The Veils of the Budapest Palace (Darke of Night Book 3) (6 page)

He shook his head almost violently, but as my hand fell away from him, he caught it and held it against his scarred face. “Other people dying. Don’t die with regrets, Caroline. It doesn’t have to be me, but love
someone
,
dance
with someone, dance with
life
.” He slid my hand down his scar to his open mouth and kissed it. A quite different thrill shivered up my arm to my spine.

My fingers clung to his lips. “Who did you lose, Zsigmund?”

Something, his free hand maybe, thudded against the wall at his back. “Everyone who matters to a child, but this isn’t about death, it’s about life. Don’t shut yourself up, don’t
give
up, not for something as trivial as convention. If I’m too much to swallow—and I can understand I probably am—choose Béla, choose this Patrick, choose—”

I cut him off, pressing my fingers to his lips. “Stop. Stop. I understand, but I will choose my own way. I promise I won’t waste my life.”

His breathing seemed to ease. His shoulders relaxed. I realised how close we stood, how isolated we were in shadows, unseen from the street or whatever lay to our other side. My heart beat and beat, because he needed comfort that I could give. And I needed to be honest.

I stood on tiptoe, and he dipped his head. I found his ear with my lips. “If I were to choose a lover, which I won’t right now, it would be you.”

Surprise loosened his grip on my hand, as I’d known it would. I began to slip away, meaning to hurry back to the road and walk sedately home to my hotel, with or without his company. But I didn’t get farther than half a pace back from him before I was swung around and crushed between him and the wall. His open mouth found mine in a huge kiss that threatened to consume me.

I tried to laugh, but I couldn’t. My bones turned to jelly as physical desire battered me. I loved the hardness of his body pressing so closely against mine, the wicked ridge of his erection against my hip. From somewhere, I found the strength to reach up and grasp his shoulders. When he didn’t even notice my push, I tangled my fingers in his thick hair and tugged. His lips loosened enough to let me breathe.

“I said I won’t right now,” I gasped against his lips.

He drew back an inch. Shadows crossed and shaded his face. His eyes glittered in the gloom. “Because I frighten you?”

“Partly,” I admitted.

I thought it would be enough to bring him back to a sense of propriety, at least for a little, but again, he took me by surprise.

His lips curved into a hot, teasing, little smile. “But that’s part of the attraction. You don’t know what I’ll do next, how far I’ll go. And you like that. Whatever else, I don’t bore you.”

“Oh no,” I said shakily. “You won’t turn this back on me. It’s you who are more afraid here, remember?”

“I’m not afraid of dying,” he said at once. “Death is inevitable and my time has always been borrowed. I’m afraid of not living
enough
.” His lips seized mine again, and in spite of myself, I opened my mouth for his invasion, held his head between my hands, and let all the lust flood over me, washing away all my sensible resistance.

“Caroline, Caroline,” he whispered against my lips. “Come. Come with me.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. The lake? I could make love to you under the stars...that would be sweet... but my room is closer.” He moved, his arm around my waist, drawing me deeper into the alley.

I didn’t resist, although I did try to laugh. It didn’t quite come off. “You never give up, do you?”

“No. This is right. For both of us. Enjoy the moment. God knows I will.”

“And afterwards?” I demanded.

“Who cares? We’ll still have had our moment.”

“Do you have no concept of consequences?”

It didn’t even slow him down, although his hand ran up from my waist to tip up my chin. “I told you, I’ll look after you.”

“Oh, I don’t mean physical consequences,” I said impatiently, almost despairingly. I was, after all, very probably barren. “What if I fall in love with you?”

That did give him pause. He stopped, gazing down into my eyes. “I think I would like that.”

“But I wouldn’t!” Not when the night was over and he left me.

His fingers touched my cheek, his caress unexpectedly tender. “You might. It will be fun, Caroline, you and I together. I know it.”

The idea of love, or even lust, as fun, was novel to me, so novel I didn’t object when he drew me on once more, emerging from the alley into another, and then through a wooden gate into a yard, and through the door of a tall, ramshackle building.

