Suddenly You (2 page)

“Tonight?” Jack laughed softly. “Happy birthday.”

“I thank you. Will you leave now, please?”

“Oh, no. Not if I'm your birthday present. I'm going to keep you company. You're not going to stay alone on such an important evening. Let me guess—today began your thirtieth year of life.”

“How did you know my age?”

“Because women always react strangely to the thirtieth. I once knew a woman who draped all the mirrors in black cloth on that birthday, for all the world as if a death had occurred.”

“She was mourning her lost youth,” Amanda said shortly, and downed a large swallow of wine until it sent a flush of heat through her chest. “She was reacting to the fact that she had become middle-aged.”

“You're not middle-aged. You're ripe. Like a hothouse peach.”

“Nonsense,” she muttered, annoyed by the fact that his flattery, empty as it was, had caused a faint stirring of pleasure in her. Perhaps it was the wine, or the knowledge that he was a stranger whom she would never see again after this evening, but she suddenly felt free enough to say anything she wanted to him. “I was ripe ten years ago. Now I'm merely preserved, and before long I'll be buried back in the orchard with the other pits.”

Jack laughed and set aside his wine, then stood to remove his coat. “Pardon,” he said, “but it's like a furnace in here. Do you always keep the house so hot?”

Amanda watched him warily. “It's damp outside, and I'm always cold. Most days I wear a cap and a shawl indoors.”

“I could suggest other methods to keep yourself warm.” Without asking for permission, he sat right beside her. Amanda huddled back against her side of the settee, clinging to the remnants of her composure.

Inwardly she was alarmed by the solid male body so easily within reach, the unfamiliar experience of sitting next to a man in his shirtsleeves. His fragrance teased her nostrils, and she drew in the alluring smell…male skin, linen, a light pungent note of expensive cologne. She had never realized how nice a man could smell. Neither of her sisters' husbands possessed this pleasing aroma. Unlike this fellow, they were both stodgy and respectable, one a professor at an exclusive school, the other a wealthy town merchant who had been raised to knighthood.

“How many years have you?” Amanda asked impulsively, her brows drawing together.

Jack hesitated a fraction of a second before replying. “Thirty-one. You're rather preoccupied with numbers, aren't you?”

He was a young-looking thirty-one, Amanda reflected. However, it was an unfair fact of life that men seldom showed their age as women did. “Tonight I am,” she admitted. “However, tomorrow my birthday will be over, and I shan't give it another thought. I shall sail on into my remaining years, and try to enjoy them as I may.”

Her pragmatic tone seemed to amuse him. “Good Lord, woman, you talk as if you're teetering on the edge of the grave! You're attractive, you're a celebrated novelist, and you're in your prime.”

“I am
not
attractive,” she said with a sigh.

Jack laid his forearm along the back of the settee, not seeming to care that he was occupying most of it and crowding her into the corner. His gaze swept over her with disconcerting thoroughness. “You have a beautiful complexion, a perfectly shaped mouth—”

“It's too large,” she informed him.

He stared at her mouth for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was a bit gruffer than before. “Your mouth is well suited for what I have in mind.”

“And I'm plump,” Amanda said, now determined to explain all her defects.

“Perfectly so.” His gaze dropped to her breasts in the most ungentlemanly inspection she had ever been subjected to.

“And my hair is wretchedly curly.”

“Is it? Take it down and let me see.”

“What?” His outrageous command caused her to laugh suddenly. She had never met such a presumptuous scoundrel in her life.

He glanced around the cozy room, and then his devilish blue gaze returned to hers. “No one's here to see,” he said softly. “Haven't you ever taken your hair down for a man before?”

The stillness of the parlor was underlaid with the gentle snapping of the fire in the hearth and the sounds of their breathing. Amanda had never felt this way before, actually fearful of what she might do. Her heart was beating so hard that it made her dizzy. She gave a stiff little shake of her head. He was a stranger. She was alone in the house with him, and she was more or less at his mercy. For the first time in a very long while, she was in a situation in which she had no control. And it was all of her own making.

