Lorcan comported himself enthusiastically during a number of reels. He seemed to mind not a bit when she danced with others. He smiled and laughed. He drank very little.
But throughout the evening Daphne sensed his mood growing gradually more and more remote. As it did, her sense of unease ramped. She thought she understood the reason, but it was as if she were watching him drift out to sea on a boat that had slipped its mooring, and there was nothing she could do about it.
As he grew quieter and quieter, her stomach coiled tighter and tighter in tension.
By the time they left the ballroom, it was knotted completely.
He spoke not at all as they climbed the stairs to their suite.
She found herself chattering anyway, to fill the silence. “What a lovely evening. Perhaps I’ll learn to play an instrument, too. I thought Mrs. Pariseau played beautifully. Perhaps she has real talent.”
Inside their room, he shook himself out of his coat. Reflexively she took it from him to hang up on the little rack by the door.
“Lorcan, would you like a cup of tea before we sleep? It’s not too late to ring for one.”
“No. Thank you.”
“Some brandy?”
“No, thank you.” He had gone to stand before the fire, silently. She stood next to him, but he did not look up at her.
She stared at him, heart in her throat.
“Shall I help you with your cravat?” she asked quietly. She reached for the knot at his throat.
He shocked both of them by seizing her wrists.
And in silence, he held her fast. His expression was dark. And almost cold.
“Daphne,” he said.
She was too stunned to speak. Her breathing had gone panicked and swift.
“I. Am. Not. Your. Husband.”
His volume scarcely raised at all.
But each word somehow hurt her worse than the last, as if he beat her down like a nail in a plank.
Until she was small and flat and lightless.
He uncurled his fingers and released her gently.
She took a step back.
Then another.
And Lorcan watched her face flash white, then scarlet, then white again.
Two hot pink spots remained high on her cheeks.
Then there was a silence that seemed to whine as if someone had fired a gun next to his ear.
They stared at each other.
She looked blank with shock.
“Good heavens. Of course you aren’t. No need to take on so,” she said lightly.
He said nothing. He could not. He was flooded with horror. As if he’d crushed a butterfly in his hands.
“Good night, Lorcan.” She said it brightly.
If there was a tremble in her voice, it was slight.
She turned. Spine straight, she headed straight for her room.
She quietly closed the door and turned the key in the lock.
He stared at her closed door.
Then covered his face with his hands.
Everything was too loud, suddenly: the fire echoed like whip cracks.
The wind moaning, as if in pain.
The frantic, slamming beat of his own heart, trying to get out of its jail. Furiously pounding its rage at what he’d subjected it to, despite its efforts to defend itself from pain. Furiously pounding as if it wanted to leap out of his chest and go to her.
He was in pain. He was in pain.
Daphne lay on her bed and held herself very still in the dark.
As if in so doing she could prevent the shocking pain of his words from flooding her entirely. As if she could save one tiny corner of herself from it.
As it was, she felt as though her lungs had been punctured.
She thought she knew why he’d done it. Why he’d said it. How he felt.
And therein lay both salvation and heartbreak.
But she could not know for sure, and she felt like she’d just leaped into the dark from a crate, only to endlessly fall.
“Daphne?” he said quietly to the door.
There was no response.
He cleared his throat.
“Daphne, if you can hear me, will you please say something?”
He waited.
He was greeted with the sort of silence that must have preceded creation. A howling nothingness. He could not feel her presence. He realized he’d been able to feel her in the room even when his eyes weren’t upon her.
He swallowed.
“Daphne. I do not know what to say . . . or how to say it. So I am just going to talk. By now you know I value my worthless hide more than I ought and I know a thousand ways to save it. But right now I would willingly lay down and die for putting that expression on your face.” He stopped. He took a steadying breath and said, more quietly, “For causing you hurt of any kind.”
There was no reply.
“Daphne?”
Nothing.
“I do not know what is wrong with me. I am . . .” He gave a short, dark, laugh. “. . . suffering, lass.”
His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper now. “I cannot say that I understand it. But your pain, lass . . . it seems I’ve finally found a thing I cannot endure.”
He listened; ear pressed against the door. Willed her with all of his considerable spirit to speak.
Nothing stirred or creaked. She could be a statue or a corpse in there.
He sensed her not at all on the other side.
He leaned his forehead against the door.
“I am sorry. I pray your forgiveness.”
He said it with the stiff formality of a man delivering his last words before they lowered the noose over his head.
Little by little, with every word he spoke, the darkness inside her lifted, until the whole of her felt golden and radiant.
She thought she could actually feel her heart breaking, cracking in her chest.
Or was it instead merely opening? Perhaps a scarred heart could never quite open again fully without pain. Perhaps like a flower, it couldn’t help but unfurl, however wretchedly, toward love.
And if it was futile, did it matter?
Was love ever futile?
If they could not keep it, did it matter?
Was it ever a waste?
