Mistress at Midnight(28)

With a trembling breath she made her glance meet his, and a belief in herself, badly battered by Charles, began to reform.

Aurelia's mismatched eyes were so damned fine and she had painted her  nails red, the colour of lust and of the roses in a vase to one end of  the mantel, overblown and wilting.

The heat of her was beguiling, her lips full and beckoning. He had  promised to take nothing and yet here she was offering him everything,  his blood thundering as if she were naked.

When she lifted her hand to wipe away a tendril of hair he saw she  shook, a beam of sudden moonlight at the window turning her hair to  scarlet.

The tie at his throat felt too tight and the waistcoat, jacket and trousers heavy against a rising want.

There were so many other things he needed to know about her, but his  mind could only concentrate on her form and her smell and on the dimples  in her cheeks which deepened with the smallest of movements. He wanted  to touch her, wanted to run his hands across the curves and the softness  until he knew each and every contour of her body. But she stopped him  with more words.

'I am not quite as practised in the sensual arts as you might imagine, Lord Hawkhurst.'

Her admission took him from his reveries with a startling quickness.

'Charles and I were … distant, you see.'

'How distant?'

'Very. He enjoyed women with more experience than I had.'

'God.'

'I was glad for it.'

His erection rose up another notch, pushing against the superfine of his  trousers. He did not wish to frighten her, but a lust unlike any He had  ever known before caught him off guard. How did she do this to him, and  so easily? He could not remember one other woman who had affected him  as she did.

Reaching out, he pushed the gown gently off her shoulders, cupping the bounteous beauty below the silk.

Heaven. He watched as she flinched at the feel of him against her  nipple, his other hand moving to her throat and her cheek and tipping  her lips to his own.

Home. He was there as his mouth covered hers and the feel of warm  familiar sweetness surrounded him. Deepening the kiss, he pushed  inwards, taking all that she would give him and more, force overcoming  softness in his need to possess her. Her skin beneath his palms melted  like silken liquid, the stain of her red tresses across the paleness  sending sense into greater frenzy.

'I want all of you.' The voice sounded nothing like his own, hoarse and  desperate, and pulling her hair into a knot, he anchored her close, his  other hand around the curve of her bottom.

She let him lift her against his chest, his breath on one cheek and his heartbeat against the other.

'My room is near.'

Up one flight of stairs and then down a short corridor. He carried her  as though she were the weight of a feather, though the burden of  acquiescence caught solid between them, heavy with suggestion.

When his door shut Aurelia closed her eyes against the four-poster she  could see in the corner, and she kept them closed as he lay her down  upon the softness, catching breath and counting seconds.                       
       
           



       

'I would never hurt you, Aurelia.'

She could no longer dwell in her own darkness. 'I know.'

Her scarlet gown was bright against pale coverings and white sheets, and  when he removed her shoes and stockings she did not flinch.

His touch strayed to a higher place and she waited for denial or for  panic. Neither came, although her breathing worried her. No longer  controlled or bridled, the crisp feel of cotton beneath her fingers  clasped tightly against an escalating need. When he peeled back her  bodice she felt the material fall loosely to her waist, her skirt  hitched up to join it.

She felt him look at her, felt his glance know her breasts and her legs  and the curved sway of hip, felt how he tethered her with her hair,  holding her still, inescapable. Her breath in the silence was ragged,  wanting the finesse and the adroitness she knew he would be capable of,  wanting the torn-away utterness of what it must be like to be truly  loved.

Loved. Her lips curved upwards. He had never said it once and he would  not. This was lust and passion and desire on both sides, though the  expression in his eyes was one she had not seen there before.  Redemption, if she might name it. Her thighs fell open with a will of  their own, the hem of scarlet silk cool on burning skin.

He did not hurry. He did not plunge in as Charles would have, caring not  a whit for any satisfaction that she needed. Rather he tarried, a small  caress here, a longer one there, pressure on a place she had not  thought to know, her response surprising as she rose to his  ministrations.

A midnight magic.

'Let go, sweetheart,' he whispered as she tensed against ardour. 'Let me take you to a place that is wonderful.'

One finger came inside her, widening the tightness, his other hand flat  across her stomach keeping her still. Faster and then faster, his thumb  hard against the bud of promise and as she cried out he pressed down,  her deep muscles clenched together so that she knew a growing restless  wave of release, the ache of it arching her back and making her shout  out into the darkness. The keening groan held rapture on its edge.

She was boneless, formless, spent. But she was also elated. She had  never felt this pull of seduction, this completeness that took her from  this world and far off into a place where all she wanted was more. She  no longer cared to be soft or docile or gentle. Finally.

As he brought her fingers to the place his had just left and she felt  the wetness, she was mute with the knowledge that her body was not  'dried out and prudish and useless' as Charles had been wont to label  her.

The gift was like a treasure.

A single tear traced its way down the side of her cheek.

'Never leave me, Hawk.' She needed to say it, to make him understand. Not just tonight. But for ever.

'I won't.'

When he stood to remove his clothes she watched, the sculptured strength  of his body revealed with each discarded garment, though as he took off  his trousers Aurelia saw a vivid red scar curling down the whole front  of one thigh.

Her finger went out to touch the knotted and raised flesh of a wound beneath each pad.

'Someone has tried to kill you?'

'More "someones" than you could imagine.'

'But not now?'

He only smiled and she understood that whatever took him from England's green and pleasant lands was not finished yet.

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, and he had been with a  good number of beautiful women. But it was more than just the physical,  Hawkhurst thought.

Aurelia was a woman who had reached out to the ice-cold core of him and  begun a thawing. He could feel it inside, the tense hard ache of  loneliness dissolving.

She had lived and she had lost and yet still she triumphed and it was  this more than anything that made hope rise unbidden. Hers was not the  innocent purity of Elizabeth Berkeley which he could have so easily  ruined, but another quality that held the kernel of a faith surprisingly  and exactly right.

For him.

Like two halves coming together as a whole.

Usually he took women quickly because his life had been bound by danger  and by little free time and because he did not wish for the commitment  that all of those he had bedded seemed to demand. But this time was  different. This time he wanted the night to stretch on for ever, the  moon across their skins and a joining connecting body and soul.

Rolling on to her, he opened her thighs with his knee, signalling  purpose. She was damp and she was ready, the swollen flesh of her sex  calling them together. With one hand under her bottom he raised her up  so that the angle of their connection might be more conducive to  pleasure and, poised at the opening of her womanhood, he waited.

'I will be gentle,' he promised as he pushed in. She was tight and small  and when her eyes widened at the pain he waited until she could  accommodate him. Then with one hard and heavy push he was in her, buried  to the hilt, her flesh calling in the ancient rhythm of life. Aurelia  was his, her hair wrapped like flame about his hand and the generosity  of her breasts between them.                       
       
           



       

The ache of ownership was the most powerful aphrodisiac Hawkhurst had  ever experienced and, emptying himself into heat, he gave no thought to  protection or hesitation, just need, desperate and all consuming.

He had bruised her, he thought later, with his fingers as he clung to  hope and with the drive of his manhood into softness. But she had  stiffened as he did, her nails a-tremble on his skin and urging him into  a response he could not stop.

The little death, the French called it-the time when a lover died and  went to Heaven and back. Joined by sex they moved inwards, straining,  wanting the moment to last for ever, listening to each other's heartbeat  and knowing each other's breath, the rush of it beaching in relief as  wave after wave depleted sanity.