Chapter Twenty-two
As soon as her soft, red lips met his palm, those lips he’d longed for in one fevered dream after another, Julian knew he was lost. Cam and Ellie, Jane, even Colin—they all faded from his mind the instant her mouth touched his skin.
She brought his hand to her cheek and held it there. Her eyes found his, a question in their bottomless depths, but he didn’t give her a chance to ask it. There wasn’t any need. They both knew the answer—they’d known since that night more than a year ago when he found her waiting for him under a sky full of stars. So he simply brought his other hand up, cradled her face in both his palms, and touched his mouth to hers.
She sighed, long and low. He caught the soft exhalation on his tongue, tasted it. Sweet. Both familiar and new at once, her taste, like a hazy melody teasing at the edges of his consciousness, one he thought he remembered until he heard it again and found he’d forgotten how beautiful it was, how much it moved him.
“Stay, Julian.” She slid her hands into the opening of his shirt to brush her fingertips over the nape of his neck. “Stay with me tonight.”
Julian shivered at her touch. Ah God, nothing had changed. Her most innocent caress still had the power to send him to his knees, to make him want to stay there. He would. Tonight. He’d stay with her, and he’d love her, and he’d wait to think about tomorrow when it came.
He drew back to look into her eyes. “Did you think I would leave you?” He stroked his thumb down her cheek and brushed it across her lower lip, his groin tightening at the hint of wet warmth he found there.
She pressed her lips to the pad of his thumb, then lifted his fingers one by one to kiss them each in turn. “Kiss me again.”
He took her lips with a groan. She opened eagerly for him and he surged inside, desperate to taste her everywhere. She met his strokes, her tongue as insistent as his, her mouth wet and open and so hot and sweet he feared he’d spend from just kissing her, before he could even tear off his breeches.
He should have known it would be like this. He never could stop at a taste with Charlotte. Her skin, her sighs and murmurs made him ravenous, and within seconds he was kissing her deeply, his tongue searching every corner of her mouth, the shell of her ear, her neck. His hands were rough in her hair, tugging as he sucked at the pulse point at her throat. God, he could stay here forever with her pulse fluttering wildly under his darting tongue, her breasts pressed against his chest, his hand hot against the smooth silk of her stockings, sliding higher, higher, over the bare skin above her garter, so close now, close to that heaven between her thighs.…
She made the tiniest movement, almost a flinch. Julian paused, his hand going still. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. It’s nothing. Just a bruise from the saddle.”
A bruise, on the tender white skin of her thigh. Where else was she bruised, hurt? He pulled back slightly and let his gaze move over her. She’d lost her hat somewhere during her mad dash for the forest. Most of her hair had come loose, but a few pins were still tangled haphazardly in the long dark strands, and one of them had scratched her cheek. Some buttons had been torn from her riding habit, and her hands…
“Let me see your hands, Charlotte.”
She hesitated, but he took her wrists and turned her hands up. Her gloves had protected her from being scraped raw by the reins, but the tender skin at the heart of her palms had already begun to swell and purple with bruises.
He pressed his face against her neck and inhaled. Her skin was so soft here, the curve where her neck met her shoulder so fragrant. She might have broken her neck today. Her skin might be cold by now, with no pulse there for his tongue to caress, and he was so desperate to get between her thighs he’d nearly forgotten—
“Julian?”
He wanted her, so much his blood scorched him as it rushed through his veins, but though her body had survived today’s ordeal, she was fragile still, with wounds and scars beneath her skin. She’d lost so much—everything, even herself—and now he wanted to take more from her.
He traced a gentle finger over the swollen skin of her palm. The bruises would fade, her body would heal, but what of the lacerations inside her, under her skin? The deep gashes in her heart, her soul—would they heal, or would they bleed forever?
“Julian? Are you all right?”
He raised her hands to his lips and pressed a soft kiss into each of her palms. “Yes, sweetheart. I just want to slow down.”
Flesh and bone, a body—it was alive or it was dead, and nothing in between. Not like a heart, which could keep beating even after everything else that made a person who they were was gone.
If you touched a body with love, could you heal a heart?
“Julian?”
Charlotte was looking up at him with such big, uncertain eyes he couldn’t resist taking her mouth again, but then he set her gently away from him. She made a protesting noise in her throat and clutched at his shirt to bring him back to her, but he captured her hands and lowered them gently to the coverlet. “I won’t leave you, Charlotte. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.”
