Forged by Love: Even Gods Fall in Love, Book 4 (14 page)

He cocked his head to one side. “Satisfied?”

She shook her head. “Not nearly enough.”

As they laughed, he went back to work. He traced around her navel with his tongue before dipping in briefly and moving to her hip, then down further. He’d done this before. She braced herself for the wonderful sensation of his tongue on her clitoris, but he didn’t do it. Instead, he propped his head on his hand and opened her with his fingers, studying her intently.

“I could never fashion anything half this lovely,” he said. Virginie wasn’t sure how she felt about such close scrutiny. Inside, she heated and tingling, prickling ran up her spine. How could that be lovely?

He slid his finger down her crease, then pinched her clitoris lightly. His close scrutiny as much as his actions made her tense. “You’re wet, my wife,” he said. “Ready for me. But you might have noticed that I’m large, and I don’t want to hurt you. Besides, I’m enjoying this too much. I like to see where I’m going.”

Goodness! She had no idea what to say or how to react. She had no training, no response. The curse of godhead was that they could sense moods, and he sensed hers, for he said, “Only honesty in this. React exactly as you want to. I intend to.” He drew his finger down the other side and she shuddered. “That’s better. Keep it up.”

He pushed one finger inside her. He’d been there before, but he hadn’t watched her so carefully, and that made all the difference. He was studying her. She’d have no secrets once he’d done. Crooning her name, he pushed another finger beside the first. Then he rotated them.

“Oh!” Her shocked exclamation accompanied her startled jerk, but he held her steady and continued to explore her. “Soft, wet, completely tempting. You smell like spice and mulled wine, and a surprising note of roses.” He bent and took a deep, noisy sniff, and then touched his tongue to her. “You taste the same and I will enjoy you completely before we’re done here tonight. The more you give, the more I’ll take from you, so be warned, my lady.” His roguish smile was unlike anything else she’d seen in him before. She hadn’t thought him capable of teasing.

A third finger joined the two already deep inside her. He plunged in and out. The sounds of her juices came loud to her ears. She had never imagined such intimacy would excite her rather than embarrass her. He stroked her, tugged at her and added to the sensations rioting inside her, so strong she didn’t know what to do or how to react.

“Relax,” he murmured, his voice low and intimate. “Think of nothing. Then you’ll come.”

Yes, that was it. Stop her mind racing. What if he—

Her orgasm took her by surprise. Completely shocked, she twisted, crying out, then screaming.

He left her for a bare instance, pulled his fingers out of her and then came up the bed to lie over her. Pressure nudged her, then grew stronger, then with an internal pop he was inside her, seated firmly. Filled her up, crammed her full.

Blindly she reached out and clutched his bare back. His muscles flexed powerfully as he drove deeper, until he was fully embedded inside her.

Sucking in a breath, she revelled in him. His heat surrounded her, so no part of her didn’t come into contact with him.

He stopped, poised with his shaft just inside her. Her eyes shot open.

He had his elbows propped either side of her, and he stared down, his eyes gleaming with inner fire. “That’s better,” he said, and thrust into her again. “Remember? Watch me, goddess. Keep your eyes open. I want to see your eyes when I make you come.”

“But I’ve—”

He laughed, rough and low. “Once and finished, is that it? That’s not the way we do it, my lady. We keep going until we can’t do it any more.”

He was as good as his word, pumping into her and pulling out. She learned the rhythm of his body, the way his muscles tensed against her skin. First one pattern, hard, straight lines, and then horizontally as he used his hips to swivel and rotate.

When he caught her in a certain way, she flinched and cried out. Her body did that arching again, an instinctive reaction.

He chuckled. Sweat beaded his forehead and when she stroked his arms, marvelling at their width and strength, he twisted again.

“That spot. Oh, don’t stop!”

“You’d have to kill me first.” He drove harder, reaching deep inside her with every stroke, holding her down by the sheer power of his body. As her body opened even more to accommodate him, he hammered into her, faster, harder, deeper. His white teeth clenched, he watched her face, never took his attention away from it.

