The Turncoat (28 page)

Then the back of her stays parted and she felt cool air on her skin. He appeared to know better than to pull the laces out. He left them loosely plaited and drew the garment over her head. She wondered fleetingly how many other women he had undressed, then put it from her mind.

In the mirror she was naked and vulnerable before him, her gossamer shift transparent in the firelight. She could see the hunger in his eyes. His hands rested lightly on her shoulders, then slid down to cup her breasts through the cloth. He lifted them, tested their weight, then gently thumbed her nipples. She felt them tighten, saw them in the mirror, budding pink through the sheer fabric.

She was trapped between his body and the dressing table, every move visible in the tilted glass. Every involuntary twitch of her hips, triggered somehow by the play of his hands on her breasts, was visible both to him and to her.

She understood suddenly why he’d turned her to face the mirror. He wanted her to see, to know, to acknowledge that this was him and not his cousin. Him and not Bayard Caide.

He needn’t have worried. She knew the difference between the two men. Caide had played her body skillfully, driving her before him to knowledge and pleasure. But Tremayne, she now understood, was determined they should go there together.

She whimpered when he abandoned her breasts to untie the lace at her collar, then trace the lines of her collarbone, her neck, her jaw. When she felt the pads of his fingers pressed to her lips, she gave in to instinct and flicked her tongue out to taste him. She heard his sharp intake of breath, and when she opened her mouth to his questing fingers, she heard him groan. She suckled, and felt his hips shift, felt him press his arousal into the small of her back.

When he touched his wet fingers to her aching breasts she felt a coiling pleasure between her legs. He continued rolling her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, moistening her chemise until it was damp and transparent, the pink of her nipples showing red in the firelight. Her breaths were coming shorter now. Every muscle in her body tensed. She closed her eyes. If he only squeezed her nipples once more, surely she would—

He stopped. Cool air swirled around her thighs and her eyes flew open. Back to the mirror. He was drawing up her chemise.

One hand held her hem, the other fingered the neatly trimmed hair at the juncture of her thighs. “Very pretty. The Widow’s grooming, I presume?” he said.

“She insisted.” Kate gasped as his finger slid through the curls.

“Did she help you, or did you do it yourself?”

She’d never thought of the procedure as erotic before, but she could tell the thought of another woman touching her intimately excited him. “She helped me the first few times. Then I used a mirror.”

“Did you part yourself and look?” he said, spreading her open with his fingers.

She shook her head.

“Did you touch yourself like this?” He found the bud that pulsed there, then circled.

“No!”

He stopped.

“No? You wish me to stop?” he asked playfully, dropping kisses on her shoulder. “Or no, you did not touch yourself?”

“I didn’t touch myself.”

“That’s a pity.” The circling resumed, light and deft. “But other times, you explored yourself?” he asked, persistent.

“Yes,” she admitted. She felt curiously unashamed.

“And did you bring yourself to climax?”

She shook her head. “No. I’ve never…” But that wasn’t quite true. “Bay did.”

His hand stilled. He dropped her chemise and it fluttered back into place.

She met Tremayne’s eyes in the mirror, expecting anger but finding only amusement.

“Bayard Caide, Angela Ferrers,” he said. “What a lot of people we seem to be bringing to bed with us.”

“He didn’t…” She groped for words.

“Make love to you?”

“No. He just…”

“Pleasured you,” he finished for her.

“Yes.”

“With his hands?” he asked, drawing her hem up once more. “Like this?”

“Oh,” she cried out as he found her again, his touch cool against her heated flesh.

“Or with his mouth?”

The thought nearly undid her. She looked up at his face in the mirror, his eyes intent, his hair falling over her shoulder. She needed…

But his hands slowed, pulled her back from the brink, turned her gently to face him. “I’m determined to banish all thought of Bayard Caide from your head. And in the event that my attentions aren’t frequent enough for you, my passionate pearl, I’ll teach you to take care of yourself in the interim.”

“Show me,” she said hoarsely.