He rose, crossed the room, and locked the door. When he turned back, she’d moved to the middle of the bed, her knees curled under her. God, he was going to bare every inch of her, slowly, kiss each bit of creamy flesh as it was revealed, worship her with his hands and his mouth and pray it was enough to heal her heart.
“How slowly do you wish to go?” She bit her lip. “That is, do you think you might come back to the bed?” Her cheeks heated in a furious blush.
Julian couldn’t help his grin. She was part temptress, part innocent, with her teeth caught in that plump red lip and that blush. “I think…” He tugged off his boots and tossed them into a corner. “Nothing could stop me”—he pulled his shirt over his head and let it drop to the floor—“from coming to you in that bed.”
“Oh, my.”
Her eyes were like the stroke of a hand against his bare skin as she watched him approach the bed. She crawled across the coverlet to the edge and wrapped her arms around his waist, sighing with pleasure as he pulled the remaining pins from her hair.
He caught his breath as the dark tresses spilled into his hands. “I dreamed about you like this, with your hair loose in a cloud around you.”
She laid her cheek against his belly and traced a finger around his navel. “So much fuss is made over a woman’s figure, but a man’s body is just as beautiful. Or is it only your body I want to taste?” She pressed her open mouth against him, her tongue following the path her finger had taken to lick delicately around his navel.
Julian threw his head back with a gasp, his hands moving instinctively to clasp her head and hold her to him, to feel the wet warmth of her mouth on every hot inch of his skin. “Charlotte, wait.”
She slid a finger under the waistband of his breeches. “I can’t wait any longer, Julian.”
He looked down at her, at her earnest, beautiful face and his resolve slipped at the desire he saw there. “I want this to be for you—”
He wrapped his hand around the long length of her hair and tried to ease her head gently away from him, but she curved one hand around his hip to draw him closer and gazed up at him, her dark eyes luminous, her face flushed. “There is no you and me. Not now. There’s only us.”
For him there was only her, and God she was lovely, kneeling on the bed before him with his hands buried in her hair, her red lips open and eager and her fingers just a little clumsy as she unbuttoned his falls. He brushed a few dark tendrils back from her face and curved a hand over her cheek. “Ah sweet, I just want—”
She looked up at him, an impish grin on her lips. “Don’t say you want to slow down again.”
A defeated groan slipped from his lips. “Men’s bodies are greedy, love. I’m not sure I can slow down now.”
She gripped his waist to hold him still and kissed her way down his stomach until she was dangerously close to the edge of his breeches. “I don’t want you to slow down. I want you to be greedy.”
His hard length strained against his falls, demanding her hands, her mouth. He looked down at her with heavy-lidded eyes, at her plump lips curved in a secret half smile. God, he knew that smile, and his cock jerked with anticipation at the memory of what followed it.
And then she pushed his breeches aside and her mouth was on him, hot and wet and perfect.
“Ah God, Charlotte.” Julian’s knees buckled at the exquisite torment of her lips sliding over his aching flesh. His hips moved helplessly as her slick tongue circled and teased. She took him deeper with each of his panting breaths and loved him for long, hot moments, her mouth sweet agony, until Julian felt the delicious tightening in his lower belly and drew away from her with a groan.
She grasped his hips to bring him back, but he resisted. “No, sweet. I want to be inside you.” He’d waited for this moment with her, dreamed of sinking into her soft, welcoming body, her arms tight around him and her breathless cries in his ears. Now it was here. For tonight she was his, and he would savor it.
He shucked his breeches, climbed onto the bed, and went to work on the buttons of her riding jacket. “How is it you’re still clothed?”
“Am I? I hadn’t noticed. I did notice you’re not.” She smoothed her hands over his shoulders with an appreciative sigh, then teased her fingertips down the arch of his spine.
“No, you don’t.” He tossed her jacket over the side of the bed, then sent her riding skirt sailing after it so she wore only her thin muslin riding shirt and underclothes. “It’s my turn to play with you.” He nudged her onto her back and stretched out on his side beside her.
Her eyes went wide. “Play with me? How—”
“Like this.” He turned her face toward his and nipped lightly at her lips, his tongue darting and teasing until her breaths came short and fast. “Yes.” He took the lobe of her ear in his teeth and bit gently. “I want you breathless.”
She gave a shaky laugh. “I am.”
With a single tug he released the tie at the front of her shirt and slipped his hand inside the loose material to caress her breast. “I want you hard and aching for me, here.” He ran a thumb across her nipple until it strained for more; then he rolled the tender bud between his thumb and forefinger. She cried out and the high, needy sound shot straight to his cock.