Mewling his name, she exploded. Her passaged tightened, gripped him, and he closed his eyes. Then he forced them open and stared at her as she lost all semblance of civilisation and control.

The air hummed. Blue sparks and flashes zipped around them, interspersed with licks of fire as he bellowed her name. “Virginie!”

Her name.

At last, she closed her eyes.

Chapter Fourteen

Whether she fell asleep or just fainted for a minute, Virginie wasn’t sure. She opened her eyes to find herself cradled in Harry’s arms. Her head was pillowed on his shoulder, her leg draped across his. Her breasts were pressed against him. She had never felt more comfortable in all her life.

He grunted, a deeply masculine sound, when her eyes flickered open. “Welcome back.”

“How long was I—”

“About twenty minutes. I was dozing off myself.” He claimed a kiss, and he made it luscious, licking into her mouth. She lifted her head, stretching up to meet him, so she could meld her mouth to his. “You owed me that,” he said when their lips parted.

“I suppose I do.” She smiled lazily.

“Virginie—” He broke off, frowning, and then started again. “Why haven’t you done even the most basic intimate exploration?”

“Was it that obvious?” She felt languorous and relaxed. Why should she deny what was patently evident to him?

“Yes. You’re the goddess of love. Surely you can control the act?” He glanced away, then back at her. “I was terrified coming in here. Afraid I wouldn’t be enough for you. You are who you are.”

“I’m also Virginie.” Time to explain at least a little of her dilemma. “I’m a woman of thirty, who has only had intimate relations with two men. My husband is one. The other you know.”

His mouth tightened. “Lyndhurst.”

“Yes. That was madness. We didn’t have time for—niceties. I touched him and it was like a fever. It was that way for him too. We couldn’t stop ourselves, especially in the latter days. We came together, and our insanity was escalating. We affected people around us and we gloried in what we were doing. Apart, we had flashes of understanding, but it never lasted, because the longing would return. And towards the end it grew worse.” She buried her head in his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

He slipped his finger under her chin, urging her to lift it again. “I understand. You continued it, but the affair didn’t give you time. I’m glad. It means this state isn’t carried over to us.” He laughed softly. “We are like this because of us, not because of some outside force.”

“But you’re Vulcan and I’m Venus. We have a history.”

“Of a kind. Not a proper one. If we concentrate on Virginie and Harry, then we might do better.”

She kissed his shoulder, his hard flesh hot under her lips. “We can’t deny who we are.”

“No, we cannot. But we have others who have shown us the way. They accept what happened to them, and they are making their own future. Some echoes from the past returned for them, but not all. Just as we’ve come together. There was a woman in legend called Rhea, did you know that?”

She shook her head. She hadn’t read much about the legends, afraid to learn more of the cruelty of the goddess whose attributes she’d inherited. Rhea, who had died. Rhea, whom she shouldn’t feel jealous of, but she did. It haunted her, the feelings she should not have. She still had remnants of desire for Marcus, still felt shades of longing for him. He was close, she knew that, only a few streets away, and the knowledge soothed her. But she should not feel like that.

Rhea had won.

“What did she do?”

“She died. The same as in this case. She had twin sons she claimed Mars had fathered, and died. The sons grew up to be Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome.”

“Goodness! So what will those two do?”

“Whatever they want to do,” he said. “They shouldn’t be bound by their birth. Lyndhurst has changed the pattern already by taking the children in, instead of repudiating them and leaving them to be raised by wolves.”

He was right. Marcus was honourable—at least he was normally, when not taken by the madness of lust. “Recently Marcus said things, did things that I don’t think are natural to him. My recklessness, that wasn’t like me.”

“From what you’ve told me, it appears not.” He hugged her closer. “I presumed that you had taken lovers, especially after your husband’s death. Why did you not?”

She laughed. “Because people expected me to. They asked and assumed. I let them think what they wanted to. It was fashionable to take lovers, but I didn’t want any of them. I led some on, played flirtation games, but did nothing else.”

How to tell him about her marriage without betraying her husband? Harry was her husband now, but she doubted he would appreciate her discussing their private lives. On the other hand, she had to tell him something. He deserved to know.

