The Shadow and the Star (40 page)

"I wish you would again."

She covered her mouth with her fingers, shocked. But the wish was real, very real, once she gave a name to the restlessness and misery inside her, to the emotion that seemed to keep tears and laughter so close to the surface that she never knew which would well up at any small crisis. Not only was she idiotically in love with Mr. Gerard, she was longing for him to touch her.

It seemed such a stupid and lowering situation to find oneself in that she hugged a pillow to her, feeling hot tears well up and slide down her cheeks right then and there. How very lonely life must turn out to be, for a female of delicacy and refinement and no background, A female who really did not belong anywhere at all.

I wish you would again.

Samuel stood silent, motionless, with temptation all around him like a tangible coercion. He saw in the dark by eyesight and heart sight; he could close his eyes and feel her tears.

He did not know why she was crying. He thought, in that moment, that he did not know anything but the urge to answer her.
I wish
… she said, and the solid earth failed him; the ground beneath his feet disintegrated.

She sat up suddenly, startled, a quick rustle of bedclothes. "Mr. Gerard?"

He tilted back his head. How could he think that she would not feel him there? He emanated desire. He burned like a bright flare with it, an invisible torch in the midnight room.

She sniffed quickly, a muffled sound, trying to hide it. "I know you're here."

"Yes," he said.

She made a little squeak, surprised after all at his voice. He heard her breathing, quick and soft.

A long moment passed. Nothing moved.

"Why?" She barely spoke the word. It hung, whispered, on the still air.

Samuel closed his eyes. "I don't know."

But he knew.

"Oh, dear." Her voice had a small tremor in it. "I suppose you've been here for some time. I suppose you've been listening to me. How excessively mortifying."

There in the dark, she could almost make him smile.

She made him ache to reach out his hand to her, twine her hair in his fist.

Ah, no… but he would not. He would contain the black fire that ran in his veins, that shamed and scorched him.

From the bed came sounds of movement. Her feet touched the floor, a vibration he felt rather than heard. "I really should find my dressing robe, if you wish to hold a conversation."

She stood up, a tumble of hair and luscious sleepy scent, the warmth of a woman's body beneath the bedclothes. He could have evaded her. But his will and his action split apart from one another. He stood planted, with a lifetime of endurance fracturing, and allowed her to walk straight into him.

In spite of the hand she'd put out to feel her way in the dark, she came up against his chest as if she had struck a wall. He caught her arm, imposing balance. "I don't wish to hold a conversation."

His voice was low and rough. He had anarchy inside him.

"Oh." She stood fixed in his hold. "What, then?"

"What you wish. What you said."

She lifted her face. "Goldfish?"

"Oh, Jesus." He cupped her cheeks, bent his head to her mouth. "This. I want this."

His lips grazed hers. A heaviness weighted him, an overwhelming pressure. Kai—there was Kai; there was what he had forged of his mind and his body. He could not do this. It was destruction.

He did not know how to kiss a woman. He thought he should press his closed mouth to hers, but the contact disarmed him, the softness of her cheek sent soundless shudders of pleasure down his body. He opened his mouth, breathing in, taking the essence of her deep inside him as he tasted the corner of her lips with his tongue.

Her body fluttered. He perceived a blush in her, a warmth beyond the range of eyesight in the dark. She brought her hands up between them. "I suppose—I suppose that you must be distressed by the reception of your necklace?"

He cared nothing for the necklace. It seemed only one more step on the course that drove him.

"I daresay—that is why you are here." Her voice sounded breathless and thin. "I could have wished—that you had not been so eager to present it. I advised—that is—oh, dear. Mr. Gerard."

How could she imagine that was why he was here? He stood holding her, tasting her, feeling her agitation, knowing himself part of the shadows in his midnight-gray clothing. He doubted she could even see him—and suddenly he let go of her, brushed one hand across the other in a familiar sorcery, and made light in his open palm, heatless blue, like ocean phosphorescence illuminating the startlement on her face, the puffy sleeves and lacy tucks of her white nightgown.

He felt suspended, offering himself in the open, without the dark to hide him.

She gazed for a moment at the rounded stone in his palm, and then up at him. In the ethereal light she seemed bewildered, and more lovely than he could have imagined, the luster of her unbound hair and the velvet curve of her face, all of his forbidden fantasies materialized into life. He rued the light already; he would frighten her, a black warrior conjured out of the night: what he desired so unmistakable, without disguise or softness,

"Oh," she said in a hushed, plaintive voice. "You should not be here. I'm afraid this is very foolish, Mr. Gerard. This is most dreadfully ill-advised."

He closed his eyes, his fist going tight over the stone. "Let me lie with you," he whispered.

"I don't believe… that does not seem… it really would not be—" She sounded dazed. "With me?"

He reached up, stroked her cheek with the back of his closed hand, the glowing light barely perceptible between his fingers. "Here. Now."