She didn’t know the answers to these questions.
She only knew she could not bear his suffering, either.
So she slid from the bed.
She turned the knob slowly, surreptitiously.
And the well-oiled door glided open silently when she gave it a push.
He was sitting before the fire, head propped on his hands.
His stillness was a revelation. It was at once clear to her how much of his moods and personality animated his body with force and confidence.
This was Lorcan weary and uncertain.
And afraid.
It clawed at her heart even as it sang a dark little hosanna that he should feel such pain all for her.
She understood now, more clearly than ever, that this fearsome man had arranged and lived the entirety of his life to avoid feeling uncertain. To avoid feeling, or showing, weakness. Or fear.
He straightened suddenly. Then swiveled about and saw her.
He was on his feet at once. He straightened slowly, cautiously.
They regarded each other from across the room.
“I . . . don’t know why I’m standing here.” Her voice was little more than a broken whisper.
With startling speed he strode across the room and closed his hand around her arm.
A little tightly.
He loosened his grip at once.
She hadn’t minded his grip. She wanted to be held as though she was desperately wanted. As if she was a thing so precious letting her go would mean the end of his world.
His hand slid down, down, then moved to her waist. His arm curled around her. He drew her into his body, gently.
He tucked his face into her throat. And held her.
“Your heart, Daphne,” he said after a moment. “Oh, your heart. How fast it is beating.”
The frayed wonder in his voice. As if he could not believe her heart leaped all for him.
He threaded his hand through her hair and kissed her where her heart leaped in her throat.
She slid her hands up, and they lingered over the mighty thud of his heart before they locked around his neck.
His mouth was on her throat, her ear, her lips. Her lips. She fell into the kiss. Surrendered entirely. She was falling, falling. Falling so irrevocably she hardly noticed that her feet had indeed left the ground.
He carried her to her room.
He removed her dress with the same startling efficiency with which he’d peeled that orange. She lay shivering and naked. He was out of his clothes just as swiftly. She heard the muffled thump of trousers and waistcoat and shirt hitting the floor.
And for a second loomed, first shadow, then lamplit, then in filtered moonlight let in through the crack of the curtain. He was enormous, terrifyingly beautiful, infinitely stronger than her. Perhaps infinitely more vulnerable. She trembled with anticipation.
The bed sank when he joined her there and they turned to each other in a near frenzy of want.
She entwined her limbs around him, eager to feel his skin over the entire length of hers. He caged her with his arms. They grappled like two people who had tumbled down a cliff, mad with, greedy for, desperate for the feel of every inch of each other; their hands wandering, stroking, searching, while their mouths clung in a deep, hungry, nearly bruising kiss. She wanted to feel every sensation he could offer her. She wanted to touch and taste all of him. She scored her nails across his chest, tangling her fingertips in the curly hair; then pulled away to close her teeth lightly over his nipple. He hissed in a breath of pleasure, his hand rising to cover the back of her head. She rose up to gently bite the great curve of his shoulder; he took her earlobe between his teeth and she gasped. His hands were on her breasts, stroking, teasing her nipples, and she moaned her pleasure.
His hands splayed over her back, traced the nipped curve of her waist, followed it to her arse, spanned nearly the whole of her thigh, his fingers reaching beneath the petal-soft skin there, softly stroking, and she sighed. And then he swiftly rose up on two arms, bridging her. He hovered there, gazing down at her. She reached up to trace his lips, wonderingly. She arched up against his hard cock at the juncture of her legs, reveling in his growled oath, in teasing each other.
And then she escaped.
She slipped from beneath the bridge of his body and rolled away. Strictly for the primitive thrill of being captured again.
Knowing she would never escape him if he didn’t let her go.
He pulled her roughly back into his arms, then briefly pinned her, and the strength of him made her weak, weak with desire.
They smiled at each other.
He kissed her. So softly, so gently, a whisper slide of his lips over hers. So tenderly that tears rushed the corners of her eyes.
“Lorcan,” she murmured thickly.
Gently she slid her palms over the vast, hard-as-armor terrain of his back, finding the ridges, the scars, the bumps of his spine.
And then he took his lips away from hers.
Trailed them along her throat.
Lingered, briefly, to draw her nipples into his mouth and suck. She cried out.
He smoothed his hands over her belly, and placed a kiss in the center of it.
He spread her thighs with his hands.
And ducked his head between.
And when the hot, satin sinew of his tongue stroked her for the first time a ragged animal groan tore from her.
And there he feasted. A diabolically skillful, stroking rhythm, a collusion between his skillful tongue, his breath, and his clever fingers drove her to the writhing brink of madness.
So much unimaginable pleasure surely could not be survived.
As if from a distance she heard her own voice half sobbing. Begging incoherently. She undulated beneath him, her fingers clawing the counterpane into furrows.
“Lorcan . . . help me . . . it’s too good . . . oh God . . . oh my God . . .”
