Chapter Nine
Nine
He’d caught her off balance and unawares. She gasped and tried to pull back but his arms locked around her. Her hands pressed against his chest. She could feel the rhythm of his heart beating, faster than before.
One of his arms circled her waist, the other slid slowly up her spine, bringing slow shivers of heat with it. It stopped finally at the nape of her neck. He stroked the tender nape with one finger, lightly, rhythmically, causing prickles of sensation to flow up and down her spine.
“Wh—what are you doing?” she managed to say.
“Showing you.” His voice was deep and soft and sure.
“Showing me what?”
He didn’t respond, not in words, but she felt him shift his position and suddenly she could feel his hard, strong thighs bracketing hers.
The warmth of his body seeped through her thin dress.
The blended scents of the unguent on his skin intensified.
It was bound to stain her dress, she thought, but somehow she couldn’t bring herself to move.
This close she could see that his eyes were not simply blue, but blue with tiny gold flecks, and ringed with a darker blue. The flecks were what made them dance, she thought. They weren’t dancing now. His irises were dark and large, and seemed to draw her ever closer, like the eye of a whirlpool.
Under her fingertips his heart thudded in an insistent beat. It echoed in her mind, in her body. She could feel the rhythm of the beat through his thighs, his chest, in the muscles of the arms locked about her, in the heat of him pressed against her stomach.
She stared into his eyes, mesmerized. The way he was gazing at her made her nervous and oddly weak. She could hardly breathe. Her breath was coming in shallow gasps.
Her lips were dry. She moistened them with her tongue and his gaze dropped to her mouth.
And with agonizing, unbearable slowness he bent his head and lightly, shockingly, licked her on the mouth. Barely a touch, it shuddered right through her, coming to pool, achingly, somewhere deep inside her.
“Your lips are so soft, so silky,” he murmured and began to feather all around her mouth with tiny, tantalizing kisses. “Amazing, considering what you do to them.”
“I don’t do anything to them,” she managed, shivering deliciously as he planted kisses along her jawline.
“Oh, but you do,” he breathed, and she could feel the warm breath of him on her moist lips, like an echo of a kiss, moonlight after sunlight. “You’re always chewing or biting them.”
She couldn’t think of a thing to say. It was all she could do to stand. She clutched his shoulders for support. Broad, smooth, and rock hard. Her hand slipped on the sticky remains of the unguent.
“And if you must bite them,” he went on, his deep voice vibrating against her skin. “This is how you should do it.” He nibbled at her lips until they parted, then he took her lower lip very gently between his teeth and bit down on it softly, over and over, laving and sucking between each bite.
With each tiny bite, sensations coursed through her body, arrowing in wave after wave, straight to the core of her. Her knees buckled and she felt herself jerk and shudder helplessly in his arms, as if she’d been taken over by something. Or someone.
The moment he released her lips she pulled back, shocked at herself. She shoved at his chest and he let her go. She staggered back, there was something wrong with her knees. She found a chair and sat down with a thump, gasping for breath, for some vestige of control.
He gave a soft groan.
She stared at him. “Did I hurt you?”
“Yes.” His chest was heaving, his voice ragged. His eyes bored into hers, a dark, midnight blue.
She scanned his body. Who knows what she had done to him? She’d been completely out of control. “What did I do?”
“You stopped.”
She didn’t understand. “How could that hurt?” Her emotions were in turmoil. What had just happened?
He stroked a finger down her cheek. “He wasn’t a very good husband to you, was he?”
She blinked at the abrupt change of subject and jerked her head away from his hand. Even the stroke of one finger sent shivers through her. “Rupert? Yes, he was. He gave me Nicky. And he protected us.” She took deep breaths and gathered the shreds of her composure together.
“But you weren’t happy.”
“Of course I was. I was the crown princess, the highest lady in the land. Every girl wants that.” She was much calmer now that she was back on familiar territory. As long as she didn’t look at him. Or touch him. Or smell that unguent. She wiped her hands on her skirt. It was ruined anyway.
“Not you. You don’t care a snap of your fingers for that.”
“How would you know?” She wished he would stop looking at her. Even though she had her head turned away, she could feel the warmth of his gaze.