She hesitated, as if she could not quite comprehend him. "I daresay you are weary, to be up so late, but—"

He took her chin and lifted it on his fist. "I'm not weary."

"Oh." She looked up into his eyes. "Oh… dear sir, is it that you are lonely? If it weren't such an awkward hour, I might have rung for tea."

Lonely. God. So hot and intense and alone.

He opened his hand, and the ghostly light colored her for a moment as he brushed his mouth against the side of her throat. Her fragrance was of pristine woman-things, powder and flowers, and that underlying heat of her body: deeper, provocative, a veiled flame that caught fire and blazed inside him.

"Oh—you should not." Her voice echoed what he knew; her hands held a light quiver as she nudged them ineffectually against his shoulders. "This is not—decorous."

It was not decorous. It was madness. But he did not let her go. He gripped his arm across the small of her back, pulling her to him. The lacy collar brushed across his temple. He allowed the lightstone to fall away onto the floor as her hair slid back in a heavy mass over his hands. Excitement flooded him. He had imagined it that way when first he'd seen her in daylight, at the dressmaker's; when he'd reached down and picked up a coronetted note inscribed to her and realized what it was.

He exerted a subtle pressure, compelling her backward toward the bed. She yielded, wavering and easy to control, her lack of resistance telling him that she did not even recognize the leverage that directed her.

At the edge of the bed, his expertise ended. Not his hunger, not his visions, not the sensation of her pressed between his body and the bed as his leg braced hard against the wood of the frame. He was breathing deeply, unevenly, ungoverned in his physical action, on the brink of a fierce and all-consuming void. He held himself savagely in check, resting his forehead against the curve of her throat.

"I won't hurt you," he whispered.

Utter truthfulness
, Dojun said.

"No," she said. "Of course you would not."

Her simple conviction shattered him. She could not trust him; he was lying, he knew he was, and yet he would not let go. He surrendered sixteen years of bruises and sweat and dreams, sinking slowly to his knees as he pulled her to him. He pressed his open mouth to her body, meeting the soft underswell of her breast. The flannel held her scent and heat, slipped over her skin beneath his tongue, promising silk beneath.

"Oh… Mr. Gerard." The protest was hardly more than warmth in the night air.

"You said you wished it." He slid his hands down, tightened them on her waist. He had dreamed of this; dreamed of it for a thousand years.

Her voice held a clouded wonder. "I suppose… because my mother was—French…"

Her hand lay against his hair. He turned his head and kissed her palm. She curled it closed, and he kissed the back of her fingers.

He felt her stillness. And then: lightly… gently, she drew a lock of his hair between her fingers.

It took all the strength he had to restrain the force inside him. He touched her as if she might vanish in his hands, a skim of contact when what he wished was to crush her to him, a brush of his fingers outlining her shape, the curves beneath her breasts, the swell of her hips. He felt himself so hot and hard that he was afraid he would terrify her if he did not contain his moves.

He had never in his adult memory touched a woman for so long before. His life had been Kai's quick hugs and a skip away, or Lady Tess' brief, quiet welcomes. The sweetness of the embrace amazed him; he felt absurdly close to tears with the warmth of her against his face and beneath his hands.

He wanted to tell her, but he had no words for it. He wanted to say
warm, delicate, soft; your hair, your beautiful hair falling free, your hands, your waist… do you understand? I won't hurt you. I don't want to hurt you. I 'm dying
.

Her hand rested around the back of his neck. He felt her breathing, the rise and fall of her breasts against his cheek.

"I am afraid we're very shocking." Her hand tightened slightly. She lifted a lock of his hair, slid it through her fingers, and brushed it back. "But… dear sir… I have been a little lonely, too."

"Leda." He had only a hoarse whisper to answer her. Slowly, so very slowly, not to frighten her, he rose. A ribbon held the nightgown at her throat; he caught the loop in his forefinger and pulled the bow free. His hand slid downward—he had expected buttonholes like a man's shirt, but there were none: his finger caught light satin hooks that fell away from tiny pearls of buttons without resistance, descending almost to her waist.

Her body went stiff as he did it. The base of the slit stopped his hand; he closed his fist on the fabric.

"Don't be afraid of me," he said fiercely. His own muscles were tense; his body felt unfamiliar to him, as if he were moving within heavy armor.

She stared up at him. He could see the dismay dawn upon her, saw that—God—until this precise moment she had not really understood him—that somehow she hadn't expected it, would require him to stop; that the words to deny him were rising to her lips.

He would not let her. He covered her mouth with his, a relentless kiss to stop those words, pulling her to him with his hand spread in her hair. He broke his promise that quickly; the kiss hurt her—he knew it must, because the violence of it bruised his own mouth. He made himself a catalyst, created influence, a controlled force that overcame her equilibrium and took her down onto the bed full-length with him.