He picked up the hand mirror lying on the dressing table, and led her to the bed. They climbed on together, and she sat uncertainly with her legs folded beneath her. He knelt beside her and began kissing her mouth. Long, languorous, tongue-tangling kisses. He dragged her chemise off her shoulders, used the weight of his body to guide hers back against the pillows, and chuckled with satisfaction when her legs fell open and she drew her knees up of her own accord.

Then, still in his breeches and shirt, he knelt between her legs and spread her sex with his long, skillful fingers. She gasped when she felt the cool air touch her heated folds. “You are pink and lovely and, I am sorry to say, decidedly virginal. We should go slowly, Kate.”

“How can you tell?” she asked, genuinely curious and wildly impatient all at once.

He placed the mirror in her hand and helped her angle it until she could see herself. It was bizarre to think there were parts of her own body she had never seen, could not actually, with her own eyes.

She watched as he traced a finger around her entrance. It was the most erotic thing she had ever seen, and the tiny quivering muscles in her thighs made obvious her desire.

Down, around, and up he traced, then he stopped on the downswing and applied gentle pressure to the flesh there. It became taut when he pressed. “If I go slowly, it should stretch, not tear.”

“Oh.” It was a detail Angela Ferrers had left out.

He mistook her tone. “Are you afraid, Kate?”

She shook her head. “Not of the pain.” Of the intimacy. Of where it would lead.

“Would it be such a terrible thing for us to fall in love?” he asked.

Of the way he could read her so easily.

“Ask me again in the morning.”

His eyes, so unguarded a moment ago, became shuttered now, and she knew he was going to bend all his formidable skills to procure the answer he desired.

He circled the nub at the top where so much tension centered. “Do you know what this is called?” he asked, with a wicked gleam in his eyes.

“Tell me,” she said breathlessly.

He did so. Then he bade her touch it herself. “It’s so small,” she said, amazed that such a tiny thing could so rule her desires when touched like this.

“It swells more when you are very aroused,” he said. “Let me show you.”

Before she could protest, his head dipped between her thighs and he sucked the swollen nub into his mouth, worried it with his tongue. When he relented, her eyes were closed, her head thrown back, her legs splayed wide.

“Now look,” he said, holding up the mirror.

But she was done with playing. She batted aside the mirror, desperate for relief. But his fingers resumed their play. She arched shamelessly into his hand.

“I see you know what you want,” he drawled, stretching out to lie beside her, one hand propping up his head, the other stroking her, as if he could do this all night. “I was thinking about killing Bay for touching you, but now I think I might have to thank him for awakening you. It’s breathtaking.”

Finally he ceased teasing and settled into a rhythm that stole her breath. She climbed fast toward the peak. Then his touch changed, slowed. She writhed in frustration. “Please.”

“Please what? Open the window? Put out the light? You’ll have to be more specific.”

She whimpered. “Please.”

He laughed. “You don’t know what it’s called, do you?”

She blushed. He had his hand between her legs and he was pleasuring her with practiced skill, but only now did she blush and turn away.

“The French call it the little death,
la petit mort
. The Spanish say they are going to run,
correr
. The Romans used to say they were hastening,
festinus
, to the finish. But in English, we say we will come. Come for me now, Kate.”

She did.

When her body started to calm, when the thud of her heart in her chest was finally louder than her ragged breathing, her eyes fluttered open to find Tremayne looking down at her, swallowing hard.

He’d loosened the flap on his breeches. Her eyes widened. She’d never seen one before, had not expected the sight to make her feel…hungry…thirsty…ravenous.

“I want to see all of you,” she said, realizing he remained clothed out of deference to her innocence. He hesitated, but she was struggling out of her chemise and the sight seemed to snap his control. He shucked his clothing quickly, and Kate stared in wonder at the glory of his body. He was broad-shouldered, flat-stomached, and narrow-hipped, like a statue of a Greek god in one of Mr. Du Simitière’s engraving books. Except for the scars. Not just his wounds from Mercer, but others as well. He was beautiful, but he had led a soldier’s life, and she should not be here with him.