And her body snapped upward like the string of a bow drawn back and a scream tore from her throat and she was among the stars.
He left his hand against her to savor the violent pulsing of her release, like a triumphant conqueror. He rose up on his knees, and she gazed up at him as he parted her thighs.
And then he rose up again, and he guided his cock into her.
The shock of him filling her made her head go back on a gasp.
He kissed her, softly.
She swept his hair from his brow, savoring the wondrously strange feeling of being filled by him. Joined with him.
“Daphne . . . lass . . . I do not want to hurt you . . . I shall try to be gentle. I fear I cannot go slow. I have wanted you more than I have wanted my next breath.”
She drew her hand along his throat, to his chest, to where his heart thundered.
“I trust you. I want you, too.”
She clung to his shoulders, slid her hands down to his hips, to the indents of muscle at his buttocks, and she arched to meet each dive of his hips. To take him deeply. To be as much a part of him as she possibly could, for this moment in time. For a time, they moved like this, almost languidly. And in the amber light of her lamp she could see his clear eyes go dark, and then remote, she watched his release come up on him, and felt within her that same building need, until she was frantic with it. Begging.
“Lorcan . . . Lorcan I . . .” Her voice, hoarse. “Please . . .”
And then their bodies were colliding, and their mingled breathing like a storm in which they were trapped.
He roared her name. She clung to him while he shook.
She lay sated, thoroughly loved, deflowered and ravished, and she seemed to him pale and fragile as a lace glove in his arms. His heart felt too large for his chest. He would kill for her without question.
And he would have to let her go.
But not tonight.
He traced with a finger the delicate bones of her wrist. The pearly underside of her arm. He felt saturated by the beauty of her body, this glorious secret hidden by her clothes, the textures and curves of her, the sweet, satiny curve of her breasts with their rose-colored nipples, the triangle of dark fluff at her legs.
“Listen,” he said quietly. “While you are with me, you do not have to be strong. Cry. Laugh. Scream. Be whoever you are. Feel whatever you feel. I am strong enough for both of us.”
She turned to him. She touched his face.
“Make me scream again,” she whispered.
He was undone. He had never felt so simultaneously weak and savage.
He traced the contours of her kiss-swollen lips with a single finger.
Then he laid his mouth against hers softly.
In him warred two impulses: devour or cherish. The instinct to take what he could before it disappeared, before it could be taken from him, before he could be told such beauty, such bliss, was not for him, burned powerfully. But she had taught him to savor. She had shown him he had the right.
And so, as if by sheer force of will he could alter the flow of time enough to make this interlude of discovery and desire last the rest of their lives, his hands moved over her slowly. Revealing to her that every bit of her skin could be a source of pleasure.
“You can tell me how you like to be touched,” he murmured, as silently, slowly, his rough palm skimmed over the unthinkable softness of her skin. Tracing the sweet dip of her waist up over the slope of her hip. Dipping to glide over the curve of her belly. To lightly, tantalizingly, tangle in the damp curls between her legs.
She half sighed, half moaned. Sounding somnolent with pleasure.
“I like . . .” she murmured, tracing his eyebrow with one finger, “watching the way your expression changes when you touch me. And the way it changes when I touch you.”
He was too moved to reply. He felt a little raw, knowing that she could see so clearly into him. He was a little in awe of her.
With delicate fingers she followed the bones at the base of his throat. Then circled the bump of his nipples, which she then licked. She smiled with a vixeny delight when his breath hitched and he hissed in a pleasured breath. She followed the furrow between his muscles on his chest, his abdomen. She marked him out like a cartographer, her face a study in wonder. Reveling in her power to quicken his breathing, to make him sigh, make his muscles tense with pleasure beneath her questing hand.
When her hand slid down to his cock, he covered it with his own. Then wordlessly, he showed her how to stroke him.
She circled him in her hand and obeyed.
“Is this right?” she whispered.
“Dear God, yes,” he groaned.
In silence, her fist dragged the length of him, harder, and harder still, as she responded to the sounds of his pleasure. She explored the smooth dome of his cock, lightly combed through the curly nest of hair, reveling in all the exotic-to-her textures of him, her eyes never leaving his face. Until he was shifting restlessly, and groaning from the heretofore unimaginable pleasure. Need was like a spear through him.
He rose up over her, and she instinctively slid beneath him so he could enter her again.
He rolled the two of them gently so that they moved, side by side together, their bodies fused and rippling.
The scream of her release ebbed into a little sob, as if such pleasure, such happiness, surely could not be borne.
And as she rested her head on his chest, her breathing settling, he stroked her hair, and he felt his own eyes burning with tears.
She’d closed her eyes, and he watched her face in the lamplight. Make this night last forever, he willed. But he’d watched her lose her battle to sleep, and he was about to lose his. They slept holding each other, entwined, skin to skin.
They woke to bright light shining through a parted inch of curtains.
The rain had finally stopped.
