SEVERAL HOURS LATER, Helena seated herself before the blazing hearth, garbed in the white silk night rail she had worn the first evening she’d encountered Darnell in the library. The first time she’d seen on his face what she later came to recognize as desire. A desire she intended tonight to satisfy to the fullest.
Since she was far too nervous for any book to hold her attention, she was relieved when, after a time spent alternately pacing and sitting on the sofa, she heard his footsteps in the hallway, followed by a knock at the door.
She looked up at him as he entered, her heart swelling with gladness at the sight of his dear face, though its expression was solemn. The tingling awareness of his presence that always struck her when he came into a room enveloped her, comforting in its intensity. Soon she hoped to take that awareness to a new level entirely.
He halted in the center of the room when he saw her. A flash of strong emotion crossed his face before he mastered his expression and walked to her. Almost at the sofa, he stopped again, as if not trusting himself to sit beside her. “I talked with Bellemere this afternoon. She told me you intended to leave us. To leave London.”
Hearing the strain in his voice, Helena’s own reply wobbled. “I think it would be b-best.”
He turned abruptly, anguish in his eyes as he faced her. “How can I ever apologize adequately for bringing this misfortune upon you? I never dreamed Priscilla would breach so sensitive a confidence—a confidence I should never have uttered, had I dealt with her more adroitly. I am deeply ashamed at having broken your trust.”
Curling her fingers into fists to resist the urge to smooth the lines from his face, Helena said, “As keen an interest as that lady takes in my errors, I expect she pounced upon the opportunity to wheedle it out of you.”
Adam grimaced. “So she did. But that does not excuse my fault in giving her the chance to do so. I haven’t been able to talk with her yet about last night’s incident—her mother denied me both times I called, saying she was ‘indisposed’—but I shall speak with her tomorrow if I have to break down her bedchamber door.”
“What’s done is done,” Helena said, rejoicing to have Adam confirm that Priscilla had tricked the information out of him. “Pray, do not be too severe with her. I…I have ever been an impediment between you. I should like to be one no longer. Leaving will accomplish that—and free Aunt Lillian from the threat of my social disasters.”
“You mustn’t let this unpleasant incident drive you from London! Bellemere can manage Society and you may leave Priscilla to me. I can no more allow you to go into self-imposed exile than I would permit Charis to do so.”
“She has scarcely caused the trouble I have,” Helena retorted wryly. “But I don’t wish to brangle! Let me convey to you the news that makes essential that I leave.”
In a few short sentences she summarized again what Lady Seagrave had confided to her. “You perhaps better than anyone know what I suffered at Lambarth’s hands. After last night’s incident, I should have wished to leave London anyway, but now I have a more compelling reason than merely avoiding disgrace. I want to meet the father I have never known. You could not ask me to forego that.”
“No, of course not.” He studied her, his lips curving into the smile she so loved. “How happy you must be to learn no part of Lambarth lives in you.”
“You do understand,” she said gratefully. “Others see only that recognizing Seagrave will brand me a bastard.”
“Better a bastard than the offspring of a man who made a travesty of the words ‘father’ and ‘gentleman,’” Adam said fiercely. “So then…you must leave us. When?”
She swallowed hard. “I go to Lady Seagrave tomorrow. We’ll leave as soon as she can arrange passage.”
“Then tonight…”
“Must be goodbye,” she finished, rising and coming over to stand by him. Her heart already raced and despite her resolve, she was so nervous she was trembling.
She made herself take his hand—the first time she had sought out his touch. After recoiling a little at the spark he must have felt even as she did when their fingers met, he raised her hand and brushed his lips across her knuckles. His breath seemed to come as quick and shallow as her own and the heat she felt emanating from him did not, she was sure, originate with the fire.
“Kiss me goodbye—on the lips,” she whispered.
At first she thought he meant to refuse. But then, his green eyes deepening with that compelling, enticing evidence of his desire, he lowered his head. “Goodbye, Helena,” he breathed a moment before his lips touched hers.
She felt the gentle brush of his mouth down to her toes and heard a moan, not sure whether it was her own or Adam’s. Then, before he could break the glancing contact, she stepped closer and put her hands on his shoulders.
