Chapter 55
Fifty-Five
Marcus Tyndale had saved her art. Three years of sketches and studies, starting and stopping, then restarting, until she’d produced what she knew in her heart was her finest work.
Kissing him seemed the most natural thing to do. She started on his eyes, moved down his aristocratic nose, and was working her way down to his sensually severe lips when she heard him say.
“This is wrong.”
“What?” She drew back.
“Wrong,” he repeated, as if trying to convince himself.
“Why?”
“You’re vulnerable.”
“Vulnerable?” She might have laughed if he hadn’t looked so tortured. In that moment, she felt anything but vulnerable. She felt exhilarated, invincible, as if she could fly. She studied his face; he was desperately serious. “Ridiculous man.”
“You’re in my care.” He insisted. “I’d be taking advantage of you.”
“In what way does this look, or feel, as if you’re the one taking advantage?” She unwrapped an arm from around his neck, tracing the line of his lips, wishing she could taste them. “You know, you’re shockingly noble for a man who professes to be a mercenary. Also, absurdly misguided.”
“Misguided?” His dark brows rose.
She nodded, settling more comfortably in his lap. “My father is paying you to bring me to England. Which makes you responsible for my escape. But not, M’sieur Tyndale, for my choices.”
“I fail to see the difference.”
“You rescued me from the Conciergerie. Saved my life. Saved my work.” She shook her head, still struggling to grasp the miracle of this revelation. “For which I am totally, unutterably, forever grateful.”
“So,” he said cautiously, “this is gratitude?”
She inched closer and let out a very French pffft of disgust. “For a man whose art shows such fine attention to detail and everyday life, you are shockingly obtuse. I am grateful, yes.” She leaned forward and nipped the lobe of his ear. “But does this feel like gratitude?”
She felt him shiver.
“You…what you’ve been through…seen…it’s traumatic.” He cleared his throat. “You’re not thinking clearly.”
“And yet, you’re the one speaking in incomplete sentences.”
“That last one was complete.”
“But wrong. Indeed, M’sieur possibly-named Tyndale, you seem to be alternating between the impressions that I’m either out of my mind or an inanimate object, like my art, to be packaged up and carried about willy nilly. As if I have no say in the matter.”
“I assure you, inanimate is the last word I would use to describe you.”
“Good. Now, stop treating me that way.”
“You are, however, in my care. I would be taking advantage of you…”
She slid her arm back around his neck. “Says who?”
He set his hands on her hips. “This is but a moment. What if you regret it later?”
If he thought the pressure of his hands on her waist would restrain her, it was having the opposite effect.
His grip was warm, firm; it made her think of all the sketches she’d done of him before they’d even met.
“Lives are made of moments.” What if these were among her last?
“What if I don’t regret it? What if this is the perfect moment? ”
A muscle in his jaw worked.
Marguerite wondered why he was trying so hard to resist her. “You were buried alive. Being in the Conciergerie felt like being buried alive to me.”
“You think I’m some sort of second chance?”
“And if you are?” She thought of her drawings. Was he her fate? “Would that be so very wrong?”
“The choices I made after I survived the pit…” the muscle in his jaw worked again. “They didn’t all turn out so well…”
“But you made them. You don’t have to live with the regret of wondering what if?”
“I live with so many other regrets. Marguerite,” his voice was desperate. “I’m not a good man.”
“You keep telling me things to make me believe the worst of you. But your actions don’t match your words. Whenever there’s a chance I might fall, there you are, ready to catch me. Why is that?”
“Force of habit?”
She smoothed a lock of hair from his brow, revealing a bruised lump smeared with blood. “What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“It looks painful. Let me clean it for you.” She glanced around for a cloth. Some water.
He caught her wrist. “It’s nothing.”
“Do you not feel pain? Do you think pain is what you deserve?” She cocked her head, studying his face. “Or do you simply refuse to allow yourself to feel?”
“I feel.” A sound that might have been a laugh, or possibly a moan, escaped him, as his resistance crumbled.
