Chapter Nine
S ophie was afraid to move. If she dared take a step to cross the threshold into her room…would he come with her?
In her uncertainty, she stood perfectly still as he tightened his hold on her, her only movement a silent catch of her breath. The warmth of his strong arms seeped through her thin nightgown, yet the muscles of his forearms and biceps flexed against her as if she physically pained him. Her eyes stung at being held like this, in a half-embrace that even now he seemed to be fighting.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered.
“You should.” The warmth of each word fanned across her cheek, and the anguished whispers that fell from his lips held her firmly in place as much as his arms. “You haunt me, Sophie. You always have…the beautiful young woman who gazed upon me as if I were a hero.”
“Because you were.” Where has that man gone, Shay? He was a stranger to her now.
“I was nothing of the kind.”
“You fought against Napoleon and stopped the French from—”
He nipped her earlobe in punishment for daring to think well of him. Then he tenderly nuzzled his lips against the sensitive flesh as if begging forgiveness. This new contradiction left her trembling with confusion.
“I was a coward. I fought to keep from having to return to England, which was the last place I wanted to be.” He inhaled a ragged breath. “You were here, and I needed to stay as far away from you as possible.”
“I don’t understand. I thought…” She swallowed hard to keep her voice from breaking. “I thought I was your friend.”
“You were far more than that,” he answered, his voice a gravelly rasp. “For years, no matter where I went, you were a ghost who followed me, who haunted me by constantly invading my thoughts. I compared every woman I met to you, and I found all of them lacking. None of them possessed your spirit, your wit, your kindness.” He nuzzled his mouth against her ear. “Those women were nothing more than empty amusements because my thoughts always returned to you.” He confessed in a heated murmur, “And not as a friend.”
Against her bare back, she felt more than just the soft cotton of his shirt and the stiff hardness of his braces—she could feel his heart pounding fiercely against her spine and his breath coming in pained jerks.
“Every glance at you was torture, every soft word from you agony, because I couldn’t bear to see you and not kiss you, to spend time with you and not touch you, to hear your laughter and little sighs…and not want more. That was why I stayed away from London. And from you. Until I couldn’t.”
“I don’t believe you,” she repeated and fought to keep her breathing steady and slow, despite the spiking of her pulse.
“That’s why I kissed you in the garden during that last visit to London.”
Every detail of that golden afternoon flooded back to her…how softly the air had caressed her arms and tingled at her cheeks, how sweet the scent of roses surrounding them, how nervous she’d been when he’d pulled her against him and lowered his mouth to hers. His lips had been a contradiction of sensations, soft yet firm, yielding yet persuading…a taste of affection tempered by the thrill of the forbidden. That kiss had been pure magic.
“Because you desired me?” she whispered, trying desperately to wrap her head around all he was confessing to her and somehow reconcile his words of wanting her with how he so firmly refused her at every turn.
“Because I desired you so much that I had no choice but to say goodbye.” His arms loosened their hold on her just enough for him to run his hands along the sides of her body, as if he couldn’t decide whether to crush her against him or shove her away. “You can accuse me of a lot of things, Sophie—being a heartless bastard, a selfish monster…a killer—God knows I’ve earned every one of them. But never doubt how much I want you.” His words were a husky admission. “How much I have always wanted you.”
Stunned, she turned to face him, only to find herself pushed back against the wall, his mouth capturing hers in a hungry kiss of pure need.
The swiftness of the kiss ripped her breath away, and she gasped as his mouth molded against hers as if made for nothing but kissing her. She sagged between the wall and his hard body, and her lips parted beneath the persistent touch of his tongue as she opened to him.
He swept inside to claim every bit of the kiss, tantalizingly caressing her tongue in velvet caresses that flamed the immediate ache between her thighs. When a soft moan of need rose from her throat, he took her bottom lip and drove her mad by alternating between bites that worried at the soft flesh and soothing strokes of his tongue.
Her arms snaked up to wrap around his neck and pull him closer. But she needn’t have worried that he’d leave, not when his large hands swept up and down her sides as if attempting to gentle a colt. The heat of his touch seeped through the thin lace of her bodice and into her flesh beneath, but goosebumps rose in his wake despite the sudden flush of heat engulfing her.
When she tore her mouth away to gulp back the breath he’d stolen, he slipped his fingers beneath the gown’s plunging neckline and caressed the bare skin beneath. His lips followed his fingers to tease at the top swells of breasts. Then her pants turned into soft whimpers when his tongue dipped into the valley between them. Each lick of his velvet tongue against the sides of her breasts drew her nipples tighter into hard points pressing against the lace that left little hidden from him.
