Trevor felt her sink into him, and he pulled her, finally, tightly against him. She fit him, which was both stunning and the most natural thing in the world. She was shifting her mouth to fit his even before his hands slid to cup her face.
Those lips of hers, so soft, so…plush. Heaven. And then she parted them, and it was so sinfully sweet, sliding his tongue between them, tasting her so intimately. She wasn’t tentative in tasting back, which should have surprised him, with all her talk of him being out of her league, but didn’t, because it was her frank approach to life that had drawn him in in the first place. He doubted she’d be any less direct with him in this. And given the rock hard state of, oh, pretty much every inch of his body, he was very happy he was right about that.
He turned slightly to pull her more tightly against him, fit her more perfectly between his hips, causing them both to trip over a few scattered books. He’d completely forgotten his surroundings, he’d been so focused on her.
“This isn’t exactly…can we—”
“Find a nicer room,” he finished. “I think there might be one or two that we could choose from.”
“The animals…” She was kissing the corners of his mouth, and now running her teeth lightly along his jaw, which made it almost impossible for him to comprehend any words being spoken, but they eventually sunk in.
“Sleeping. By the fire. Very content.”
“The fire. Should we go…stoke it? Or something?”
“Oh, we’re doing just fine stoking the fire. Come on.” He kissed her again, hard and fast this time, and they were both gasping a little when he broke it off and took her hand. “I’ll lead the way, you provide the light.”
“Oh, right. I—I think I dropped it…at some point.” She crouched down and fished around, finding the flashlight quickly and flicking it back on. “I don’t even remember turning it off.”
He had the immense pleasure of looking into her face now, seeing her eyes, all dark and sparkling when she looked at him. Her hair was a wild halo of curls, which only accentuated the sultry way her lips parted when he tugged her back against him and took her mouth again. “It’s kind of insane, how badly I want you,” he said.
“I’d be insulted, except—”
“Not what I meant.”
She tugged his mouth back to hers and smiled against his lips. “I know. I’m not that lacking in self-esteem.” She crowded her hips against his. “Besides, you’re being pretty convincing about wanting me.”
He laughed. Why was it so easy with her? “Promise you’ll always be this open and direct,” he said, as he led her from the room.
“Not everyone appreciates my…directness.”
“You have no idea how refreshing it is.”
Now she laughed. “Let’s hope you still feel that way…later.”
He caught the hesitation, and knew that, despite leaping along with him tonight, she was still unconvinced on how they could do anything beyond share this night together, or maybe the next ice-bound few…. Well, he wasn’t exactly sure himself. But no way was he walking away from this, from her. So, he’d just have to do whatever it took to make sure she didn’t want to walk away, either.
He led her down the dark hallway, and back upstairs, only he ducked down the right wing this time, not toward the left where the parlor and the dogs were. He felt her hand shudder a little in his. “I know, it’s getting chilly up here. But I know where—” He broke off as he stopped in front of a set of double doors. “This was my aunt’s favorite guest room, and I was lucky that I was her favorite great-nephew, so it was always mine when I stayed here.” He opened the doors, and Emma flashed the beam of light around the interior, stopping first on the beautiful, ornately carved fireplace, then a bit longer on the equally beautifully hand-carved sleigh bed.
“I can see why you both loved it,” Emma said, as he pulled her inside and closed the door to the hall.
There was wood stacked by the fireplace, which, given Lionel’s attentiveness to detail, he’d expected to find. “It will only take me a few minutes to get the fire going.”
She let go of his hand, and helped illuminate the area in front of the hearth so he could get things set up. “How long has it been since you’ve been here? You said things sort of broke down between you and your family…” She trailed off, then said, “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about that now. I was just—this is a lovely room and the way you spoke about your great-aunt…it sounded like you loved her very much.”
“I did. She was the best. And if she were still around, I think she’d have been my ally in finding out the truth. She was the only one who could stand up to Lionel without pissing him off. If anyone was going to make him understand why it was so important to me to know, it would have been her.”
He stacked the wood, stuffed in the tinder and kindling, then sparked one of the long fireplace matches he’d drawn from their special brass container beside the mantel.
“How long has it been? I mean, since she’s been gone?”
“I was seventeen. And just starting to make noise about things.”
“Why did you even suspect?”
