How to Wed a Baron (12 page)

With some effort, Alina tore her gaze from the brandy snifter. “About your dead wife, yes. But you would have told me in your own good time.”

“If I didn't disappear again, as I did from Portsmouth.”

“I hadn't thought of that, but yes, I suppose so. But mostly, if you were to go through with the marriage, that is, which you aren't, so I really have no reason to be curious about your…personal past.”

“Ah, but you'd give that fine cloak to know, wouldn't you?”

“I most certainly would not,” she protested, finally unable to resist looking him in the eye. He had such arresting green eyes, different from any color she'd ever seen. “But I do have a perfectly lovely reticule with seed pearls stitched all over it in the design of a peacock, if you think you'd fancy it.”

“Now I've upset you.”

“You can't upset me, my lord, if I don't wish to be upset. I am only curious about the man I am not going to marry. Anyone would be, you know. You're exceedingly strange. May I have a sip? I've never tasted brandy, but I like the smell of it. You warm it with your hands, don't you?”

He offered her the snifter, and she took it with both hands, holding it beneath her nose and breathing in its heady fragrance before touching the glass to her lips. The moment the warmed liquid hit her tongue she had to force herself not to gasp, and determinedly took a long swallow before handing the thing back to him.

“Here,” he said, holding out a handkerchief he'd produced from somewhere on his person. “Your eyes are tearing. You are supposed to sip, kitten, and then hold the brandy in your mouth for a few moments, allow it to caress your tongue, and only then swallow. When something is good it is to be savored. Not gulped.”

And then, without taking his eyes off her, he raised the snifter to his own mouth and demonstrated what he meant.

Those slumbering parts of her had clearly only been napping since she'd first seen him again this afternoon. Now they yawned, stretched and slowly began to wake up once more. “Why do you make me feel this way when you look at me?” she asked him before she could stop herself. “I don't like it.”

“No, kitten, you don't understand it. There's a difference.”

His gaze was steady, unwavering and mind-shatteringly unnerving. She tried to get up to leave this man and his unsettling way of saying what she didn't think he knew. But when he held out his hand she subsided, sighing.

He took her hand in his, stroked his thumb against her palm.

The entire world seemed to have suddenly narrowed to include only the two of them, wrapped inside the soft glow from the fire. He was so intensely male. She, for the first time in her life, believed she might know what it meant to be a female.

“You want to kiss me again, don't you?” she asked him quietly.

“No, kitten. That is precisely the last thing I want to do.”

She looked down at her hand, lost in his, believing his touch put the lie to his words. “Forgive me.
There was a time, my lord, when I thought I was a fairly intelligent person. Do you think it's that the air here in England is different? Is that why I've been so very stupid ever since I left the ship? Or…or perhaps it was the brandy, because, you know, I've never really drunk strong…”

His finger beneath her chin signaled that he wanted her to raise her head, look at him. Her heart beating madly, her breath somehow gone, she couldn't seem to refuse.

“Have you ever wondered about the difference between what we know we shouldn't do and what, against all good sense, we find we have to do?” he asked her, his face close to hers, the smell of brandy on his breath somehow intoxicating her more than the drink itself. “And, much as I shouldn't want to do this, kitten, I find that I have to…. I really, really must….”

Alina's eyelids fluttered closed as, only his light touch beneath her chin holding her in place as if she had lost the power to move, he put his lips to hers. And this time he didn't move away again.

She didn't know what to do, how to react. She tried pursing her lips, but that didn't seem right. She tried simply tightening them against her teeth, and half felt, half heard his soft chuckle, so she knew that had to be wrong, as well. She probably looked like Danica in one of her disapproving attitudes.

So when Justin put the pads of his thumbs to
either side of her mouth and began to lightly massage her skin, she simply relaxed, deciding that he knew much better than she what a kiss between a man and a woman was all about.

“Better,” he breathed, moving back slightly, just enough to look into her eyes. He tipped his head slightly to one side, his eyes alight with mischief. “Now let's try that again, shall we?”

