Revenge Wears Rubies (25 page)

The next afternoon, they were stealing a few more hours, lolling about in Galen’s four-poster bed. He was fingering one long curl of her hair, wrapping and unwrapping it around his wrist and hands, enjoying the silky sensation of it.

Once more, in the wake of having her, instead of simply feeling satiated, Galen wrestled with an increasing attachment to her, a desire to keep her close and linger in her presence. The more he experienced her, the more beautiful and enticing she was growing, and the puzzle of it was as intoxicating as the woman.

Her leg was hooked over him, and when she drew her calf across his hips and grazed the base of his shaft, his body instantly hardened. It was easy to slowly reposition himself so that his cock was nudging her thighs apart, and he shifted Haley over so that her back was on the bed, but her bottom was nestled up against his arousal. He imagined they made an odd pinwheel, but he loved the view of her sprawling away from him, with her sex up against his.

It was a lazy game that suddenly became increasingly sensual as Galen noticed that his hands were still free to do as he wished. Spreading her thighs further apart, he touched her, exploring her at his leisure and admiring how amazingly soft her skin was, warming to his attention and pinking up as he watched. She was the most exotic of flowers, and the honey she exuded was an opiate that made him forget everything but the celestial transport her body offered him.

Haley wriggled against him, closing her eyes at the sudden renewal of her own need for him. It was ridiculous—this inexorable pull to join her body to his. It was as if her practical self was connected to the world around her by the smallest threads, and every time he touched her or even looked at her a certain way, she was cut adrift.

He dipped his fingers into his mouth, and then the soft workings of his fingertips around and over her clit felt mysteriously like a tongue. It was the most wicked illusion she’d ever experienced, for his warm, hard cock was buried inside of her, gently rocking into her and stroking up against the side of her wall, finding a sensitive place that sent her reeling, the tense little coil of pleasure inside of her instantly tightening.

She felt like the most licentious sultana to lie back and allow herself to be stroked and pressed, his shaft so delightfully thick and his fingers so skilled, her eyes filled with tears. Just when she thought she might find her release, he teased her and changed the rhythm or lightened the friction of his fingers over her engorged clit, and Haley gave herself over to the dance, following his lead and enjoying this decadent waltz.

It felt a little strange to be angled away from him: she could reach his chest and press her splayed fingers against his heartbeat, but her touch was limited. “Galen, I . . . I seem to be . . . receiving far more benefit . . . than you. . . .”

“Nonsense,” he said softly, but moved his hips to remind her that he was very much enjoying the connection between them, and she gasped as his shaft seemed to thicken inside her as he increased the speed of his fingers. “But if the lady is keeping a tally . . .”

Something inside of her began an inevitable cascade, tumbling and gaining momentum with each fluttering pass of his hand over her clit, until there was no part of her body that wasn’t directly linked to that tiny bud, until she was sure that finding and mounting that invisible peak would shatter her completely—and she didn’t care. There was only the promise of release, and Haley arched her back as the first white-hot jolt of her orgasm unleashed itself and radiated up her spine. The intensity made her cry out, but it was as if another woman were moaning somewhere, and Haley could only ride wave after wave and pray that she would recover herself when it was all over.

And then even gravity’s hold betrayed her, and Haley had the dizzying experience of being lifted and turned until she was on her knees, and Galen had repositioned himself behind her, quickly refilling the void inside her with his hungry cock. She cried out again, this time in a trembling sigh as the waves began to subside.

But Galen caught her, leaning over her as he buried himself to the hilt, and one of his hands recaptured her sensitive clit and immediately reignited the fire there. She bucked against him, biting her lip to keep from begging him to stop because already she knew she didn’t want him to cease a single movement. The cascade swept away her thoughts and she pulled her knees together to tighten her hold on him, to increase the strength of her spasms, and it was all she could do to cling to the bedding and breathe through unthinkable pleasure.

Galen began to move back and forth, gritting his teeth against the force of her orgasms, taking her in strokes that were so slow and so deep, he could feel her channel’s every twitch and release. He drew out until only the tip of his cock was inside of her, ringed by the tight pink of her opening, and then he deliberately pushed forward in a relentlessly slow invasion of her body until she finally moaned.

“Galen, please . . . faster . . . faster . . .”

He obliged her with the merciless skill of a man who wished to draw out her own pleasure, and his own. He increased his momentum, driving into her, faster and harder by degrees, until at last there was no sound in the room but the slap of flesh as their bodies came together in a crescendo of carnal lust.

Galen tipped his head back, his orgasm ripping through him and robbing him of the last vestiges of his control. He spent himself in a hot rush of crème that never seemed to end. He squeezed his eyes closed tightly and marveled that he could feel his own heartbeat in every inch and extremity of his body—his fingertips and toes, his eyelids and . . .
Hell, I think I can feel my hair. . . .

It was such a ridiculous thought, he laughed at the sheer joy of being so completely undone, and discovered that even that small spasm of laughter added to the power of his orgasm and stopped his breath in his throat.

