Gareth: Lord of Rakes (30 page)

“Do we blame Astrid for this sudden urge to see the world?”

“I think that’s part of it,” Gareth said, “maybe not all. Somewhere after the accident, I lost track of Andrew. I am beginning to think he’s more upset than I knew, but I can’t put my finger on why. He’s always so hail-fellow-well-met, but I know he holds himself responsible for the fact that only he and Mother survived.”

She liked that he’d talk to her thus; she hated that after today he’d have nobody to discuss family concerns with. “From what you’ve said, Andrew and your mother were the only ones not inebriated.”

He paused, his hands at the knot of his cravat. “That never occurred to me. In years of tormenting myself with what-ifs and if-onlys, I never put together that everyone who died was drinking heavily, while those who survived were not. Interesting.” He regarded their drink as if it contained hemlock.

“You won’t die in a boating accident because you shared a bottle of wine with me, Gareth.”

“I know.” Though his tone was unconvinced. Then he offered her a piratical grin. “Maybe I’ll expire of an apoplexy in that bed in the next room.” She hit him with an embroidered pillow for his impertinence; he lunged at her to divest her of her weapon, and they both ended up tangled lengthwise on the couch.

Felicity coshed him again with the pillow. “Get off me, you awful man.”

“A blow to the head can have serious consequences,” Gareth chided her, kissing her nose as he rose partway off her. “You must take more tender care of my person, Felicity, or I will conclude spirits make you violent.”

He did get up, and held out a hand to assist her to her feet.

“Spirits don’t make me violent, but dirty old solicitors surely do,” Felicity said as she gained her feet.

“What about a dirty not-quite-old marquess?” Gareth murmured as he slipped his arms around her.

“Him, I have a decided fondness for.” If fondness could apply to the love of one’s life. She leaned into him, felt his hand stroking down her unbound hair, and never wanted the moment to end.

“Seeing as you’re so fond of me, how about if I take you into that bedroom and make passionate love to you for the next twelve hours, hmm?” He nuzzled her neck, addling her wits with the scents of sandalwood and spices. And with his kindness.

This flirtation, this banter, was Gareth trying to be kind—as if their assignation were merely another of his casual liaisons, undertaken for fun and easily forgotten.

Perhaps she could learn even that from him.

“Passionate love would be quite acceptable.” Though twelve hours was far from enough.

He made sure it was lovely, made it everything she’d dreamed shared intimacy could be.

They took their time stroking, petting, teasing, and talking without any particular urgency or agenda. Felicity reveled in the pleasure of being able to see Gareth’s face as he touched her, as his arousal built and ebbed. She reached over again and again to touch his features as he lay beside her, to kiss him while his hands left trails of pleasure all over her body. The room had grown dark when Felicity felt Gareth’s hand go still on the side of her face.

“Soon, Felicity, I will make love with you. You will sleep in my arms this night, and we will rise and break our fast together. But then, my love, we will part. Do you promise me when the time comes, you will accept that?”

My
love.
For one night, she was his love. He leaned down to kiss her before she could reply. When he paused, his mouth poised above her, she realized all his petting and stroking so far had been so much teasing before he turned his attention fully to her pleasure.

“I promise, Gareth.” He was demanding a price from her for this night in his arms. The price was an absolute parting. He would start collecting on it tomorrow morning, but the price would never be paid in full.

Gareth made no further comment, but in the deep shadows of the firelight, he closed his eyes and pressed his lips to her forehead.

“So be it,” he murmured, grazing his mouth over each of her features. His hands roamed her body, as if memorizing the landscape of her bones and muscles. He touched her softly, sweetly, and with such care Felicity’s worries and fears melted under his caresses. When he shifted to rise over her, she wanted to lift herself up to him, to capture him with her limbs and her mouth and
her
love
and hold him to her heart.

Gareth laced his fingers with hers where they lay beside her head on the pillow. In the same moment, he joined their mouths and began the joining of their bodies. His tongue, his shaft, his hands, melded her body to his, slowly, gently.

