The Heiress (12 page)

Suzette released a little sigh into the chest. “She must have truly loved him.”

“Hmm,” Daniel murmured, but he was now wondering why he’d told her all that. Even Richard didn’t know so much about him and his family.

“So your mother’s family never forgave her?” Suzette asked suddenly, distracting him. “They didn’t welcome her back on your father’s death?”

“No.” Daniel’s mouth tightened, but he admitted, “My mother’s mother apparently sent us food and money and such, whatever she could sneak out to us through her maid. However, she died while I was still in school and her husband, my grandfather,” he added with disgust. “Apparently he is a bitter old bastard and has never relented.”

“Perhaps he will someday,” Suzette said quietly.

“I wouldn’t care if he did. It’s too late now,” Daniel said firmly. While the man could have eased his daughter’s troubles had he tried years ago, he hadn’t, and now Daniel had. He didn’t need or want anything from the coldhearted old fool.

Suzette heaved a sigh into the chest. “So much sorrow and struggle. In comparison, I had an ideal childhood. While my mother died shortly after Lisa was born, I never went without, and grew up with lots of fresh air, lots of love and laughter and with my loving sisters and a doting father.”

“Who has managed to work his way into a position where you are forced to marry to save your family from ruin,” Daniel pointed out dryly. “For some, sorrow comes young and for others later. Life evens out in the end.”

When she glanced over her shoulder in confusion, he pointed out, “I had my sorrow and struggles while young, while yours are happening now at the end of an idyllic childhood. Frankly, I’d rather have the young sorrow. I was a child, and didn’t miss much. This must all be a terrible shock for you, however. I doubt you grew up imagining being forced to marry to save the family.”

“No more than you probably did as a child,” she said quietly.

Daniel remained silent. He wasn’t being forced to marry for money, but couldn’t say that. Besides, if not for Richard he would have been.

“Is it awful of me to admit I am glad?” she asked suddenly.

Daniel blinked in surprise and glanced to her. “Glad?”

“That you need an heiress and are willing to marry me,” she said quietly. Suzette then turned to grimace and admitted, “I was worried you wouldn’t and then I would have to find another prospective groom.”

The thought didn’t please Daniel and he frowned as he recalled Garrison dancing with Suzette the night before. His mind then filled with a long line of bachelors who would have been happy to marry Suzette for her dower alone, and in his mind, each of them was leering happily at the thought of getting their hands on sweet, passionate Suzette.

“I didn’t like the idea of that though,” she continued on a sigh. “When you touch me, I feel . . . Well, I feel alive as I have never felt before,” she admitted. “I didn’t like the idea of any of the other men touching me that way.”

Neither did he, Daniel thought grimly as she set a pale blue dress beside the nightgown, before digging through the chest once more. His mind was now full of those leering bachelors tossing Suzette to the bed and lunging on her one after the other. Bastards!

“And your kisses quite steal my breath,” she informed him, her behind bobbing about again. “My lips tingle even now just at the thought of it.” Suzette shook her head. “Although had you said no, I suppose I would have had to have let someone else kiss and touch me like that.” She paused and said uncertainly, “Though perhaps I am wrong and it would have been fine. I mean, I hardly knew you when you kissed me and yet you stirred amazing passion in me. Perhaps a kiss is just a kiss and any one of the other men might have made me feel all hot and wanting too.” Suzette glanced over her shoulder and asked, “Do you think that’s possible?”

“No,” Daniel growled deep in his throat, anger and jealousy filling his thoughts as he imagined her with all of those men at once.

“Hmmm.” She turned back to the chest. “Then I am not sure why you had such an effect on me. Perhaps it was the punch the Landons served. It was quite a bit stronger than I am used to. Perhaps it was really just that which affected me so.”

Daniel stiffened, his eyes narrowing at the suggestion. She thought her response purely a result of drink? That it was the punch that had made her tingle all over? He’d see about that. She hadn’t been drinking this morning, and he’d damned well make her tingle until she exploded. Suzette would never again think it was just the drink or that just any man might cause it, he determined and stood abruptly to stride toward her.

