SHE WAS MORE OF a rag than a woman, astonished, sated, a bit sore.
She savored the feel of their rib cages rising and falling in rhythm with each other.
“Am I hurting you?” she asked.
“Only a little. Don’t move yet. I love the feel of you.”
He was still inside her.
She rested her head on his shoulder, and his hands roamed her back. The two of them were sheened in sweat.
“I meant it to be more artful,” he said through her hair, which had fallen all over his face. “And it will be. Perhaps the third or fourth time.”
His dream was coming true. And now that he had her, he sensed he would never, never quite get enough.
He could feel her smile against his shoulder.
His fingers lightly trailed the blades of them, skimmed the elegant taper of her waist to her hips, then paused to circle, slowly, deliberately, that oh-so-exquisitely alive spot at the very base of the spine, until she shifted and began to moan softly again. “Philippe . . .”
He arched her gently backward in the cradle of his arms and touched his tongue to her nipple. She gasped. How he loved that sound.
He nipped. “I want to taste every inch of you,” he murmured. “There is pleasure to be had from every curve, every hollow, every secret place.”
“Show me.”
“Come with me,” he said abruptly.
He gave her a little push.
She slid from his lap. She took him by his hand, pulled him up out of the chair, and led him to the bed. He followed behind so he could watch the silken sway of her unfettered hair tapering to a stop just above her delectable, round white arse, and he knew how he would next take her.
He sank down on the bed with a sigh and pulled her over him.
“We must get rid of these first,” she insisted.
She pushed his shirt away from his shoulders and flung it away much the way he’d flung her night rail. He made short work of his trousers, and they became a wad on the floor.
“Cover me,” she whispered.
And then he captured her, engulfed her completely in his arms, and rolled her over to face him.
“I’ve always wanted to lay down beside you for a night,” he murmured. His finger traced her jaw, the line of her nose, the little nautilus of her ears.
“Always?”
“After I’d ravished you a dozen different ways.”
“Are there a dozen different ways?”
“Oh, ma chérie,” he said in mock pity. “If only you knew.”
“Ravish me,” she decreed on a whisper.
His mouth took hers hard, and he pushed her hair back from her face.
Her hands were gliding tantalizingly over his thighs, exploring, relishing in the feel of him, and his lungs drew in swift, ragged breaths as desire ramped.
The glorious friction of her sweat-slick bare skin, the chafe of her nipples against his own made him moan softly. She was a heaven of softness and lithe curves. And his cock was hard again, curving up toward his belly against hers, and it made him wild.
He moved suddenly and rolled her over on her belly and straddled her thighs, trapping her hands, leaning over her to trail kisses along the pearls of her spine, followed by the glide of his fingertips. Her breathing heaved, too.
“Philippe . . .”
He raised her hips off the bed and trailed a finger between the divide in her arse, nipped first one cheek, then the other. “Comme une pêche,” he said.
She groaned. “Please, Philippe, I want . . .”
And then he slipped a finger between her legs to find she was hot and wet. It made him savage.
She groaned gutturally, a low animal sound, feral and so erotic it was like a long, hard stroke down his shaft.
“Do you want me, Elise?”
“Yes.”
“How do you want me?”
“Now. Now.”
“Like this?”
He tormented her and himself by sliding his cock lightly, lightly along her cleft.
Her hands curled into the counterpane. Her back swayed with the hard gusts of her breath. She slapped the counterpane, half groan, half laugh. “Damn you . . .”
And then he thrust hard, sheathing himself in her, and she groaned softly.
He considered tormenting the two of them with finesse; he knew how to amplify pleasure with anticipation . . . and he tried. He withdrew slowly, allowing her to feel every inch of him, savoring every inch of the cling of her flesh.
But need had its claws in him.
He sank into her again, pulling her hips hard up against his, reveling in her gasp.
“Shall I stop now, Elise?” His voice was a raw rasp.
“Oh, God, no. Please. Faster . . .”
He drew back, and sank into her again, slowly, slowly, slowly. Sweat beaded his body. The cords of his neck were drum tight.
She shifted her hips to take him deeper and moaned in sensual torment.
He unleashed himself. His hips drummed into her, and the world was the raw, primal sound of the slap of their skin together, the ragged saw of their breathing, the moans of pleasure and pleas for more more more.
His release nearly yanked him from her body, and as hers tore through her, she screamed, her body arcing toward his, fingers curling into the counterpane. He felt ripped from his body. He heard his own harsh cries as if he were on the moon.
HE AWOKE WITH her hair across his lips; they must have slept for a time. Her head was on his chest, and her arm was flung over his shoulder. Her thigh was draped over his. She was breathing softly, her breath was warm against his chest, and desire kindled like a match to a rushlight. He shifted as his cock began to stir. He trailed his fingers over her spine, over the curve of her hip, savoring, arousing, waking. Wanting. Wanting. Dear God, wanting.