Felicity felt an instant’s panic—equal parts desire and anxiety—as she felt the length of him filling her, but then he glided away, and the panic was replaced by loss. He eased forward again, watching her now, then forward a bit more. She raised her head off the pillow to recapture his mouth, and flexed her hips to follow his retreat. By slow degrees, her body accepted him, until she caught his rhythm and he was moving easily inside her.

For long moments, he pleasured her thus, with a lovely, languid thrusting that allowed Felicity to kiss him while her hips undulated with his. She freed one hand from his grasp and explored his face, watching her fingers trail over each feature. She slipped her hand to the nape of his neck, then down the long muscles of his back, using the purchase she found to hold herself to him more tightly.

Never tightly enough.

“Easy,” Gareth murmured. “I want to love you all night. There’s no rush.”

“But I want…” Felicity went silent as pleasure spiked upward on his next thrust.

“And you shall have.” He moved in her just as slowly, but with a hint more power and depth.

“Better,” she whispered. “But, Gareth, please…”

“Hush.” He bent his head to give her a deep, openmouthed kiss that met her need for more, and enflamed her further at the same time.

“Gareth.” She would beg, she would plead, she would make wild promises, if only she could form the words.

“I know, love,” Gareth said, kissing her again. “I know. Trust me.” By slow increments, he changed the depth, speed, and angle of his thrusts, joining their bodies ever closer. He measured his breathing in counterpoint to hers, so their torsos stayed seamed together, even as their hips moved. Still, she rocked up against her lover in a desperate need to be yet closer to him.

Felicity crossed an eternity of pleasure with him, holding him desperately tight as longing, love, loss, and desire twined through her soul. When the first tear seeped from her closed eyes, Gareth began to give her the deep, powerful strokes that would bring her satisfaction to her.

She let herself be swamped by the pleasure he gave her, buried her face against his chest, and rocked up against him, rocked up
into
him, clinging and crying out with the force of her gratification.

And her grief.

He eased her down with a return to that languid, lazy rocking together, stroking her face gently and smiling down at her when she opened her eyes. His gaze was so tender, so unguardedly pleased and sad, she had to close her eyes again.

I
love
you; I love you. I will always love you.

***

Gareth gave Felicity a while longer to drift as he rested his forehead against hers. Were she more experienced, he could have made love to her for hours, but the day before he’d pleasured her thoroughly—and a bit roughly—with his hand. He could have offered her a joyous romp tonight as well, or an encounter laced with ribald good cheer. He knew infinitely many ways to share pleasurable sex with a willing woman.

But he wanted—he needed—to
make
love
with Felicity on their one and only night together. He needed to grant her wish for the experience of having not a bed partner, but a
lover
. For that, only tenderness and care would do, and so he gathered himself to complete their loving.

She responded to the change in him as he began to move in her again. Whereas before, he’d been attentive and arousing, now he was focused and aroused, truly aroused. A mild pleasure would not do for Felicity, nor did he seek one for himself. He sought to possess her and to give her everything of himself at the same time. He flexed into her more deeply, letting her feel the relentless power driving his desire. She wrapped her legs around his hips, holding him to her even as he withdrew to plunge again.

Without increasing his speed, he levered himself more tightly into her, and felt satisfaction bearing down. Felicity curled up, fused her mouth to his, drawing on his tongue in rhythm with his thrusts. She broke off as pleasure overcame her, leaving her shuddering even as he continued to stroke into her.

“Look at me,” Gareth rasped. “Look at me when I love you.”

Topaz heat locked on him, and without breaking her gaze, he spent himself deep inside her body, letting her see, even as he forced her through the fire yet again, the desperate pleasure, the passion, the gratification, and the peace that being her lover at last had brought him.

***

As Felicity gradually regained her breath, thoughts, at first, were too hard to hold. She held her lover instead, this dear, precious, generous, imperfect man, whom she must leave in a few hours. In one sense, she craved that parting, because the emotions and sensations he had created for her were too much, too intense. Only the comfort of his weight pressing her to the bed reassured her she would not dissolve from a pure, overloaded intensity of feeling.