“Ah, Helena,” he murmured, but whatever else he might have said was lost as she took advantage of the slight opening of his lips to slip her tongue into his mouth.
He stiffened in shock, but before he could pull away, if such were his intention, she darted her tongue deeper, seeking his. The blast of sensation that rocketed through her when the sensitive tip of her tongue caught the plush fullness of his so weakened her knees that she almost fell.
Fortunately his hands closed on her shoulders to pull her nearer. Curving her body to fit against his, she leaned her weight on him and gave herself up to the exquisite game of fencing tongues, advancing to tease and tantalize, withdrawing to await his pursuit, then sending the full blade of hers gliding across his.
She could feel his heartbeat thundering in his chest and lower, a hard ridge pressed its heat against the thin silk covering her abdomen. She murmured and twined her fingertips in the tendrils at the nape of his neck, pulling his head closer still while she stroked and parried and stroked again with her tongue.
Everything within her seemed to turn molten, coursing in heated waves from her belly, the sensitized tips of her nipples down and outward to knees, fingertips, toes. A throbbing began at the junction of her thighs, pulsing in time to the stroking of their tongues.
She had just decided that she needed hotter, closer, when Adam broke the kiss and took a staggering step backward. “Helena, no,” he mumbled, his eyes wide and unfocused, his breathing erratic. “This is…madness.”
“Yes,” she said fiercely, and brought his head back down to capture his mouth and his tongue again. A second later, with a strangled cry, he crushed her against him.
This time he was the aggressor, his tongue pursuing hers, laving it with quick, hard strokes, hers the strangled cry as she scratched his coat, desperate to penetrate the material and find bare skin. With her other hand, she inched down his waistcoat, straining to reach his arousal. She took his cry in her mouth as her fingers found purchase, shaping and caressing the long hard length of him straining against the trouser flap.
She was working the buttons to free him when he caught her hand. “No, Helena,” he panted. “We…mustn’t.”
She curled her hand around his erection, exulting as he shuddered. “Do you not want this? Do you not want me?”
“Yes…no!”
“One night, Adam. Just one stolen from all the rest of our days. One night when nothing else exists, not duty, not obligation—nothing but you and me and this. Only you and I will ever know. Can you send me away without tasting this for just one night?” Massaging his length as she spoke, she pulled his head down for another long kiss.
After a moment he broke away again, though his hips still angled into her stroking fingers. “Are…you sure? I’m trying to resist, but another moment of this—” he rubbed against her “—and I’ll be beyond stopping.”
“Don’t resist.” She caught his bottom lip between her teeth and nipped it. As she slid her tongue back into his mouth, his leaped forward to meet hers, mating fiercely as if they were lovers long parted.
But as her fingers managed to undo the first button of his trouser flap, he thrust her back. “Not…here.”
“You’ll come to my room, then?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Now? You promise? For I swear if you are not there in ten minutes, I will come to yours.”
He kissed her hard, running his hands down her back to cup and squeeze her buttocks. “I’ll be there. I promise.”
Like stealthy accomplices, they slipped from the library and hurried up the stairs. In her room, Helena lit a brace of candles, then pulled back the bed linens and tossed her satin dressing gown to the floor.
What would Adam prefer? she wondered. To find her waiting between the sheets—or to have her meet him at the door, candles outlining her body beneath the silk?
Then the door swung silently open as Adam entered. The collar of a shirt peeked out from beneath his dressing gown and his hair was tousled, as if he’d disrobed quickly.
“Adam, my love,” she whispered, walking over to him.
He framed her face with his hands. “You are so beautiful,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve wanted you for so long, I can’t remember not wanting you.”
She took his hand, led him to the bed, stripped off his dressing gown. Beneath it he wore only his shirt, hanging below his waist where it tented out over his erection. She nudged him onto the bed and pushed him back against the pillows. When he reached out to tug at her night rail, she pulled it from his grasp. “Not yet. First, let me please you, Adam.”
He let the silk go, his gaze never leaving hers as once more she gently pushed him against the pillows and placed his hands at his sides. Perching beside him, she leaned over and kissed him, found his tongue and twined it with her own.