“My mother persuaded the Duc de Clermont-Ferand to marry me when I was eighteen. To tell the truth, he did not take much persuasion. He was seventy.” Harry shuddered. “He was a good seventy, as the saying goes. Not tall, but healthy in most respects. As an older man, though, his prowess in bed was not—great. He wanted me more as a trophy than for use. He had no children, but he had heirs, so I didn’t need to give him any. The times he came to my bed”—she repressed her own shudder—“were not pleasant. But he was kind to me, and generous. I had everything I wanted.”

“Except a young man in your bed.” He held her gently but firmly. She loved his hold, the way he almost cherished her. “So that gave you a poor opinion of the act of love?”

She nodded. Her late husband had on occasion bestowed cruder names on the act. Her reading had given her the names of others, but she liked the way Harry described it. That set the emotions apart, on a level of their own. Still trying to work out what had happened to her, she could cope if she put this in a separate compartment in her mind and kept it safe.

“I didn’t want to actually go through with it again. I found it tiring and disturbingly personal. With—” She broke off.

“Go on,” he said firmly.

After snatching a glance at his face, she ventured to tell him more. But not everything. That wasn’t his business to know. “With Marcus, we were too frantic to concern ourselves with anything more. At first I thought it was love. Right until that last evening at the theatre.”

“Did something happen that night?”

She nodded. “You were there, were you not?”

“I was. With d’Argento and Kentmere. D’Argento had called him to try to break the enchantment and me because of who I was.”

“Some semblance of reason penetrated through to me that night. I ignored it. At the time I thought Marcus and I would marry, and continue. We might make enough power to use against the Titans. But it was the wrong kind of power, I see that now. It would have fed them rather than stopped them.”

“What do you mean?”

She tried to translate her instinctive feeling into thought. “We might call it good and evil, but I think it is slightly different. There is a power that adds to things, that improves, and the kind that drains. Do you see what I mean?”

He frowned. “I think so. But I’m not sure about all this. I’m not used to thinking in this way. I like what I can touch and see, and feel, not what might or might not hang in the air.”

She understood that well enough. “You’re a practical man.”

“Yes, I am.” He turned to her, rolled her onto her back and leaned over her. “Which means I should be leaving you alone, urging you to sleep because we have to rise early in the morning. But you can sleep in the coach.”

She hadn’t felt so light-hearted in years. “So I can.” She reached for him, the shadows in her mind gone.

Unfortunately, at the first inn on the road, the landlord had made an error with the bedrooms. Harry and Virginie were forced into separate rooms, so that Virginie could share with her mother. Harry occupied the servant’s room the innkeepers had somehow booked for Deirdre, thinking she was a domestic, but Harry would have none of that.

He missed sleeping with his wife. Although their rising in the morning had been necessarily hurried, he’d enjoyed waking with her. Her halting confession that this was the first time she’d spent the whole night with a man delighted him. He vowed that it wouldn’t be the last. He’d waited until she rose and went into her dressing room before he got out of bed. He wasn’t ready to reveal all his secrets, not yet.

It took three days of speedy and often uncomfortable travel to reach his home in Cheshire. That was because he ordered frequent changes of horses and a punishing pace. After the first night Mrs. Davenport slept with his wife. He wouldn’t be able to keep his hands off her if they were together. In the inns, with their paper-thin walls and rickety furniture, he didn’t want to risk embarrassing her.

She screamed when she came. He wanted her to scream herself hoarse the next time he had her under him. And not in a country inn. His homing instincts took him flying towards his house. That analogy put him in mind of the pigeons d’Argento had sent with him. A clever idea, that. The army used them to pass messages quickly, and it made sense. D’Argento, the messenger of the gods, could travel quickly, but he couldn’t be in more than one place at the same time. He wanted to stay in London, to watch Lyndhurst and ensure he was safe.

There was more to come, he’d told Harry. Perhaps marital life, by which he meant bedroom activities, would help Virginie shake off the last of the addiction. He’d made Harry promise to keep a close watch on her for the first few weeks.

The way he was feeling, she’d be close to him for more than a few weeks.