“Are you by chance trying to seduce me?” she whispered.

“There's no reason to fear me. I would never force myself on a lady.”

Of course there would be no need. It seemed very likely that he had never heard the word “no” from a woman.

This was without doubt the most interesting situation that Amanda had ever found herself in. Her life had been spectacularly uneventful, in which the characters of her novels said and did all the forbidden things she herself would never have dared.

As if he could read her thoughts, her companion smiled lazily and leaned his chin on his hand. If he was indeed trying to seduce her, he was in no great hurry. “You're exactly as I imagined,” he murmured. “I've read your novels…well, the last one, at least. Not many women write as you do.”

Amanda never liked to discuss her work. She felt uncomfortable when she received effusive praise, and she was most definitely disgruntled by critics' opinions. However, she was keenly curious about
this
man's opinion of her work. “I wouldn't have expected a pr—a man of your…a cicisbeo,” she said, “to read novels.”

“Well, we have to do something in our spare hours,” he said reasonably. “We can't spend all our time in bed. Incidentally, that's not how you pronounce it.”

Draining the last of her wine, Amanda glanced at the sideboard, wishing for another glass.

“Not yet,” Jack said, taking the empty glass from her hand and setting it on the small table just behind her. The movement brought him directly over her, and Amanda shrank back until she was nearly reclining on the upholstered arm of the settee. “I won't be able to seduce you if you have too much wine,” he murmured. His warm breath touched her cheek, and although his body didn't quite meet hers, she sensed the solid, heavy weight of him poised over her.

“I w-wouldn't have thought you'd had such scruples,” she said unsteadily.

“Oh, I have no scruples,” he assured her cheerfully, “it's just that I like a bit of a challenge. And if you had any more wine, you would be too easy a conquest.”

“You arrogant, vain—” Amanda began indignantly, until she saw from the rascally twinkle in his eyes that he was provoking her deliberately. She was both relieved and sorry when he moved away from her. A reluctant smile pulled at her lips. “Did you like my novel?” she couldn't resist asking.

“Yes, I did. At first I thought it would be typical silver-fork fare. But I liked the way your well-bred characters began to unravel. I liked the portrayal of decent people moved to deception, violence, betrayal…you don't seem to shrink from anything in your writing.”

“Critics say my work is lacking in decency.”

“That's because your underlying theme—that ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things in their private lives—makes them uncomfortable.”

“You actually
have
read my work,” Amanda said in surprise.

“And it made me wonder what kind of private life the proper Miss Briars might lead.”

“Now you know. I'm the kind of woman who hires a cicisbeo for her own birthday.”

A smothered laugh greeted her rueful statement. “
That's
not the way to pronounce it, either.” His shrewd blue gaze traveled over her, and when he spoke again, his voice changed. The amusement was tempered by a note that even in her inexperience, Amanda recognized as purely sexual. “Since you haven't yet asked me to leave…take down your hair.”

When Amanda didn't move, only stared at him with round, unblinking eyes, he asked quietly, “Afraid?”

Oh, yes. All of her life, she had feared this…the risk, the possible rejection and ridicule…she had even feared the disappointment of discovering that intimacy with a man was indeed as base and repulsive as both her sisters had assured her it was. However, she had lately come to discover that there was something she feared even more: not ever knowing about the great tantalizing mystery that everyone else in the world seemed to have experienced. She had described passion so well in her novels, the yearning and madness and ecstasy it inspired, all the feelings she herself would never experience. And why should that be so? She had lacked the good fortune of having been loved so greatly by a man that he would seek to join his life with hers. But did that mean she should forever be undesired, unwanted, unclaimed? There were perhaps twenty thousand nights in a woman's lifetime. For at least one of them, she did not want to be alone.

Her hand seemed to reach for her hairpins of its own accord. She had pinned her hair the same way for the past sixteen years. The neat topknot was made by twisting her curling locks into a heavy coil. It took exactly a half-dozen pins to secure it as tightly as she preferred. In the mornings, her hair stayed relatively smooth, but as the day progressed, tiny curls never failed to spring out all over her head, forming a fuzzy halo around her face.

