U pstairs, Kate dried herself off, examined her ruined chemise, retrieved her crumpled dress and put it over a chair, and finally pulled on a dressing gown that hung against the wall. It was silk, and felt like an exotic caress against her skin. She wound the cord twice around her waist to keep it closed.
Still Gabriel didn’t come.
She picked up the journal on Ionian treasures, leafed through it, and was amused to find a learned and aggressive letter from Gabriel featured in the notes. She picked up Aretino and put him down again immediately. Those engravings seemed to have nothing to do with the incandescent tenderness with which Gabriel had touched her.
And, like that, she realized that she’d made a decision.
She meant to sleep with Gabriel. She was greedy, mad with greed if the truth be told. She wanted this—him—for herself, to make up for the seven years in which not a soul touched her in a loving way.
She would give him her virginity, and then leave for London. Her legs trembled at the thought, and she felt her cheeks warming. It was the only thing she had wanted ferociously in years.
The door opened, and Gabriel walked through. There was something leaden in his face, in his eyes. “What happened?” she asked, from across the room. And then, walking to stand before him: “Gabriel, what happened? Are you all right?”
He looked down at her, eyes full of an emotion that she couldn’t read. “Do you know what I’ve been doing in the ballroom, Kate? Do you have any idea?”
She put a hand on his coat, wanting to feel the solid warmth of him in light of the chilly rage in his voice. “Dancing.”
“Not just dancing,” he said, precisely. “I’ve been dancing with my future wife, Tatiana.”
Kate never thought that pain could rip through one’s heart like a wound, but now she knew it could. She had managed to forget about Tatiana, to pretend that Gabriel was simply . . . elsewhere. Her whole body tensed and froze, just as it had when she had entered her mother’s room and seen a body with no spirit.
Luckily Gabriel kept talking. “I sat with her at dinner. She has dimples and speaks five languages. We danced the first dance. She is an exquisite dancer. I asked her to waltz.”
“I see,” Kate said unsteadily, reaching up to push her hair behind her shoulders.
“You don’t see ,” he said in a savage tone. “You don’t know enough about bloody society to see . Waltzing with a woman means taking her in your arms and circling the floor, leg to leg.”
“It sounds very intimate,” Kate managed, proud of the control in her voice.
“Very,” Gabriel said. “If you and I—” He turned away and spoke to the black window. “If you and I ever waltzed, everyone in the room would know we were lovers. You can’t conceal anything, not with a woman in your arms and a waltz playing.”
Kate was confused and getting a little angry. It didn’t feel right that Gabriel was pushing his betrothal in her face. “It is likely not proper for me to offer congratulations.”
He swung around and stared at her, his eyes like black coals. “Do you dare to offer me congratulations?”
Kate smoothed the front of the silk dressing gown she wore. “I should . . . I should return to my chambers.”
He was on her like a predator. “You will not leave me!”
And then she knew what the emotion in his eyes was. It was despair, and rage—and love. Love. “Gabriel,” she said, with a little gasp.
“You dare—” he began again.
“Hush,” she said, putting a hand to his cheek. “Hush.”
He swallowed.
“I probably wouldn’t love you so much if you were not the man that you are.”
His throat worked furiously. “You—”
“Love you.” She nodded. “With all my heart.” She brought his face to hers, and gave him the sweetest kiss of her life. “You are mine,” she whispered. “In some way, in some part of my heart, you will always be with me.”
With a groan, he folded her into his arms. She wrapped hers around his waist, catching the faint odor of his orange blossom soap, together with a spicy wildness that was Gabriel’s alone.
After a while, he stirred. She put a hand over his mouth before he could speak. His arms slid from around her shoulders and she stepped back, tearless, head high.
“You cannot marry me. You will marry Tatiana because she is chosen for you, but more than that, Gabriel, because you deserve someone who speaks five languages, and who dances like an angel, and brings a king’s ransom with her.”
“If the world were different—” His voice broke.
“It isn’t,” she said steadily. “The world is what it is, and you have a whole castle to feed and clothe and look after. Not to mention a lion.”
He didn’t smile.
“You will never turn your back on your responsibilities,” she told him. “You are not your brother, Gabriel.”
“But for you,” he said achingly.
“I would rather love you now,” she said fiercely, “than take you as a man broken by turning your back on your family.”
“You are a rather frightening woman,” he said, a moment later. But his eyes had lost that wild despair.
She put her hands on the knot holding the dressing gown together. “What do you call this garment?” she inquired.
“A banyan.”
