Chapter 17
Chapter 17
Julia found it far easier to imagine that he’d brought her here to seduce her than that he’d intended to lay his life’s history at her feet.
Though the two things were not unrelated, for her heart, already susceptible, had become entirely his once he’d opened up about his past.
On occasion, she had caught herself thinking, even hoping, that all his glowering and hard words were naught but a mere papier-maché mask, disguising the real man beneath. But the metaphor had been truer than she had known. Every tragedy, every trauma in his life had been another sticky, messy layer, clinging to him; he’d smoothed and shaped them around his soul as best he could, until the mask and the man were one and the same.
Now that rough, heavy mask had a crack in it, made when he’d revealed his biggest secret to her. She trailed her fingers around the sharp angle of his jaw. Here, in this simple cottage, he’d shown her his determination to peel away the broken pieces of his past. He was trying to set himself free.
But if she in turn revealed her biggest secret to him—that she was the reviewer who had so disdainfully spoken of pity, little imagining how it had added to his pain—it would only plaster over that sliver of a crack, sealing off that glimmer of hope forever.
So, she went on kissing him instead.
One of his big hands came up to cup the back of her head. Ah, but she did not think she would ever tire of the sensation of his mouth on hers, soft and firm at once. It made her forget all about the magazine and her dilemma.
“I suppose you tell this story to all the women you bring here?” she teased, when he let her have her breath again.
He drew back, and his brows dove downward. “I’ve never told this story to another soul.”
“What of the girl Mr. Sawyer teased you about the other day? When you came to rehearsal rather . . . rumpled.”
“Sawyer.” Beneath her, she felt the muscles of his abdomen ripple in a huff of annoyance. “There’ve been no others since I met you, Julia.” His gray-green eyes held hers. “The day I was late to rehearsal, I’d come straight from here, it’s true. But if I looked as if I hadn’t slept, it’s because I laid awake half the night, thinking of you.”
“Oh.” Perhaps such honeyed words shouldn’t please her, but they did. She shifted her hips against his groin, deliberately provocative. “Only half the night?”
One corner of his mouth twitched—almost a smile. “Naughty lass. What am I going to do with you?”
The answer, it seemed, was to kiss her senseless again. After learning every curve of her lips, he nibbled his way along her jaw to murmur against her ear. “Dare I ask—did you ever lie awake thinking of me?”
Before she could answer, he traced the shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue. “I t-tried not to,” she insisted, aware for the first time how little the notion of a wicked tongue had to do with words.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Sharp teeth nipped at her earlobe and made her gasp. “Now, tell me, did you give in to temptation and touch yourself too?”
“T-touch myself?” His lips against her throat were doing strange things to her pulse. “Where?”
A low laugh hummed against her neck. “Wherever gives you pleasure. Here, perhaps.” His fingertips slid from her hair and down the path his mouth had taken, brushing along the edge of her bodice, then slipping just beneath to tease the tops of her breasts. One thumb swept over her nipple, bringing it to an aching peak. “Or between your legs.”
His touch alone would have been enough to set her aflame. But when combined with the smolder in his voice? Heat rushed through her—no mere blush this time, but a roaring inferno of desire.
“No,” she confessed on a needy sob. To have done such a thing would have been to admit to herself how much she wanted him.
Though now, as she lay panting in his arms, she wondered how she ever could have denied it.
“I was saving that honor for you.”
Between thumb and forefinger, he pinched the nipple he’d roused, firmly but not to the point of pain. Something like an electric charge zinged from her breast to that secret place at the joining of her thighs, leaving behind a delicious ache. “And what an honor it will be.”
It was evidently not, however, an honor he intended immediately to bestow. He went on kissing her, stealing her breath as his hot mouth searched every inch of bare skin it could reach—her lips, her throat, her chest. Nor did the hand at her breast cease its playful torment, kneading and teasing until she began to squirm.
“Have mercy,” he groaned against her hair before shifting her in his lap with a flex of his hips, as if she weighed nothing at all. “I’ll give you what you need.”
His left arm cradled her as the right swept down her body, his palm leaving a path of longing in its wake—waist, hip, thigh. Long fingers encircled her ankle, then followed the pattern of her clockwork stocking up her calf. He resumed kissing her as he toyed with her garter.
“I can feel the heat of you from here.”
Her cheeks prickled. “I think you’ve made every inch of me blush.”
“Let’s just see, shall we?” One twitch of his forearm bared her to the tops of her stockings. “Open your legs.”
The dark note of command in his voice was difficult to resist, though she tried to sound saucy as she retorted, “Yes, my lord.”