“I know it sounds hokey, but I never felt like I fit in. I didn’t have the same killer instinct my family did, or the same mind-set about conquering all for the sake of the victory. Amassing wealth—or more of it, I should say—wasn’t how I wanted to judge my success in the world. And no one seemed to get that in this family.”
“Not even your parents?”
“My father was a true Hamilton, through and through, and my mother lived to serve my father…and her own societal needs. I know that sounds rather harsh, but…we knew who we were, and who we weren’t. We got along fine, mostly because we just pretended not to notice our differences. They just wanted me to be a fine, upstanding young Hamilton, and I wanted to keep the peace.”
“You said ‘was.’ Are they—”
“Gone? Yes, right after I graduated from college. Drunk driver.”
“I’m so sorry—”
“That’s when I decided to forge my own path. I graduated, decided to stay in North Carolina—”
“And start your own empire.”
He laughed. “Hardly. My degree is in environmental geology. I started a company that works with builders to make sure the land they build on is safe. I also work with already established communities, older communities, to pin down problem areas and help them work with the local authorities to clean things up.”
“That’s—”
“Not very Hamilton-esque. I know.” He shrugged. “I really enjoy it. I have good people working for me. And, unless being a Hamilton will open doors to helping the people I’m trying to help, I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not. Or never felt like, anyway.”
“So…because you felt different, you assumed your family tree was—”
“A bit twisted? Well, not specifically. But you know how some kids feel like they were adopted, or should have been? Like they’re aliens in their own family? That’s what it was like for me. When I was in school, I had a class on psychology and one of the projects we did was working on our own family tree. That got me started, and I kept digging. Not because I intended to prove that there was a bastard line somewhere up the tree, but, I guess in hopes that I’d find at least one ancestor I identified with personally. Just to feel connected in some way, to know more about who I was and where I came from.”
“I can understand that. But that trust fund would help a lot of people, and it’s yours, regardless of how you feel, so why not—”
“I tried to talk to Lionel about my feelings, which was pretty foolish, looking back. I went to Aunt Trudy first, though, and she encouraged me to talk to him. I should have known better. And that’s when I realized that there really was something to my concerns. It was clear I’d struck a nerve, and he all but shoved me out of the conversation. As I said earlier, I can be stubborn. And, unless he was going to confide the truth in me, about my heritage—all our heritage—then I wasn’t going to touch anything that came from it. I know it sounds high and mighty, and it’s really not. It’s more—”
“You being a stubborn idiot?”
He laughed, which surprised him. But she made it easy to see things with a bit more perspective. “I’m sure it looks that way. And, I probably am, a little. But it was a choice I made. To live on my own terms. Not Hamilton terms, and that meant not living on Hamilton money.”
“And you’ve still never found out the whole truth.”
“No. And it’s not like something that colors my every waking moment. I have moved on with my life. But, yes, it is something I want to know, need to know, at some point. I hope to have a family some day, and I want to know what legacy it is I’m passing down, skeletons and all. I don’t want any child of mine to question where he or she came from, or why they might not feel the same as I do about things.”
“Why do you think the proof you need is here? Wouldn’t Lionel keep important family documentation like that at the family estate in town?”
“Trudy was the matriarch of the Hamilton family, and, in that arena, she took great pride in the caring and maintaining of the history we’ve accumulated, both in physical artifacts and written history. She had all the certificates—birth, death—from generations back, along with journals and Bibles.”
“And you think that’s the missing link for you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you get to see any of it while she was alive?”
“I was just starting to dig when she first got sick. She was sick a very long time, and spent most of her time here. She loved this place, and Lionel had most of her things and anything dear to her, moved here. He’s never changed that since her death.”
“How long was she sick?”
“A little over two years. And when I had the chance to see her, I didn’t want to bother her with everything I was thinking or feeling. We all knew she wasn’t going to get better, she knew it, too. So we enjoyed our time together.”
“Any regrets about that?”
He stopped poking at the fire and looked over his shoulder at her. She’d perched herself on the edge of the bed, with the flashlight dangling in her hands, which were pressed between her knees. “No,” he said, never more sincere. “None.” He replaced the poker in the wrought iron stand, and pushed to his feet, turning to face her. “Lionel and I don’t see things the same way, and though I haven’t exactly been banished or anything, we don’t exactly enjoy each other’s company. So he politely invites me to family functions, and I politely decline, and we coexist with little adversity.”