“I…but I…”

He didn't allow her to finish, which was probably a good thing, as she had no idea what she might have said, but just captured her mouth even as she was speaking.

He kissed her, and then he kissed her again, and yet again. Each time she felt she learned more, until she actually became frustrated each time he withdrew, and found herself lifting her face to him, seeking out his next kiss.

He nipped lightly at her upper lip, which rather tickled. He actually drew her full bottom lip between his teeth, and ran his tongue along the soft underside of it, sending a trumpet blast to her sleeping parts and rousing them to full attention.

And when she sighed, and he insinuated his tongue into her mouth, probing, touching, stroking…why, she thought she might simply go mad.

She raised her arms to slide them around his neck, her cloak falling away without notice or care. It was only important that she hang on, keep him
close, urge him closer. Because there was more than awareness in her now. There was hunger, a hunger she didn't understand but felt certain only he knew how to feed.

His hands went to her head, and she could feel the slight tug as he pulled the pins from her hair, slid his fingers into the tumbling curls even as he sighed against her mouth. He liked that? That was good, because she liked it, as well. Very much.

Now his hands were on her shoulders, and he was kissing her ear, his breath hot against her, sending shivers down her arms. He was pressing kisses along the length of her neck, and she was falling…no, he had her. He had her safe, and if they were falling, they were falling together, until she was lying on the soft velvet cloak.

And he was still kissing her, his fingers lightly tugging at the squared neckline of her chemise, his lips following the descent of the lace-edged silk, setting her skin on fire, making it impossible for her to breathe, but only possible to gasp in surprise as her breasts were suddenly free of the silk and he was touching her…touching her everywhere, kissing her everywhere, whispering that she was beautiful, she was everything, she was heaven and hell and the world in between….

His mouth closed over one taut, straining nipple, and Alina pressed her head back, raising her chin, raising her upper body toward him, offering she
knew not what, as long as he didn't stop, never stopped.

She wanted to be touched, needed to be touched. Would simply die if this feeling went away.

His fingers closed over her other nipple, squeezing, rubbing, and she cried out at the intensified pleasure that shot through her, caused an ache to begin between her thighs. She dragged her nails down his back, feeling the ripple of his muscles beneath the fine lawn of his shirt, the faint shuddering of those same muscles as she cupped her breast, lifting it for him as he stroked the very tip with his wonderfully rough fingers.

She was his instrument, and he was composing a symphony upon her body. She soared, she swept, she sighed. She urged, she purred, she demanded. Because there was more, there had to be more. No symphony, no matter how wonderful, doesn't build, and build, the way she felt her senses building, without a heart-pounding crescendo somewhere, a thrilling climax, a sound so perfect and wonderful that it stops your heart, your breathing, only to take you up, up, into the stars before at last returning you to earth.

She was his instrument, and as Justin strummed her, his tongue flicking at her in time with his stroking thumb, his thigh somehow insinuated between her thighs, pressing hard against her, urging her to return that pressure.

Without thought, without shame, she responded, rubbing herself against him. With growing awe, she knew there was a crescendo coming to her, an ending to the symphony, yes, but one that she had to know.

And yet, when it happened, when the glorious became nearly intolerable, when her body at last found its own music, as her eyes flew open wide and she could only hold on to Justin as every cymbal crashed, and her heart became a tympani, she was still aware somewhere inside of her that it wasn't enough.

Not for her. Not for him.

Justin covered her breasts and rolled onto his back, taking her with him, pressing her cheek against his chest as his arm came around her and held her close.

They lay there for some time, feeling the heat from the fire, barely stirring when a log burned through and crashed in the grate. Alina's breathing at last returned to something less frantic, and her heartbeat was no longer audible in her ears.

And still she said nothing. Justin said nothing.

The mantel clock chimed out the hour, and at last Justin moved. He kissed the top of her head, and then helped her sit up, lifted her cloak up and around her shoulders.

