Hearts Beguiled (17 page)

T
he door flew open and the innkeeper, who was bent over a cookpot at the fire, looked over his shoulder, his face screwed into a scowl.

"Here now, there's no need to barge in here like an ass with a bee up her arse!"

"I want a bed," Max said.

The innkeeper straightened to peer nearsightedly at a tall man with a battered face who appeared to have a swooning woman in his arms. "Is she dead? Is she contagious? I'll not let no room to a—"

Gabrielle burst into breathless laughter as Max set her down on her feet. She felt giddy, as if she had been sipping champagne all afternoon. "We've just been married!" she announced.

The innkeeper bowed, making a leg in the manner of the courtiers of a century ago. "My felicitations, madame . . . monsieur."

Max pulled his purse out of his waistcoat pocket and pressed a scattering of coins into the innkeeper's hands. "My good man, I want a room. With a bed. Spare no expense."

The room the innkeeper showed them to was in the back on the ground floor. He flung open the door with another old-fashioned bow. "Monsieur, madame. A room with a bed."

Gabrielle, standing behind Max's broad back, heard him make a funny sputtering sound. "Praise God," he said weakly. "A bed."

He stepped through the door, and Gabrielle followed, almost falling over the end of the biggest bed she had ever seen in her life. It had clawed feet the size of an elephant's and was draped with heavy curtains of a royal purple hue. It so filled the tiny room there was barely space to walk around it.

The innkeeper, pride beaming on his face, bowed a final time and shut the door. Gabrielle, her eyes brimming with repressed laughter, looked at Max.

"You," she began, and the laughter bubbled out of her. She pointed to the enormous bed. "You've been asking for it!"

"So I have." His laughter joined with hers in husky counterpoint, dancing around the room.

Then at once they stopped laughing and looked at each other.

It was so quiet she could hear the steady thud of a hammer striking iron from the blacksmith's down the road. The sound was almost as loud as the hammering of her heart. A muted gold light filtered through the slats of the jalousie shutters. A warm breeze stirred the air, bringing with it the scent of freshly cut hay. So many times she had dreamed of, imagined, planned for this moment, and now that it was here she was frightened.

Max moved and her muscles tensed.

But the step he took was away from her. He paced the room, to the window, the door, back to the window.

He turned his back to her, stuffed a hand in his pocket, ran his fingers through his hair. "I didn't think it would be such an ordeal to take a wife. All that eternal babbling in Latin. Why couldn't the fat fool have just pronounced us married and been done with it?"

She looked up, surprised at the hard rush of words. He's nervous, too, she thought, and loved him all the more for it.

"Damn!" He spun around, took a step toward her, then stood still, his hands hanging loose at his sides, his sooty gray eyes searching her face. Outside the hammering stopped; the breeze died.

"Max, I love you."

He swallowed, sighed. "I know," he said. "I know . . . Come here."

She went.

His arms encircled her. He rested his cheek against the top of her head, and for a moment they simply held each other.

"I love you, too," he said at last.

She drew in a deep breath, filling her lungs. She felt so strange, weightless, as if, without an anchor to hold her, she would float like an aerostat up and out of the room. She reached for the bedpost. The wood was smooth and warm beneath her hand.

He ran his fingers along the edge of the blond lace that trimmed her sleeve. "Did you buy this dress for me?"

"I thought of you," she said, her throat so tight the words were but a coarse whisper. His fingers moved beneath the lace, tracing the curve of her elbow. "I imagined you taking it off me ..."

She turned around so that he could unhook her dress. She did it thoughtlessly, without words, like a woman long married. Yet at the touch of his fingers on her neck, she shuddered and a harsh groan tore from her throat.

He gathered up her hair and brought it to his mouth in his cupped hands as if dipping into a pool of water for a drink. "Peaches," he said. "I love the smell of your hair. Like warm peaches fresh off the tree."

She shut her eyes and saw him plucking a peach off a tree, his white teeth biting into the soft flesh, his tongue coming out to lick the sticky juice off his lips.

He pulled her hair to one side, exposing the bare nape of her neck. He kissed her there. Her eyelids fluttered open, then closed again. She bowed her head, savoring the warm, moist touch of his mouth on her skin.

He released the hooks that fastened-her dress. He did it slowly with single, expert twists of one finger, stopping after each one to kiss her back as it was bared to him.

