[Samuel Barbara] Lucien's Fall(Book4You) (20 page)

She looked at him with the dazed hunger of a woman at her limit. His breath was unsteady and he found he could speak no more but only gaze up at her face, and slowly he opened his hands and touched her breasts lightly, curling his fingers over the cool flesh above her bodice. They gasped together, surprised at the sensation. Lucien didn’t move for fear she’d bolt, only touched her there and looked at her. He told himself it was so that the passion would grow in her until she could not leave here without fulfillment, so it would seem to her her own choice, but the weighty hunger in his groin, his belly, trebled at the feeling of her supple flesh against his fingers.

In his imagination, this had gone this way, just this way, until the next moment, when Madeline braced her body against his and lifted her hands to his face. She smoothed her fingers over his cheekbones, his jaw, his nose and lips and eyes, touching him the way she touched her flowers, as if his face were a precious thing, as if she had never explored anything so wondrous. Her lips parted a little, and pressing into him tightly, she bent and kissed him.

It was an inexpert kiss, a little awkwardly fit at first until she thought to shift a little and slant their mouths tightly together. Lucien felt the kiss from his forehead to his knees, her simple soft movements, her tongue darting out to seek his own, her full, hot mouth open and hungry—

He groaned, and pulled her tight, shifting their bodies so that Madeline lay in the thick, cool grass, her skirts scattering over the lawn. He kissed her in return, teasing and showing her how to move, how to join, to dart and retreat, to play. Kissing her was a thing unto itself, and he had not ever known that it could be such a big thing, so satisfying, so arousing all by itself.

Violins and flutes and cellos rang in his mind; the colors danced and threaded together, and Lucien was suddenly afraid. What if he could not escape the music any longer? What if he could never sleep again for it? What if all he could do was write it and burn it and write it and burn it, forever?

In anger and fear, he grew rough. This little innocent had so overridden his senses that he could not even properly ravish her. Not that he made a habit of ravishment, but this moment seemed to call for it. Harshly, he yanked her dress from her shoulder, pushing at the fabric to expose her breasts.

She cried out, "No!" and grasped at the fabric in a rush.

He paused and held her, kissed her again, leaving her breast uncovered but touched only by the naked air as it never had been, left it open to the kiss of his gaze. He lifted his head, his arousal almost painfully acute now, and looked at her—a full round plumpness tipped with coral, like a flower—hearing the swirl of violins swell in his head.

He touched the point with one finger only. Her breath caught. The flesh beaded tightly and he gently moved to take the dress from her, so her shoulders and breasts were bare and open to his eyes and his touch and the sensual caress of wind.

Looking at her, Lucien touched her nipples with his thumbs, then bent and suckled her, deep and hard. She cried out—a bright cry that burst into the day with surprising and erotic force. Her fingers clutched his arms. "I want to touch you."

He turned her and unlaced the dress and pushed the fabric off her arms, so she was naked to the waist in the thick green grass, and he wore all his clothes, and that didn’t seem fair. She sat up, purpose in her eyes, and reached for the ribbon in his hair, and plunged her hands into it. She straddled him boldly and bent her head to his, and kissed him. Lucien groaned and touched the long smooth stretch of her back, her sides, her waist. He squeezed gently at her buttocks, and bit her mouth with light nips.

Her movements were restless, her fingers combing through his hair, over his face, down his back. She pressed closer and closer to him, as if she didn’t know...

Of course she didn’t know. With a great burst of joy and arousal, Lucien realized he would enjoy the pleasure of teaching her for the first time all the secrets of her responsive body.

He broke away from her lips and kissed a path down her chin, over her throat, slowly, slowly, all the while stroking the sides of her soft—oh, soft!— breasts. When he kissed the high round swell of flesh, she pushed at his shoulder again, only a little, her protest dying in the space of a breath, for he knew what she would like, and he did it—he opened his mouth and covered her nipple, and suckled lovingly until she near melted, a sound like pain coming from her throat.

Lost in his own passion, Lucien reached for her skirts, and pulled them up and touched her leg, just above the knees, and skimmed his hand upward to her hip. He ached for her, and a hard ragged sigh came from him at the tenderness of that hidden skin. He moved his fingers on her—

Madeline bolted. "No!" she cried, shoving at him with impossible strength. "No."