“I
didn’t think I’d had much of the punch, but perhaps I indulged more than I realized and—” Suzette’s words ended on a gasp as she was suddenly caught by the waist and lifted off the floor. In the next moment, she was on her feet and being turned to face Daniel, and then his mouth was on hers, stirring up those tingles she’d mentioned and sending them shooting to every corner of her body.

Suzette responded at once, her hands slipping around his neck and her mouth opening eagerly. They still had much to discuss, but she was willing to wait to do so if it meant enjoying his kisses and touch again. Besides, she was beginning to find his kisses addictive, the first one making her immediately greedy for more. When Daniel suddenly picked her up again and carried her around to the side of the bed, Suzette merely moaned as his body moved against hers. He laid her on the bed, and then started to straighten, and rather than protest, she tightened her arms around his neck, trying to keep him with her, but Daniel easily freed himself and then stood upright.

Confused, Suzette watched silently at first, but some of her confusion cleared when he quickly shrugged out of his jacket and vest and removed his cravat. She watched the movement and ripple of his muscles as he set the items carefully on a chair by the window, marveling at the sheer beauty of his muscled chest, and then he moved back to the side of the bed. Daniel crawled to kneel next to her and urged her to sit up.

Suzette did so at once, glad when he kissed her again, but it was a brief light kiss, pressed to the corner of her mouth before his lips traveled to find her ear. She tilted her head for him, her eyes drifting closed and then popping open again when she felt his hands at her back. In the next moment her gown dropped off her shoulders, and he was urging her to remove her arms.

Once he had her upper body bared, Daniel kissed her mouth again, this time a deeper, more demanding kiss as he urged her back on the bed once more. Suzette went willingly, her arms around his neck at first and then she began to move her hands curiously across the skin stretched taut over his shoulders, and down his back, before shifting them around between them to explore his chest. He was hard and soft all at the same time, his muscles moving under her curious fingers and she sighed into his mouth. Daniel allowed it for a moment, and then broke their kiss to allow his lips to trail down her throat, his chest moving away from her touch as he paused to nibble at her collarbone.

Suzette sighed and shifted restlessly on the bed, her fingers moving to clasp his head now that his chest was denied her. When he then moved on to worship her breasts, she moaned. An ache began between her thighs and her legs began to tremble. Suzette could only think it was a good thing she wasn’t standing because she didn’t think her legs would have held her up.

“Daniel,” she groaned, tugging on his hair as he nipped and suckled at first one nipple and then the other. The sensations he was stirring were still too new for her to take for long and she wanted him to stop and kiss her again, but this time he ignored her silent demand and instead, his mouth continued its exploration, dropping to lick the underside of her breast before trailing kisses across her stomach.

“Oh,” she gasped, giving up on his hair and grabbing for the blankets she lay on for fear she would hurt him by pulling too hard on his hair. When he reached the line of her gown where it rested at her waist, Daniel ran his tongue along the flesh just above it, setting her stomach muscles jumping. Suzette twisted her head to the side and back, clawing and tugging at the blankets. She sighed with relief when he gave up that torture and rose up. Suzette thought at first that he would return to kissing her and she desperately wanted that, but instead he shifted down by her legs and began to ease her skirts up her calves.

Suzette simply stared at him. Daniel, in turn, sat on his haunches, watching her as he skimmed the material upward. He moved it all the way to her knees and then suddenly stopped and clasped the ankle of her left leg to lift it off the bed. When he then pressed a kiss to the outside of her ankle, she swallowed and licked her suddenly dry lips, but then gasped in surprise when he suddenly lifted her ankle over his head to bring it down on the other side so that he could kiss and nibble the inside of her ankle. The action made her gown slide even further down her legs so that it now pooled high on her thighs, leaving the rest of her legs naked and barely covering her core, but Suzette bit her lip and didn’t protest, merely tightening her fingers in the blankets as he began to nibble his way along her calf toward her knee.

When Daniel paused to lick the crease behind her knee, she jerked on the bed in surprise at the tingle that sent shooting through her. Suzette was almost relieved when he set that leg back on the bed, but he set it down to the side of him, leaving her laying with her legs splayed and he between them. In the next moment, he’d shifted to lie on his stomach and begun to nibble and lick at her other ankle and calf.