“It is rather hot.” She slowly untied the knot. “You see, Gabriel, while you were downstairs making a decision of one kind, I came to a decision of my own.”
He looked, rather unwillingly it seemed, from her hands to her face. “You did?”
“Whatever happens with Tatiana,” she said gently, “doesn’t matter here, not tonight. Tonight is for us. Tomorrow is for the world, for Tatiana, for dowries, and all the rest. I shall come to your ball with Algie, and then I shall travel to London with Henry. I believe that I shan’t go back to Mariana at all. There is nothing for me there, though it took me years to realize it.”
“Henry will take care of you.”
She smiled. “Yes, she will. She fell in love with my father, you know. Truly fell in love with him. But he married my mother instead. So she lived her life without him. And it was a happy life.”
Gabriel made a sudden violent movement. “I don’t want to even think about the prospect of you with someone else.”
That was just like a man, to Kate’s mind. He talked easily of Tatiana, but the parallel, her future spouse, was not such a straightforward subject. “Henry sees me as the daughter she never had,” she said. “You will be here, and I shall be in London. But tonight . . .” She untied the cord and let it slip through her fingers. It fell to the floor with a gentle slap.
“Tonight I want you, all of you.”
“What are you saying?” His face was dark with hunger.
She let the banyan ease apart, its silk falling to the side to reveal one breast.
“I’m giving you my virginity, such as it is,” she said simply. “It’s a gift, Gabriel, and one I have the right to bestow on whom I wish. It does not mean that I won’t climb in a coach after the ball and leave this castle, because I will.”
He was shaking his head, so she let the other side of the banyan slide open, freeing both of her breasts to his gaze.
“I, and I alone, can bestow this gift,” she told him, drawing a hand over the curve of her breast. “It will not change anything between us. I expect you to use a French letter.”
To her relief, the steel in his jaw eased a bit. “You sound like the abbess of a particularly strict brothel.”
“Not a very complimentary comparison,” she said, unable to stop her grin, “but I’ll forgive you.” The banyan fell down, to her elbows. “Do we have an agreement, Gabriel? Do we have tonight?”
“I shouldn’t,” he said raggedly. “As a gentleman—”
“You’re not a gentleman tonight,” she reminded him. “You’re a man, Gabriel. And I’m a woman. With no titles, or society, or nonsense between us.”
“You’re killing me,” he said, snatching her to him so suddenly that the breath left her lungs. “You unman me.”
From what she could feel, that was definitely not the case.
“Really?” she asked, her voice a provocative thread of sound. Then she deliberately rubbed against him. Her wrapper had given up the fight and fallen to the ground; there was something delicious about the contrast between her nakedness and his formal attire.
Not that she had long to enjoy it.
With a muffled groan, he fell back a step, his eyes eating her alive, and began wrenching off his clothes. Buttons flew; his cravat skidded across the desk and landed on the little pile of pottery fragments; his breeches disappeared while she was still absorbed with his chest.
“You’re very muscled,” she said, striving for a casual tone.
“Hunting,” he said.
“Don’t tell me you’ve been providing all the fowl that we eat at every meal.”
His mouth quirked. “Hardly. Witness the gift of my mother, who kindly left me a Star of India emerald whose price will keep the castle going for another six months, even given the extravagances of this weekend.”
She sobered, drew closer, and put a finger out to his shoulder. “Gabriel?” Her whisper had an aching hunger to it, and he responded immediately, scooping her up and striding over to the bed.
He put her down and then, without further ado, swung a leg over her and lowered himself, slowly, onto her body.
Kate let out an involuntary squeak at the weight of him, the heat, the curious feeling of a muscled body against hers. He didn’t move, just waited there, elbows braced on the side of her head.
She opened her eyes and met his. “Aren’t you going to . . .”
“What?” he asked, obviously trying to look innocent but failing.
Kate licked her lips. She didn’t expect to have to instruct him . “You know,” she insisted.
“No, you tell me,” he said silkily. “You had all the time to study Aretino while I was downstairs.”
“I didn’t look at that book,” she said, wiggling around to get herself more comfortable. He was no lightweight, after all. A strange look crossed his face. “What?”
“That—feels good,” he said, a hoarse little gasp escaping his lips.
“Ah,” she said, pleased. She wiggled again, testing how his hardness fit into the curve of her thighs. “Would you like to know what I did while you were downstairs?”
“What did you do?” He had lowered his head and was licking her collarbone. The rasp of his tongue sent a little frisson over her nerves.
