Someone to Care (Westcott #4)(22)

He drew back his head and looked into her eyes—dreamy with desire and blue even in the shadows cast by the candle. “You are sure, Viola?” he asked. What the devil was this?

“Yes,” she said.

They were the only words they spoke in the first hour of that night, apart from some indecipherable murmurings as they coupled. They were on the bed by then, the bedcovers pushed to the foot, the candle still burning, her nightgown and his dressing gown in a heap on the floor.

She was hot. Eager and uninhibited. Having made her decision, she gave herself with abandon and demanded pleasure in return. He slowed her down, showing her that the pleasure given and taken with hands and fingertips and mouth and tongue and even teeth was as sexual as the final feast. And seeking out pleasure points on her body and guiding her to pleasure points on his.

When he finally mounted her, turning her onto her back first and coming between her thighs as he covered her, she was slick and ready and he was hard and eager. But even then he slowed them, thrusting with measured strokes, avoiding too great a depth until the final moments, sliding his hands beneath her as she lifted herself toward him and matched his rhythm.

And then the final drive toward the shared and ultimate pleasure of release and the little oblivion that always followed upon the best of couplings.

This was surely the very best.

He lay on her for several moments, his weight pressing her to the mattress while his heartbeat slowed and consciousness returned. She was warm and relaxed and sweaty beneath him. He moved off her and reached down for the covers before settling beside her and sliding an arm beneath her neck.

The Countess of Riverdale. Viola Kingsley. He still could not quite believe it. She had been worth the fourteen-year wait. Not that he would have had her this way back then even if she had been willing. She had been a married lady—apparently married, that was.

She was asleep. Her hair was untidy, her face flushed, her lips slightly parted. She had drawn the sheet up to cover her breasts in a belated nod to modesty. Beneath the covers her naked body touched his from bosom to ankles. She was beautiful in every way it was possible for a woman to be beautiful. Fourteen years had not robbed her of any of her allure. They had merely added to it.

What strange fate had thrown them together here, one of his hired horses having acquired a loose shoe, her hired carriage having developed a cracked axle? He still did not know the name of either the village or the inn. But he did not believe in fate or coincidence. It had happened and they had made the most of it—were making. The night was far from over. It was probably not even midnight yet.

There was still much pleasure to be had.

The noisy revelries were still continuing downstairs.

And there was no hurry.



* * *



? ? ?

Viola did not sleep deeply, though she did perhaps drift for a few minutes, exhausted and satiated. It had been so very long, and never like this. Oh, never even close. It would be laughable even to try comparing.

She knew beyond a doubt that she had made a grave mistake. For she had allowed something vivid into her life, something . . . joyful, and she would never, ever be able to forget. For a while perhaps she would not want to, but eventually she surely would. For vivid living and joy were not for her. Any possibility of either had been killed in her when she was seventeen and married Humphrey, and there was no changing the world and the persona she had created for herself since then.

Her life would become dull and decorous and blameless again tomorrow and for all her tomorrows after that. She had run from Bath in a sort of panicked attempt to escape all that had happened during the past two years, when it had all accumulated in her spirit and become too much for her. Perhaps she had wanted to escape everything that had happened before that too. Perhaps she had wanted to escape from the whole of her life, even from herself. And something—call it fate?—had arranged all this. She had run far from her usual reality this afternoon when she went to the village fair with a known libertine and enjoyed every single vivid moment of it. She had run further yet tonight when she had waltzed with him on the village green and kissed him on the riverbank and left her door unlocked. But if it was fate that had set up today, she was not at all sure it had been kind to her. Perhaps it had not intended to be. Perhaps it had intended to teach her a harsh lesson. For there was no permanent escape. Ultimately she must take herself with her wherever she went, and there was no changing herself except during brief, wistful, defiant moments.

But oh—she was not sorry.

Not yet. And why anticipate sorrow and guilt?

She must have drifted again. She awoke to the touch of his hand moving featherlight up her body, between her breasts, over one of them, beneath it. He set the pad of his thumb over her nipple and rubbed so lightly that she felt the effect more than the touch. Desire stabbed down inside her and upward so that both her womb and her throat ached.

She turned her head on his arm and saw the hard, austere, cynical, silver-templed Mr. Lamarr, with whom no woman of sense would allow herself to become personally involved. But almost in the same moment she saw Marcel, the lover in whom she had found escape and delight and no peril at all. Except that there was the certain knowledge of a bleaker-than-ever future.

And the rest of tonight.

She realized suddenly that the inn had fallen silent and there was no further sound of music coming from outside. She must have dozed for longer than she thought. Time was passing. This night was passing.