Suzette bit her lip harder and raised her head to peer down at him, feeling ridiculously vulnerable all of a sudden. That feeling didn’t go away when this time his lips continued past her knee and burned a trail up one thigh.

“Daniel?” she breathed uncertainly.

“Shh,” he breathed against her thigh and nipped lightly, before whispering, “Let me show you it wasn’t the punch.”

“I think I know it’s not the punch alread— Oh!” Suzette cried out and clutched desperately at the blankets as he slid a hand up and pressed it against the core of her as he continued to nibble his way toward it. She didn’t even notice that he was using his arm and face to urge her legs wider apart, until he suddenly withdrew his hand to press it against first one thigh as his other hand came up to press against the second. Suzette glanced down again then, startled to realize that her skirt now lay across her stomach with the bodice of the gown, leaving her completely bared to him, and then she watched in shock as he ducked his head between her spread thighs and began to do things she was sure the church wouldn’t approve of.

Suzette lost the ability to speak then. Dropping back on the bed, she bucked her hips and writhed like a wild thing under the unbearable pleasure.

Daniel merely tightened his grip on her thighs, holding them firm as he licked and laved and sucked, drawing mewls and gasps, moans and groans. She began to make a high keening sound as the pleasure he was wringing from her mounted, and instinctively drew some blanket into her mouth and bit down to muffle the sound. But her hips instinctively rotated and bucked as she rode the waves he caused. When she next felt something pushing into her, Suzette spat out the blanket on a cry, her body arching and bowing on the bed as a rush of pleasure exploded through her that was so intense she felt sure she was dying.

As the shattering gave way to less extreme waves of pulsing pleasure, Daniel rose up and began to shift up beside her. Suzette hardly noticed until he bent over her and claimed her lips. She was still experiencing pulses of pleasure when his hand replaced his mouth and he continued to stroke her, his fingers dancing over her damp skin and then sliding inside her and withdrawing and then sliding into her again as he thrust his tongue into her mouth.

Suzette groaned, and clasped him tightly around the shoulders as a new pleasure began to build in her even as the old waves receded. As excited as she was, it was only moments before she was crying out and shuddering again as she was carried away on another explosion of pleasure. This time Daniel didn’t continue to caress her, but slid his hand from between her legs and held her close as she rode out the waves riding over her.

It seemed a long time before the rush became a slow occasional pulse, and then Suzette opened her eyes and found him staring down at her silently, a curiously gentle expression on his face.

“It wasn’t the punch,” he said solemnly.

“No,” she agreed.

“And you would not experience it with just any man,” he assured her firmly.

Suzette smiled faintly at the combination of haughtiness and anger in his voice, and murmured, “Then I guess it is good you agreed to marry me. I should be very disappointed to spend a lifetime with a husband who did not make me burn as you do. You have ruined me for all others.”

An expression she couldn’t name flitted across his face and then Daniel bent his head to kiss her again, this one sweet and slow rather than demanding and passionate. Suzette kissed him back, but that expression she’d caught now troubled her and she realized that while he had given her pleasure not once, but twice, he was still unsatisfied, his hardness pressing against her leg. It did seem unfair to her and she suddenly twisted on the bed. Daniel had laid one leg across her nearer thigh to keep her legs open as he caressed her, but now she threw her free leg over his and pressed her breasts against his chest even as she reached between them to find his hardness.

The moment she touched him, Daniel broke their kiss and growled, “No.”

“But—”

“No,” he said sternly. “This was for you. I’ll not take your innocence.”

“We are marrying. It is yours to take,” Suzette pointed out, and then squeezed him insistently. “Besides, I want to feel you inside me. And I can feel that you want me.”

Daniel remained completely still for a moment, and then suddenly released her and rolled away to get up.

“D
aniel?”

Gritting his teeth, Daniel hurried to collect his vest and jacket and refused to turn and look at Suzette. He was holding on to his control by a very thin thread. If he turned and saw her there all tossled and sated, her gown twisted around her waist, he knew damned right well that control would snap. There would be no way to keep from doing what his body was aching for and bury himself deep in all that damp passion he’d brought about.