His restless energy drove him to ride for several legs of the journey. Not the carriage horses, of course, but he hired hacks at the inns where they made the change. He hoped Virginie understood. Whether she did or not, he couldn’t stay cramped in that coach with her scent in his nostrils. The occasional touch of her skin teased and reminded him of their time together. Alone, he’d have had much more satisfying ways of passing the journey. Why had he not thought to put Deirdre on an earlier coach, found a reason to stay in London for an extra day? That way he would have had his wife to himself.

His horse stumbled on the uneven surface. They’d just passed Liverpool, at last in Cheshire. They would reach his home by tonight. He would be a brute to force Virginie into bed so soon, but he was afraid he might be crossing into brute territory. Unless she said no.

A fleeting thought crossed his mind. Was he affected by the spell? Was this longing to plunge inside his wife’s beautiful body once more a result of the potent arrow Eros had driven into her?

He couldn’t know. But he never felt anything but himself when he was with her. He didn’t feel the need to do something he wouldn’t generally want to do. He must go on his rusty and little used instincts.

The horse was definitely getting tired. So was he. At the next stage he left the horse to be rested and taken back to where it belonged, and joined the ladies in the carriage.

Deirdre was making something with thread and a little shuttle. While he admired the craftsmanship, the technique appeared fairly simple, just something to pass the time. He could think of better ways. Sighing, he settled in the corner opposite his wife and spent the remainder of the journey watching her. That pleased him. After all, she was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

Would she like his home? If she didn’t, he had others. Or he’d build her one if she wanted something he didn’t have. Perhaps she’d prefer the gentler climate in Devonshire or the dramatic Derbyshire countryside. Cheshire had keen winds and green fields. There were some breath-taking places, and the company was genteel, if she wanted to mix.

It was so unlike him to worry about such matters. What was he thinking? She was his wife. Which was why it was so important to him to please her.

Would she like it?

Virginie had a headache. Her mother had been using that infernal shuttle—tatting a collar edging, she said—and talking non-stop about the change in their fortunes. Virginie hadn’t slept well since her wedding night. Strange and lumpy beds, plus the presence of her mother. She’d woken up in the night, transported to a different time, when they’d had no choice but to share a bed. Even housekeepers had limited accommodation, especially in the modest establishments Deirdre used so she could avoid the Duke of Boscobel.

At least her husband had deigned to share the coach for the last part of the journey. She understood his reasons for riding. If she hadn’t sent her riding dress ahead with the bulk of her luggage, she’d have joined him, just for the exercise. And the fascination of being with this man. She had never met anyone quite like him. Were they all like this in Cheshire? She was about to find out.

Excitement built as they approached the house. A swathe of green park and two well-kept lodges framed the entrance. The massive iron gates were open, the drive when they swung on to it smoother than the road. Harry didn’t look out the window. He watched her. She offered a tentative smile. His was broader.

“Look,” he said. “Your home.” He courteously extended the sentiments to her mother. “Yours too, madam.”

The sun beamed down on the grass and the lush trees. When she’d thought about the north of England, she imagined mountains and lakes, not this expanse of smooth parkland.

“I thought of having a man to see to it,” Harry said, “but I like it as it is.”

“Creating landscapes is all the rage,” Deirdre remarked. “But I doubt anything could better this.”

“We are lucky here,” he said. “The estate is relatively small. Twenty miles away are my coal mines. Some of them. This part of the countryside is rife with them, but they do not occupy every acre. We have our sheep farmers and our coastal towns with fishing ports. Liverpool is fast growing as a port of importance. It will rival Bristol and London soon.” He spoke with pride, and the trace of an accent Virginie hadn’t noticed in London.

The coach took a curve and Virginie got her first sight of the house. She stared, frozen, the sense of coming home foreign to her. It didn’t make sense. She’d never been here before. But the house, built in grey stone with huge windows on three storeys, seemed to welcome her.

She wanted it too much. That was the truth. She was the mistress of this place. She’d seen houses more fashionable, larger, with more impressive facades, but not one she’d immediately taken to so strongly. Her houses in France were elegant, light, fashionable, but this place breathed history.