One pin, two, three…as she drew them out, she held them in her hand until the ends dug into the soft flesh of her palm. As the last pin came out, the coil dropped heavily, her long locks falling to one shoulder.

The stranger's blue eyes contained glints of fire. He began to reach for her hair, then checked the motion. “May I?” he asked gruffly.

No man had ever asked permission to touch her before. “Yes,” she said, though it took two attempts before the word came out clearly. She closed her eyes, felt him move closer, and her scalp tingled as he sifted lightly through her hair, separating the coiled curls. His broad-tipped fingers moved amid the thick strands, brushing her scalp, spreading the mantle of curls over her shoulders.

His hand drifted to hers, gently prying her fingers open, making her drop the wire pins. His thumb smoothed over the tiny red marks the pins had made on her palm, and he brought her hand to his face to kiss the little sore spots.

His voice curled hotly inside her palm. “Your hand smells like lemons.”

She opened her eyes and stared at him gravely. “I scrub my hands with lemon juice to remove the ink stains.”

The information seemed to amuse him, and lights of humor mixed with the heat in his gaze. He released her hand and played with a lock of her hair, his knuckles brushing her shoulder and making her breath catch. “Tell me why you requested a man from Madam Bradshaw, instead of seducing one of your acquaintances.”

“Three reasons,” she said, finding it difficult to speak while his hand was stroking through her hair. A flush of warmth came over her throat and cheeks. “First, I didn't want to sleep with a man and then forever be faced with him in social situations. Second, I haven't the skills to seduce anyone.”

“Those skills are easily learned, peaches.”

“What a ridiculous name,” she said with an unsteady laugh. “Don't call me that.”

“And third…” he prompted, recalling her to her explanation.

“Third…I am not attracted to any of the gentlemen of my acquaintance. I tried to imagine what it might be like, but none of them appealed to me in that way.”

“What kind of man appeals to you?”

Amanda jumped a little as she felt his warm hand slide around the back of her neck. “Well…not a handsome one.”

“Why?”

“Because handsomeness is always accompanied by vanity.”

Jack grinned suddenly. “And I suppose ugliness is accompanied by a wealth of virtues?”

“I didn't say that,” she protested. “It's just that I would prefer a man's looks to be ordinary.”

“And his character?”

“Pleasant, not boastful, intelligent but not conceited, and good-humored. But not foolish.”

“I think, peaches, that your ideal man is a paragon of mediocrity. And I think you're lying about what you really want.”

Her eyes flew open, and she frowned in annoyance. “I'll have you know that I am honest to a fault!”

“Then tell me you don't want to meet a man like one of the characters in your novels. Like the hero of the last one.”

Amanda snorted derisively. “An unprincipled brute who brings himself and everyone around him to ruin? A man who behaves like a barbarian and conquers a woman with no respect for her wishes? He was not a hero, sir, and I used him to illustrate that no good can come of such behavior.” She warmed to the subject, recalling indignantly, “And readers dared to complain that there was no happy ending, when it was abundantly clear that he did not deserve one!”

“Part of you liked him,” Jack said, giving her an intent stare. “I could see it in your writing.”

She smiled uncomfortably. “Well, in the realm of fantasy, I suppose I did. But certainly not in reality.”

The hand behind her neck closed in a gentle but secure grip. “Then here is your birthday present, Amanda. A night of fantasy.” He loomed over her, his head and broad shoulders obliterating the firelight as he bent to kiss her.

“Wait,” Amanda said in a flash of panic, turning her head as Jack's mouth approached hers. His lips pressed on her cheek, a brush of intimate heat that astonished her. “Wait,” she said again, her voice wobbling. Her face was turned full toward the fire, its yellow glow dazzling her eyes as she sought to avoid the stranger's exploring kisses. His mouth moved gently over her cheek and toward her ear, tickling the tiny wisps of hair just above it.

