Chapter Twenty-Three
C hase held his breath as he waited for Tessa to join him in front of the fire. For one terrible moment, he worried she wouldn’t come to him. He desperately needed her tonight, more than he would ever have the courage to admit. He needed to lose himself in her softness, her warmth, her kindness… God help him, he needed her forgiveness. He needed to see in himself whatever traces of goodness she claimed to see in him.
She slipped her hand into his, then slid down onto the floor with him, and relief pulsed through him with every pounding heartbeat.
He whispered her name as he helped her sit on his lap. Her warm skin glowed with a golden sheen in the firelight, and the dark silhouette of her curves beneath the cotton gown flared heat in his loins. His hands trembled as he brushed her hair over her shoulders and down her back, letting the silky waves sift through his fingers. Every caress he took was oddly both soothing and arousing, but then, he expected nothing else from her, this woman who had proven herself to be the most surprising person he’d ever met.
He shifted her over him until she straddled him, bringing their faces even and her big eyes staring into his. Her smooth inner thighs brushed against the trousers he still wore, and the friction roused a tingle over his skin matched only by the gentle caresses of her fingers as she trailed them up his bare arms and over his shoulders to cup his face between her hands. When she leaned in to kiss him, the touch of her lips ached through him and tightened his gut, not in desire but in desperation to be the man she thought him to be.
He gently brushed a stray curl away from her cheek. “There’s a good man inside me who needs to be set free,” he said quietly, his voice as soft as the crackling fire beside them. “That’s what you said.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
He wrapped his arms around her and lowered his mouth to her ear. “Then set me free, Tessa,” he urged in a husky rasp. “Show me how.”
She nodded silently, then pulled back only far enough to wrap her arms around his shoulders and claim another kiss. Soothing but full of affection, her soft lips tantalized his until the tip of her tongue teased at their seam and cajoled him into opening his mouth for her. Her tongue slipped inside in a smooth sweep that was more comforting than arousing, more entreating than bold. But every glide of her tongue across his held a confidence that seeped into him—not of herself, but of him. The belief she held in him made him tremble.
She clasped the hem of her night gown and peeled it slowly up her body, over her head, and off, leaving her naked in the firelight.
Sweet Lucifer , she was beautiful. He trailed his hands over her bare body, following the flicker of firelight across her smooth skin as it played over her slender shoulders, down her breasts to the soft flesh of her belly and the curve of her hips. He’d seen her naked last night and knew how glorious she was. But what she was presenting him with tonight wasn’t nakedness but vulnerability. She was doing exactly as he’d asked of her and was showing him how to be free, and she had started by baring not only her body to him but also her soul.
She took his bottom lip between hers and sucked gently. The soft pull of her mouth tugged all the way down to the tip of his hard cock, still confined within tightening breeches. A groan fell from his lips, one she drank up when her mouth captured his. She was still largely inexperienced in physical intimacies, still innocent in so many ways, but her soothing caresses and gentle kisses were the touches of an angel. He knew when she whispered his name against his lips and pressed herself closer to him that he would find salvation with her. And when she placed a light hand to his shoulder and gently pushed him down to the floor on his back… heaven .
Still perched over him, Tessa leaned down to brush her mouth over his chest. Her long hair tickled his bare muscles as it fell over him, and his breath came rough and ragged, only to stop completely when her lips found his flat nipples. She teased each one with her tongue in turn, the way he’d done to her, and his stomach muscles contracted at each unintended graze of her teeth.
She placed a kiss to the center of his chest, right over his pounding heart, then raised her head to meet his gaze. Holding his eyes transfixed with hers, she slipped her hand down his body to his waist, where his need for her bulged unashamedly beneath his breeches. Her torturously slow fingers unfastened the buttons of his fall and reached inside to free him.
Chase sucked in a sharp breath through clenched teeth as she lifted herself over him on her knees, then slowly lowered, sliding him deep inside her tight warmth. Only then did she break eye contact with him, to close her eyes as her fingers clutched his chest muscles. For a long moment, she didn’t move, and being with her like that, buried inside her, her soft body surrounding his, filled him like an intoxicating drug. Not a physical yearning, he instinctively knew. Redemption .
She began to move. Soft little rocks of her hips, slow and steady…yet the gentle movement increased his need for her, one that went beyond mere physical release. His chest clenched around his heart as it slammed against his breastbone so fiercely he was certain she could feel it racing beneath her fingertips, certain she could feel the aching throb that pulsed through him and into her. Her trembling thighs squeezed his waist as she moved over him, forward and back, up and down…slow and deliberate. What they were doing together wasn’t bed sport, wasn’t even simple sex—they were making love, and the realization surged through him so intensely it shook him to his core.