“Graham,” he corrected swiftly, sternly.
Of course, he would have a name that was little more than a growl. The sound of it reverberating through his chest made something inside her vibrate like a plucked harp string.
“Graham,” she repeated, half acquiescence, half plea, as she slid her knees apart.
“Good lass.”
To her shock, a sense of pride suffused her at those gravelly words. Sprawled in the lap of a man, with his hand up her skirts, surely she ought to have felt shame? But somehow, knowing how stinting he was with praise made her crave it all the more.
His thumb swept over the delicate skin of her upper thigh. “Lift your skirts the rest of the way.”
She fumbled to hike the light woolen dress to her waist, wishing suddenly she could shed it entirely and be bare to his gaze.
“Very pretty.” He watched himself brush a finger along the seam of her sex. “Aye, and rosy as your cheeks.”
Though tempted to look for herself, she squeezed shut her eyes, the better to lose herself to the building sensations as his fingertip danced over her folds, dipped into her entrance, then slid higher to tease her already swollen pearl. She’d never done more than toy with her private curls or press the heel of her hand against the spot that ached. But with a touch both gentle and sure, he seemed determined to learn what pleased her most.
She heard with amazement the sound of her own wetness and the greedy groan its discovery dragged from his chest. “It pleases you?” she murmured against his questing mouth.
“Only one thing could please me more.” His tongue surged inside her mouth, and below, one finger mimicked the motion, easing into her tight channel. His thumb pressed against the little bundle of nerves at the top of her sex. Together, the sensations were almost overwhelming.
When he slid his finger out, she whimpered, and he thrust forward again. He began to make maddening little circles with his thumb. A second finger joined the first, stretching her, filling her, driving her toward some unknown crisis. The throbbing ache became a tingle. Light sparkled behind her eyelids.
“Aye, that’s it,” he crooned. “Come for me.”
Instinctively, she lifted her hips to his hand as something burst inside her, radiating in circles from her core.
Lightly, he stroked her mound, easing her past the peak, murmuring against her brow, “That’s my lass.”
My lass. Oh, how could she, who had only ever wanted her independence, thrill to the thought of being possessed by a man? But she could not deny the appeal of hearing Graham call her his.
At long last, she opened her eyes to find him watching her. The room had grown surprisingly dim. “Did I sleep?” She scrambled awkwardly to sit up, making him wince.
“Nay,” he reassured her, glancing toward the window. “There’s a storm approaching.” At just that moment, rain began to lash the glass. “Not exactly curricle weather. I’m sure it’ll blow over after a while.” He dropped his gaze to her face again. “Fortunately, I can think of a few ways to pass the time.”
A moment before, she had felt perfectly sated. Now her pulse leapt. “I’m sure you can.” She studied the sculpted angles of his face from beneath her lashes. “How many of them involve me, er, deepening my acquaintance with the fearfully hard thing that’s been pressing into my backside for the last half an hour?”
A shocked laugh rippled through him, appearing at last on his lips as a sardonic smile. “You’ve seen too many Blackadder plays.” One russet brow arced in a delicious scold. “But as it happens”—scooping his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, he rose with her in one swift motion, making her squeal—“all of them.”
A playwright hadn’t any cause to be so strong. But having observed the deftness with which he had tended the horses and drawn water from the well, she could guess experience and circumstance had made him familiar with labor of the sort that ordinarily did not fall to the lot of earls.
Why, he’d probably even split the logs for the fire!
He carried her up the stairs without showing the least sign of strain, though the delight of being cradled against his broad chest had left her breathless.
At the nudge of his toe, a door swung inward. Once swift glance took in the small, slant-ceilinged room and its contents: a ladder-back chair, a chest of drawers that doubled as a washstand, and a bed. His bed.
Just over the threshold, he lowered her feet to the floor, then slid a finger under her chin to tip her face to his when she would have lowered her gaze. “The, ah, degree of acquaintance is entirely up to you, Julia,” he insisted, searching her eyes with an intensity that made her knees weak. “If you wish to rest for an hour, I’ll leave you in peace. If, however, you have . . . other desires, I can more comfortably fulfill them here.”
An hour.
When that hour was up, no matter what had transpired in this little cottage, in this little room, they would have to return to Clapham. She would once more be a mere lady’s companion, and he the earl. And, for at least a few days more, he would wield the pen of Ransom Blackadder, while she was expected to take up that of Miss on Scene.
She didn’t know how those other stories would end. She could only take charge of the one playing out in the here and now, in which she was Julia and he was . . .