She looked at him in open curiosity. “Why…why was that all?”

He retrieved his snifter of brandy and downed the remainder of its contents.

“You're supposed to sip, remember?”

He put down the snifter and, at last, he smiled at her. “I should be shot,” he said affably enough. “That…uh…that wasn't intended. It was to start and end with a kiss.”

Alina drew the edges of the cloak close together over her breasts. “I know. Tatiana explained it all to me. Gentlemen can be overcome by lust at the drop of a hat. They can't help themselves. It wasn't your fault.”

“Tatiana? She said that? And who, pray, is this font of wisdom?”

“My companion. She was once my maid, but now she's my companion, and Danica is my dresser.”

“I see. And which is which, may I ask, so that I can thank your companion for having explained it
all
to you?”

“Now you're being facetious. I know I really don't know anything. In point of fact, until just now I thought the whole thing…” She stopped herself.

Justin helped her to her feet. “Yes? You thought the whole thing what?”

Alina bent her head and muttered the word beneath her breath.

He leaned closer, pushing her tangled curls away from her face. “Your pardon, kitten. I didn't quite catch that.”

“Repulsive,” she said quietly, and then looked up into his face. “I thought the entire thing repulsive. There, I've said it.”

“Ah, I see. Now I wonder if Tatiana's explanations left much to be desired, or if I should thank her again, as she made it much easier for the reality to exceed your woefully low expectations. Although I will tell you, I believe that I am not completely without talent, and that you are delightfully teachable. That is who I was supposed to be tonight, wasn't it, my curious little kitten? Your teacher? Your small experiment in what it means to be a woman? It may be a little late for warnings, but you should know that it is dangerous to play with me.”

She wasn't certain which most upset her, his words or his tone. She only knew that the next thing she was aware of was the stinging of her palm after it had connected with his smiling face.

“Good,” Justin said as she turned and began to run toward the door, her face aflame with shame. “We'll deal much better these next days if you hate me. Or at least I will.”

She whirled about to face him, her cloak swirling around her feet—which would have been marvelously dramatic, she supposed, except that she nearly tripped over the thing as she walked back to him.

“I don't understand you. I don't understand any of this very much, but I don't understand you most of all. Why are you here? You've already told your
Prince Regent that you won't do as he wants you to do. You won't marry me. So what does it matter to you if
Inhaber
Novak wants to kill me? I am none of your concern. You've made your own bed with your Prince Regent, for whatever reasons, so why don't you just go lie in it, and leave me to myself? Luka is more than capable of protecting me. He was a soldier, and loyal to my father. You were nothing but a, a— Oh, and that's another thing! I have no idea what you were, what you are. So thank you very much, my lord, but we won't be requiring your services anymore. Luka will shoot the
Inhaber
dead and then take me to my mother's family. You, my lord, can…can simply go to straight to hell.”

“Wait,” Justin said quietly, just as she was about to make a second attempt at a dramatic exit, this time first carefully raising her cloak hem above her bare ankles. “There is no good time to tell you this. There is no family here in England for you to go to, Alina.”

“There's not?” Alina felt the first stirrings of what could turn out to be real panic. “But—”

“Your mother had a single surviving relative, a sibling, a brother, Robert, Earl of Birling. He died without issue a little over eight years ago, in a duel. Everything was entailed, and there were no more living male relatives to inherit. The titles, the lands, everything reverted to the Crown at that time. Your mother didn't know, Alina, because when she
married your father the Farber family cut her off and had nothing to do with her ever since. She never told you that?”

Alina stumbled to a chair and sat down with a thump. “No…no, she never said anything.” She looked up at Justin, her eyes awash in tears. “Disowned her? Why?”

“Your mother was several years older than her brother, who was a contemporary of mine. I don't know the entire story, but there was something about the disgrace of having the only daughter married to…to a bloody foreigner. I'm sorry, that's all I know.”