“Oh, my!” He gripped her hips to prevent her from shifting as he waited for the last rivulet of his spendings to leave his body—and for his heartbeat to slow. “Don’t move.”

“I . . . I shall have to move at some point, Mr. Hawke,” she teased, then laughed softly and undid all his efforts. They both gasped at the movement and fell apart in peals of laughter to fall into each other’s arms on the bed.

“I cannot help but think that this is a most unconventional affair, Galen.” She pushed her hair back from her forehead. “We talk so little—”

“Conversation would seem a waste of these minutes we steal, don’t you think?”

“Not a waste.” She bit her lower lip, then smiled up at him. “I suppose there will be time enough for talk later, and if you aren’t forthcoming, I shall have to get better at torturing things out of you.”

“Ah, torture!” He smiled, too, then felt his humor bleed away. “What use are stories of the past? They either say too much about a person or too little to matter. Although I do often wonder what you were like when you were younger . . .”

“We are none of us recognizable from our past, I think,” she sighed. “People are like chameleons, changing over time. . . .”

“Because they’re faithless and disloyal?” He couldn’t help himself.

“No!” She laughed, playfully punching him in the arm. “Because when you’re eight and you swear you wish to grow up to be a fairy king, I don’t think you should be condemned as an adult to living in a house made out of mushrooms.”

“Some promises are meant to be kept.”

“Do
you
always keep your promises, Galen?” she asked him, drawing up to perch on his chest, her nose level with his and her expression suddenly more serious.

He could feel her heart pounding against his, the firm press of her ripe breasts against his chest and the sweet naked length of her body lodged on top of his as if she’d been molded for him.
Do you always keep your promises, Galen? Dear God, which ones—the ones to dead brothers and friends; or the ones to you, Haley?
“I keep as many as I can.”

“You never speak of yourself.”

“It is an uninteresting topic.”

She laughed again, and he was smiling before he realized it. “It is not uninteresting to me, Galen.”

“We have already established that you are easily pleased, Haley,” he teased, bucking her over without warning so that now it was his body that covered hers. “But you’ll have to trust me that I never aspired to be a mushroom king.”

“And what do you aspire to?”

He kissed her to distract her from the question and ended up rewarding himself with another rampant erection. “Come to the house tomorrow.”

She shook her head. “Aren’t you worried my father is going to start asking about my sudden penchant for window-shopping?”

“Come to me tomorrow, Haley.”

“I wish I could, Galen, but Aunt Alice has committed us to viewing the Diorama in Regent’s Park and then we’re attending a party afterward. I don’t think I can excuse myself without creating suspicion.” She disengaged from his embrace, shyly beginning to retrieve her clothes. “Indeed, I should go home now before the afternoon is gone completely.”

One glance at the clock confirmed that she was right, but Galen didn’t feel any more ready to let her go. “Tomorrow.”

She shook her head and held her clothes in front of her. “Not unless you have an invitation to Lady MacLean’s dinner party, and frankly, I’m not sure I can maintain my composure after . . . It’s not like before, Galen.”

“Isn’t it?”

“I think you are dangerous enough behind closed doors, Mr. Hawke.” She turned to head toward the dressing room. “But lucky for me, it’s too small a dinner party for you to work your dark magic and make an appearance.”

Galen smiled, the wicked smile of a man who liked nothing better than a challenge.

Late that same night, he was alone and distracted in the dark of his room. He’d expected to be sleeping like the dead. But instead he was wrapped in sheets that held the faint scent of their lovemaking, and struggling to find peace.

Not that he’d expected John’s ghost to mystically appear with a blessing once he had the girl in hand, but . . . a sense of fulfillment? Of relief? Of accomplishment? Anything but this melancholy state of alertness defined by the dragging sound of the clock ticking on the mantel and the burning memories of her beautiful presence in his arms.

A part of him acknowledged that he was the worst kind of villain, even foregoing using French letters to prevent a possible pregnancy—as if leaving her with a bastard child would be the coup de grace. Michael’s warnings about sparing his conscience later haunted him now.

But Haley Moreland was nothing he’d anticipated, and not even the scream of his conscience would make him stop now.

She’d surpassed his expectations. She’d eclipsed the fleeting fantasies of his imagination and surprised him at almost every turn with the candor and playful spirit of her lovemaking. She’d expressed her every delight, innocently hiding nothing from him, and naïvely spurred him on to please her even more, to find new ways to make her moan and sigh.

Just thinking about her, his body reacted, a soft weight like hot sand in his belly slowly hardening his cock. Galen reached down, closing his eyes as his hand circled the thickening shaft, marveling that he could burn for her again so quickly.

He inhaled her lingering scent, the orchid sweet musk enveloped him, and it was all too easy to conjure the memory of her, complete and compelling enough to make him groan. He closed his eyes, sliding his hand down to the base of his shaft, tightening on the sensitive base where his flesh contracted across his balls, and then began moving in a languid motion to draw out the pleasure.

He imagined her in the red dress, the one she’d worn the first night he’d seen her, but this time, in his fantasies he adorned her in a ruby necklace dripping with diamonds and envisioned a very different encounter in that balcony.