The heat of his body through the fine linen shirt warmed her more than the blaze from the library’s hearth. But she wanted more, wanted the feel of his bare skin against the thin material of her gown. Still kissing him, she worked loose the buttons on his shirt, pushed it aside and ran the pads of her fingers over his chest, tracing his ribs. He gasped, sucking her tongue deeper when she drew his puckered nipples between her fingertips.
Suddenly she wanted to taste him, his chest, his nipples, the hollow beneath his throat. Laving his mouth with a final stroke, she broke away to trace her tongue across the raspy stubble of his chin, nipping lightly, over the ridge of his jaw, up to the tender curve of his ear, around to the soft skin just behind it. Lowering her mouth to nibble at his neck, she leaned her weight against him and skimmed her other hand from his chest down the flatness of his belly, thrilling to the texture of his bare skin.
He tensed as her fingers approached his erection, his breath little gasps at her ear, then uttered a strangled groan as she grasped his naked shaft. A pulse of exquisite sensation rippled to her core as he quivered in her hand. The skin was so taut and smooth, the head, where a drop of moisture beaded, almost silky to her exploring touch.
Tracing it with one fingertip, she whispered, “Does this please you?”
“Y-yes,” he gasped.
But she wanted him beyond speech, beyond any response but the thrust of his hips. Still outlining his length with her fingers, she moved her mouth downward, rejoicing as he shuddered against her when she rasped her teeth across one taut nipple, then the other. Cupping her hand around his shaft, she descended his abdomen, laving, nipping, gliding her cheek across the soft skin.
Finally she moved to straddle his legs. Grasping his erection with both hands, she continued to shape and caress him while she examined him in the candlelight, marveling at the beauty of his nakedness as he lay with his eyes closed, head thrown back, his rigid hands clutching the sheets.
“I want to kiss you—here,” she said, drawing one finger down his length. “May I?”
His eyes flew open. “Yes,” he rasped, fisting his hands more tightly in the sheets.
His cock leaped against her lips and a long, low moan issued from his throat. Something leaped in her, too, a blaze of sensation in that moist, throbbing spot between her thighs. Murmuring, she widened her legs, rubbing against him as she licked from the thick rigid base of his erection to the satiny tip, then took him into her mouth.
Her heart was beating so rapidly she felt dizzy, impairing her hearing, for when he thrashed his head from side to side and cried out, she couldn’t tell whether he was imploring her to stop or continue. But the thrusting motion of his hips seemed to indicate he wanted more.
As did she. She loved the feel and taste of him, the feral pulsing in her veins, the throbbing at her core, winding her tighter and tighter. She loved the sound of Adam’s gasping breaths, the sheen of sweat on his chest and abdomen, the clench of his fisted hands and corded arms. Then he cried out, his whole body going rigid as he filled her with his salty essence.
For a few moments he lay gasping, eyes closed. Worried that she had somehow hurt him, she slid up beside him on the pillow. “Adam, are you all right?”
His eyes opening, he laughed weakly. “All…right? No. Astounded. Transformed.” He lifted a limp hand to caress her cheek. “I didn’t want for it to be like that, only for me. But you are…amazing. I couldn’t control myself.”
“Then I did please you?” She smiled tenderly at him. “I did so want to. I listened quite closely to the Divine Alice’s instructions.”
“‘Please’ is a thousand times too weak a word—” Suddenly he stopped, his eyes going from dreamy to fully alert as he propped himself up on an elbow and stared at her. “The Divine Alice! You can’t mean that you…”
“Consulted her?” Helena said. “Oh, but I did! I’ve wanted to talk with her ever since I first saw her at the park. After my disgrace at the musicale, I decided my visiting her could hardly worsen the scandal. More than anything, I wanted to please you. I thought she would speak honestly of what happens between a man and a woman.” Her smile turning wicked, she traced a finger down Adam’s bare chest to circle one nipple. “And she did.”
With a growl, Adam caught her hand and brought it to his lips. “And what,” he asked, nibbling each finger in turn, “did the Divine Alice say about my pleasing you?”