He captured her once more. "Shhh," he said, and kissed her—or tried. She fought hard, pushing against him, her clothes askew. Her work had made her incredibly strong, and he could not keep hold of her long enough to coax her back to softness.

"I love you, Madeline!" he blurted out in desperation. "Don’t go!"

It startled her, he could see that, but not for long. She pushed away, pulling her clothes around her. She stumbled to her feet. Her hair had come loose and a lock of darkness fell down to touch one white breast.

A blaze of need bolted through him at the sight, and he jumped up. "Madeline,"

he said roughly, bending to capture her mouth, holding her face in his hands. Against his sleeves, he felt her breasts, against the sides of his wrists, but he did not touch her again, not like that. He held her face as lightly as he could and kissed her, letting himself fall adrift on the taste of her tongue and the fullness of her lips and the softness of her hair.

"Madeline," he whispered, and kissed her face, her eyes, her bare shoulders. "I love you, let me love you. Let me show you."

She shoved him, hard, and he stumbled backward. Angrily, she pushed her hair off her face. "Love." She spat out the word. "You wouldn’t know love if it killed you."

"Madeline—

She struggled with the dress, trying with a flush on her cheeks to cover herself.

She turned her back to him. "Go away, Lucien!" she cried.

The sight of the small white rise of bones in her back pierced him. Stabbed with uncommon guilt, he reached for her sleeve, and before she could shove him away, tugged it into place. "Madeline—"

"They that are rich in words in words discover that they are poor in that which makes a lover,’" she quoted softly. "Go, Lucien. Can’t you see I’m not like you? Seduce some other woman."

"I don’t want another woman," he said.

She looked at him. "You’ll destroy me."

Music ripped through his brain, bright and loud and sorrowful. Without a word, he turned on his heel and left her. She was right—he was a coward and a rake and he had no business dragging her down with him.

With a kind of lost desperation, he headed for the stables.

…

Juliette thought the weather oppressive, and it had grown worse by evening, when it should have been cooling off. Instead of soothing breezes blowing in from the water, there was a thick humid stillness weighting the air. It affected the guests adversely, making them quarrelsome. Madeline had snapped at her, and Anna bit the head off three maids, sending one after the other down the stairs in tears. In exasperation, Juliette herself had stopped by the countess’s room, on a thin errand, to help her dress. Anna complained about this and that, but it was plain she was pouting because she wanted Lucien, and Lucien didn’t return her lust at all.

"I’d watch him, Juliette," Anna said as they went downstairs. "I can’t think how you’d let such an incendiary sort in the same house as your unmarried daughter."

Juliette laughed that off. "Madeline is quite able to take care of herself."

"Perhaps," Anna said with a flick of her fan, "but perhaps you’ve simply forgotten what it is to be young."

She sailed off.

Juliette made a face at the haughty, retreating back. Under her breath, she said,

"Perhaps you’ve forgotten!" She turned to examine herself in the long mirror on the wall.

Her neck, though not so taut as it once had been, showed no crepeiness, and her eyes were as bright and clear as they’d ever been. But weren’t there a few more lines around her lips now? And a little dry look around her eyes? At thirty-six, she was bound to show some of the years she’d lived, but had it marred her?

So deeply did she examine her face that she did not hear Jonathan’s approach, and she startled when he slipped his arms around her waist, meeting her eyes in the mirror.

"Why do you frown so, beautiful lady?"

A rush of thick warmth filled her. Together they were so beautiful a pair—he so tall and elegantly slim and blond; she smaller, rounder, but just as blond. She lifted a hand and touched his jaw, admiring him in the reflection. "I was only wishing to be younger," she said, and ruefully smiled.

He bent his head and kissed the side of her neck. "Do not change even one thread of yourself. I adore you as you are."

The crown of his head, showing hair smoothed back from his high, aristocratic forehead, aroused her oddly, and she turned her face to meet the kiss he had waiting, reaching behind her to touch him boldly. "I hope you’ll not dally this night, my love," she said with a throaty laugh. "I have something I think you’ll like very much."

