Chapter 21
R afe’s lips moved over hers. His arms were strong and his body an anchor she could cling to and not for an instance did she consider trying to free herself from his embrace. With a sigh, she gave herself up to his kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him down.
She closed her eyes, soaking up all of the delicious sensations not only surrounding but filling her. Like a dry sponge thrown in an ocean, her awareness expanded with the influx of perceptions. She cupped his hard jaw, holding his face to hers, alive to each inch of beard-rough skin abrading her palms.
Her pawn. Her blackmailer. Her thief.
His muscular arms, the sinew in the thigh pressed against her hip, the hard chest flattening her own breasts, all of these set her skin tingling with the need to arch closer, rubbing against him like a cat. His scent filled her nostrils, crushed grass and dry pine, astringent soap, mysterious male musk.
And kisses. Kisses such as she’d never known nor dreamed existed: the feathering gentleness of velvety nibbles; the shivery carnality of moist, softly drawing kisses; and, finally, a deep, soul-searing kiss as he angled his mouth sideways over hers and tilted her chin, urging her mouth open. She needed no further encouragement. His tongue stroked the sleek lining of her cheeks, playing with her own tongue: wet, warm, and infinitely wicked.
Abruptly sensation exceeded experience. She’d no words to record the feelings rocketing through her, no terms to even identify them.
Her head fell back and wedged in the lee of his arm. Her eyelids fluttered open, allowing her a glimpse of his rugged face, tense and intent. Then he was kissing her again. But surely kisses alone could not account for the surge of pleasure coursing through her, as sweet and heady as hot mead. Kisses couldn’t set a pulse beating high between her thighs, or rouse an aching in the very tips of her breasts.
She wanted to melt into him, to feel his body surround hers, to absorb him into herself. She tried. Lord knows, she tried.
She moved her hands around his torso and up his back, clasping the hard, mounded shoulder muscles and pulling herself as close as humanly possible. Her hips burrowed into the niche created by his splayed stance. A sound rumbled from deep in Rafe’s chest. He pulled away from her. She voiced an unintelligible but vehement protest, her eyes opening to flash a disbelieving glare at him.
Why would he want to stop? Why, in the name of all the saints, would anyone ever want to stop something so wonderful?
He lifted his head and stared down at her. His breath rushed out in pants to fan her hot cheeks and swollen lips.
“Oh, no,” he said, sounding amused and winded and angry and tender all at once. “Kisses, yes,” he said and rained a dozen lightning-fast busses over her temple, cheeks, and eyelids. Her mouth turned to intercept them but could not. She made a sound of frustration.
“Dear Lord,” he whispered, capturing the back of her head in one broad hand and pressing her forehead to his.
“Kisses,” he whispered. “Nothing more.” He laughed. “I seem to have acquired a taste for punishment. I knew how inadequate kisses would—No! Stay, you!” he commanded as she tipped her chin seeking his lips. “I am no saint and you, lady, are a far greater temptation than this poor mortal flesh has ever endeavored to resist.”
She didn’t understand the meaning of his words, or why, though his gaze roved like a stalking thing over her countenance, he held himself back. She knew only that a moment earlier she’d been vibrantly whole, and as each moment passed her pleasure dissolved like footprints lapped by an incoming tide.
She’d had too little happiness of late. She’d forgotten its flavor. She worked her hands up to his face, bracketing the tense jaw between her hands and polishing his lips with hers.
“Kiss me,” she whispered. He stared down at her, the shadows of his lashes making mysteries of his warm brown eyes. She could read nothing there. The very world seemed to hold its breath. She brushed her fingertip across the silky sable fringe of his lashes. “Kiss me.”
His head moved slowly down—
“’Sblood! Tunbridge was right!” A woman’s voice broke Favor’s hushed anticipation.
Instantly, Rafe straightened, carrying her to his side and behind him, shielding her from curiosity seekers.
“Pray excuse us.” His voice was vitriolic and cold, like burning ice. “I hadn’t realized we were being offered as voyeuristic entertainment,” he said, “or I should have endeavored a more licentious tableau.”
Silently, Favor cursed the intruders, far more furious at their interruption than embarrassed by it. She raised her chin to a haughty angle and stepped from behind Rafe’s broad back.