“Graham,” she breathed, closing the slight distance between them to lay her cheek against his breastbone. “Make me yours.”
Slowly, his arms came around her, his embrace both tender and strong. He pressed a kiss to her crown and breathed deep. “A man such as I does no’ deserve such sweetness.”
“That’s wrong. Think what sugar can do for lemons, or a cup of over-steeped tea.” She rose on tiptoe to press her lips to the edge of his jaw, prickly with the day’s growth of beard. “Take what you need.”
She hadn’t been fully prepared for the hunger those words would unleash. He raised his hands to either side of her face, driving his fingers into her hair and scattering her hairpins. Her heavy brown locks tumbled over her shoulders as his mouth crashed over hers, devouring her inhibitions. Against her belly, she could feel the evidence of his arousal.
“I want you bare,” he insisted, as his hands slid down her back to undo her dress.
For answer, she began to fumble with the buttons of his waistcoat. “I want that too.”
In another moment, she stepped out of the puddle of her gown, and a few quick tugs of the laces set her free of her corset. She stood before him in nothing but shift and stockings, having made little progress in her turn, nothing more than pushing his coat askew and disheveling his cravat. A little hiss of frustration escaped her lips.
One corner of his mouth kicked up—half a smile, at least. “Go stand by the bed,” he told her.
Clinging to one bedpost for support, she watched as he shed his coat and waistcoat and laid them over the chair, then picked up her dress from the floor and shook it out before draping it over his clothes.
It both amused her and ratcheted up her frustration. “Are gentlemen always so particular about wrinkles at a time like this?”
“Habit,” he said with a shrug that conveyed something more than indifference. He tugged loose the knot of his cravat, slid it from his collar, and wound it neatly around his hand before laying it aside. “I couldn’t always afford to be careless. But I suppose the truth of the matter is, it was a way of maintaining control when everything around me had gone mad.”
“And now, do you”—she slipped one shoulder from her shift—“do you ever just let yourself go?”
“You may fancy you want me t’ say aye.” He pulled the hems of his shirt from his breeches and dragged the garment over his head in one swift motion, revealing the brawn that she had only before suspected, the size of his arms, the wall of muscle that made up his chest. He’d spoken of shoring up Castle Dunstane—had he hewn stone and laid it with his own hands? Her mouth went dry as he tossed the shirt onto the chair and took another step closer to her. “But best be mindful what you wish for, lass.”
She wasn’t frightened of him. A bit apprehensive, perhaps, as she’d heard that being bedded inevitably involved pain. But nothing about what she’d seen, or what he’d said, made her wish to change her mind.
Pushing away from the bedpost, she walked toward him, grasping the sides of her shift and slowly raising it. When she came within arm’s length of him, he reached out, covered her hands with his, and helped her lift the garment over her head.
He sucked in a breath. “I imagined you thus,” he said darkly, “the very night we met.” With one fingertip, he pushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen over her breast, teasing her nipple with the curl. “But my imagination didn’t do you justice.”
“Will you let me see you, too?” she asked as she stretched out a hand to him.
His arms fell to his sides, so that nothing stood in her way as she dared to brush her fingertip over his shoulder and down his biceps. Her own imaginings had been severely hampered by a lack of information. She’d seen statues of naked men before, but they were mere marble, and while Graham’s muscles were almost as hard, his skin was anything but cold. And as for those so-called works of art, well, she could guess that whatever they hid behind their little fig leaves would not compare to what tented the front of his trousers.
Her hand moved lower, one finger snagging his waistband and slipping free the first button of his fall. Then another. And another.
“It’s hardly fair,” she cried after working half a dozen buttons loose. She’d meant to tease, but her voice sounded fretful. “My skirts hampered your desires not at all.”
“If I’d known, I would have worn a kilt for you.”
“How would that help?”
“Well, for one thing, there are no buttons.” He winked. “And for another, a true Scot wears nothing at all beneath.”
With that, he at last came to her aid, making short work of the remaining buttons and pushing his trousers over his hips. His member sprang free, ruddy and just as gloriously powerful as the rest of him.
Oh. She wanted to touch him, be touched by him, everything, all at once. Flailing one arm behind her, she reached for the edge of the bed and took a stumbling step backward.
He followed, grasping her shoulders, easing her onto the mattress, then lowering his mouth, first to suck the sensitive spot at the base of her throat, then to nuzzle her breast before capturing her nipple between his lips.