The sensations evoked by his hot tongue and the nip of his teeth were swiftly eroding Helena’s powers of speech. “I didn’t…think…to ask,” she murmured.
Adam laughed deep in his throat. “Let me be your tutor, my temptress, and I shall endeavor to please you just as thoroughly.” Wrapping an arm around her, he pulled her against him and cradled her on his chest.
Helena snuggled under his chin, breathing in the scent of him, more deliriously happy than she’d ever been in her life. An overwhelming sense of having come home filled her, as if she had been made to be here, wrapped in Adam’s arms. She refused to listen to the tiny voice that warned how short-lived that happiness would be.
The maelstrom of sensations that had been building within her eased as she relaxed into his warmth. She’d almost drifted asleep when she felt his hands slipping under the hem of her night rail.
She reached down to stay them. “Adam—my back. I…I would rather not remove the gown.”
“Do you not know every inch of you is beautiful to me?” he whispered. “Every scar, an emblem of your honor and courage? I want to see you, touch you everywhere.” Leaning over to nuzzle her lips, he stroked his fingers over her skin as he slowly tugged the gown up.
Helena would have resisted, but the quiescent tension within her had tightened the instant his clever fingers began their work. Before she could begin to worry, he gently pulled the gown over her head.
And then thought scattered altogether as with his other hand, Adam tipped her chin up and captured her lips, sliding his tongue within as she gasped at the pleasure of his mouth on hers. While he kissed her, his hand wandered slowly up her leg, kneading her ankle, smoothing over her knee, rubbing the tender inside of her thigh.
Groaning into his mouth, she widened her legs, offering him access to her hot, pulsing center. His fingers crept upward at a maddening pace, moving so slowly that she began to twist restlessly beneath his hand.
As his fingertips grazed the thatch of curls between her legs, he broke the kiss and moved his mouth to her breast. In the next moment, his finger parted her folds to caress the nub within while his mouth suckled her nipple.
Acute pleasure seared her where his mouth and fingers worked. She cried out as she writhed beneath him.
“Does that please you?” he whispered against her breast, continuing to slide his fingers over the slick nub.
“Oh, yes,” she gasped.
He moved to her other breast, suckling the nipple, teasing it with his teeth, then cupping the whole breast in his hand and nipping the tender skin. Meanwhile his finger slid lower, parting the lips to delve into her body.
The piercing pressure spiraled tighter and tighter until she felt she must explode or shake to bits. Just when she felt she could not stand the torment any longer, something within her released, sending a paroxysm of unimaginable pleasure coursing to every nerve.
For a long time afterward, as the waves of sensation faded, she lay motionless, too drained to move or speak.
Smiling down at her, Adam kissed her forehead. “Did I please you, my love?”
She struggled to smile back. “I never dreamed…such feelings existed.”
“Only for you, my sweet,” he whispered. “For all of this night.”
And for the rest of that splendid night they lay entwined, Helena pillowing her head on his thigh, her hand cupping his spent member to coax him back to strength, or gathered boneless and breathless against his chest while his fingers soothed her satiated skin.
But after awakening near dawn to have the little voice she’d been ignoring cry insistently that their time was nearly over, Helena knew with desperate urgency that she could not leave Adam without tasting just once the fullness of union that, to protect her, he had been denying them.
Snuggling closer, she nibbled Adam’s ear while her fingers stroked down his abdomen. She felt his chuckle as his shaft rose to meet her teasing fingers.
“More, my insatiable darling?” he murmured.
“Always,” she replied, leaning up into his kiss.
Boldly she sought to conquer the fencing blade of his tongue, but he would have none of it. Chuckling again, he rolled her beneath him, clasped her hands and pulled her arms above her head as he settled himself between her legs. Moving his hips, he pressed his hard length against her, stroking her sensitive center with the hot smooth head of his cock in time to the rhythmic sweeps of his tongue.
Knowing that continuing in this fashion, he would soon drive her beyond control, Helena turned her face away, breaking the kiss. “Can’t…breathe,” she gasped. Though it was truly not a lie, her plea achieved its aim, for Adam rolled her over and lifted her to straddle him.