“I didn’t look at the Aretino, but I read the journal about Ionian antiquities,” she said, running her fingers down his shoulder, slipping to his broad back, dancing down the line of muscle there. “I read your letter to the editor. It was very intelligent. Very argumentative too. I thought you needn’t have called the author a numbskull. Or said that he was writing nothing more than piffle.”
“Kate.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
His head slipped lower and his mouth closed over her nipple.
She didn’t shut up. She couldn’t; when he took her nipple into his mouth, she gave out a startled cry. It felt as if a wire snapped inside; as if she were a puppet, her body arched toward his, feeling soft, warm, and desperate. Suddenly the erection pressing between her thighs felt . . . different. “Gabriel!”
He sucked harder, and she forgot the words that formed in her mind before they could reach her lips. She clutched his shoulders, but he pulled away from her. Before Kate could collect herself, he braced himself on one elbow, freeing his right hand, which slid down her leg to—
There.
“I don’t think that’s—” Kate managed.
But his fingers were dancing in her curls, and he lowered his head to her other breast, and she couldn’t answer, she couldn’t speak.
Sparks started racing up her legs, and she writhed, her hands clutching him, desperately running down his arms, over his chest. “I want,” she panted.
“What?”
He sounded entirely too lazy, too calm, and too in control. His voice penetrated her brain and she opened her eyes. She was just lying on her back like a ninny and letting him pleasure her.
Ignoring (with effort), what he was doing with his fingers, she started kissing his cheek. When he wouldn’t raise his head, she licked him like a cat, just the way he’d licked her, and purred when he shuddered at her caress.
Finally he raised his head, so she licked the edge of his lips, and then nibbled at them, because the idea occurred to her, and they looked delicious.
Gabriel put up no objection.
She let her hands run down his back and over the curve of his arse, discovering the muscles, exploring hills and valleys and the small dimples that marked his left and right side.
She could feel him stirring against her, and it seemed to her that it was likely a good sign.
“Kiss me,” she commanded, licking his lips again. “Please.”
He covered her mouth fiercely, and her arms flew back up to his neck, as if only holding him tightly would keep her steady in the firestorm of their kiss. Long drugging moments later, he broke off the kiss, only to say, “I want to make this last all night, but Kate . . .”
“What?”
“If you don’t stop rubbing against me like that, this is going to be a very short and disappointing first encounter.”
“I like it,” she said, smiling up at him and wiggling. “It makes me feel . . . warm. And soft. And”—her cheeks turned rosy—“wet.”
He framed her face with his hands, brushing her lips with his, and suddenly she felt that part of him, nudging against her.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Please.” Everything in her body strained, as if all her concentration had gone to that fiery place between her legs.
His eyes were black with desire. “I need to put on a French letter, as commanded,” he said, grabbing something from the bedside table. And then, a moment later . . .
He was larger and hotter than she would have imagined. He slid partway into her, and stopped, whispered something that she couldn’t understand.
She drove her hands into his hair and arched toward him. “It’s not enough,” she panted, and heard a groan that was almost a laugh . . . and then he drove forward again.
She screamed, but not because of pain. It was the feeling of being owned, possessed and taken, the sense of another person, not just any person, but Gabriel, Gabriel .
He pulled back. “Does it hurt?” he asked. “Talk to me, Kate. We don’t have to continue. We can—”
“Please,” she panted.
“Please stop?” He was hanging above her, his jaw tight, his eyes black with passion. “Does it hurt too much, love?”
“I can’t—”
“You can’t take it,” he said, withdrawing even more. “I understand. I’ve been told I’m too large before.”
“Damn it,” Kate cried, finally finding her voice. “Come back, Gabriel. Come—come now!” And she reached down and pulled him fiercely toward her.
His smile flared with pure wild joy. “That’s my Kate,” he crooned, and he stroked forward.
She arched her back instinctively, coming to meet him. He was too full, too big, too perfect. It was the very edge of tolerable. “Again,” she gasped, willing her body to accept.
Obligingly, he performed.
And again.
And again, again, again, again, again. He pumped into her until his breath was nothing more than a hoarse rasp, and sweat dampened both their bodies.
“Sweetheart,” Gabriel said, “you have to, I need you to . . .” but he lost his voice and she didn’t know how to follow the heat and the madness where her body wanted to go. Until . . .
Until she discovered that if she tightened . . . if she squeezed . . .
He let out a hoarse bellow, for one thing. Every time.
And she . . . it made flames lick down her legs and up her middle, and she arched her back again, welcoming the joy and the wildness, the sweat and the pleasure, and then . . . there it was.
Wave after wave of heat crashing through her body, until she cried with wanton pleasure, dug her fingers into him, and hung on.