“Lady Fia.” She acknowledged the slender girl and brace of snickering men on either side of her. “Were you seeking me?”
But Fia didn’t appear to hear Favor. Her gaze was trained on Rafe, as blank and fixed as a sleepwalker’s.
“Fia?” Rafe echoed, scowling.
One of the swains—a handsome blond man whose name Favor could not recall but whose fetid breath she did—stepped forward. His lip curled in derision. “The Lady Fia Merrick. Lord Carr’s daughter. You do know Lord Carr, don’t you, fellow? For either he’s your host”—he turned to Fia, doubtless so he could witness the appreciation his next sally was sure to bring—“or your employer.”
The other swain, a green lad who’d the previous night confessed to Favor his fervent desire “to be baptized in the ways of sin,” took his blond friend’s cue.
He shot a quick, guilty glance in Favor’s direction before averting his eyes and addressing her. “Miss Donne, never say your taste for rural pleasures is what’s kept you from sampling a more cosmopolitan fare. I didn’t believe Tunbridge when he claimed it so, but”—he hid his mouth behind his hand—“I can scarce doubt my own eyes.”
“You must have gone to some trouble to locate me, Lady Fia.” Favor tried once more to divert attention from Rafe. He’d been mad to walk into the center of one of Carr’s parties. If she didn’t think quickly, he’d be found out. “And in quite a hurry to do so. Lord Tunbridge left not ten minutes ago. Was there something imperative that you needed to see me about? Or were you eager to see us?” The innuendo was sharp and unflattering yet Fia barely glanced in her direction.
The men, either too dull-witted to catch the inference or simply uncaring, were watching Rafe, who had gone mute—strange behavior from a man who hadn’t lacked for words a few minutes before. Favor studied him. But though at first glance one might have supposed that he, too, had fallen under Fia’s siren spell, there was nothing of desire in his gaze. It was searching and somehow sad.
“ Is this brute one of your employees, Lady Fia?” the youth asked. Favor held her breath, willing Rafe not to take umbrage.
Fia answered without removing her gaze from Rafe. “No.”
“You know him, then?” the blond man said.
“I don’t know,” Fia said reflectively. “There’s something familiar about him.” She stepped forward.
“Here now,” she said imperiously, “do you know me, sir?”
Rafe hesitated. The sorrow intensified in his eyes. He shook his head. “No. I do not know you.”
A shadow passed over Fia’s countenance, making her beauty suddenly tragic. Then it was gone and one high-curving brow rose haughtily.
“I thought not. Nor do I know you.” She turned away but checked her step and turned her head. “Ah. I have it. I know where I’ve seen this fellow. Do you know my father?”
An unpleasant smile curved Rafe’s wide lips. “Oh, yes. Him I know.”
Fia nodded, clearly satisfied. “There you are. He is one of my father’s special guests and that is why we have not seen him. That, and his having apparently been”—her gaze passed to Favor—“preoccupied with other companions. Tell me, Miss Donne, does my father know you are dallying with his … guest? He won’t like it.”
Favor’s heart beat thickly. Silently she prayed Fia would not reveal her interest in Carr to Rafe. Not yet. She needed time. Time to …
“He doesn’t like sharing,” Fia went on. “Never got the knack of it.” Her three-point smile lit her smooth, youthful countenance and she motioned for her swains. They came like puppies to a milk bowl and she linked her arms to each, one on either side.
“Come, gentlemen. Despite Miss Donne’s conviction that we were sneaking through the woods hoping to surprise her and this fellow in an indiscretion, I still desire to find the stag’s anders Mrs. Petrie claimed to have seen. Oh, yes. I heard your query, Miss Donne, and no, I did not come to see you.”
She did not look back as she allowed her sniggering male companions to draw her away. In minutes they were lost to sight in the rocky, tree studded landscape.
Favor, flooded with relief that Rafe had escaped more dangerous notice, sank to the grassy floor.
“Why did she warn you about Carr?” Rafe asked, standing above her. “What did she mean?”
Her recent relief died. She should tell him the truth: that she was here to become affianced to Lord Carr. She kept her head averted, steeling herself to say the words. And why shouldn’t she tell him? He already knew half of it: He’d accepted that she was seeking to make a brilliant match, to refill her clan’s coffers with a rich husband’s money. Why not Carr?
