Leslie Lafoy (27 page)

Belle gasped as his hands skimmed down off her shoulders, over already tantalized skin. God, what he was doing to her … Far more exquisite sensation than she could bear, so much less than she needed. She couldn’t endure much longer; she had to move, had to climb. Something. It was there, drawing her up, daring her to reach and soar. Delight, exquisitely breathtaking, shot from her breasts to the center of her womb.

His fingers skimmed lower, over the sensitive expanse of her midriff and lower still, trailing luscious fire all the way to the swell of her belly and the waistband of her trousers. The buttons separated at his touch and she held her breath as he bent his head and laid feathering kisses along the still burning path his fingers had forged. Consumed with need, intoxicated by the promise, she arched up against his lips, against his hands, and begged him for deliverance.

Her plea penetrated the heat of his wanting and jolted his conscience.
Not here. Not like this. Not like Mignon
. He didn’t want Belle looking back and comparing, thinking … He straightened abruptly and just as quickly swept her up into his arms.

“No,” she protested, clinging to him as he carried her out of the kitchen and down the hall. “It’s too far, Barrett.”

It was only a matter of meters, of stairs, and a short bit of hall. It was just far enough to let his blood cool a necessary degree or two. There was a difference between making love and ravaging and he wanted her to remember him for knowing that and caring enough to take the time.

At the base of the stairs, she burrowed her cheek into the curve of his shoulder and nipped lightly at his neck. “Please don’t make me wait.”

“You deserve silk,” he replied through clenched teeth, starting up. “And making love on stairs is a bitch.”

She nipped him again, growled, “I don’t care,” and then arched her back, thrusting her breasts upward as she boldly trailed her tongue over his earlobe.

His blood sang and his breath caught. “But I do,” he reminded himself, tightening his hold on her and quickening his pace.

Catching his lobe gently between her teeth, she whispered, “I hate you.”

“No you don’t,” he countered, reaching the second floor and striding toward their room and the silk sheets he’d promised her. “What you hate is having to wait for your pleasure.”

Easing back into the cradle of his arms, she looked up at him. “I don’t want to lose it,” she said, her eyes dark with a desperate honesty. “Barrett, please. I’ve never wanted like this. Don’t deny me.”

“As though I could,” he admitted, dropping to his knees on the edge of her bed. She didn’t give him a chance to lay her down; she rolled out of his arms, onto her back, and arched up, her hands pushing her trousers down over her hips.

And shattering his noble intentions. He leaned forward, neatly swept her feet up, grabbed her pant legs, pulled them off her and flung them away. Even as he did, she sat up and reached for him. His breath caught high and painfully hard as she deftly unbuttoned his trousers. He stopped breathing altogether when she slipped her hands around his shaft and freed it.

“Please, Barrett. Don’t make me wait.”

He couldn’t. The friction was too exquisite, the promise too inviting. He shoved the fabric of his pants aside, took her wrists in his hands and forced her back, pinning her arms into the sheets over her head. She wiggled beneath him, drawing him into the cradle of her thighs. Damp curls brushed hardened heat and he sucked in a ragged breath as his body shuddered and he strained to savor the sharp edge of delight.

She arched up, moving her hips to deliberately caress the full length of him and strip restraint from his grasp. Locking his gaze with Belle’s in silent warning, he mated them in a single sure stroke. Conscious thought reeled beneath the wave of breathtaking sensation. For a heartbeat he froze, struggling to salvage control, trying to bear up to the wonder of their fit, the heat of her welcome, the urgency of his need. And then Belle moaned his name and shifted her hips to deepen their union. Undone, he closed his eyes and surrendered to primal instinct.

Arching, meeting his thrusts, Belle strained to ride the swiftly building crest. It was heaven. And it was hell. A wave of pleasure higher and deeper than she could embrace and fully know. She gasped in awe, wanting to possess it forever, and then gasped again as it was swept away by another even more intense, more demanding, more unfathomable. Even more unkeepable. Soaring higher than she’d ever been before, she desperately strained to reach higher still. She was going to die when she reached the top, die a thousand deaths if she didn’t.