And in another sense, she dreaded their parting.

“You are generous and brave,” Felicity said, pushing his hair off his forehead.

“You inspire me,” he whispered back, laying his cheek against her temple.

In comfortable silence, they lay together a good long while. Felicity eventually felt him slip from her body. Oh, what a loss that was… Still, she didn’t want him to take his weight from her.

“You’ll be all right if I get up?”

“I will be immobile for the next age, Gareth, so thoroughly have I been ravished.”

“Not thoroughly enough,” Gareth muttered, climbing off her and out of the bed. He retrieved water left to warm by the hearth and a flannel. Felicity watched him wash the evidence of his passion from his body, then spread her legs obligingly while he did the same for her.

“How shameless you’ve become.” He gave her a proprietary pat on her privy parts when he’d finished tending her.

“Beyond redemption,” Felicity agreed, drawing the covers up over them both and flopping to her side. “By your most inspiring example.”

“I will provide one more example for you,” Gareth said, stifling a yawn as he spooned himself around the curve of her back. “I will now demonstrate that behavior most common to the sexually satisfied male by closing my eyes and, quite shamelessly, going right to sleep. I suggest you do likewise.”

He was dodging—or being as wise and kind as the situation would allow. Felicity closed her eyes and wiggled her backside into the warmth of his body. They had had a long, difficult day, and she hadn’t the strength—or the courage—to ask him to stay awake merely so she could store up yet still more moments of his company before the parting that must occur in the morning.

***

In the soft, dark shadows after midnight, Gareth showed Felicity the pleasures to be had when sleeping with her back cradled against her lover’s chest. When she woke just after dawn, sprawled on his chest, he gave her new pleasures, ones that allowed him to stroke and fondle her breasts while she controlled the speed and intensity of their coupling.

He hadn’t intended to ask so much of her, but he was able to bring her to climax with the subtlest of touches, with tenderness and care. She showed no signs of discomfort, though he doubted she’d admit discomfort even if she felt it. As she drowsed in his arms, he wanted her yet again, and again after that, but having granted her wish for a night together, he held himself responsible for managing their parting as well.

And each time they joined, he made that parting more difficult not just for himself, but for her, too.

He left the bed to build up the fire, knowing Felicity watched him when he moved around the room rather than return directly to the bed.

“I’m not leaving you yet,” he told her, finding the water and flannel and making use of them again before rejoining her in the bed. “We have a few hours, at least.” He kissed her nose then wrapped her in his arms.

But Felicity had doubtless sensed the change in him, the slight withdrawal. She kept her hands above his waist and made no move to ask more lovemaking of him.

“I know you’d rather I hopped out of this bed, threw on my clothes, blew you a kiss, and scampered out of your life,” Felicity said, curled against his side.

She was being brave, and her example, as he’d said, did inspire him. “I wish you would, and I’d be devastated if you could.”

“To think of not seeing you again, not holding you again, not even knowing if you are well or troubled, or even alive—it unnerves me. How shall I—”

He silenced her with a finger against her lips.

“Hush, love. You must think only of the next moments, and the next, and the next, and you will, sooner than you believe, find you are not missing me quite so much as you feared you would. Besides, I suspect Andrew would tell you—despite my wishes to the contrary—if I were seriously indisposed. We will need to contact each other indirectly for the next little while, at least until the brothel can be sold.”

He’d taken inordinate comfort from that realization, which was selfish of him—also stupid.

“What if I don’t want to sell it?”

She would hold onto the brothel, risking all the damage it could do her, merely to maintain a connection with him—a connection he was not worthy of.

“Then my purpose in your life is truly at an end today, and we will have no further dealings, indirect or otherwise.”

“I gather you’d prefer I sell.”

“Of course I’d prefer you sell, goose. The longer you are associated with that place, the more likely it is people will learn of your interest in it. Somebody at Willard and Willard has already been egregiously indiscreet. Not selling all but guarantees whoever sought to tarnish your name will succeed—and my name as well, come to that.”