"Oh?"

"You’ll see."

A discreet cough from a footman broke them apart. Juliette smoothed her coif and sailed regally into the dining room, wickedly glancing over her shoulder at Jonathan, who struggled to right his clothes. He winked at her. She flipped open her fan and laughed.

Anna was only jealous.

Or was she? One of the first people Juliette spied as she came into the salon was Lucien, dressed elegantly in black. He leaned insouciantly against the wall, a glass of port in his hand. Looking at him, Juliette felt a clutch of fear.

He burned. The fire lay bright on his features, lighting them from within, giving his face a haunted, brilliant cast. The restless heat was in his form, as taut and poised as a cat about to spring, and in the careless, deliberate flame of his movements.

But it was mostly in his gaze, in the burning look he sent across the room. Juliette touched her ribs, knowing who would be at the end of that fevered blue gaze, who would be the subject of that pointed and urgent passion.

Madeline.

Who sat to one side by herself as she tried to ignore that sizzling look. Tonight she wore a gown of turquoise silk that accented her olive-toned skin and dark hair. The color pointed up the natural red of her lips, the rosiness of her flushed cheeks—and what girl could help being flushed when pinned by such an intense perusal?—the depth of her dark-lashed eyes.

Juliette, seeing Madeline through Lucien’s eyes, was quite startled by the hitherto unseen sensuality of the girl’s movements, in the tilt of her head, the rise of her breasts over the low-cut gown, in the nervous way she sucked lightly on her lower lip and let it go.

Dear God.

For a long terrible moment, Juliette was paralyzed by all the things she’d not observed because she’d been swept into such a state by her affair with Jonathan. A taste of bile rose in her throat. She looked from Lucien to Madeline and back again. Madeline carefully sipped her port, settled her hands back in her lap. She looked up at Lucien, and Juliette clamped her teeth together to catch the cry that nearly tore out of her throat, because for one bright, shattering moment, Juliette saw that Madeline was most desperately in love. She probably didn’t even know it.

Anna sidled up next to her. "Nothing to worry over, is it?" she said slyly, and laughed.

With a steely calm that had served her well for more than twenty years, Juliette smiled at her longtime friend and competitor. "Nothing at all," she said, and flicked open her fan with an arch of one perfect brow. "Now you’ll see what a master might do, my dear."

But as she sailed confidently toward Lucien, her heart slowly shredded. It had been a most expensive and delectable luxury to fall in love with Jonathan— she had known that. She had not known it would cost her heart, her love, and her daughter.

Her only hope of saving Madeline lay in successful seduction of Lucien Harrow, and preferably, in flagrante, so all the world knew.

Including Jonathan. Including Madeline. Who would both, she had no doubt, hate her when it was revealed.

But Juliette had not risen from the life of a dressmaker’s daughter to the status of countess by whining over the cost of sacrifices. With a determined and glittering smile, she bore down on Lucien Harrow.

He roused himself to greet her, and she saw with alarm that he’d grown thinner these past weeks, as if the fire were consuming him from within. What a terrible waste if such a man had consumption.

But no, there was none of the telltale weakness about him. Indeed, it seemed as if he never slept. Perhaps he had only been indulging too much in the wrong things. "Good evening, Lucien," she said, flicking open her fan.

"Good evening." Quite automatically, he paid tribute to the beauty of her bosom with his eyes, and to her lips, and to her hair—no wonder he was so successful with women, Juliette thought—how many men really looked at a woman that way?

With a coquettish smile, she inclined her head. "I wonder if you’d play a little game with me," she said.

"A game?" He lifted an amused brow.

"Yes. Close your eyes."

He obliged her. Juliette noticed distantly that he had astonishingly long lashes, and they fanned like a child’s over his high cheekbones when he closed his eyes. It gave his gaunt face a curiously touching and vulnerable look.

"I’ve a bet with Lady Heath," Juliette said, "that you can name the dress color of every woman in this room, and I’ll win a sovereign more if you can tell me their jewels, as well."

Lucien smiled. "You wear yellow with garnets. Lady Heath is wearing royal blue brocade and sapphire and diamond ear drops with a long necklace upon her breast."