Carr’s face rose in her mind’s eye. Other girls had wed men with far more years than Carr. It wasn’t age alone that stayed her tongue. It was the knowledge that she knowingly sought to take as her mate a man so evil.
But Rafe wouldn’t know that. Rafe hadn’t stood beneath Carr’s lathered steed and stared up at him while he decided one’s fate with less thought than he’d give to drowning a kitten. Rafe hadn’t witnessed Carr’s satisfaction as he’d ridden off with his devil’s brood, leaving her alone in a blood-stained night rail among the dead and dying.
Rafe wouldn’t know she maneuvered to become a monster’s bride.
“Favor?”
How sweet her name sounded coming from him. But he couldn’t match her Christian name with her surname. He didn’t know it. Just as she didn’t know his. And it didn’t matter.
But it did. They’d followed their inclinations on instinct and emotion. Their relationship was a castle built on quicksand, doomed to disappear, swallowed by harsh realities and grim truth, surnames and pasts, obligations and penalties.
But she could not see it fall apart yet. Not yet. She could cling to whatever she had of happiness, stretch it out a few more hours or days or …
“I think she was talking about you, Rafe.”
He’d squatted down on his heels beside her, his brow worried. “What?”
“When she said Carr didn’t like sharing. I think she mistook you for one of the gamblers and I believe she meant Carr would not like sharing you with me. I might divert your attention from the tables.”
“I see.” He’d accepted her he, too concerned about her to give it much heed. “Are you all right? Did those men offend you? I can—”
“No!” She reached up, grabbing hold of his forearm. The muscle tightened beneath her grip. Sensual awareness ambushed her anew. She drew back her hand. “No. You can’t do anything. You have to keep hidden or you’ll be found out.”
“No one will find me out.”
“They almost did! You’re safe now only because of Fia Merrick’s certainty that no one could breach her father’s castle.”
That wholly engaging lopsided smile once more graced his bold features, making boyish what was normally so unremittingly male and mature. “Thank you for caring.”
She made an exasperated face. “It’s not as though I want to care.”
His smile spread into a grin. “I’m sure of that.”
He knelt down beside her on one knee and raised a hand to touch her cheek. She scooted backward on her seat. She could resist him if he didn’t touch her. But why would she want to res—
Ah, no! she thought, that way lies disaster!
No similar cautionary thought seemed to occur to Rafe. He’d eased forward, prowling toward her. The smile still teased the corners of his mouth, a lazy smile now and quite, quite predatory. As were the dark eyes and intent gaze belying that charming, casual smile. He looked like the proverbial wolf come to court the lamb.
She gulped, scooted back again, slipped and landed flat on her back. Before she could scramble up he was over her, arms braced on either side of her shoulders, blotting out the sky with his breadth.
He reached down and grinned as she flinched, but his hand moved harmlessly past the quivering agitation of her mouth and chest and tangled in her hair.
Her pulse galloped. The memory of his kisses was so fresh she could still feel his lips.
“Why would you conceal its true color?” The smile slowly vanished from his face. “Ah, yes. The would-be suitors like a dark lass.”
He released the strand of black dyed hair and in one easy movement rose to his feet. He extended his hand down to her. She wriggled up onto her elbows, gazing blankly at his hand. Disappointment quickly replaced her trepidation. So, there was to be no dalliance, then?
“Let me help you up,” he said mildly, as though he’d never held her, caressed her, molded her body to his and his lips to hers.
“No, thank you,” she said, aware she sounded disgruntled.
As if he knew the reason for her glum expression he grinned. “Here, little falcon. I may not be one of Carr’s well-heeled roués but at least my character is not so poor that I would ply my slight amorous skills here for any chance passerby to view. Neither, do I think, would you want that.”
“Of course not!” she huffed, dusting off nonexistent pieces of grass, avoiding his amused eyes. Damn the man’s arrogance!
“I don’t know what momentary aberration clouded my judgment, but you may be well assured there shan’t be a second such lapse,” she said.
She clambered to her feet, ignoring his offer of assistance and turned a quelling eye on him. She acknowledged with gratification his bow in deference to her terse statement.
And missed the smile his deferential pose concealed.