Keeping himself buried inside her, he sat up and wrapped his arms around her, keeping her perched there on his lap as he began to rock her back and forth. The swaying of their joined bodies increased the growing need between them, and he could feel her oncoming release as her folds tightened around him, all the tiny muscles inside her bearing down deliciously around him.
A whimper fell from her as she wrapped her arms around his neck and locked her ankles at the small of his back, giving over completely to the pleasure he brought her. She clung to him, letting him thrust up beneath her with every arching rock of their bodies. She bit her bottom lip to stop the rising moan in her throat as her body tensed against his in sweet anticipation.
Her climax shuddered through her, and she gave a soft cry of joy as her body clenched and released around his with each lapping wave of pleasure that overcame her.
Chase rolled her onto her back, closed his eyes, and lost himself in deep plunges inside her. When he felt the rush of release overcoming him, he slipped from her tight warmth and squeezed his hard length between their bodies. He buried his face in her shoulder and gritted his teeth as he jerked against her. A growl from the back of his throat mellowed into a husky groan as he released himself in a rush of delicious bliss against the hollow of her hip.
He rolled onto his side and held her close, not moving, except for the joint pounding of their hearts and gasping breaths. Her body sagged bonelessly against him, hot and damp with perspiration, and the musky-sweet scent of making love filled his senses as happiness seeped over him.
For once, he couldn’t find any words—couldn’t find his voice even if he had known what to say that could impossibly make this moment any more perfect. All he could do was place a kiss to her temple and hope she understood how much she had changed him.
As their breaths slowly steadied and their heartbeats slowed, he knew he’d been granted redemption in her arms, just as he knew that forgiveness could now come, that he could accept his life for what it was and all the events that had brought him to this place, this moment…this woman.
“You are a good man, with a loving heart and a brave soul,” she whispered as she continued to cling to him, the words barely louder than a breath. “And I love you for it.”
He squeezed his eyes shut as her soft words cascaded through him. The overwhelming truth struck him—
In setting him free, she had captured him, body and soul.
*
A few hours later, Tessa woke gently from a deep sleep, with her eyes opening heavily and a yawn stifled on her lips. The darkness filling the room told her that dawn was still several hours away. Good. She wasn’t ready yet to surrender the night, especially given what faced them in the morrow. So she rolled over to snuggle closer to Chase and fall back asleep.
But the bed was empty.
Confused, she sat up and pushed her mussed hair away from her forehead as she searched for him, afraid he’d left to spend the rest of the night elsewhere.
A breath of relief eased from her to find him standing in front of the fireplace, gloriously naked as he lifted a glass of whiskey to his lips, staring down into the red coals at his feet. He hadn’t left her.
But even the sight of him, all chiseled planes and sculpted muscles that would have put Lord Elgin’s stone gods to shame, couldn’t prevent worry from twining up her spine. He felt a world away even though he stood only half a dozen feet from her, his broad shoulders slumped with distraction as he stared into the fire.
“Chase?” She pulled the coverlet up to her shoulders against the cool night air. “Is anything wrong?”
“No.” He glanced at her over his shoulder and gave her an apologetic smile that did little to reassure her, before turning back to his drink and the fire. “I wanted to stir up the coals. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
His low voice was as deep as the shadows in the midnight’s silence. Around them, the inn was still, all the travelers settled in for the night and the barroom closed. Only a faint rustle coming from the outside stirred the quiet, of horses in the paddock and dogs in the courtyard, making their little room feel even more cocooned against the night.
“Come back to bed.” She snuggled down into the warm covers and feather mattress to where they’d moved after making love on the floor. “You need to get some sleep.”
“If I come back to bed with you looking like that,” he warned, and this time, the look he gave her was one of pure heat, “sleep will be the last thing I do.”
His sultry comment warmed her cheeks, and a shameless ache stirred once more between her thighs. “Then definitely come back to bed.” She couldn’t help herself. Being with him brought her a joy she’d never thought possible, and an insatiability for his touch. “I’m cold.”
“Sweetheart, you are the furthest thing from cold,” he mumbled into the glass, then went right back to staring at the dying fire.
This time, she frowned at his flirtation, certainly uttered to distract her from her concern over him, but which only served to increase it. A new frown creased his brow from thoughts she knew couldn’t be good.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” she corrected. “You’re thinking about Thomas and what will happen tomorrow.”
He stiffened for a moment at her gentle accusation, then finished off the last of the whiskey in the glass and muttered, “Among other things.”
He meant her.
Tessa knew they would have to have a long talk about what had transpired between them, but that conversation could wait. “You don’t need to be concerned about anything else right now except Thomas,” she assured him, hoping her voice sounded far more resolved to him than it did to her. “Your only thoughts should be how happy you are.”
“I am.”
“You don’t sound like it.” Not at all. And she knew she was the reason for it. Was he regretting all that had happened between them? “I know that none of what happened during the past few days was in your plans,” she said quietly. Then she admitted, “Certainly not… us .”
