
“Very well, then.” He leapt off the bed. “If you’re not tired. We should do something.”
“Aye. But what?” She sat up against the headboard, pulling the blankets with her, keeping her breasts covered.
He shook his head. “Shame. Ah, well. I’ll have plenty of time to look my fill. But for now…” He rummaged in the satchel he’d packed for the evening, found what he wanted, and joined her on the bed once more. He dropped them in her lap.
“Cards?”
He nodded, pulling on his shirt and sitting on the bed across from her.
The corners of her lips drooped as she followed the lowering hemline of his shirt. “Shame.” But she took up the cards and shuffled. “If I win, will you… surrender the shirt?”
“Only if you give up the blanket once I win.”
Her smile sealed the deal. “What game?”
“I prefer vingt-et-un.”
“You will not be surprised, perhaps, to find I do as well.”
“Not in the least.” Damn, he wanted to kiss her, but she kept the shuffling deck of cards in front of her like armor, like a charm to ward away amorous advances. No matter. He’d have her naked and under him in one hand.
She dealt the cards. They played. He lost.
“Do not scowl.” She clutched the blanket to her chest, refusing to let them slip. “You may have another chance to win. Now, off with the shirt, please. It is mine.”
He had it over his head and on the floor before she could finish her sentence.
“Yes…” Her brow furrowed, and her lips hung open bereft of sound as her gaze roved the length and breadth of his torso. The tip of her tongue appeared between her parted lips, teased the tip of her top, front teeth. “Well. Lovely.” She tried to shuffle the cards, but her fingers fumbled, and they flew into the air between them. “Ack! Oh!”
He gathered them up, laughing, and he shuffled them this time as she looked everywhere but at his cock, steadily rising to attention between them. What a game they played. Not the cards. This ease between them. He could play with her and plot with her. He could savor her and fight for her. Agreement, disagreement, teasing, and loving—it all came easy as breathing with Emma.
He dealt her a card on the smooth space of bed between their folded legs. “Emma Blackwood?”
“Hm?” She bit her thumbnail, studiously looking only at his face.
He dealt himself a card. “Are you going to marry me?” She’d come here. She’d given her body to him. She would marry him. But damn, he needed to hear it, needed that final brick in the home he’d been building for them in his imagination.
Her hand dropped to her lip as her face lit with delight. “Yes, I believe I will.”
He dealt her another card. “And will you let me announce it next week at my sister’s ball? Lottie hosts one every year at Clearford House in honor of our mother. She’d love nothing better than to be the one to break the news.”
Emma’s blanket-covered breasts rose and fell, and she ducked her head, her hair falling to hide her face. “I would like that.”
He dealt himself the final card, and they played, and she won quite before he had any notion what was happening. But before she had any understanding of what he was about, he swept the cards to the floor and ripped the blankets away and basked in the gasp he tore from her throat, in the joy and laughter in her eyes. And when he stroked into her again half an hour later, her moans against his skin where she kissed him, he knew no matter what the cards had said, he’d won.