The pleasure rolled through her ever faster, ever harder and deeper until it was all that there was. The spark ignited in her core in a single second, narrowing her reality to its breathtaking promise, to its exquisitely slow explosion. Pleasure, pure and brilliant, rolled outward from her center—to her breasts, to her thighs, to her toes and out the top of her head—and flung her, quaking and gasping, into the tumbling stars.

She drifted down too soon, too weak, too gloriously satisfied to struggle against it.

“Belle.”

A lush whisper against her lips that sweetly caressed her soul. His kiss was gentle and she sighed, her contentment complete. His own sigh mingled with hers and he drew slowly back to release her wrists and collect her into his arms.

When he rolled onto his side and drew her with him, she smiled. It had been as she’d always known it would be; fierce and wild and perfectly right. They were well suited, their needs and their sense of time, one. Even now his breathing was every bit as labored as hers, his body just as relaxed and spent, his satisfaction seemingly every bit as deep.

“Barrett?”

He made a low humming sound and gathered her closer. “I wish,” he whispered, slowly feathering kisses along her brow, “I could have made that go on longer.”

“I’d have cried if you had,” she confessed, running her fingers through the sprinkle of coarse hairs on his chest. “Thank you for having mercy on me.” She smiled and added, “Finally.”

His laughter was quiet, but Isabella felt it all the way to her soul. “Do you think,” he drawled, “that you might have the strength to do it again? Perhaps, between us, we might try to go slowly enough next time to actually savor it a bit.”

“I’m more than willing whenever you’re ready. As for the going slowly…” She gave him the truth. “I’m not sure I’m capable of restraint. Not where you’re concerned.”

“So you don’t really hate me?”

Never
. “I was being petulant. Most unpleasantly so.”

Catching her chin between his thumb and finger, he tilted her face up until her gaze met his. His grin was wicked. “Don’t ever apologize for wanting, angel.”

“I wasn’t going to go quite that far.”

He laughed again and gave her a quick kiss before easing his arm out from under her head and sitting up. Lying curled on her side, she watched him tug off a boot and throw it aside. The second was halfway off when he froze and muttered darkly, “Damn.”

She arched a brow. “What is it?”

His shoulders rose as he took a deep breath. “I didn’t think of putting on a sheath. It never crossed my mind.”

Ever the responsible gentleman. Grinning, she sat up, pleased by the fact that he’d been too involved to think of protection, to make a list of chores to be attended. “Don’t feel guilty,” she offered. “It didn’t occur to me, either.”

“Belle, this is serious,” he admonished, yanking off the boot. It sailed across the room as he growled, “Christ. I never forget.
Never
.”

“It’s another bridge,” she observed, watching as he stripped away his shirt and flung it after his boots. “And a most unlikely one. Henri and I tried for several years and I never conceived. The doctor said that it probably wasn’t possible for me to ever have children.”

She stretched out her legs and wiggled her toes as he lay back, divested himself of his trousers, and asked, “What if the doctor’s wrong?”

“The midwife told me the same thing. And they always know more than the doctors do.”

For a long moment he frowned up at the ceiling and then he rolled onto his side, saying, “I don’t suppose that it ever—” Whatever else he’d been about to say was abandoned as he reached out and gently traced the dark line that curved over the top of her calf. “I know a bullet scar when I see one.”

Isabella grinned, glad that he’d found something else to occupy his mind. “That one hurt. And it took forever to heal.”

His gaze snapped up to hers. “
That
one?” he repeated, his brow cocked. “There are others?”

Nodding, she unbuttoned the cuffs of her shirt. Baring first her right arm, she turned so that he could see the scar that ran diagonally across the top of her shoulder. “This one eliminated the possibility of ever wearing another fashionable ball gown.”

He was trying to swallow when she freed her left arm and dropped the shirt beside the bed. “This is from a piece of debris,” she explained, tracing the line that ran down the inside from her elbow to midway above her wrist. “I wasn’t quite far enough away when the charge went off. It means I always wear long sleeves. This one,” she said, half rolling onto her side to show him the uppermost curve of her backside, “was, as you can tell, just a graze.”

His fingers slowly skimmed over the wide scar. “You didn’t have this one stitched up.”

“I wasn’t about to drop my trousers,” she supplied, her blood warming again, her pulse quickening. “Even for a doctor. It would have been entirely too humiliating.”