The way his dark eyes met hers through the shadows confirmed her suspicion, despite his words. “I don’t regret that.”
“Neither do I.” She sat up and drew her knees to her chest. “But I also know that everything is going to change now for you, and I don’t want to be in your way.”
“You are not in my way.”
She dropped her gaze to pluck her fingers at the rough stitches edging the coverlet. “It was one thing when you planned to leave for Spain.” When he could have put her behind him without a second thought—well, she certainly hoped it would have been far harder than that for him to put her behind him and move on with his life, but her point remained. “Yet it’s something completely different now that you’ll be staying in England and picking up your life again here.”
He didn’t agree. He didn’t say anything.
She lifted her eyes to meet his, and his grim expression shuddered an icy shiver through her. Suddenly, she wasn’t simply cold in the empty bed; she was downright frozen.
Her fingers stilled on the coverlet. “You are staying in England now, aren’t you?”
He didn’t give her an answer. Instead, he refilled the glass with a generous pour of whiskey.
She sat forward, clutching the coverlet to her bosom. “You can’t still be thinking of leaving. Thomas needs to grow up in England, surrounded by his family. He knows no one in Spain.”
He stared at the glass as he slowly swirled it. The whiskey glowed red in the dying firelight. “I wasn’t planning on taking him to Spain.”
Confusion tightened her chest. “Then where…?” The realization of what he meant seeped through her like icy tide. “No, you can’t do that. You can’t leave him here and go off without him.”
“It’s the best thing for Thomas.” He took a large swallow of whiskey. “I’m certain John and Mary would raise him. They’re going to be thrilled to have their grandchild back.” The whiskey turned his voice husky. “He’ll be safe there with them, just as you and Winnie were.”
“He should be with his father.” She shook her head. “You don’t have to stay at Cuillin. I know how little you like the place, and I don’t blame you.” It truly was haunted, she knew that now, and not with ghosts. “You could stay in London or at one of the other Greysmere properties—for God’s sake, you could buy a different house, a place that’s new for both of you, where you aren’t reminded of the past at every turn. It’s a chance at a new beginning for you.”
“Or the chance to make the same mistakes all over again,” he muttered into the glass. “Perhaps make even worse ones.”
“You won’t.
The dark expression on his face stopped her heart. “I was a bad father before—absent at best, uncaring at worst. I never even put up a fight when Eleanor said she was leaving for London and taking him with her.” He added in a quiet voice, “Part of me was actually glad she was, so I wouldn’t have to be wracked with guilt over not knowing how to be a proper father to him. I could blame my failures as a father on distance.”
“You were not a bad father,” Tessa insisted. “How were you supposed to have known what to do when you never truly had a father yourself to show you? He died when you were just a boy, and even before then, he was always away in London, never with you. If you want to blame anyone, blame your mother. The duchess should have prepared you better for having a son of your own once her husband died.”
Instead, the old woman had focused on rearing a son who was more duke than human, on impressing upon him the obligations of title and rank rather than being loving and kind. That Chase had managed to grow into the good man he was despite all that still amazed Tessa.
If only she could convince him of that.
“Thomas wasn’t even two years old when you lost him, and before that, he spent most of his time with his nurse,” she reminded him softly. “The truth is that you didn’t have time to be a father to him at all, good or bad.”
“But I’ll be a bad one now, simply by wanting him back.” He gestured the glass in the direction of the village and the Fishers’ cottage beyond it. “His return to me means taking him away from the only family he knows, the only true home he’s ever known.” He muttered, “And I’ll be nothing more than Satan himself for doing it, for destroying all their lives.” He added a quiet reminder, “After all, he’s now been their son for longer than he was mine.”
She couldn’t argue against that. But she knew one truth for certain—“He is your son, Chase. Your son. He deserves to be with you, and you with him.” Frustration bloomed inside her. “For God’s sake, his return into your life isn’t a punishment. Fate brought him back to you as a gift, and you need to embrace the new future you have waiting for you. You love him, and you’re going to give him the life he was meant to have. With you.”
She slipped out of bed and approached him, the cool air trickling over her bare skin. She took the glass from his hand and helped herself to a long sip, then set the glass on the mantel and laced her fingers through his.
“Now come back to bed.” She gave him a playful tug and her most seductive smile. “Dawn is still hours away, and I’m suddenly not at all sleepy.”
She led him back to the bed and crawled under the coverlet, then curled up against his side when he joined her on the mattress.
Tessa melted against him and welcomed his hand caressing between her legs and stoking the already growing ache at her core. Her arms wrapped around his shoulders as he rolled her over onto her back to make love to her again, his lips and hands moving over her hungrily.
There would be no more talk of leaving, at least not tonight. Tonight, she belonged to him, he belonged to her, and the night was still theirs. Damn whatever new trials the dawn would bring.