“A girl who cared for position wouldn’t let someone like Mrs. Barrow call her lovie. Wouldn’t let her precious son make friends with a scruffy little fisher boy. Wouldn’t leave it all behind her without a thought.”
She said nothing. She was calm and back to herself, she thought. She must never let him do that to her again.
“Being the princess didn’t make you happy, and I don’t believe he did, either.”
“You’re wrong,” she flashed. “I was happy. And I did love my husband, I did.” She’d promised to on her wedding day and she had, she really had. With all her foolish sixteen-year-old heart.
“I see, so it was love’s young dream?”
Her mouth wobbled and she jerked her back to him. She marched to the fire, seized a poker, and jabbed the fire savagely with it. Smoke gushed into the room.
After a few minutes she put the poker down. “We will leave in the morning,” she announced.
He sighed.
She frowned. “What?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. It is just that I had hoped to be here when Harry arrived. The day after tomorrow.” He slanted a look at her.
Callie stared at him, unable to believe the effrontery of the man.
No doubt that’s why he’d kissed her like that, to soften her up.
“Let me get this clear,” she said. “First you lock my luggage away to force me to delay my departure, then you foist your company on me—unwanted!—for the journey, and now you have the gall to suggest I wait another two days?”
He nodded, his blue eyes dancing. “That’s it, in a nutshell.”
“Because you want to meet your brother.”
“Yes.”
She glared at him.
After a moment he added, “He’s a very nice brother. I’m fond of him.” He seemed not the least bit abashed.
“I’m not surprised you survived the war,” she said at last.
His mouth twitched. “And why is that?”
“Because you were clearly born to be hanged,” she told him.
“Or throttled. It does amaze me that nobody has throttled you. That you’ve escaped hanging doesn’t altogether surprise me—government authorities are so rarely efficient, I find.
You can wait for your brother as long as you like.
Nicky and I will leave first thing in the morning. ”
Gabe watched her sweep from the room, his mouth drying at the sway of her hips. His body was aching and aroused and he felt simultaneously frustrated and exhilarated.
He shrugged on a shirt, then sat down at the writing desk in the corner, pulled out a quill, and began to sharpen it with a small pearl-handled knife. His mind kept reliving that kiss, but he forced it instead to consider what he’d learned about her.
He hadn’t meant to distress her, hadn’t meant to stir up painful memories. But his questions had produced such revealing answers he could not regret asking them.
Most fascinating was her answer to the question he hadn’t asked. She’d answered it with such vehemence, too. I did love my husband, I did.
Was it the truth? Or, to paraphrase the Bard, had she protested too much?
And did it matter anyway? After all the man was dead.
It was bizarre, Gabe reflected. He’d known her such a short time and knew so little about her, yet, somehow, she had become so important to him. And it wasn’t just lust, though he was beset with lust the entire time he was with her. That mouth of hers would be the death of him yet.
He groaned just thinking of how she’d tasted, her sweet, frantic response. She’d almost dissolved right there in his arms. Had they not been standing, she might have been his yet.
But he’d been in lust many a time before, and it had never caused him to panic at the thought of the woman leaving. He’d never panicked in his life, let alone over a woman. But the feeling in his chest when she’d declared she was leaving, he was pretty sure that had been something akin to panic.
The soldier in him had reacted immediately to secure his position; he’d taken her luggage prisoner. Held it hostage until she gave her parole. Not one of his more glorious military moments.
It was only afterward that he’d analyzed his actions. It had shocked him to realize it, but there it was, as large as life in his consciousness.
After so short an acquaintance he had no business thinking the thoughts he was thinking, or making the plans he was making. But he seemed to be making them anyway. He couldn’t seem to help it.
All unknowing, like a sniper in the dark, she’d taken him neatly in the heart.
He’d had no idea it could happen like that. He’d never had plans to settle down, had never once considered marriage.
Marriage? Surely he wasn’t. He couldn’t be.
Marriage was for family men, for eldest sons who needed to get heirs, for men in need of an heiress, or for fools who fell in love.
Gabe was about as far from being a family man as he could imagine; he’d never met his father, never once been to the family home.
He’d met his two older brothers twice in his life that he recalled.
It might be three times. Those occasions had been stiff and uncomfortable, and none of them had made a push to see each other since they’d become adults.