“Have you ever been kissed, Amanda?”

“Of course I have,” she said with wary pride, but there seemed no way to explain that they hadn't been anything remotely like this. A stolen kiss in a garden or a perfunctory embrace beneath the holiday mistletoe wasn't at all comparable to being held in a man's arms, breathing in his scent, feeling the heat of his skin through the linen of his shirt. “I—I suppose you're very accomplished at it,” she said. “In light of your profession.”

That drew a flashing grin from him. “Would you like to find out?”

“First I want to ask you something. How…how long have you been doing this?”

He understood her meaning at once. “Working for Mrs. Bradshaw? Not long at all.”

Amanda wondered what would drive a man like this to prostitute himself. Perhaps he had lost his job, or been dismissed for making a mistake. Perhaps he had fallen into debt, and needed extra money. With his looks and wit and good bearing, there were many occupations he was well suited for. Either he was truly desperate, or he was lazy and dissolute.

“Do you have a family?” she asked.

“None to speak of. Do you?”

Hearing the change in his tone, Amanda glanced up at him. His eyes were serious now, and his face was so austerely beautiful that the very sight of him made her chest ache with pleasure. “My parents are gone,” she told him, “but I have two older sisters, both married, and too many nephews and nieces to count.”

“Why aren't you married?”

“Why aren't
you?
” she parried.

“I like my independence too well to relinquish any part of it.”

“That's my reason, too,” she said. “Besides, anyone acquainted with me will confirm that I'm uncompromising and obstinate.”

He smiled lazily. “You just require the proper handling.”

“Handling,” she repeated tartly. “Perhaps you'd care to explain what you mean.”

“I mean that a man who knows anything about women could have you purring like a kitten.”

Annoyance and laughter billowed together in her chest…what a rogue he was! But she would not be deceived by his facade. Although his manner was playful, there was something underneath—a quality of patient watchfulness, a sense of restrained power—that made her nerves thrill in warning. He was no callow boy, but a fully mature man. And although she was not a worldly woman, she knew from the way he looked at her that he wanted something from her, whether it was her submission, her sexual favors, or simply her money.

Holding her gaze, he reached for the gray silk cravat around his neck, tugged it loose, and unwound it slowly, as if fearing any sudden move might frighten her. While she watched with wide eyes, he undid the first three buttons of his shirt, then leaned back and studied her flushed face.

In her childhood, Amanda had occasionally glimpsed her father's grizzled upper chest as he walked through the house in his dressing robe, and of course she had seen laborers and farming men with their shirts unbuttoned. However, she could never recall having seen anything like this, a man whose chest seemed to have been sculpted from bronze, the muscles so defined and heavy that they literally gleamed. His flesh looked hard and yet so warm, the firelight dancing over the smoothness, shadows settling in the indentations of muscle and the triangular hollow at the base of his throat.

She wanted to touch him. She wanted to put her mouth on that intriguing hollow, and draw in more of his tantalizing scent.

“Come here, Amanda.” His voice was a low scrape of sound.

“Oh, I can't,” she said unsteadily. “I—I think you should go now.”

Jack leaned forward and caught her wrist gently in his fingers. “I won't hurt you,” he whispered. “I won't do anything that you don't like. But before I leave you this evening, I'm going to hold you in my arms.”

Confusion and desire swirled inside her, making her feel unanchored, helpless. She let him pull her forward until her short limbs rested stiffly against his much longer ones. He ran a large palm down her back, and she could feel a trail of sensation in its wake. His skin was hot, as if a fire burned right beneath the smooth golden surface.

Her breath shortened, and she closed her eyes, shivering, luxuriating in the feeling of being warm all the way down to her bones. For the first time in her life, she let her head fall into the waiting crook of a man's arm, and stared up at his shadowed face.

As he felt the trembling of her limbs, he made a crooning sound and cuddled her closer. “Don't be afraid,
mhuirnin
. I won't hurt you.”