A lantern burned inside the door, casting shadows across a narrow hallway, several other doors and a flight of stairs. I halted, resisting when he would have pulled me on. My heart beat like thunder. I could change my life in this moment, make some huge mistake or find some great joy. I felt wicked, out of control. And yet, in his own words, where was the harm? My heart and my reputation were my own. Everything in me desired to go with this man, this stranger, who frightened and fascinated me.

He paused with me, no longer tugging or persuading, leaving me to make up my own mind.

I swallowed. “You’ll let me leave at any time?”

“Of course.”

“Even now?”

His forehead touched mine, rested there, his eyes closed as if resigned to losing me at this last hurdle. “I’ll even walk with you to your hotel. Shall I?”

I drew in my breath. “No.”

A smile flickered on his lips, flashed in his eyes as he opened them and led me across the hall to the stone staircase. We climbed to the next floor, and I turned my face away from the figure who passed us on the stairs. Zsigmund took a key from his pocket and unlocked a door on the next landing. Once again, he didn’t hold me, merely stood aside for me to make the decision. Part of me wanted to be persuaded, taken, have that choice taken away—but only because I’d already made it. He was giving me the chance to change my mind, an unexpected and rather touching gesture.

I stepped over the threshold, and he closed the door. My stomach twisted. He moved through the dark room, lit a lamp that illuminated the shabby space. A small room with peeling paint on the walls, and ancient battered furniture. But at least it looked clean. He walked to the window and closed the shutters. I looked from the bed to the washstand, to the old trunk under the window with bits of sleeve hanging out of it, to the small table and hard wooden chair in the middle of the room where the oil lamp stood. A couple of open books and some paper lay there, half-finished letters, perhaps, with a pen thrown across them so carelessly that the ink had splattered out. It was bare, yet chaotic, in a very masculine, Zsigmund kind of way that made me smile.

“Does she come here?” I blurted.

“Who?” He was unbuttoning his uniform coat.

“The girl I saw you with in the assembly rooms.”

“Amelie.” He shrugged the coat off and threw it over the chair. Beneath it, his shirt was white but well mended. “No. Don’t ask me more when you don’t really want to know the answers.”

“You’re right. I don’t.” Although I rather thought he’d just handed me them anyhow. “I suppose I just want to know that I’m more. Not if I’m less.”

He walked across to me with quiet deliberation and took my face between his hands. “More. You’re already more than anyone. Never doubt it.” His kiss was tender, sweet, something entirely new. I felt his fingers in my hair, removing the jewelled clasp and the pins until my hair fell down around our faces. He smiled against my lips and drew back. “I dreamed of seeing you like this. Beautiful and untamed as nature made you.”

My shawl fell to the floor, but he didn’t pick it up, merely stepped away from me and took off his necktie. With a total absence of modesty, he began to unbuckle his belt.

My breath caught in my throat. My body began to burn. I couldn’t tell if there was more panic than desire in the flame.

“Don’t you want to turn off the lamp?” I asked nervously. It was, after all, like my wedding night.

“No,” he said softly. “I don’t.”

In one swift, shocking movement, he hauled the shirt up over his head and threw it carelessly behind him before catching me in his arms. “I want to see every inch of you that I caress, every expression, every desire.”

I clutched his arms to keep my balance, but the feel of his warm, firm skin under my fingers was so delightful that in blatant wonder, I ran my hands up over his muscled upper arms to his broad shoulders. Every inch of him seemed to move in response to the slightest caress.

Young. I was about to know a young man’s body.
This
man’s body. I gasped into his mouth at the sudden surge of lust.

His fingers worked at my back, loosening hooks and laces. One hand swept down from my cheek to my shoulder, pushing the gown down to my elbows. He lifted me in his arms as if I weighed no more than a baby and swung me around. I knew a hint of dizziness, disorientation, and then there were cool sheets under my naked back, and no more than air on my skin.

Zsigmund, naked to the waist, his belt and trousers already unfastened, stood beside me with one knee on the bed. His hot, avid gaze seemed to pin me to the mattress, paralysed. More than desire,
need
blazed through me. I had never felt so open and vulnerable to anyone, even to Neil on our wedding night. He’d made love to me in the dark, as was proper. I should have been outraged by Zsigmund’s depravity, but although his staring shocked me, some previously unknown, wanton part of me gloried in it, in the raw lust of his gaze.