“Like you did with your folks.”
“Sort of runs in the family, it seems, yes.”
“Until now.”
He stepped closer. “Until I heard he was going overseas for two weeks and giving his staff some seasonal time off. Usually he rattles around up here alone, just him and the dogs and that damn parrot, as he calls him. Cicero was one of Trudy’s…eccentricities. She loved that bird. And Lionel loved Trudy, so he put up with him. I’m somewhat surprised he’s kept him all these years, since he really can be obnoxious. And Lionel doesn’t put up with obnoxious from anyone.”
“People do interesting things to keep the memories of loved ones close. My dad actually keeps my granddad’s—his dad’s—ashes in this huge, cheap trophy he had them sealed into. It was a thing he won when he was, like, twelve years old. But his dad had coached his team that year and it had been the thing that had brought them close after my grandmother died. So that’s where my grandfather is spending eternity.” She smiled, and looked a little embarrassed about sharing something so personal and, perhaps, unusual.
He moved closer, bumping her knees apart and stepping between her thighs. He took the flashlight from her, flicked it off, and tossed it to the carpeted floor beside the bed. “You know,” he said, “there is another reason I have no regrets about not pursuing things when Aunt Tru was alive.” He took her hands in his, and lifted them up.
“Why is that?” Emma asked, her voice trembling just the slightest bit. But the look in her eyes wasn’t one of trepidation. It was one of anticipation.
Which made Trevor smile. “Because then I wouldn’t be here. On this stormy night.” He kissed the back of her hands, then pressed them to the bed beside her legs, and started scooting her backwards, climbing right up with her, and over her. “Finding you.” They reached the pillows and he pinned her hands beside her head, lowering his body to hers, until they both groaned in satisfaction at the perfect fit of his hips between hers. “And discovering that, maybe, I’ve been right in pursuing my own life. Because what’s really important isn’t where you came from…but what you do with who you are.” He nipped the point of her chin, then at her bottom lip. “But I’m thinking now that I stopped short of the real goal.”
“What goal?”
“Of figuring out the rest, which is that it’s all fine and well to find yourself, create and pursue your own path, and stick with what works for you and let go of what doesn’t.” He grinned then, and looked into those sparkling, direct, honest eyes. “But, it’s not entirely complete until you find someone to share yourself with, and maybe leave something behind when you go, that makes other people smile.” He kissed her then, tenderly. “Like you did, talking about your dad and granddad.”
“And like you do, talking about Aunt Trudy.”
“Yeah…like that.”
She leaned up this time, and tugged her fingers free so she could hold onto his face and kiss him, taking his mouth, staking her claim, making her stand. Her kisses were passionate and strong, like her body presently moving beneath him.
He drove his fingers into her hair, taking in return, tangling his tongue with hers, his groans mixing with her gasps. He moved his hips against hers as she lifted them off the bed, moving beneath him, with him.
“This is a little insane, you know,” she panted when he reared back suddenly and tugged off his shirt. She worked just as feverishly to divest herself of her clothes, too. “I just met you.”
It should have been comical, their frantic disrobing. It certainly wasn’t the slow, tantalizing unveiling of her for the first time he’d have liked for them both to indulge in. “I know,” he said. “But I feel like I’ve already waited a lifetime for you.” He kicked free of his shoes, shucked his pants, helped her tug off her own. “You are so beautiful, and there will be many times in the future where I will pay rapt attention to every inch of your lovely body—some, perhaps, with more detailed focus than others—but right now—”
“I know,” she said, and all but yanked him on top of her.
He grinned. “Did I tell you how much I like that you’re not a fragile flower?”
She rolled him to his back, and he sat up and pulled her legs around his hips. The flickering fire behind her made the tips of her curls appear as if they were glowing embers. “My very own Vesta.”
She twined her arms around his neck and started to tease him with kisses along the side of his neck.
“You,” he said, as he pushed her backward, making her squeal in delight, while keeping her legs twined over his hips as he lowered himself slowly between her legs, “are going to drive me delightfully insane.” He stopped just short of pushing inside her. “I hope you’ll let me do the same.
In response, she tightened her legs around him, bringing him into her body. “Start now.”