And she woke with a sigh and lifted her head with a murmur. “Philippe.”
She lifted her head and softly, teasingly, kissed his mouth. He smiled against her lips, then pulled her bottom lip gently between his and splayed his hands across her buttocks, pressing ever so slightly so she could feel how aroused he already was. She smiled, too. She rippled with him as he stroked her back, her thighs, knowing how to move to make him wild, to make herself wild.
He rolled her over on her back and hovered over her.
“Slowly,” he said.
“We’ll make time stop,” she agreed on a whisper.
He was inside her in a leisurely thrust, and she locked her legs and arms around his back, pulling him close, pulling him ever deeper in.
They moved together almost languidly; he drew his hips back, she arched to meet him. Prolonging, as best they could, that inevitable, savage, ramping of pleasure, the greedy run toward ultimate bliss. Savoring the feel of each other, drunk on deep, hungry kisses. Prolonging the time when they would part again.
For as long as he could. And then it was upon him, pressing at the very seams of his being.
“My sweet, I cannot wait . . .”
By way of answer, she arched against him. “Faster, Philippe.”
As the tempo escalated, their bodies collided, and she took him as deeply as she could, her head thrashing back, her fingers digging into his arms, her legs locked around him as he drove the two of them to release.
THEY HAD STOLEN time.
They had not stopped it.
“Stolen” did indeed seem to be the word for it. Because neither of them had the right to each other, given their stations and . . . oh, yes, that word: “circumstances.”
“What of Alexandra, Philippe?”
She couldn’t believe she’d been able to utter the name, but as the fire burned low and the perspiration cooled on their bodies, and as sleep fought for the right to them, a certain ruthless clarity had taken over Elise’s consciousness.
For a moment the word rang there in the dark, a sudden shock, like the sound of a distant gunshot.
It seemed to have nothing to do with the two of them. It was an intrusion of reality into the stolen fantasy of the night.
It was a long time before Philippe spoke. His voice was thick. As if he’d needed to unwillingly drag the words to the surface.
“She has gone to London. I will make it right with her in London.”
Elise said nothing more.
And at last she took in a long breath, as if drawing in his very essence, and sighed.
His hand absently swept her back. Sleep was claiming him.
A certain merciful numbness, a finality, a resolution, set in for her.
This had been an elegy, of sorts, this night with him.
No one knew better than she the consequences of diverging from duty, responsibility, and station. She would never fault him for it. She would not ask it of him, ever.
But she now knew what to do. And she supposed there was peace in that.
THIS TIME HE must have slept like the dead. For when he awoke, he was alone, and a gray light was beginning to slip through the curtains.
He slid his hand over to the side of the bed. It was still warm. And he left his hand there, as if she were lying there still. And he remembered. Why did he feel so very weighted, when he’d just had Elise in his bed?
He woke again when there was a tap on the door.
He sighed at the intrusion of the real world. “Enter, please.”
In sprang a dapper and alarmingly alert footman with coffee and an apple tart on a tray, which he deposited on a little table.
“You’re off to London today, sir?”
Ah, of course. That was why.
“Yes, James, it’s London.” He’d told both James and Ramsey of his plans last night as Elise had taken Jack up to bed.
“Horrible day for it, sir,” he said cheerily. He whipped back the curtains to reveal yet another curtain of rain.
“I’ve seen worse,” Philippe yawned.
Today he was inured to it. He wouldn’t feel the rain or the cold. He would go through the motions of duty, and as he rode in the Earl of Ardmay’s loaned carriage—a slow journey to be sure in this weather—the memory of last night would sustain him. With luck, he would be in London before Alexandra.
And that was where he would do right by everyone.
ONCE IN LONDON again, after a truly unpleasant trip, much of which he’d slept through, and after he’d made himself presentable at the Redmond Townhouse, where he was admitted by Jonathan, the only Redmond currently in residence, Philippe called upon Alexandra.
He found her in the sitting room of her family’s town house, arranged picturesquely on a blue settee that made her eyes look extraordinarily bright. The house was so thoroughly heated he was surprised steam didn’t rise from his coat.
She rose and allowed him to bow over her proffered hand.
“I wasn’t certain whether to expect you, Philippe.”
“Please forgive my unorthodox departure the other night. I know it was uncharacteristic.”
“I should hope so! How tremendously odd and, I daresay, rude of you to dash off so, Philippe. And yes, so very unlike you. You were hardly off to deliver a baby.” She gestured to a Chippendale chair and rang the bell.
It was odd, but his heart gave a reflexive little anticipatory leap at the sound of a ringing bell.
He sat in the fragile, elegant chair.
“It was indeed rude, and for that I apologize sincerely. A friend of mine was in distress and I could ease it, Alexandra. Surely you’ve come to the aid of a friend in distress before?”