She might have turned skittish, might have bolted, if he had not settled his body over hers at that moment, and threaded the fingers of his left hand with her own. His right hand, she could feel spreading her. Then he was poised at her entrance, and with the gentlest nudge, he slipped inside, and she was lost.

Her hips surged to meet him, to engulf him, but he drew back, just out of reach. Then he dipped back inside her, and she was running, hastening, on the verge of dying once more, but the contact she needed remained out of reach.

“Peter,” she said. “Please.”

He groaned. “Slow and gentle, my love. Trust me.”

She didn’t want slow and gentle anymore. She wanted all of him. She wrapped her legs around his waist, dug her heels into the small of his back, and rose to meet him.

*   *   *

H
e had not anticipated seducing her. If he’d thought ahead to what might happen at the cottage, he imagined himself kissing her farewell before she stepped into the boat with Arthur Grey.

But they were maddeningly proud and stubborn, father and daughter, and she did not board the boat.

He ought to have returned to the house and taken her on the floor of the parlor when she offered. Should have used her fast and hard with no regard for her innocence, and bundled her tearful and torn into the waiting shallop. Instead, he had taken her hand and talked of lovemaking.

There was no other word for it, this shared journey. He’d been nervous, leading her up the stairs, afraid he would hurt her or, much worse, disappoint her. He ought to have seduced her, courted her pleasure with a rake’s tricks and driven her before him to climax, if he wanted to make her pliant. But he could not bear to insult her that way. They must go together, he realized, or not at all.

Her boldness had delighted him, stirred him to a degree he scarcely remembered feeling since he and Bay were teenagers, set loose on London with too much money and too little sense. His determination to go slowly with her had proved the right course. She responded so artlessly and honestly, he needed no further stimulation than the sight of her, head thrown back, hips pumping, to bring him to aching hardness.

He’d stopped twice after entering her shallowly to prolong his erection. He had promised her he would not spill inside her, and he was determined to bring her to pleasure again before he spent outside her body.

She surged up, her wet warmth engulfed him, and he froze. He retained control, but only barely. Her eyes were wide with pain.

“Kate,” he said, “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“I wanted to remember this. Always.”

When her grip on him slackened, he began to move again, and said, “You will. I promise.”

Then there were no more words for some time, until she had run, hastened, died, and come for him again, and lay tangled between Tremayne and the bedclothes.

He’d done everything in his power to stay hard but not come with her, and now he faced a dilemma. He was still sheathed in her, still painfully erect. To thrust inside her while she lay nearly insensate seemed caddish, and also dangerous. He did not think he would have sufficient warning—or will—to pull out. But to withdraw from her body and groan and stroke himself in front of her seemed awkward, out of the question. He must turn away and finish into the bedclothes, silently.

He withdrew from her as gently as possible, but a tremor of aftermath shook her small frame, and her eyes fluttered open to hold his. Before he had a chance to move, she reached out and took him in her hand.

He was slick with their mating, and shocked when she displayed no distaste. Her fingers closed around him and stroked. A lush, liquid sound. Her hand felt scorching hot, her touch artless and devastating. He would, at that moment, have done anything for her.

“Harder,” he begged, ashamed and exhilarated by his capitulation. She tightened her grip, stroked again, then once more, and he came, crying out and spurting into her hand and onto her pale belly.

He’d been neither discreet nor silent. He had no idea what to do next, but she was smiling up at him, her fingers playing over his still-twitching length, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to collapse on his back beside her and laugh.

“Dear God. Where did you learn that? Angela Ferrers again?”

She turned her head on the pillow and kissed him, openmouthed and as generous with her tongue as she had been with her hand. “No,” she said, pulling away with laughter in her eyes. “Pure instinct. Was it correct?”

“I’m not sure I have words for what that was.”

She looked sidelong at him. “Is it always like this?”

He shook his head. “No. It’s usually enjoyable, but not like this.” This, he realized, had been more than enjoyable. It had been important. And it could not, must not, be the last time.