No. Slowly. He would work her slowly, build her up until she was mindless, begging for release. He held her hips flush against the bed and took her other nipple in his mouth, biting it gently. “Do you need more, sweetheart?” She didn’t answer, but writhed against the bed as he continued to stroke her. “I think that’s a yes.”
He moved to her other breast and circled her nipple with his thumb, his touch slow, feather-light, torturous, then bent his head and took the dark pink bud into his mouth to suckle her, his lips gentle at first, then more insistent, his tongue darting roughly over the tender peak as his hunger grew.
He drew back to gaze at her, at her dark pink nipples so hard and tight against the transparent white muslin, wet from his mouth. He blew on the peaks and watched them tighten even further, but his gaze darted to her face when she whimpered in response. Her hips rose from the bed, tempting him to slide a hand down her belly and run his fingers through her damp curls.
She cried out again and her back arched sharply. “Please, Julian.”
God, he was greedy, greedy and desperate, because with that one breathless plea all his plans to tease her evaporated in the heat of his own desire. He tore off her shirt and chemise and fumbled with her drawers until he slid them off at last and she lay bare before him.
“Charlotte.” He pressed a lingering kiss between her breasts. He could feel her heart throbbing against his lips. “You don’t know, you can’t know how lovely you are to me, how much I want you.”
Her fingers twisted in his hair. “No more waiting, Julian. I want you, too. I’m ready.”
He groaned as his fingers found the weeping center of her desire and circled the tiny nub with his thumb, once, again—
She let out a strangled cry and urged herself against his hand. “Julian, now.”
“Let me just… I don’t want to hurt you, sweetheart.” He held her open, his thumb caressing still in slow circles as he pressed one finger inside her, and God, she was ready, her damp flesh yielding, her body melting for him.
“Yes, love. Now.” He came over her and kneeled between her thighs, gasping as her hand reached out to caress his cock. He rocked into her fist, unable to stop himself, but then she pressed him against her damp heat and he surged inside her with one deep, hard stroke.
She sank her fingernails into his back as he began to move, his neck corded with the effort to keep from plunging wildly into her like some untried schoolboy with his first woman. Sweat broke out across his brow and his breath came in harsh, panting gasps, but he kept his strokes deep and steady for her.
“Oh, yes. Oh please, Julian.”
She wrapped her legs around his waist and rose to meet him with every thrust, pleading with him, begging him, her sighs and moans driving him so mad with desire it took everything in him to hold on, to wait for her. “Come for me, sweetheart.”
At last she cried out and her body convulsed around him and ah, God, the sweetness of her, the beauty of her… He couldn’t get enough. His back arched and he buried his harsh groan in the soft skin of her neck as his pleasure took him.
They were both panting when he rolled to his side and gathered her into his arms. She moved to lay her head on his chest and he held her against him, both of them silent, because if they didn’t move or speak, tomorrow might not find them, and they could stay here forever, where there were no doubts and no unanswered questions.
He came awake a while later, his eyes opening to a dark, quiet room…somewhere. His chamber at Bellwood? No, that was a place of nightmares, and there were no nightmares here. Here was deep, even breathing, a hand on his stomach, and something soft and warm against his neck.
Charlotte.
She was asleep, her cheek pillowed on his chest. He tightened his arms around her and relaxed back against the bed. What had woken him?
A dream.
Not Colin this time. Not a nightmare, but something so sweet he stayed as still as he could to hold on to it, because in this dream he could touch one of the tiny glimmers of light pinned to the midnight blue sky. He could touch a star.
Charlotte. In the dream he traced her smile so the shape of it would be always on his fingertips—more than a memory. A part of his skin.
Julian. I knew you’d come.
Did you hope I would?
You know I did. You already know.
And he did know. He’s always known. He was born knowing.
The next time he woke there was the faintest trace of light in the eastern sky. He rose from the bed, tugged on his breeches, threw his shirt over his head and wandered over to look out the window.
Tomorrow had found them. His dream from the night before grew fainter with every finger of sun curling over the horizon, and in its place…questions.
Questions with no answers.
Jane. He was betrothed to her. He couldn’t change his mind now without loss of honor, and if he did, he’d lose something even more precious, too. His one chance to make amends to Colin. Jane would be left alone, with no protection—
“You’re dressed.”
Julian turned away from the window. Charlotte was propped against the pillows, her eyes sleepy, her dark curls spilling wildly over her bare shoulders.