Even as he said it, he had difficulty imagining her doing that, or what precisely the occasion might be in which she would leap to help a friend.
She was silent, studying him coolly.
“I heard you use the word ‘Elise.’ Isn’t that the given name of your housekeeper?”
“Yes.”
There was a peculiar, brittle, little silence, into which a woman, presumably a housekeeper, crept bearing tea and a plate of scones.
Alexandra settled a scone onto a plate and handed it to him, then she poured two cups of tea. Neither of them spoke.
“Alexandra,” he said idly, after a sip of tea, “where do you suppose your sister learned the word ‘bastard’?”
She froze.
But only momentarily. She lifted the tea the rest of the way to her lips, sipped, then settled it leisurely upon the table.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean that she called my housekeeper’s son a bastard.”
“Well . . . isn’t he?” She was genuinely confused. She pointed to the teapot. “Teapot.” She pointed at the settee. “‘Settee.’ ‘Bastard.’ Like that. Perhaps we should be grateful my sister is demonstrating a command of the language, since she has struggled with her lessons.”
He wondered if she meant to be witty.
He explained slowly, as if she were a witless child, “It was meant to be hurtful.”
She straightened. “Please do not feel free to use that tone with me,” she said icily. “He’s just a—”
Philippe settled the china cup down so abruptly that the clink echoed in the room.
She blinked.
They regarded each other in silence.
“Why don’t you tell me how you got my housekeeper removed from her position at the academy, Alexandra?” he said softly.
She froze again. She regarded him unblinkingly.
“‘Elise’?” she quoted, on a scoff. With a nervous little laugh.
“Elise.”
“Well . . .” She seemed confused again. “It was a simple thing to accomplish, Philippe, for people such as us. I suggested that my sister was merely an unusually gifted child of delicate sensibility, and should be allowed to proceed with her lessons how and when she saw fit. And your ‘housekeeper’—you will love this, Philippe—said it would be stupid to remove her from a circumstance of order and discipline, as it was exactly what she needed. Stupid! I ask you. Imagine her calling me stupid. And so when I learned of her circumstances through a servant, I threatened to expose Elise and her son to all of the parents of children attending Miss Marietta Endicott’s Academy. Which would have spelled financial ruin for the school, as no decent parent would want their children taught by such a woman. That woman needed a lesson in learning how to address her betters.”
Philippe was silent. He couldn’t speak. He needed to breathe through the anger, as if it was new pain visited upon him.
“Betters” had never sounded so ironic.
He could so easily imagine Elise in a moment of passionate caring suddenly saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.
How he wished he’d been there.
“How did you learn of her ‘circumstances,’ as you call them?”
“Servants are eminently bribable, Philippe. They have such amorphous morals.”
“Ah, yes. Unlike the aristocracy.”
Alexandra flushed. “She implied that I was stupid.” Even now the memory clearly raised her hackles.
He remained coldly silent.
She gave a little laugh. “Is that how you would like me to be treated? You would have a common schoolteacher, a common housekeeper, insult me?”
“She has a son.” He said this almost hoarsely.
“Yes, I know,” she said patiently. “The bastard.”
He closed his eyes and counted to five to steady his temper.
“Do let’s not argue, Philippe,” she soothed. “We have been friends for so long and I know we would rub along well together. I think you know it, too. I believe you came here for a purpose. Do let’s move on to it.”
Her eyes were soft and placating, and she made to lay an entreating hand on his arm.
He stared a threat at it, so she retracted it, astonished.
“I came here to thank you, Alexandra,” he said shortly.
“To thank me?” Her face began to light, anticipating some recitation of her virtues.
“Yes. Because if you hadn’t gone about removing Elise from her position, I never would have met her.”
She stared at him. And then as realization set in, her face slowly flooded with scarlet, and her eyes narrowed to slits.
“You have been sleeping with that whore,” she all but hissed.
“Have a care,” he warned silkily. “Have a care.”
She was gasping for breath through her own shock and anger. “Surely you don’t intend to marry . . . you will be the laughingstock of everyone you know, you will bring shame upon your great family with that common little—”
“This . . .” She jumped when he took his fist and lightly thumped his scone, shattering it into a million little crumbs. “. . . is all that is left of my life and my great family. And that is how much I now care what you or anyone else thinks of what I do now.”
She was breathing hoarsely. “You will leave now.”
He nodded and stood looking down at Alexandra, for it was likely the last time he would see her.
“If you are disappointed or hurt, Alexandra, I do regret causing you discomfort. I have cherished the friendship between our families.”
“Get out,” she hissed.
“And there is nothing common about love, Alexandra,” he said gently. “I do sincerely hope one day you learn it for yourself.”
He bowed shortly and showed himself out.