To Beguile a Beast (Legend of the Four Soldiers #3)(74)

And she gave it. Without volition. Without conscious thought. Her belly rippling with the orgasm that continued unabated. She panted into the sheets, filling her mouth with the corner of a pillow to keep from screaming aloud.

She felt his upper body lift away from her, causing his pelvis to press into her more heavily. She saw out of the corner of her eye one of his arms braced beside her shoulder. He withdrew. Slowly. In this position, beneath him, with her legs only hip-width apart, the pressure was intense. He was crammed so tightly within her. His cock dragged against her as it retreated from her soft flesh. She closed her eyes, lost in the intense feeling. He pushed back in, just as slowly, and she felt his entire hard length reenter her. This was bliss. This was sensation beyond anything she’d ever experienced before. She could lie like this and submit to him forever, reveling in his hard flesh, his male scent all around her.

“Helen,” he rasped. “Helen.”

And she felt him jerk against her. He thrust one more time, shoving his entire length into her, and she came again, a sweet, warm, washing wave of pleasure after the intensity of before. He withdrew suddenly, and hot semen splashed her thigh. He was immobile above her, his breath coming harshly, his weight still holding her lower body pinned to the bed. She wished he could stay like this, with his hard body pressing her into the bed, but it was inevitable that he roll to the side.

He slid away from her and stood beside the bed, taking off his clothing, moving slowly as if terribly wearied. He climbed in beside her, nude, and drew her close, and that was better. Wordlessly he fitted her body against his larger, harder one, and tucked her head into the crook of his arm.

She watched sleepily as his chest rose and fell, the beat of his heart slow and steady under her cheek. She wondered what they would do if they got the children back. If he loved her and if they could ever have a life together.

And finally she decided it was all too much to think about right now. So she closed her eyes and went to sleep.

WHEN HELEN WOKE again, the room was nearly dark. Alistair was in the process of gently pulling his arm from beneath her head. The movement was what had awakened her. She made no sound but watched as he stood and found his smallclothes and breeches, sliding them up his long legs. And she remembered something that she’d meant to ask him earlier when he’d first returned to the hotel.

“Where did you go?”

His hands, buttoning the fall of his breeches, stilled at her voice and then resumed their work. “I told you. I went to the docks to see about a ship.”

She propped her head in her hand, lying on her side. “I’ve told you my secrets. Isn’t it time you told me yours?”

It was a gamble based on their recent lovemaking. He might still retreat into that hard anger he’d borne toward her for the last week. He might simply pretend he didn’t know what she spoke about.

He did neither. Instead he bent and picked up his shirt, holding it in his hands and staring down at it as if he’d never seen white linen before. “Nearly seven years ago, I was in the American Colonies. You know that. It’s how I came to write my book. It’s also how I lost my eye.”

“Tell me,” she whispered, not daring to move or breathe lest she break his narration.

He nodded. “My purpose in the Colonies was to discover new plants and animals. The best place to look for undiscovered things is where men haven’t already explored—the edges of civilization. But because it’s the edge of civilization and because we are at war with France, that was also the most dangerous place to be. Naturally, then, I found it expedient to attach myself to various army regiments. I spent three years thus, tramping where they tramped, collecting samples and making notes when they camped.”

He was silent a moment, still staring at the shirt in his hands until he shook his head and looked up at her. “Forgive me; I’m delaying the crux of my story.” He inhaled deeply. “In the fall of 1758, I was with a small regiment of men, the 28th Regiment of Foot. We were marching through a thick forest, our destination Fort Edward, where the regiment intended to barrack for the winter. The trail was narrow, the trees oppressively close when we came to a falls.…”

His voice broke and trailed away, and a look crossed his face that she’d never seen on him before. Despair. She nearly cried out.

But his face smoothed and he cleared his throat. “Spinner’s Falls it was called as I found out later. We were attacked from both sides by the French and a band of their Indian allies. Suffice it to say that we lost.” A corner of his mouth twitched in something that might’ve been a smile. “I say ‘we’ quite deliberately. In the midst of battle, one is never a bystander. Though I was a civilian, I fought just as hard as the soldiers standing next to me. We fought for the same thing, after all: our lives.”

“Alistair,” she whispered. She’d seen how he’d touched Lady Grey’s dead body, seen him patiently teach Abigail to fish. He wasn’t a man who would commit or recover from violence easily.

“No.” He waved away her sympathy. “I’m prevaricating again. I survived the battle relatively unscathed with several others, and the Indians rounded us up as captives. We marched for many days through the woods and then we made their camp.”

He frowned down at the shirt and carefully folded it. The muscles of his bare arms shifted in the fading light. “The native peoples in that part of the world have a sort of custom when they win a battle. They take captive the enemy who survives and they torture them; the object is part celebration, part demonstration of the enemy’s cowardice. At least that’s what I believe the object is. Of course, there may not be a reason at all for the torture. Certainly, there’s ample evidence in our own history of peoples delighting in inflicting pain purely for the pleasure of it.”