Chapter Sixteen #2
He was moving closer, his weight bowing the support of her knees until they caved apart, placing him at the base of her stomach, and forcing the pounding to strengthen into a ear-filling beat.
“Because you doona’ comprehend what you do.”
He rolled onto his back, taking the coverlet with him, and if the chemise wasn’t fit exactly to every part of her, it would have gone, too.
Lisle looked down at the man in her lap, and wondered at her sanity.
He folded his arms across his chest, making the masculine bulging even more visual and distinct. She frowned.
“What is it?” he asked.
“You,” she replied. “This. Your strength. The ease with which you put all of it on display.”
“’Tis a weapon, Lisle. Doona’ mistake it for anything else.”
“Your body is a weapon?”
“As is yours.”
He moved his vision to include her tulip cups. Then he moved it back to her face. Lisle colored.
“There the resemblance ends. I know the penalty.”
“Penalty?” she asked.
“Aye. And I pay it…every time. Effortlessly. Without thought. Without regret and recrimination. You are different.”
“I am?”
He sighed. Everything on him moved with it. “You are a very handsome woman. Worse, you are a woman of passion, fire, and endless ecstasy.”
“Ecstasy?” she asked, although her lip quivered on the word.
“And I am doing my level best to ignore all of that.”
That had her frowning. He was reaching up and running a finger along the side of her cheek, ending at her chin. “Why?”
“Do you wish to be here?” he asked.
Lisle looked away, focusing for a moment on the fireplace that had seemed so warm and inviting earlier, and felt now like it was endless leagues away.
“Doona’ look away from me to answer that. Look here. Right here.”
He was lifting his head and pointing to his eyes. Lisle bent her head and complied, looking as deeply into his eyes as he would let her. There wasn’t a hint of anything save opaque black to be seen on the surface. She wondered why.
“Now…do you wish to be here or na’?” he asked.
“I…doona’ know. Perhaps,” she replied softly.
The amber was back, accompanied by a groan.
“I am not exhausted enough for this!” He exclaimed it, and then proved the words by rolling back onto his hands and knees and putting his face very close to hers.
That way, she had to feel every breath slipping over her face, watch every heave of his chest, and tremble all over with every bit of what he must be referring to when he called it passion.
“For what?” she asked right back, snarling slightly with the words, and sending her eyes all over him, since he’d arrayed himself for that purpose right in front of her. That much she understood.
“This!”
He reached forward to grip her shoulders; then he slammed her to his chest, crushing her tulip-encased bosom against the thick, heavy smell of him, melding himself into lace-covered sweat, and making her think her lawn chemise was too much material after all.
Then he was looking at her, like he was asking something.
Then he was filling his nose with the smell of her lips, her cheeks, and moving to an ear, and doing everything except the one thing she wanted.
His arms were as hard as they’d looked, and weren’t giving her much room to breathe as he continued his exploration.
“So sweet.” She thought she heard him murmur it, but it could be a mistake of the drum beating through her temples, and thumping everywhere along her. There was definitely a drum, pounding hard and in perfect rhythm to every one of her increased attempts for breath.
“So…passionate. So trusting. So open. So…clean. Fresh. So innocent.”
Lisle tried to turn her head to find his mouth, but he was denying that, too.
She should have had Mary take out her braid before she’d dismissed the woman.
It was just making it easier for him to slide his lips and breathe his words along her neck and over her shoulders, and everywhere but against her lips, where she wanted them.
“How…do you ken such?” she asked in the room he gave her.
“You reek of it, love. I doona’ trust only my nose, either. I trust all my senses. All of them.”
Love, she thought. There was that word again, but coming from him it couldn’t mean what it was supposed to. It couldn’t. The devil didn’t know what love was.
“Langston?” she asked.
He was inhaling and breathing all about the back of her neck and making shivers that were moving from there to the tips of her bosom, making little pinpricks of sensation that were tormenting her with the proximity of male flesh they were pressed against. From there, it was a quick drop all the way to where the chemise hem was, and that part of her really was on fire.
“Aye?” He whispered it, sending more rivulets to follow those already in motion, and that had her squirming and shoving, and doing her utmost to unlock his arms. All of which got her a chuckle, and that made a worse sensation as it traveled over her back, and settled into the same path that the other shivers had gone.
