Sparhawk's Angel (14 page)

M
adness.

There could be no other word for what was happening to him. She was small and perfect, and if she trembled as his hands reached out to draw her close, he did, too. He was as much beyond caution as he was past reason, and far, far beyond caring for the consequences. Nothing mattered now except the girl in his arms, and his whole world, mad or sane, had narrowed to the featherweight touch of her body against his.

She was kissing him with the same untried eagerness she'd shown before, her mouth sweet and soft as velvet, and when he hungrily deepened the kiss, unwilling to hold back, she yielded and met him, her slender fingers reaching up to thread restlessly through his hair. He was drunk with the taste of her, dizzy with her scent. She smelled of flowers, violets and her own womanliness, a scent he remembered with stunning clarity from his sheets; after the night she'd spent alone in his bed, her fragrance had clung to the linen, an unintentional reminder so vivid that he'd been unable to sleep there himself without imagining her.

Except that nothing he'd imagined had been as wildly breathtaking as the reality of Rose. His Rose, his for this single night. Tomorrow she would go to wed another, tomorrow he could be killed by the enemy's gunpowder, but tonight—tonight would be theirs.

He drew her closer, painfully aware of how fragile the bond between them was. The silk of her hair, still crimped from the hat, rippled over his arm as he slid his hands along her back, lifting her against him. He marveled at her delicacy, at how easily his spread fingers could span the narrowness of her waist as she arched against him, and his heart pounded at the knowledge of what she was offering, her urgency a match for his own. Clumsy with inexperience, her blind fingers fumbled at the first of the long row of buttons on his waistcoat until she broke away from his kiss long enough to look down at her hands.

Her dark brows drawn together with concentration, she scowled as her fingers worked to slip the buttons free, one by one by one, until impatiently he pulled her face and his lips back to hers. She dug her fingers into the front of his half-open waistcoat and yanked, the last buttons giving way and flying from their broken threads. She circled her arms around his waist, tugging his shirt free from his breeches as she slipped her hands up along his bare back.

"That time I saw you while you were shaving—day and night, I haven't been able to put it from my thoughts," she confessed shyly. The warmth of her kiss made her voice dusky with promise as she looked up at him through the veil of her lashes. "If I could, Black Nick, I would play you again for your shirt and win, too, so that I might gaze my fill of you once more."

"I told you, lass, I'll never play against you again," he said as in his haste he pulled his shirt and his unbuttoned waistcoat together over his head. "But I'll give you what you wish anyway, with neither dice nor a card in sight. I can, you know, be powerfully obliging."

Gently he took her by the wrists and placed her palms on his bare chest. Her face turned serious as she tentatively touched him, her fingers brushing over the dark, curling hair.

"You've been hurt, haven't you," she said softly, "and often, too, from the look of it." She was running her fingertips across his lean, muscled torso with a tenderness that was exquisite torture to him, and hesitating over the paler ridges of old scars. "How lucky you must be to have survived so much!"

He remembered her concern for him earlier, her fear that he'd been killed. No one had feared for him like that for a long, long time. "Luckier still to be here with you."

But she didn't rise to the blatant compliment, her silver eyes still solemn as she explored his body, learning it, until he could bear no more and pulled her back into his arms. He didn't wish to frighten her, but his whole body was hot and ready for her, the tension growing tighter and tighter with every unabashed touch of her hands.

"You
will
drive me mad, Rosie," he whispered hoarsely as he swept his lips across her cheek to the soft, sensitive place below her ear. "Wicked, clever, little creature."

She shuddered with pleasure, her eyes closed and her head tipped back, the pulse throbbing in her pale throat. "It's you, Nick," she breathed. "You make me wanton. Bold and wanton and not at all like me. You and the moonlight and—and, oh, my, what you do…"

"Then go ahead and blame the moon, sweetheart," he whispered raggedly, "for it's never been like this for me, either."

Swiftly he eased the gingham shirt free from her breeches. Made for a boy, the breeches hung low on her hips, accentuating the flaring curve below her waist. The contrast was unexpectedly provocative, and the novelty wildly exciting because she wasn't shrouded in the endless layers of women's dress.