She bit her lip to stifle a moan when his hands moved up to cup her breasts. He massaged their fullness with his palms until she leaned forward to push herself harder into his hands. Accepting her invitation, he played with her nipples, expertly squeezing and stroking in turn until they throbbed in a faint echo of the growing insistence between her legs.
He lowered his head and captured her nipple through the lace. His lips closed around it and suckled, taking rakish nips of the hard nub between rolls of his tongue and expertly making her ache until she arched her back to beg for more. While he suckled at one breast, he continued to play with the other, and her fingers dug into the hard muscles of his shoulders in response, like a cat flexing her claws in sheer pleasure at being petted.
He released her nipple from his lips and stared down at her in wonder. “You’re not afraid of me,” he murmured, puzzled.
“Not at all.”
“You should be.”
Never. Impulsively, Sophie pulled his head down as she brought her mouth fiercely up against his.
Her unexpected kiss mimicked the intensity of his, even daring to pry his lips open with her tongue and push inside for a wanton taste, just as he’d done to her. But somehow, she quickly lost the upper hand and found him once more controlling the kiss, once more stroking his tongue between her lips in a steady, sliding rhythm that pricked hot goosebumps across her skin. So she closed her lips around his tongue and sucked.
A deep groan tore from the back of his throat. His hands tightened around her hips, pulling her bottom away from the wall and tightly enough against him that she could feel the hardening ridge beneath his trousers press into her lower belly. He wanted her. There was no denying it.
“Make love to me,” she pleaded as she placed her mouth against his bare neck and felt the wild racing of his pulse against her lips.
He murmured a single, muffled word as he buried his face in her hair as if her offer were sheer torture. But her heart heard clearly—
No.
Before she could even think to blink away the instantaneous stinging in her eyes, he lowered himself in front of her. He kept his hands tightly around her hips to hold her still as his mouth placed kisses down her throat, over her breasts, and lower still to the seam where the lace bodice attached to the silk skirt.
“I can’t make love to you,” he told her, his eyes squeezing shut as if pained. “But I can give you this pleasure,” he whispered, his hand sliding down her body, “if nothing more.”
Confusion fought with growing desire inside her about what he meant, about why he now shook as much as she did. “I don’t unders—”
Her breath caught as he rested his hand against her lower belly, right where a thousand fluttering butterflies stirred to life. The heat in her veins flared into flames.
His hands slid beneath the skirt and caressed her bare thighs until the tips of his fingers brushed against the curls guarding her feminine folds. A tantalizingly torturous ache pulsed just below his fingertips. He pushed the skirt higher, up to her hips, where he gathered it out of his way as he combed his fingertips through the triangle of curls.
She caressed his temple, her fingers shaking. “Shay, I want—”
But before she could finish her new plea, he slipped his thumb down between her thighs and stole her words away. All she could do was give an incoherent murmur, too overcome by need to say anything else.
He began to stroke back and forth along the seam between her legs with the side of his hand. Sophie swallowed hard at the delicious caresses, and every sensation in her body concentrated right there .
His clever fingers teased at her folds as he delved deeper. He stirred such throbbing aches inside her as he fondled the soft petals, caressing and gently pinching in turn, that she clung fiercely to his shoulders to keep from sagging to the floor at his feet. His fingers teased and twirled, slipping and sliding through a wet arousal that brought a hot blush of embarrassment to her cheeks.
He expertly toyed with her but avoided the one place that throbbed and ached the fiercest, choosing instead to slowly circle the little nub in tightening circles—
Then he flicked his thumb over it. A jolt of electricity shot through her, and she gasped against his throat.
“Sophie…” His rasping voice gave only a second’s warning before his fingers slipped inside her warmth.
Her body flexed against his hand in response to this new sensation of having a part of him inside her. He paused only a moment to give her time to adjust before gliding in and out of her in a steady rhythm that rocked her to her toes. All of it was made even more unbearable by his thumb, which continued to give glancing touches to the aching nub buried in the top of her folds that sent hot pulses up her spine.
Then he slipped a second finger inside with the first, stretching her wider, filling her. His knuckle ground against the nub, and a moan of pleasure fell from her lips. His fingers played between her legs, curling into her and retreating in such increasingly deep strokes that she could barely remember to breathe.
“Shay!” she exclaimed. Her fingers dug into his hard shoulders until his muscles flexed beneath her hands, but he didn’t stop the wanton plunges and retreats that spiraled a wicked longing through her. Instead, he deepened them.
Unable to stand still, needing more of this intimate caress, she stepped her legs wider apart and wiggled her hips against his hand in an attempt to bring him harder against her, right against that hot and throbbing place that demanded his attention.