Eyes glazed, chest sheened with moisture, his breathing rough, he gazed up at her. “This is…better. I can see…how beautiful your breasts are.” He weighed them in his hands as he spoke. “Nipples…pink from my mouth. See the curve of your belly. Touch you.” He pushed gently at her knees to widen the parting of her thighs.
Before he could return one hand to tease and stroke and send her crashing over the precipice, Helena thrust her hips quickly downward to capture the smooth tip of his rigid cock. Pushing downward again, she felt a slow burn as at last, at last, she eased him within her.
The moment of discomfort passed swiftly, succeeded by an amazing fullness that massaged and caressed from her throbbing nub down the whole of that sensitive passage.
Beyond thought or plan, instinctively she withdrew and thrust down again, crying out at the wonder and intensity of it. Vaguely she noted Adam catching her arms.
“No, my love, we—” he gasped before Helena leaned forward to cover his mouth with hers and press her knees against his sides as she drove downward, sheathing his length fully within her.
“Love me, Adam,” she whispered. “Love me completely.”
For an instant he remained rigid, resisting. But when she thrust against him again, with a growl he seized her bottom and pulled her closer, arching upward to meet her.
Though she’d had to trick him to it, he quickly took the lead. Slowing the pace of their movements, he let her drive him in deep, then held her still while he pulsed within her before allowing her to pull back for another thrust. Though he’d several times taught her to balance on the acute edge between madness and ecstasy, this time he held her suspended above the abyss until she was shrieking her need for fulfillment. Then, with an equally savage cry, he plunged in one last time and bound her against him as they both shuddered, spun and shattered together.
The intensity of it, similar and yet so different from the pleasure he brought her with his clever tongue and nimble fingers alone, robbed Helena of breath and brought tears to her eyes as she lay afterward on his chest, both of them spent and gasping.
One flesh. One heart, hammering in unison as they lay wrapped in each other’s arms.
But though she’d long sought to ignore it, she was forced now to acknowledge the pale light forming a ghostly halo behind the tightly drawn curtains, its increasing illumination beginning to rival the glow of the guttering candles. When Adam stirred, she sat up, every fiber of her being revolting against the thought of losing him.
She couldn’t sail away and leave him. Having experienced this ecstasy, she simply couldn’t imagine life without him. Her heart, her soul, couldn’t bear the loss.
“Adam, I did please you, didn’t I?”
He opened his eyes and smiled at her. “Did we not please each other?” he corrected, kissing her hand.
“Marvelously,” she acknowledged, returning his smile. “Then…though of course I do not wish to keep you from your…obligations, would it not be possible for us to…to salvage some time to be together? I could take a house outside London. Somewhere close enough for you to visit.”
His smile fading, he looked at her searchingly. “Are you proposing what I think you are?” he said at last. “Helena, I don’t want you to be my mistress! I want…” Almost at the point of uttering something more, he shook his head. “Let us not speak of it now.”
Her chest felt as if a giant talon had ripped it open. She swallowed hard and blinked back the burn of tears. “No, of course not. Excuse me for mentioning anything.”
Of course he didn’t want her. Hadn’t she caused enough havoc in his life? Why would he wish to take a scarred, ill-behaved, troublesome woman who tumbled from one scandal to the next as his mistress when, should he ever wish to indulge in a discreet affair, with his breeding and charm he might have any woman in the ton?
The day was definitely dawning now, the rosy light at the windows brightening with every passing moment. Belowstairs, the servants were probably already stirring.
Feeling a chill that went to the bone and had little to do with the temperature of the room, Helena slid from the bed and fished her satin wrapper off the floor. “I expect you should go now, before the maid comes to make up the fire. I shouldn’t wish to distress Aunt Lillian by creating yet another scandal on my last night in her house.” She picked up Adam’s dressing gown and the long-abandoned shirt and held them out to him.
For a long moment he stared at the garments, as if reluctant to take them from her hands. Hating, as much as she did, that their night together was ending?
Finally, swallowing hard, he said, “I expect you are right.” Dropping the shirt on the bed, he stood and pulled the dressing gown around him. For a few more minutes Helena drank in the beauty of his naked body—the broad shoulders, flat belly, strong legs and now-flaccid shaft lying against his thighs. The body she had kissed and caressed, licked and fondled, pleasured in every way she could devise over the long hours of the night as he had caressed and pleasured hers—even, she recalled, her breath catching, the scars at her back.