Gently his hand glided beneath the rough homespun to find her silky bare skin, and he felt her shiver as he traced the arcs of her ribs. At last he reached the high swell of her breast and she gasped as his hand caught and caressed the taut flesh, the crest tightening in an instant beneath his touch. With the same untutored boldness she arched against his hand, pressing her aching flesh into his palm as again she gasped, her breath harsh and uneven.

"Sweet Rose," he murmured, shoving the shirt higher as he caressed her. "My sweet, perfect Rose."

She moaned softly and twisted beneath the sensual fire he was fanning in her body, and as she did, something hard and jagged bumped against the back of his hand. He paused and frowned, puzzled.

"Oh, please, Nick, don't stop," she begged in a hoarse whisper as she twisted back toward him. "Please don't."

The thing swung into his hand again, and this time Nick caught it in his fingers. A hard, faceted oval, still warm where it had lain against her skin. Swearing softly to himself, he swept the loose-fitting shirt over her head, and she gasped again, this time from surprise, not pleasure, backing away and fanning her fingers to cover her bare breasts.

"Hell and damnation, Rose," he murmured, nearly speechless as he stared at her. "I'd no idea."

Framed by the scarlet hangings of the bed, her skin glowed ivory pale in the candlelight, her tangled hair midnight around her bare shoulders and the dark breeches hanging low on her hips. Like some sultan's houri, her nakedness was draped in jewels, blue sapphires in star-shaped gold settings and heavy strands of pearls that glowed against her flawless skin. Her fingers couldn't hide her breasts completely, soft and ripe and waiting again for his touch. Her silver eyes were clouded with passion, her small pink mouth swollen and stained darker by his kisses, and he had never seen anything more exotically, seductively beautiful in his life.

"My mother's jewels," she said. She shifted her hands higher over her breasts and the twin rows of bracelets cascaded, shimmering, down her wrists. "I couldn't leave them behind."

She couldn't leave the jewels, but she would have left him, without a parting word or regret, and the truth sliced at his heart before he could guard himself. He had always been the first to run away; he was never the one abandoned. She raised her chin, a small defiance he'd come to associate with her, and the candlelight caught the aquamarine ring on the ribbon around her neck. Her lord's ring, right where Nick had guessed it would be, the mark of the man she had chosen over him.

He would always be second, he would never be good enough for the ones he cared for most
.
…

"Was it that easy to decide, then?" he demanded, his pride lost in the raw, aching need to know for certain. "Are you so eager for that bastard's bed?"

Her cheeks flushed dark. "I—I have to marry him, Nick. My father—"

"The devil take your father!" His body was still hard as granite for her, frustration rising into anger. "If you're so hell-bent on leaving, then why are you here now? Why stay to torment me like this?"

"Don't make this out to be my fault, Nick!" she shot back at him, her own temper flaring to match his. Swiftly she retrieved her cast-off shirt from the floor, clutching it to her breasts. "You're the one who brought me to this dreadful place, stinking of tobacco and rum and harlot's scent! How could I be the one tormenting you?"

"Because, damnation, you are!" he thundered. "
You
are! Is that answer enough?"

Even as he spoke, he knew the words made no sense. From the look on her face he was sure she knew it too, and likely didn't care, either, and the angry silence between them stretched longer and longer.

From another room in the house came the high-pitched, giddy laugh of a woman who'd had too much to drink, and almost in answer a dog in the street barked a sleepy response. Slowly Nick realized that the other sound, the dull, heavy thud, was the racing of his own heart.

With a groan he closed his eyes. He couldn't seem to make his mind run straight, as it jumbled the black-and-white board of the draughts game with the rustle of coral-colored silk and the scents of violets and woman on linen sheets and her husky little laugh and the way her silver eyes would suddenly turn serious and solemn when she looked at him and the muffled flutter of an angel's wings as she lifted him clear of a sinking ship to save him for this. For this: rejection and despair and longing so sharp that he wondered how he'd bear it.

Lord help him, maybe he truly
was
mad.

He shook his head and looked to Rose, waiting, the shirt still crushed in her hands before her. Her shoulders drooped forlornly and her hair hung down on either side of her face.