“What did you call me?” she asked in bewilderment.

He smiled down at her. “A small endearment. Did I neglect to mention that I'm half Irish?”

That explained his accent, the neat cultured tones tempered with a sort of musical softness that must be Celtic in origin. And it also explained why he had turned to Mrs. Bradshaw for employment. Often tradesmen and mercantile institutions would hire a lesser-qualified Englishman over an Irishman, preferring to give the Celts the dirtiest and most menial work.

“Do you have a distaste for the Irish?” Jack asked, staring steadily into her eyes.

“Oh, no,” she said dazedly. “I was just thinking…that must be why your hair is so black and your eyes so blue.”

“A chuisle mo chroi,”
he murmured, stroking the curls back from her round face.

“What does that mean?”

“Someday I'll tell you. Someday.” He held her for a long time until she felt steeped in his warmth, every nerve saturated and relaxed. His fingers slid to the high-buttoned neck of her brown-and-orange-striped gown, where muslin ruffles had been stitched to form a small ruff. With great care, and no particular hurry, he unfastened the first few buttons, baring her soft, cool throat. Amanda couldn't seem to control the rhythm of her lungs as they surged in unsteady expansions, her breasts rising repeatedly. Jack's dark head moved over her, and she made an inarticulate sound as she felt his mouth press against her throat, lips gently searching.

“You taste so sweet.” The whispered words sent a shiver down her spine. Somehow, whenever she had imagined this intimacy with a man, she had thought of darkness and urgency and groping. She had not expected firelight and heat and this patient courting of her body. Jack's lips wandered in a velvet path from her throat to the sensitive opening of her ear, played lightly, and then Amanda jerked in surprise as she felt the tip of his tongue stroke along a tiny inner crevice.

“Jack,” she whispered. “You don't have to play the lover for me. Truly…you are kind to pretend that I'm desirable, and you—”

She felt him smile against her ear. “You are an innocent,
mhuirnin
, if you think that a man's body reacts this way out of kindness.”

As he spoke, Amanda became aware of an intimate pressure against her hip, and she immediately went still. Her face burned crimson, and thoughts flurried through her head like snowflakes in a wind-ravaged sky. She was mortified…and extremely curious. With her legs entangled in his, and her skirts riding to her knees, she could feel the powerful length of his thighs and the hard shape of his erection. She had never been held against a man's aroused body before.

“This is your chance, Amanda,” he murmured. “I'm yours to do with as you like.”

“I don't know what to do,” she said unsteadily. “That's why I hired you.”

He laughed and kissed the exposed part of her throat, where her pulse thrummed in a frantic rhythm. The situation seemed fantastical to her, so completely outside of all her experiences, that she felt as if she were someone other than Amanda Briars. The spinster with her quills and paper and ink-stained fingers, and old-maid's caps and foot-warming jars, had been replaced by someone who was soft…vulnerable…able to desire and be desired.

She realized then that she had always been a little afraid of men. Some women understood the opposite sex so easily, and yet this understanding had always eluded her. All she knew was that even in the bloom of her youth, men had never teased and flirted with her. They had talked to her about serious subjects and had treated her with respect and propriety, never suspecting that she might have liked them to make an improper advance or two.

And now here was this resplendent man, unquestionably a scoundrel, who seemed more than interested in the prospect of getting under her skirts. Why shouldn't she allow him to kiss and caress her? What good did her virtue do her? Virtue was a cold bedfellow; she knew that better than anyone.

Bravely she caught at the open edges of his shirt and urged his head down to hers. He complied at once, his mouth brushing softly over hers. She felt a shock of warmth, a rush of pleasure that paralyzed her. His weight settled on her a bit more heavily; his mouth teased and pressed harder until her lips parted. His tongue stroked inside her mouth, and she would have recoiled from the strangeness of it had her head not been wedged so securely in the crook of his arm. Sensation flared in the pit of her stomach and in areas of her body that she couldn't even name. She waited for him to taste her again…oh, the way he explored her mouth was odd and intimate and exciting, and she couldn't seem to prevent the small moan that rose in her throat. Her body relaxed slowly, and her hands came up to his head, stroking the coarse black silk of his hair, the cropped locks that tapered to a point at the nape of his neck.