As he turned to the door, she clamped her lips shut, stifling the aching need to confess her love in these last few minutes they would ever have alone.
Adam would probably soon feel guilty enough over the night she had coerced from him without adding to it the burden of her love. Better that he think her a wanton who’d decided she couldn’t leave his life without sampling the passion that had sizzled between them since that first night in the library. Just one more irresponsible, ill-bred act by a girl who had already committed so many.
Numbly she moved to the center of the room, eyes closed, waiting for the soft click of the closing door that would signal the beginning of the impossibly empty days that stretched ahead of her without him.
She sensed him walking past her—then turning back. Framing her face in his hands, he kissed her, so gently she had to bite her lip afterward to keep from weeping.
“You will stay at Lady Seagrave’s?” he asked.
She nodded. She couldn’t tell him everything she felt, but she could at least say this. “Thank you, Adam—”
He put a finger against her lips and smiled tenderly. “No, I thank you…my dear Helena,” he whispered, his eyes roaming her face as if to memorize every curve and line before he pulled her once more into his arms.
She had vowed to let him leave freely, but despite those noble intentions, she clung to him, her hands biting into his shoulders and her body molding to his as if to sear an imprint of him into her skin.
At length, he set her away from him. “Nothing is settled yet, so don’t do anything rash,” he said, one finger caressing her cheek. Then he turned and walked out.
Helena stumbled back and slumped onto the bed, burying her face in the pillow he’d lain upon, which still carried the faint scent of his shaving soap. She had wrested from him her one night of passion. She now realized she would likely pay bitterly for it for years to come.
BARELY AN HOUR LATER, A GRIM, tight-lipped Helena arrived at Lady Seagrave’s town house. After brooding on her love-ravaged disarray of a bed for a time after Adam left her, she’d sprung up with a fierce resolve to be gone from the house before any of the family woke. She didn’t think she could face Charis or Aunt Lillian without them immediately suspecting what had occurred.
And as for Adam—she couldn’t face him at all. She had thought she’d loved him before, but until last night she’d had no concept of the intensity of connection, the sweet purity of emotion one human being could feel for another.
And having felt it, she knew she didn’t have enough veneer of polite behavior to keep herself from approaching Adam again to beg that he reconsider taking her as his mistress. Too little maidenly restraint not to want to scratch out the eyes of Miss Priscilla Standish for daring to marry Adam. Adam—her Adam, whose body had branded hers, who belonged with her!
Thank heavens for Lady Seagrave’s invitation. Only the width of an ocean between them could guarantee that she would keep her distance from Adam, let him lead the life his honor required.
When she tiptoed quietly into the entry, to her surprise, the butler directed her to Lady Seagrave’s book room, saying the mistress had been up for several hours and was eager to meet with her. Trying to summon a pleasant expression, she knocked at the door and entered.
“Good morning, Helena,” Lady Seagrave said. “Let me finish these instructions and…” Her words trailed off and her welcoming smile dimmed as she examined Helena’s face. “Oh, my poor dear. Saying goodbye was difficult?”
“Yes,” Helena replied shortly.
“Then I hope my news will cheer you. When I visited Gavin’s office yesterday, I found one of his most experienced captains there. He was to rejoin his ship in Falmouth once the rest of his cargo arrived, but when I told him who would be traveling with me, he proposed we sail immediately. He has been with Gavin long enough to know that bringing him his beloved daughter a week sooner would be worth far more to Gavin than a thousand bottles of Spanish wine. We can set out today—if you are ready?”
Even the prospect of meeting her father could not lift her spirits. Still, she knew she ought to leave London without delay. “I am quite ready.”
“Excellent! I’ll have Stephen put your trunks in the coach.” She came over to pat Helena’s cheek, concern in her wise eyes. “Do not grieve, my sweet. Everything will turn out all right in the end.”
Helena managed a smile. But though she was about to embark on the sort of adventure she’d always dreamed about, she couldn’t see how anything would ever be right again.