When he started to uncover her corset and chemise, he worked faster, impatient. He pushed the bodice of her dress down around her waist, freeing her arms, then guided the bunched material past her hips. It slid along her legs to land in a puddle at her feet. He stroked his thumb along her shoulder blade, just above her corset, then bent his head to kiss the place where it met her spine.

"Oh ..." She shivered, wondering how a mouth that looked so hard could kiss so gently.

"Do you like that?" he whispered, leaving a trail of more teasing kisses across her back.

He deftly undid the laces to her corset, and it split open to fall forward into her hands. She pulled it over her head and, with a sharp flick of her wrist, sent it sailing across the room.

His hands, spread wide, clasped her waist, and he spun her around so fast she almost fell. A bar of shadow fell across the lower half of his face, but his eyes glowed as he looked at her, beckoning her like the lights of a cottage window on a storm-racked night. For interminable silent seconds he stood unmoving, then his hands left her waist. He gripped the sides of her head and covered her mouth with his. She clung to his forearms, answering his kiss, meeting the thrusting invasion of his tongue. Love for him poured through her in a flood, filling her to bursting, and she gasped aloud as if in pain.

He slanted his mouth back and forth across hers, almost hurtfully, the pressure of his kiss so intense it left her lips feeling bruised. His mouth trailed down, along her jawline. He tangled his hand in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her neck, where he planted quick kisses, flicking her skin with his tongue.

Running her palms across his back, she pressed her breasts to his chest, irritated suddenly at the barrier of clothing that still remained between them. She wrenched at the buttons on his waistcoat, heard one clatter to the floor.

He stilled her hands. "Would you rip the clothes right off me, woman?"

"Yes."

He shrugged out of the waistcoat, letting it fall to the floor.

She tugged at the ruffled jabot around his neck until he choked and rolled his eyes piteously, and her laughter, low and soft, filled the room. She pulled his shirttail out of his breeches, but he did the rest, yanking it over his head and flinging it aside.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, then leaned back to admire his chest. It was just as she imagined it—brown, broad, brawny. She buried her face in it, breathing deeply and stirring the light that of dark, silky hair into tickling her nose.

"Mmm . . . you smell sweet."

"Sweet!"

"Well, tangy sweet. Like lemon sherbet."

"Good Lord."

She licked him. "You taste good, too."

He laughed. "Stop it, you little idiot."

Then his laughter caught in his throat. His eyes roamed her face, down her neck to her breasts. With the back of two knuckles, he stroked what he could see, the soft swelling above the lacy edge of her chemise. He curled one of the ribbons around his finger.

She shook her head, covering his hand with her own. "I'll see you naked first, Maximilien de Saint-Just," she teased. And she smiled as she heard his breath catch.

She looked down. Desire that was hidden in the hammering of her heart, the hot rushing of the blood through her veins, was plainly visible on him—a hard, pulsating bulge that strained against the tight chamois. She outlined the hard ridge with the tips of her fingers, using feathery strokes that made him groan, and she saw the muscles in his stomach tighten as he forced himself to stand still.

Her strokes grew bolder, faster. Finally he could bear it no longer. He grasped her hand to stop the movement of her fingers, but held her palm hard against him. "Do you want it, Gabrielle?"

Her hand tightened around him for a moment, then she let him go. "Off" with those breeches," she said huskily.

His eyes slitted half closed, his lips curled into an insolent smile. His hands rose to his waist. The breeches slid to the floor.

He took a step back, the better for her to see him. He stood before her proud in his manhood, proud in his need of her. And he let her look her fill.

In the muted light his eyes glowed silver. A muscle ticked in his clenched jaw, but she wasn't looking at his face. "Do you want it?" he demanded again, his voice rough.

Her eyelids drifted closed and she swayed slightly, as if she were about to swoon. She swallowed, nodded.

"Then say it."

"I . . . want it."

He lifted her in his arms and,' swinging around, fell with her across the big tester bed.

They rolled over and over, back and forth across the broad width of it, their mouths locked together in a kiss that reverberated between them like a crack of thunder. He ended up on top, straddling her. He raised his head and looked down on her with eyes hard and hot with a hunger that seared her like a flame. She saw in his face all that he wanted to do to her, all that he would do, and her body began to tremble in an anticipation that was both joyous and fearful.

"Mine," he said. "You are mine, Gabrielle." And hooking his fingers into the top of her chemise, he ripped it off her.