“Graham,” she gasped, arching her back and curling her fingers in the linens as his hands swept to her hips, caressing her skin and spreading her legs so that he stood between them, his erection hot and heavy where it pressed into her belly. She writhed as his ravening mouth moved to her other breast, then traveled lower, lower. His tongue swept along the crease at the top of her thigh. Surely, he wasn’t going to put his mouth—
Her whole body jolted as his hot breath stirred her thatch of curls and he began to kiss her mound. When his tongue began to tease the same sensitive spots that his fingers had found earlier, she cried out and would have closed her legs if not prevented by the breadth of his shoulders. “Nay.” The thrum of his deep voice against her aching flesh was the most extraordinary torment. “You must come for me again.” She drove her fingers into his coppery hair and once more gave in to his command.
Aftershocks were still rippling through her when he rose, lifting her higher on the bed. Setting his knee to the mattress, he caught her hand and brought it to his member. Her eager fingertips encircled his flesh, so hot and so smooth.
“Your skin is like silk,” she marveled, watching herself stroke him.
“And so is yours,” he said, as he curved his hand around hers to help her guide him to her slick entrance.
Her body was pliant, but still it was a stretch to take him. He eased forward gently, patiently, filling her. Then he caged her body with his, surrounding her with his strength, his heat, his scent.
“This, this is how it feels to be mine.”
She understood, now, why his ability to maintain control was so important. But a part of her still longed to know what it would feel like if his control began to fray. Impaled, pinned to the mattress by the wonderful weight of him, she could do nothing more than drag her tongue over the hollow at the base of his throat, tasting salt.
He shuddered and drew back. “No—Oh!” she gasped when he thrust his hips forward, driving into her again.
“No?”
“No. I mean, yes.” She tossed her head from side to side, her hair scrubbing against the sheets. “Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. He set a steady pace of advance and retreat, the movements of a primal dance whose motions came to her as naturally as breathing. She began to rock her hips upward to meet his, feeling a now-familiar sensation begin to build once more. As another climax overtook her, he thrust and held himself deep within her, his neck and arms corded with desire. Then, as the pulses of her own body began to fade, he pulled free and rutted once, twice, against her belly. She felt his seed spurt in hot jets across her skin.
She might have dozed then, but not for long. She knew when he rose, listened to him pad across the room, heard the splash of water being poured from a pitcher into the bowl that sat atop the chest of drawers. A moment later, she started as he wiped away the evidence of his passion with a wet handkerchief.
“That’s c-cold,” she protested.
When he was satisfied, he helped her to sit up. She watched as he returned to the washbasin, admiring the taut muscles of his backside. He rinsed the handkerchief, then wiped himself clean. The white linen cloth came away faintly stained with pink. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.”
He sent a stern, skeptical glance over his shoulder, demanding the truth.
“It’s a pleasant kind of soreness,” she insisted. Already she could feel the twinge of previously unknown muscles in her thighs.
That softened his expression just a bit. “Ah. The kind that comes from a good day’s work,” he teased, coming toward her. “The kind that makes you eager to do as much again.”
They sank down to the mattress together, bodies relaxed and twined together, his kisses leisurely, as if they had all the time in the world.
Though they didn’t, of course. And he knew it too. “The rain has stopped,” he remarked with a sigh as he rolled away from her, onto his back. “I should take you home.”
“I suppose so, yes.” Aunt Mildred would fuss if she were gone much longer. She propped herself on one elbow for a last look at him, sprawled in naked splendor. “But thank you for bringing me here. I wish I could stay.”
His chest rose and fell on an almost-silent breath. “You could . . . if I made you mine in earnest.”
“That wasn’t in earnest?” she asked with a playful smile, dragging a fingertip down his arm. “My goodness.”
But he was perfectly serious, it seemed. He turned his head to face her. There was a rawness, a vulnerability to his expression greater even than she had seen downstairs, as if more of the mask had been chipped away by their lovemaking.
“I could make you my wife.”
Her breath caught. “You’re only saying that because of what we’ve done, because you think it’s the honorable thing to do.”
He shook his head, his hair bright against the pale sheet. “I’m saying it because I need you.” Then he sat up, so that she could no longer see his face. “I’d hoped you needed me too.”
This wasn’t at all what she’d imagined when she’d vowed to use his interest in her to save the magazine.
Then again, almost everything that had happened since that day had been beyond her wildest dreams.
What might happen if she dared to push the boundaries of her happiness beyond the back room of Porter’s Bookshop, beyond this cottage, even beyond the Covent Garden stage? This would be writing a new ending, indeed.
“Graham.” She slid her hand along the sheet and tangled her fingers with his. “I do.”