"You made me feel different, Nick," she whispered, the tears there on the edge of her words. "That was all. Can you believe it? You never looked at me and saw Lily, the way Lord Eliot will. You saw only me."

She twisted and balled the crumpled shirt in her hands as she struggled not to weep. "I've no excuse for being here at all now, not after I swore I wouldn't be caught alone with you again. I'm weak, Nick, vastly, horribly weak. This time I cannot claim I'm tipsy, or that you've somehow forced me against my will because you haven't. All you did was make me feel beautiful, beautiful and clever and special, and for this one time—likely the only time—in my life, I wanted to believe it."

"Oh, Rosie," he murmured, touched to the quick by the depths of her misery. "Believe it, my dear, sweet lass, believe it because it's true."

And for him it was. This, then, he could give her, even if she'd take nothing else from him. What did his own wretched faults and weaknesses matter beside her sorrow? With rare tenderness he took her by the hand and drew her once again into his arms, her back to his chest and his arm possessively around her narrow waist as he turned her toward the mirror.

"Look, Rosie, and trust your eyes," he said as he pulled the shirt from her hands and dropped it to the floor. Gently he eased her hands from her breasts, letting
her see her own beauty without shame. Her nipples were already pink and tight
with longing, and he guided her hips back against his so she could feel his own
arousal, hard and ready. Standing before him like this she scarcely reached his
shoulder, and Nick was struck again by how small and delicately made she was,
how pale and untouched she looked against the dark hair and old scars on his
chest. "You're a beautiful woman, sweetheart, finer, rarer, more precious than
any of those jewels."

But instead of looking at her own image, her gaze was raised higher, to his face, her eyes filled with wonder. "I'd rather see you," she said breathlessly. "You're as good as you are handsome, Black Nick. No wonder Lily wishes to keep you safe."

She twisted gracefully against him, raising her arms around his neck to draw his mouth to hers, and as she did he caught her around the waist and pulled her with him onto the bed. She kissed him feverishly as he rolled her beneath him, the fire that had burned between them earlier now sparking even hotter. Impatiently he swept the necklaces aside, bending his head to kiss the eager, pink crests of her breasts as she twined her restless fingers into his hair and arched her aching flesh against his mouth. He slid his hand along her flat little belly, unfastening the fall of her breeches and shoving them down over her hips, her skin damp and glowing against the scarlet coverlet.

"Little Rose," he murmured. "Sweet, perfect little White Rose."

He kissed her again, taking her first gasp of wonder into his mouth as his fingers slipped through the black curls to her womanly center. Already she was wet and swollen, her body easing the way for his touch, and she shuddered, writhing beneath him as he urged her fire brighter. He wanted, needed, nothing more than to bury himself in her, to find himself in all she offered and forget what he would lose. Desperately he tore at the buttons on his breeches, only half aware of the flutter of white at the head of the bed before them.

"This isn't right, Nick," said Lily softly. "You know in your heart it isn't."

His head whipped up, his fingers stilled in midcaress. Lily was sitting cross-legged like a Turk on the pillows at the top of the bed, her wings behind her echoing the curved headboard and her hands draped across her bent knees. She sighed sadly and shook her head.

"I've kept my distance," she continued, "hoping you would see the error of this path yourself, but you are still in too many ways a hugely stubborn man, determined to trot directly to the very gates of Hades and pound on the door to be let in."

Why now? he thought wildly. Why in blazes did Lily have to come to him now? His blood was pounding in his veins, his body primed and poised for release, and from the little cries that tore from Rose's throat and the flushed sheen of passion that colored her breasts, he doubted she'd any more wish to be interrupted than he himself.

"Damnation," he rasped as he glared at Lily, "I thought you wished to make me happy."

Beneath him Rose's eyes flew open, wounded and uncomprehending. "I thought I was making you happy, Nick, truly," she whispered uncertainly, breathing hard. "But if somehow I've done something wrong—"

"Nay, sweetheart, not a blessed thing," murmured Nick quickly, sweeping his mouth down on hers to reassure her. Once again his fingers found her rhythm, and he took her soft, startled cry of pleasure.