Her breasts seemed to rise up to fill his hands. He kneaded them until they felt swollen, engorged. She watched his hands move over them, dark skin against white, roughness against softness. Her breaths were pushing out of her in harsh pants. And she felt his breath, fast and hot, against her neck. He lowered his head and licked the rounded curve of her breast where it rose in a swell beneath her arm. Then his mouth curled around, stroking underneath with his tongue, lips roaming up, climbing the gentle slope to capture the peak with his teeth. He drew the taut nipple into his mouth and a familiar and sweet, exquisite pain shot through her as he suckled and sucked like a babe.

"Max, oh, Max," she whispered, cradling his dark head as he drew on her nipple, squeezing it between his lips. She felt a love for him so tender, tears filled her eyes.

He stroked her flank, following the contours of her body. In at her waist, out along the flare of hipbone and thigh. Spreading his fingers wide, he covered her stomach with his hand. He kept it there for a moment, flat against her womb, then slowly inched it lower until she began to quiver in anticipation of the moment when he would first touch her there—that tiny, throbbing knob of desire between her legs.

Even expecting it, wanting it, craving it, still she shuddered and gasped when at last, at last his fingers touched her. He rubbed and stroked her gently, slipping a finger inside her, then out, in, then out, and she writhed, arching up to press against his hand. There was a yawning emptiness inside of her that cried out for filling.

The yearning to feel him, to take him inside her, became a physical pain so that she began to whimper, "Please, please, please," and she grasped his hardness with her hands.

The breath left him in a keening moan. "Oh, dear God, Gabrielle ..."

He pushed her legs apart roughly with his knees, and she spread them wider still, lifting her hips as he thrust into her. Her back arched rigidly as an explosion of desire tore through her, blotting out the universe, and the breath emptied from her lungs in a guttural cry.

❧

She opened her eyes on his frightened face. "Gabrielle? Christ, did I hurt you?"

"No, no, no. Love me." She pulled him down against her, pressing on his buttocks to push him even deeper inside of her, relishing the exquisite feel of his thick, hard length filling her. "Love me."

Sealing her lips with his, he began to move inside her with hard, rhythmic thrusts, and her body joined with his, rising, falling, and rising again, each crest reaching higher and then higher than the last. The big bed began to shake, and the purple curtains quivered as the beat grew in tempo. Her fingers clutched at the velvet counterpane, twisting it into knots; her teeth clenched tightly together and her breath pushed out of her in harsh, rapid moans as she rocked with his driving thrusts. Harder, faster, higher he went, pulling her up after him, and when they reached the highest peak of all, they arrived there together.

With a muffled groan he fell across her, burying his face in her hair. She turned her head to see his profile. His eyes were still tightly clenched, his mouth partly open as his breath came out in short, harsh pants. Beneath her bare flesh she felt the velvet counterpane, sticky now with her sweat. Her heart raced and her limbs quivered with exhaustion. The weight of him pressing into her breasts made it difficult to breathe. But when he started to withdraw from her, she wrapped her legs around his hips to hold him in.

"Don't leave me," she said.

He braced himself up on his elbows to look at her. He lay his palms against her cheeks and kissed her slowly, gently. "I knew," he said, love in his voice, love in his eyes. "I knew it would be like that with you."

Gabrielle hadn't known it could be like that at all. But she couldn't find the words to tell him so.

Sighing happily, he rolled onto his back. They lay side by side, legs still entwined, for a long time in a companionable, satisfied silence, drifting in a sated state between sleep and awareness.

"Gabrielle," he murmured, nothing more. And he took her hand and placed it on his chest.

His flesh was warm, hard. It rose and fell with his breathing, and his heart beat against her palm. He seemed so strong, so alive, yet she knew how tenuous was anyone's hold on life. Max . . . His name filled her mind. If I lose you, too . . . But the thought was too terrible to finish.

She rose up to lay on her side facing him, her head braced on her fist. His male member, spent now, lay limp against his thigh. She remembered how he had felt inside her. His length, his thickness, his difference, had surprised her. She wanted to fondle it, to tease it back into hardness again, but shyness stopped her.

He saw what she was looking at and a smile curved his lips. "So you liked that, did you?"

She blushed and glanced away. Her hair fell forward and hit the side of his face.

He cupped her chin, forcing her head around. "Admit it, Gabrielle."

"I liked it."

"That's good, ma mie, because you're going to be getting a lot of it from now on."