And so, after the first instinctive jerk of my arms to cover myself, I stilled and let him look. His gaze travelled over me, unhurried and yet greedy, from my throat to my breasts and down over my waist, and stomach and hips to my thighs. It felt like a flaming caress, setting every inch of me on fire.

Zsigmund was right. I should make the most of every situation, and this one was going to be more precious than most. It would never come again. Greatly daring, I stretched under his gaze, arching my back and reaching up to grasp either side of the pillow.

His lips parted. His Adam’s apple wobbled. Deliberately, he dropped his knee off the bed and smiled, a predatory, blatantly lecherous smile, and God help me, I liked that too. He pushed his trousers and underwear down over his hips, and I made an involuntary, inarticulate sound deep in my throat when his fully erect penis sprang back against his flat stomach.

When he climbed onto the bed, he was like a god, beautiful as I’d never known a man could be, powerful, unstoppable. And I’d no idea what to do with him. Marriage to Neil hadn’t prepared me for a lover like this...

He swung one leg over my hips and knelt, his hot eyes still raking me. His buttocks leaned on my thighs. His broad, golden chest rose and fell with quick, uneven breaths.

“Now,” he said huskily, “I have you.”

I swallowed. I had difficulty concentrating on anything other than the huge member he must have imagined would go inside me. He reached out one hand, stroking two gentle fingers across the hammering pulse at my throat, and then trailing them downward between my breasts.

An almost agonised frown formed between his brows as he palmed one breast and slowly, tenderly kneaded. I couldn’t recall such intense bliss.

“I want to be slow and careful with you,” he whispered. “I want to seduce you with words and caresses until you fall apart in my arms. But God help me, I can’t. I want you too badly. Tell me if I hurt you. Only that can make me stop.”

And he lunged forward, seizing my mouth in his. His knee pushed my thighs apart, and his full, glorious weight lay between. I threw my arms around him, holding on, loving the feel of his undulating skin beneath my fingers.

The long, blunt shaft pushed against the juncture of my thighs, and his breath hissed into my mouth.

“Wet,” he mumbled against my lips. “So wet for love, for me...”

And then he entered me. I gasped with shock, and he slowly released my mouth to gaze down at my face. He took his weight on his hands; his arms shook. He pushed again, gently, and then again, and with the invasion came sparks of pleasure.

“Oh, that feels good,” he whispered. “Such heat, such bliss...” He began to move with more serious intent, and I felt my control over the known world slip and slide away. There was only Zsigmund above me, in me. He twisted, bending his head to one of my breasts, and kissed it. I felt the flick of his tongue on my nipple, over and over, and the strong, aching suck of his lips, and I moaned, moving with him. My hands stroked up and down his back in wonder at the play of muscles as he thrust into me, grinding and straining with increasing abandon. I clung, kissing his shoulders, his throat, and then his mouth when he straightened.

The fierce passion in his eyes would have frightened me only moments before. Now, I revelled in it, pushing and pulling with him, stroking him with my thighs, holding on to his wildly plunging body as my own seemed to lose all control, all volition. Something fiery and strange and wonderful swept through me outside and in, building and building in intensity until I cried out in joy and wonder, and with a groan, he rammed into me one more time.

Somewhere, I was aware of him leaving my body. I even sobbed in protest, but then his hand was there, his fingers inside me as his seed spilled across my thigh.

He’d said he would take care of me. I hadn’t realised what he meant.

His mouth closed over mine, shaking, smothering the wild noises coming from his throat. But his lips were smiling, and his finger still moved within me, as if stirring the ecstasy as it tried to die back. His thumb found the little bud of pleasure—
my God, how does he know about that?
—and glided over it repeatedly.

I moaned again as the pleasure began to spike. He left my lips to watch me, his clouded eyes avid and triumphant.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

“Making love to you,” he said breathlessly. “Don’t you like it?”

I tried to laugh but couldn’t. “Of course I...I like...oh God,
Zsigmund
!” I shattered again on his hand, my hips lifting off the bed and writhing.