Chapter Six
She wasn’t entirely certain how it happened, but they were lying back on the bed.
The heat of his body was seeping into hers, chasing away the chill that had clung to her since being caught in the rain.
Every aspect of it was intoxicating. His lips moving against hers, his hands stroking her shoulders and down her arms to her fingertips, only to return and repeat it again.
Slow, languorous, and yet there was intent in every stroke, every caress.
He was building toward something, something she recalled with perfect clarity though it had only ever occurred one time.
But every second of that last afternoon with him was forever burned in her memory.
Now, current sensations layered over memory and anticipation curled inside her, mixing with need and impatience.
“Malcolm, it isn’t exactly as if this is the first time,” she whispered, even as he kissed her neck.
“It’s the first time in a long time, and that counts,” he said. “We have no reason to rush.”
“Other than you’re driving me mad right now.”
He grinned at that. “The last six years have been painfully mundane. I welcome a little madness.”
“I dreamed of you,” she admitted. “Even when I wanted so desperately to hate you—sometimes I even succeeded at that—I still dreamed about you. Remembering every touch, every kiss… If we are to wed—”
“When, Cecily. Not if. When,” he corrected firmly.
“When… we will have all the time in the world and can take our leisure exploring one another. You showed me passion, Malcolm, and for six long years I’ve mourned the absence of it in my life.
I do not wish to wait any longer. I do not wish to go slow.
I want to feel that heated rush, to feel us both lose control just a little. ”
It was as if her words unleashed him. His mouth settled on her again, his kiss hungry and undeniable.
Clothing that had been a soft barrier between them simply vanished.
Stripped away with a skill that left her breathless.
And when his hand closed over her breast, his fingers teasing the hardened peak, she couldn’t stop the desperate moan that built within her from bursting forth.
Then he kissed his way down, his mouth covering the other peak and drawing deeply, ravenously.
The hunger it incited in her would not be denied.
Lifting her hips, Cecily rocked against the firmness of his thigh between her legs.
Arching against him, seeking more, seeking relief.
And he gave it. Pressing his thigh firmly against the center of her, intensifying both the pleasure and the need.
When it was no longer enough, only then did he ease down her body, his mouth trailing hot kisses over her skin until his mouth was poised only inches from her mound.
She shivered, anticipating what it would feel like—remembering what it had felt like in the past. But even those memories failed to adequately convey the power of it when his mouth moved against her, his tongue sliding between slick folds and dancing over flesh so sensitive that she cried out even as she clutched his shoulder, holding him to her.
The release took her without warning, crashing over her and through her like a rogue wave.
It consumed her. And when it had passed, he moved fully between her thighs.
The hardness of his arousal was impossible to mistake.
As he joined them together, she felt a small amount of pain, not so unlike the first time all those years ago.
But it was gone soon enough, and in its wake only that unbearable closeness remained, that feeling of being his in every way that mattered.
She’d never moved on, never sought to marry another because the idea of sharing herself in that way with anyone else had been anathema to her.
Thought fled. In its wake came only the rush of desire, their bodies straining together in that narrow bed, each of them climbing toward the peak. And when they both tumbled, it was together.
*
Malcolm lay in the darkness, Cecily pressed against his side as the storm outside slowly died.
It had roared in, wind and rain whipping everything into a frenzy as the rivers and streams crested their banks.
But now it had slowed to the merest drizzle.
The wind had grown quiet, thunder had faded, and the lightning—bright and fiery—had long since ceased in splitting the sky.
The rightness of that moment struck him. It was not lost on him that the last time they’d been in that hunting lodge, while out for a drive in his phaeton, it had been a summer storm, barely more than a squall, that had sent them seeking shelter inside.
Had this storm not been worse, had the rain not saturated the earth until the swollen rivers could hold no more, she’d have hidden there until danger had passed and he would have ridden on to Sedgewick Hall without an inkling of her presence.
He’d never much believed in destiny or fate, thinking them little more than childish fancies used to excuse bad luck, bad behavior, or fickle fortunes.
But he was no longer certain. For surely it must have been some powerful force that aligned the events—her mother’s schemes, his desperate desire to leave the city behind, her absconding, and a storm that was unlike anything he’d experienced had all brought them to their current point.
“You are thinking,” she murmured, her voice laced with playful accusation.
“Merely pondering the vagaries of fate—that what it once took from me has now been returned,” he mused quietly. “I married another because honor demanded it. But I never loved her. I tried. I did. I thought it would be easier if I could.”
“Did she love you?” Cecily asked softly.
“Not even a little. She never had. I was simply the goal her mother had set for her,” he answered with a kind of bare honesty that he had only ever shared with her.
“But you shared her bed.”
It was a difficult admission to make. One that both embarrassed and shamed him.
But she had the right to know, and he would not have secrets between them.
“No… the marriage with Elspeth was never consummated. The night of our wedding I drank myself into such a stupor that I passed out in the study. Still, I felt that honor and duty demanded it of us. Yet when I reluctantly attempted to join her in her chamber the next night, and again the night after that, she wept and cried so piteously at the prospect I simply decided it was not worth it. If there is one thing our family does not lack for, it is prospective heirs.”
She lifted her head, their gazes locking. “In other words, you may have married her, but you remained faithful to me.”
“I suppose I did,” he agreed. “I feel as if we’ve just been waiting for one another for six long years. Each of us spinning in place like tops until we could finally crash into one another again.”
“And all it took was a little rain.”