Capturing her mouth beneath his again, he gave a low groan of pleasure against her lips that reverberated through her and spun out to the tips of her fingers and toes.
His tongue plunged deep inside her mouth, then retreated, then did it again and again until a relentless rhythm built beneath his lips that matched the deep caresses between her legs. The throbbing heat inside her pulsed in time with his thrusts, and she clenched her fingers into his scalp as the tiny muscles inside her clenched around his fingers, as if to somehow draw him even deeper. Her greedy body matched his rhythm in squeezing and releasing, and begging whimpers of need dropped from her lips.
She felt as if she were running for a cliff, to fling herself over into the abyss. But he kept her there, just at the edge. His fingers again playing at the throbbing nub, yet not nearly hard enough, spun a delicious excitement through her until all of her shook violently, until he had to nudge her thighs apart with his knee to keep her from slamming her legs closed in response, until she was nearly sobbing.
“Please…” she panted out, barely audible against the shadows around them. Please love me! Give yourself to me, now and forever. “Oh, please, Shay.”
His thumb found the throbbing nub in her folds and pressed hard.
Her hips bucked against his hand, and Sophie cried out as breath-stealing pleasure broke over her. She spasmed against him as wave after wave of electric release slammed through her.
Every sensation in her entire body focused right there , right where his fingers continued to intimately caress her. He coaxed every bit of bliss from her as his finger once more slipped inside her, to give her greedy body something to hold onto as it squeezed and released in a fading pulsation that matched her slowing heartbeat.
When he finally slipped from her tight warmth, her strength left her, and she sank slowly toward the floor, only for Shay to stop her fall by sweeping her up into his arms. Her body was too numb, too spent, to do anything more than cling to him as he carried her into her bedroom. His body shook as violently as hers, and when she placed her lips to his neck, she could taste the salty perspiration of exertion and restraint.
He pulled back the bed covers with one hand, then laid her gently on the mattress. The sensation of the cold mattress hitting her backside while his heat still warmed her front jarred her, and she sucked in a deep breath just as he leaned over to kiss her. At finding her mouth open and inviting, he gave a groan, only to pull away without plundering her mouth again as he’d done before.
But she so desperately wanted him to do exactly that. He’d brought her to bliss tonight, yet a hollow feeling in her belly told her there could be so much more pleasure they could share.
Her arms wrapped around his neck. “Stay with me,” she whispered. “Make love to me.”
He rested his forehead briefly against hers and rasped out hoarsely, “I can’t.”
“But you can.”
Then, so softly, she barely heard him, “I won’t.”
He released her and slipped away into the darkness.
*
Shay returned to his bedroom and closed the connecting door between their rooms, leaned back against the door, and squeezed his eyes shut, both against the vision of her body that had branded itself onto his mind and his steely erection whose painful throbbing wouldn’t be soothed tonight. At least not the way he wanted.
He raked a shaking hand over his face and let himself pant down the blinding desire still gripping him. What the hell had he been thinking to touch her like that?
Touch her? A pained laugh choked from him. He’d done a hell of a lot more than that. Even now he could still taste her sweetness on his lips, could still smell her floral scent clinging to his clothes, could still hear her whispered whimpers and moans. His hands clenched and opened over and over to ward off the memory of how her bare flesh had felt, so soft and warm, deliciously pliable, trembling in eagerness for more. And the way she’d come against his hand, how her body had tightened around his fingers…how exquisitely her body would have milked every drop from his if he’d had his cock inside her instead of his fingers—
He pounded his head back against the door. God help him, how much he had wanted that, how desperately he’d yearned to be with her in exactly that way.
And never could be.
He would never be worthy of her body, her softness, or her love. He didn’t merit even the stolen touches taken tonight in his desire to give her pleasure, to prove to her how much he wanted her. To think he could do that without wanting to possess her completely, nearly doing exactly that when she pulled him down to her in the bed and begged him to make love to her—
Christ. Now he was lying to himself.
What had stopped him tonight wasn’t his guilt over John’s death. That had only been part of it. What had truly stopped him was knowing that the room wasn’t dark enough to hide his scars, the leathery, misshapen, mottled flesh that extended across his shoulder, down his chest and over his abdomen…all the way down to his right hip and thigh.
He saw her reaction in London when she first glimpsed his face, heard the way she’d gasped in shock. And horror. He’d terrified her, and that had been only half his face. If she saw the true damage the fire had done, she’d find him nothing but abhorrent. She would never touch him or caress him, would never let him cover her body with his to make love to her. And the way she would stare at him then—
He reached behind him and threw the bolt, locking her away from him.