Her blush deepened and she couldn't possibly meet his eyes. It seemed scandalous to talk about it so openly. Scandalous and exciting, and she wanted him again. Already.

"I know you want me, Gabrielle, and it isn't conceit that makes me say it. I want you just as much.'' He curled a hank of her hair around his fist. "I've wanted you like that, ma mie, from the first. I opened my door and there you were. Your hair was on fire and your eyes were snapping in anger-why were you angry?"

"You took so long to answer the door." And you were so incredibly handsome, she thought. It wasn't fair.

"Purple eyes," he said. "I'd never seen purple eyes before. I was instantly hard."

She sucked in a shocked breath. Laughing softly, he pulled her head forward until her mouth was a bare inch from his. "You came for Fornication, remember? You were lucky I didn't give it to you right there on the floor."

"Max!"

He pulled her down on him, rolling over at the same time and slamming his mouth down on hers in a fierce, bruising kiss. When the kiss ended every inch of her flesh felt aflame, alive with desire.

And he wanted her again. His manhood, pressing against her thigh, had begun to harden. He stroked between her legs, where she was slick and ready for him. He lowered his head to kiss her—

There was a timid knock on the door.

"Go away," Max said.

"Monsieur, madame?" came a faint, feminine voice. "My father thought you might be hungry."

Grunting, Max rolled away from her and pushed himself off the bed. She enjoyed watching the play of the muscles in his buttocks as he walked across the room—until she realized he was going to answer the door just as he was!

She sat up, snatching desperately at the counterpane in a vain attempt to at least cover herself as he pulled the door open. She heard the girl gasp and the crockery rattle.

"Thank you, mademoiselle," Max said, taking a tray of food from her hands—roasted fowl, bread, cheese, and wine. He turned away from the door, the tray balanced in one hand, and Gabrielle saw a round, pocked face crowned with braids, with two big round eyes and a huge round mouth. The eyes went from Max's partially erect manhood to Gabrielle, then back to Max.

"Oh, Jesu!" the girl cried, fleeing with a slam of the door.

"You are absolutely shameless, Maximilien de Saint-Just. And you embarrassed that poor girl—"

"She didn't see anything she hasn't seen before," he said matter-of-factly, setting the tray of food on a small stand by the bed.

Gabrielle went rigid. "Oh, really? And when, pray tell, did she see it before?"

A perplexed look crossed his face. Then a deep, delighted laugh rumbled from his chest. He knelt beside her on the bed, one knee between her legs, and leaned into her.

"You're jealous!"

She clutched the velvet material, bringing it up under her chin. "Don't be ridiculous . . . Was that girl your mistress?"

"I never saw her before in my life, you silly idiot. I only meant she couldn't have reached adulthood without seeing a naked man." He lowered his head to give her a hard, swift kiss. "How old were you when you saw your first yard, Gabrielle?"

Her eyes opened wide with shock at his frank language. "Max!"

He laughed, kissing her again. "Such outraged innocence!

Don't pretend you haven't heard that word before. That and a hundred different others. I didn't realize you Parisian shopgirls had such sheltered childhoods. I thought only a gentlewoman had to wait until her wedding night for a glimpse at a man's bayonet and balls."

Gabrielle's cheeks burned and she was sure he could read the truth in her face. For of course he was right; she had heard all the words. What was the old saying—you can't sleep in the gutter and wake up clean? But she had been innocent once, too. And not so long ago. Even in Maman's house, with her lovers coming and going so freely at all hours, Gabrielle had never seen a man without his clothes. Until Martin. She had been sixteen, and it had been her wedding night . . .

Tell him, she thought. Tell him now.

But Max had stood up again, turning away from her to pour wine into glasses from the jug on the tray. When he turned around to put the glass into her hand, there were still traces of laughter on his face.

He raised his glass to hers in a toast. "May this night last a hundred years and our love survive eternity," he said, his silky voice turning the words into a song of love, and she knew she couldn't tell him yet.

It was growing dark now, the shadows falling heavier in the room. She watched the movement of his throat as he drank. It gleamed with sweat for the air was still and hot. Her eyes moved over him possessively, savoring the fall of his hair against his neck as he tilted back his head, the flex of his shoulder and arm as he raised the glass to his lips, the ripple of the muscles that corded his stomach as he swallowed.