If ever there was a moment he wanted to keep forever, this was it.
“Not really.” He crossed the room and sat down next to her on the bed. He would leave soon, before he couldn’t make himself leave at all, but not now. Not yet. “I can’t properly be said to be dressed in this shirt.” He stuck his fingers into the rip and wiggled them, hoping to amuse her, to see her smile.
She didn’t. Instead her face went alarmingly pale. “It could have been so much worse.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“If you’d fallen, I never would have forgiven myself.”
No. Not this. Not with him. “Don’t do this, Charlotte.”
“You could have broken your arm, or your leg. You could have broken your neck—”
“If I had, it would have been my own fault.” He took her chin in his hand, stunned at the fierce tenderness inside him. “I’m a grown man. I made the decision to come after you, to grab your reins.”
Her gaze darted away from his. “You came because you had to come. I was reckless and foolish. What else could you do but follow me? I gave you no choice.”
“No. Look at me.” He waited until her gaze met his. “I made my own choices, and so did Hadley.”
She was quiet for a moment, then, “You mean to say it’s not my fault he died.”
“Ah, sweetheart. A tragedy like that is no one’s fault, no matter what Hadley’s mother said. It just…is. You must know he never would have blamed you.”
“No. He wouldn’t have. But I blame myself.”
The break in her voice cleaved his heart in two. “You have to make peace with it. Don’t you see, Charlotte? Nothing will ever be right again until you forgive yourself.”
She curled her fingers into his palm. “How do you know so much about forgiveness?”
Because I’ve denied it to myself, just as you have.
That hopelessness in the face of unbearable pain, that crushing guilt—he knew it as well as she did, and he couldn’t outrun his demons any more than Charlotte could. He’d realized that yesterday when he’d flown across the grounds after her, his panicked heartbeats echoing in his head as she wobbled in her saddle, one breath away from being crushed under her horse’s hooves.
He drew a deep breath and met her eyes. “You were right all along, Charlotte. I’m no hero, despite what all of London thinks. The soldiers I dragged from the battlefield to the field hospital? I left someone else behind.”
She said nothing, only squeezed his hand.
“My best friend,” he said after a moment. “Colin Hibbert. He was killed by a French Dragoon—the sword passed clean through his chest and out his back. If I’d been there, I might have done something, fought beside him, but I was too busy being the hero. I left him to die alone on the battlefield.”
Tears rushed to her eyes, and Jesus, it was bitter to see her cry tears for him after all she’d had to bear. Tears he didn’t deserve.
“You blame yourself for his death.”
He ran a weary hand down his face. “I do. Or I did. I hardly know anymore.”
“Young men die in war, Julian. They die, and it just…is,” she whispered, giving his words back to him. “It’s no one’s fault.”
Fault, blame—the words felt meaningless to him now, even selfish. What did it matter who was at fault? It didn’t change anything. “Colin’s dead either way, and I’m still London’s conquering hero.”
He heard the bitterness in his voice, and she did too, because something flickered in her dark eyes. She reached for him, but after a breathless moment he gently pulled away from her. “My betrothed.” He cleared his throat. “Her name is Jane. Jane Hibbert. She’s Colin’s sister. Aside from an elderly aunt she’s alone, and I—”
“You have a chance to make amends.”
“Yes.”
She let out a long sigh, then reached out and took his hand. “Julian? You weren’t being a hero when you saved those soldiers.”
He flinched. It was true, but it hurt like the devil to hear her say it. He looked away. “What was I, then?”
She turned his face back toward hers. “Don’t you know? Don’t you recognize yourself? When you saw those men struck down, you couldn’t have behaved in any way other than you did. In that moment you were, down to your soul, just who you are. You weren’t a hero that day—you were more than that. You were Julian.”
Her faith in him, her kindness, after all he’d said to her, all he’d done—it shamed him. His throat went tight and he reached blindly for her. She opened her arms to him and drew him down beside her, touched her lips to his forehead, his cheeks, his eyelids, and he didn’t think of Jane, or what he owed to Colin. He thought only of Charlotte, of finding her mouth with his so they both could know what forgiveness felt like.
They woke much later. She was cradled in his arms, her back pressed to his chest, their legs entwined. He tightened his arm around her waist and cupped his hand over her belly. “Charlotte? Will you let me take you to Bellwood?”
She hesitated, then threaded her fingers through his. “Yes.”
There was more to say, but he didn’t say it. He buried his face in her hair, inhaled her sweet lemon scent, and he couldn’t even remember what it was.