“Langston!” she tried again, sharpening her voice.
“You doona’ ken what you do,” he replied harshly.
“I know I doona’, but I want to do it!”
The shuddering that shook him with those words was made worse as he shoved himself onto his back, taking her with him and lifting her free of the remaining coverlet.
Then he was running his arms all along her back and over her buttocks, and along the backs of her thighs that had never felt such a thing.
Lisle gasped, and he had the motion, holding her lower lip between both of his while he sucked on it.
That had her moaning, and he moved his mouth then, opening it to capture the sound, while his hands shifted, holding her loins tightly against a part of him possessing heat, and strength, and solid rigidity.
The sound of a long horn blast filled the room, growing in intensity and stridency, and it was followed by three shorter ones. Langston matched the cadence, moving her with it, the motion bringing her upward, and then back down, using the strength of his upper body, and nothing else.
“The horn.”
Lisle pulled her lips from his to say it, but he didn’t allow her time to say more before he had her mouth again, and this time he wasn’t allowing her any resistance at all.
Lisle felt the straps holding the tulip cups in place moving as he peeled them down, rolling them into snakes of ribbon atop her arms.
She heard pounding, and it wasn’t any internal thing. It was nearly shaking the bed with it.
Langston lifted his head away, stared sightlessly at her for several moments, and then rolled his eyes up as he flung his head backwards. He was in luck that the mattress was soft, she thought, with a reaction such as that.
“My lord!” There was a frantic knocking at the antechamber door. “They’re at the drawbridge! At the bridge!”
“Run, Lisle.” Langston lifted his head and his look pierced her in place. “Run. To your chamber. Doona’ look back. You make me forget everything. I canna’ allow such a thing. Not now. Bloody hell. My arms have the weight of boulders.”
He was heaving great breaths when he finished the words, and it might be true, since his arms slid away with the weight of them.
“Why?” she asked.
“Are you still here?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“Because you need help.”
He must have thought that the most amusing thing he’d ever heard, if the laughter that came from him was any indication. Lisle went onto her hands and knees, and then she was crawling down over the side of the bed.
“Go through the connecting door.”
“’Tis locked.” She checked it anyway. He raised himself.
“How did you get in here?”
“Through the hall.”
“In that attire? I’ll have you across my knee if you attempt such a thing again.”
“Your Lordship!” The voice was calling louder.
“Where is your key?” Lisle asked.
“Somewhere out in the bushes.”
She stared. He sighed heavily.
“Open the armoire. Get a cloak. Put it on and sit in one of those chairs, and try to be invisible.” He motioned with his head toward the same chair she’d already been in.
“They’re in the courtyard, my lord!”
Langston groaned, rolled to the side of his bed, and stood, watching her.
He didn’t have much time, and he wasted it watching her?
He had control of his arms again, because he had no trouble making a motion with his fingers for her to keep walking.
She had the cloak wrapped about her, covering even her head, and then she was perched back in the chair.
“Come in, Etheridge. Assist me. I’ll be a moment.”
Lisle slipped open the cloak a bit and wished she hadn’t as Langston was already stepping into Sassenach attire, slapping a belt into place while his valet buttoned the shirt and started tying a cravat-thing about his neck, all without stopping for anything that looked like a bath.
They were doing it in such silent efficiency it looked like something done often and without wasted effort.
They were also being silent for a reason.
Langston had put his finger to his lips to guarantee it.
The valet was combing his hair and handing him a walking stick thing, and then they were both gone, Langston looking dapper and cool, and just like a Sassenach-leaning laird should.
Lisle let out her breath. She hadn’t even realized she was holding it.
She’d given away her knowledge. She only hoped he’d been so caught up in the same emotion her body was still suffering through that he hadn’t caught it.
She’d heard the horn and knew it meant trouble, because it had come in three blasts.
One blast might mean the opposite. She’d never heard two.
She wondered what that meant. The long, lone tone she heard throughout the morning could mean anything, but today it had meant rescue was needed in the chapel.
That certainty she’d be willing to bargain with anything over.