My husband, she thought. It filled her with a warm sense of security. It wasn't a feeling she was used to, and she was seized with a sudden and overwhelming fear of losing it. She brought the glass of wine to her lips, and her hand shook so badly the rim clattered against her teeth.

She felt his eyes on her, and when she looked up she saw that he was staring broodingly at the ring on her hand. She set her glass of wine back onto the tray and spread her fingers, really studying the ring for the first time. The band was thick, though worn, and etched into a fiat oval of gold was the famous Saint-Just crest, a lion's head between two crossed swords.

The ring suddenly felt heavy on her hand, and she curled her fingers into a fist around it. "Did ... did it belong to your father?" she asked, hoping that it did not, for she didn't want to be bound by another family heirloom.

"My father used to wear it. A long time ago." He sat down beside her on the bed, leaning back against the headboard and balancing the glass of wine against his stomach. He picked up her hand, rubbing his thumb over the etched metal of the ring. "He had it cut down to fit my mother. He gave it to her on the day they were wed."

"But I thought you said—"

"I did. The wedding was a sham, conducted by a phony priest hired by my father to play the part."

"Your father only pretended to marry your mother? But why?"

"Why do you think? She was beautiful and a virgin and he wanted her. But she wasn't of his class and he was already married anyway." His lips tightened into a bitter smile. "I suppose the randy bastard didn't want to bother with trying to seduce her honestly, so he pretended to go through with a marriage ceremony."

"What a wicked thing to do!"

"Wicked?" He laughed harshly. "He's the comte de Saint-Just and a marichal of France. It made for an amusing anecdote to tell the king the next time they went hunting together." He turned his head to look at her, and through the dusky twilight she saw his face. She saw anger and shame, and the terrible hurt of a child who learned too young of evil and cruelty and sin.

"She died a whore, Gabrielle," he said, bitterness roughening his voice. "From a disease that whores get. But she never stopped loving the bastard. I can forgive her everything else, but not that."

He sat up abruptly and, bending one leg, leaned forward to pour some more wine. Tentatively she stroked his back, and when he didn't pull away from her, she pressed her face into his bare flesh. "I love you," she said. It seemed inadequate, but it was all she had to offer him.

It must have been enough, for after a moment he sighed, releasing a pent-up breath. He turned back to her, embracing her with one arm and pulling her against him. He stroked her hair, shutting his eyes. "Gabrielle," he said. It sounded like a prayer.

She held him, pressing his head against her breasts. She thought of mothers and sons. Dominique's love for her was unconditional now; she was the sun to his world. She wondered what he would hate her for when he became a man.

"What do you think Dominique will say when we tell him we are married?" she asked, voicing only one of her many fears.

Max squeezed her shoulders. "Dominique will be all right." He tossed back a swallow of wine. "He's bound to be a bit jealous at first, but he'll come around."

She raised her head from where she had tucked it into the hollow of his shoulder. "I've never spent a night away from him before."

"Simon will tell him something."

Agnes, she thought with a despairing laugh, had probably informed all of the Palais Royal that Gabrielle was spending the night with her lover. But Simon, Simon who had once named her the daughter he'd always wanted . . .

"Simon's probably frantic with worry."

The smile he gave her was suspiciously smug. "No, he isn't."

"How do you know he isn't?"

"Because he knows you're with me."

"You men think you know everything."

"We do."

"Hunh! Who says so?"

"I do."

She pretended to pout. "It seems I've wed myself to a bullying tyrant."

He slid his hand around her neck, pulling her head closer to his. His bent knee had fallen sideways against her breasts, and he moved it back and forth across her hardening nipples. "I'll bully you day and night if it makes you stick your lower lip out in that adorable fashion."

He took the lip in question between his teeth. He chewed on it lightly, then the kiss became more ardent, his tongue moving deep inside her mouth, and she tasted wine.

Something wet and cold splashed on Gabrielle's breasts. "Max! You're spilling . . ."

He pressed her back against the pillows and leaned over her. His eyes met hers, and her chest tightened at the look of desire, of raw, naked need, she saw in those sooty gray depths. She drew in a deep breath, and the pungent, rich aroma of wine filled her senses. Together they looked down, where two big red rivulets trickled through the valley between her breasts, spreading out onto her flat stomach. Slowly, while she watched, he lowered his head, and his tongue came out and licked the ruby liquid from her skin. Her eyes slid shut, and she began to drown in the rising, enveloping feel of him loving her.

His face rose above hers, and once again their eyes met.

I want you, his said.