“Unbutton my shirt,” Jack murmured. He continued to kiss her while she fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat and the placket of his linen shirt. The thin fabric was warm and scented from his body, crumpled from where it had been tucked inside his trousers. The skin of his torso was smooth and golden, rows of hard silken muscles contracting at her timid touch. His body radiated heat, luring her like a cat to a patch of sunlight.

“Jack,” she said breathlessly, her hands creeping beneath his shirt to the long plane of his back, “I wish to go no further than this…I…this is quite enough of a birthday present for me.”

He chuckled and nuzzled the side of her throat. “All right.”

She huddled against his bare chest, greedily absorbing the heat and scent of him. “Oh, this is dreadful.”

“Why dreadful?” he asked, smoothing and playing with her curls, his thumb venturing to her temple and grazing the fragile spot.

“Because sometimes it's better not to know what one is missing.”

“Sweet,” he whispered, and stole a kiss from her lips. “Sweet…let me stay with you a little longer.”

Before she could answer, he kissed her more deeply than before, his large hands gently gripping her head through the mass of curls that spread everywhere. She strained upward toward his mouth and body, unable to stop herself from pressing as close as possible. A deep physical agitation, like nothing she had ever felt, welled inside her, and she arched against him in an effort to soothe it. He was strong, big-boned, able to overpower her so easily if he chose, and yet he was astonishingly gentle. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered why she did not fear him as she should. She had been taught since childhood that men were not to be trusted, that they were dangerous creatures who could not control their own passions. Yet she felt safe with this man. She put her hand on his chest, where his shirt gaped open, and the strong, fast beat of his heart resounded against her palm.

He took his mouth from hers and stared down at her with eyes so dark they no longer looked blue. “Amanda, do you trust me?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I don't know the first thing about you.”

Laughter rustled from his chest. “Sensible woman.” His fingers worked at the buttons of her bodice, deftly freeing the bits of carved ivory from their moorings.

Amanda closed her eyes, while her heartbeat became at once light and violent, like the thrashing of a panicked bird's wings. I'll never see him again after tonight, she told herself. She would let herself do these forbidden things with him, and forever afterward keep the memory in some private corner of her mind. A memory for herself alone. When she was an old woman, long accustomed to the years of solitude, she would still have the knowledge that she had once spent an evening with a handsome stranger.

The brown-striped fabric slid open, revealing a chemise made of silky zephyr cotton, overlaid with a lightly boned corset that hooked up the front. Amanda wondered if she should instruct him how to unhook the corset, but it immediately became evident that Jack was familiar with the process. Clearly this was not the first corset he had ever encountered. Her ribs were compressed slightly as he brought the front edges of the garment together and detached the row of small hooks with miraculous ease. After he urged her to pull her arms free of her gown, and she lay before him with her chest covered only in thin, nearly transparent cotton, Amanda felt horribly exposed. Her hands actually shook with the effort not to snatch up the bodice of her gown and cover herself.

“Are you cold?” Jack asked in apparent concern, noting the telltale tremor, and he drew her up against his chest. He was effortlessly strong, vital, the heat of his skin seeping through his linen shirt, and Amanda began to shiver for an entirely different reason.

Jack nudged the strap of her chemise down her arm, and lowered his mouth to the white curve of her shoulder. He touched her gently, the backs of his long fingers drifting over the round shape of her breast. His hand turned over, and his hot, slightly damp palm cupped the top of the slope until her nipple ached sweetly and rose into his hand. His fingertips toyed with her, stroking through the zephyr cotton, pinching tenderly. Amanda closed her eyes and turned her head enough to press her mouth to his cheek, lured by the faintly bristly surface. Her lips tingled as she dragged them down to the place beneath his jaw where the scratchiness blended into smooth, silken skin.