And then his mouth was on hers and all reason fled.
His lips, his mouth, his tongue teasing with hers.
His hands. One sliding up her back to cup her head, the other sliding around her waist, pulling her closer against his body. “God help me, I feel.”
She pressed against him, wanting—needing—to feel him too, more of him, the length of him against her.
He was cradling her, laying her down on the blankets.
She reached for him, unbuttoning his waistcoat, untucking his shirt, sliding her hands up under it to feel the silken heat of his skin, the tensed muscles of his stomach, the soft fur of his chest. His own hands reached for the sash of her gown, untying it, pulling it down off her shoulders, revealing her chemise and stays.
“Too many clothes,” he groaned, and Marguerite couldn’t agree more, her fingers moving to the ties of his breeches.
She was distracted by the delicious feel of his mouth on her neck, warm kisses on the hollow of her collarbone, his hands on her breasts, tracing her nipples through the thin fabric.
And then his mouth was on them, sucking through the fabric, even as his fingers worked at the ties of her stays.
She felt her corset loosen, felt him drag it down, along with her chemise and her gown, around her hips.
She wanted to continue removing his clothes, but he was bent over her, his hands and his mouth adoring her breasts. The sensation was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Neither rough and painful, the way Gerard had groped her, nor soft and exploratory, the way she’d touched herself.
It was…he was… “Oh,” she sighed in heated wonder.
His mouth, his hands continued downwards, like tendrils of fire snaking around her ribs, her belly, her hips.
She felt her core melting and she arched upwards.
He yanked the tangle of clothes off her, leaving her in nothing but her shoes, stockings, and garters.
She kicked her shoes off, tugging at his shirt before he could return his attentions to her body.
He pulled it over his head, and she gasped.
“The scar?” He said, his hand drifting to the slash that started across his forearm and continued down across his ribs and belly. “It’s ugly, I know.” He turned, reaching for his shirt. There were more scars on his back. Fainter. Almost as if he’d been whipped. More than once.
“No.” She felt suddenly, fiercely protective of this man who seemed so determined to hide any evidence of his pain, and yet so concerned with hers. She grabbed his wrist. “It’s…you…you’re beautiful.” She thought fleetingly of her portfolio of drawings. “More beautiful than I imagined.”
A tenuous expression crossed his face, as if he wanted to believe her. And as much as she wanted him to continue what he’d been doing, she wanted to touch him, to show him the truth of her words. That every part of him was beautiful to her.
She unfastened the buttons of his breeches, feeling the length of him through the fabric.
When she pulled them and his small clothes down, his penis fell hot and hard against her chest. She stroked it, feeling him quiver and pulse against her hand.
She looked down at it and was swept by a desire to feel him inside her. She covered the tip with her mouth.
He groaned, a sound that made her pull him in deeper. She felt his hand tangling in her hair, heard him growl, “If you keep doing that, mon coeur, this will all be over before it’s even begun. And I feel fairly certain neither of us wants that…”
They were facing each other, both kneeling. Surrounded by the tangle of their clothes. In the eerie silence of the cave, the rapid sounds of their breathing seemed amplified.
Still on their knees, they both rose in the same moment, their lips met again, the kisses this time softer, slower, deeper. She inhaled the scents of him, sunshine, leather, and musky desire. His hands slid down her back to her hips, cupping her buttocks.
She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her aching breasts against the hardness of his chest. “I want you,” she whispered.
His body tensed.
She drew back and saw pain and confusion in his cognac-colored eyes. Feeling the stir of the same emotions, she began, “Did I…do…say…something wrong?” Did I hurt you?
“No, no. Not you.” He shook his head. “I…it’s just...” He stroked her cheek with the back of one finger.
She thought about what he’d said about choices that hadn’t gone well.
“There’s no need to rush,” she said, face heating as she thought about all the things she’d like to try. She lifted her chin. “We have two or three days to get to know each other better, do we not?”