“You dropped them for me.”

Actually, she’d all but torn them off for him. Most decidedly a first for her. But then, with Barrett everything was different than it had ever been. She’d certainly never let any other man unbutton her—

“Trousers!” she exclaimed, remembering the contents of the pockets and flopping onto her stomach to reach past the bedding and retrieve them. She had a pant leg in hand when the pleasure came, lusciously slow and intensely compelling. “Oh, sweet Mother of Pearl,” she moaned as he laid another lingering kiss on the inside of her thigh.

“You’re not going to be needing them anytime soon, sweet angel.”

No, she wouldn’t. She didn’t need anything other than Barrett Stanbridge.

*   *   *

As soon as he could feel anything beyond satisfaction, it was likely going to be acute embarrassment. Apparently, neither one of them was particularly good at exercising restraint. With what energy he had left, Barrett smiled. They’d simply have to keep working toward that end. Practice, after all, did eventually make perfect. And exceedingly, delightfully, wondrously satisfied along the way.

Belle slipped down to lie against his side and drape her arm around his neck.

“Was that a sigh of contentment?” he asked, settling her head into the crook of his shoulder, her body into the circle of his arms.

“I have never in my life been this bone-deep satisfied.” She sighed again and languidly drew her leg over his. “I am so glad Mignon picked you out of the crowd.”

Mignon. Barrett stared up at the ceiling, remembering. There had been a satisfaction with her. But it wasn’t at all like the kind he felt now. With her it had been a sense of accomplishment, a knowing that he’d given a grand physical performance and acquitted himself well as an experienced lover. His body and his mind had been equally exhausted from the strain of it. And it had been nothing more than that.

But with Belle … God, he had no idea what he’d done in any specific, technical sense; sensation and desire had overloaded the conscious portion of his brain. Both times. But he was most definitely satisfied. Yes, bone deep. And well beyond. Satisfaction thrummed through every fiber of his body and resonated softly in the very center of his soul.

It had ended badly with Mignon. His neck could end up in a noose for the shallow pleasure of that night. But he was glad she’d picked him out of the crowd, too. If she hadn’t, he’d have never met Belle. He’d have never known that making love with a woman could feel this blissfully good. And it was nice to know that at thirty-one there were still some delightful discoveries to be made in life. It made waking up in the morning something to look forward to.

Waking up was especially nice with Belle beside him. He gathered her closer and lightly pressed a kiss to the top of her head. He hoped they didn’t find Lafitte’s treasure too soon. Not until the wonder had faded away and he was ready to let her go. He smiled, closed his eyes, and let himself drift off into sated slumber.

*   *   *

He didn’t know how long he’d dozed, but he knew Belle was sliding out of his arms. His sweet, impetuous, persistent Belle. He let her go. “Are you going after those trousers again?” he asked, already knowing the answer. And that she’d come back to him.

“I have something to show you.”

Opening his eyes, he found her sprawled out and dragging her trousers back toward the bed. The effort gave him the most splendid view of her backside. “I like it.”

“Not that,” she laughingly admonished, flopping back to lie against him again, her hand rammed deep in the pocket of her rumpled pants. “This,” she declared, dropping the trousers and holding up a strip of paper.

It wasn’t the piece he’d found. This one had the lines of missing text.

“‘Lies to Cross, Park and Hyde,’” she said softly as she held it for them both to read. “‘Lion’s Paw and Gentle Bride. Setting sun on Castle’s Rise, fifteen paces to the prize.’”

His heart hammered wildly, his mind raced. They had the instructions. The hunt for the treasure could be over before daybreak. And Belle could be gone before breakfast.

Or perhaps not, the rational part of his brain quickly countered. The treasure hunt might involve a trail of clues. It could take days or weeks to follow it along to the end. And then there was the matter of discovering who had killed Mignon. That part of the puzzle wasn’t going to be solved before breakfast. Not the next one, anyway.

She rolled half atop him, cradling her chin on her hands and smiling up at him. “I’m not really all that tired.”

“I’m offended,” he teased, slipping his arms around her, feeling more in control, understanding her excitement, her unwillingness to wait. Given all they had to accomplish, he could afford to be indulgent.