The Wrong Way to Catch a Rake, page 24
‘The eighth wonder of the world, sweetheart. Watching you come.’
‘That’s silly. And I’m so selfish. I should have waited for you but suddenly I was already there.’
‘How can you be selfish when you’ve given me the most precious gift I could dream of? It only makes me want you more.’
She traced his cheek with her fingers, words bubbling inside her. She wondered if the next time they would escape her. She seemed to lose herself so much in those moments. She wanted to lose herself...find herself... And him.
She let her fingers roam downwards. Now that the ache of need that had been chasing her for days had calmed there was a different kind of pleasure in exploring him. In feeling the way his muscles tensed at her touch, his breathing becoming shallow, his eyelids lowering. She touched her tongue to her lips and his gaze followed, turning darker, his own lips parting. It felt so marvellous to control him like this, to feel her pull on him. She looked down to his erection.
‘How much do you need me, Dominic?’ she murmured, returning his question to him even as she remembered how desperate she’d felt when those words coursed through her. He shook his head as if to fight that pull.
‘Far, far too much for my peace of mind, Phoebe. What the hell am I saying? I haven’t had any peace of mind or body for weeks now...’ He sucked in his breath as her hand closed around his erection. ‘Christ, that feels so damn good. Tighter.’
She obliged, then softened her hold, caressing the length of his shaft with her palm as she watched him struggle against the current of his needs. She closed her hand around him again. Tight. His eyes closed and he surged against her hand.
‘Damn you, Phoebe. Don’t you disappear on me again.’
She pulled him down against her, feeling the shiver of his unravelling control everywhere their bodies touched. This was a different kind of pleasure—possessive, powerful, a strength in giving something she hadn’t realised she possessed. She revelled in it as much as in her own pleasure.
‘I love your weight on me, Dominic. Your heat. I love watching your eyes turn dark with need.’
‘Phoebe...’ Her name was a long groan, which turned into a hissed breath as he settled between her legs, his erection pressing against her damp heat. ‘Hell, I... I need to protect you.’
It took her a moment to realise what he was referring to and for a moment she was so tempted to take that risk. He raised himself a little, his chest heaving, his voice tight, almost accusing.
‘No. I want you to choose to be with me, not be trapped into it.’
She nodded, a little frightened by a shadow behind those words. She did not want to think beyond tonight. Not yet. But she let him bring the box and when he was ready he stroked her face and kissed her fear away and replaced it with a whole new form of tension.
When he entered her, vivid pleasure filled her as well. That he was hers, that he wanted her, that he cared... That he... She pushed those half-formed thoughts away and moved with him, her hands caressing and scraping at his back, pulling his head to hers to kiss him with all the love and fear that felt as if it would explode inside her. When he climaxed he called out her name with a long, hoarse groan and she took his weight with fierce joy as he sank down on her.
As she slid with him into exhaustion her last thought was—this is right.
For the first time in her life she knew absolutely that something was right.
* * *
It was the coolest, most silent hour of the night when she felt him shift and she woke as he raised himself above her, his eyes dilated and dark. The moon was already sinking, now directly outside the ornate window. It cast silvery shadows along the taut muscles of his arms, making him shimmer like a mystical being.
A shiver of fear coursed through her. These dark hours of the night were dangerous, especially when she couldn’t hide behind the fog of lust and heat that had completely enveloped her earlier. She wasn’t afraid of him, but of this. This strange power that seemed only to grow between them. Of the look on his face that she’d never seen except when he looked at her. She was afraid because she wanted it so badly to mean this man was now part of her... The thought of him slipping away, her little universe shrinking back to her carefully set perimeters... It was unthinkable.
He touched his palm to her cheek, brushing the pad of his thumb under her eye. She hadn’t even realised a treacherous tear had sneaked out. She closed her eyes to shut him out. She could cope with disasters; she didn’t know how to cope with dreams.
‘Look at me, Phoebe.’ His words were tight, accusing. She swallowed and opened her eyes.
He gave a brief nod and continued.
‘I know the smart thing is to wait for morning and good counsel so we can work through this like sensible adults, but I don’t want to. Especially not now you finally know the truth about me and vice versa. This is utterly new territory for me, but if there is one thing I know it’s that I’m not letting you go. I can’t let you go. If I have to follow you about like a damn lackey, that is what I will do. You do know that, don’t you?’
‘I said I was willing to...to continue like this.’
He shook his head. ‘This isn’t enough. I want more than an affair where we share a bed when our paths happen to cross. I want our paths woven together, Phoebe. I want to be with you and discover everything about your brilliant mind and your addictive body. I want to marry you and live with you...’ He broke off as if alarmed by his own words.
Phoebe could almost hear the crumbling of her defences, but they were still powerful. She wanted everything to stop right there before they ruined it.
‘Why can’t you be happy with what we have, Dominic?’
‘I am happy with what we have, Phoebe. So goddamned delighted that I go to bed plotting when I can next corner you and have you scold me into bliss. This whole month has been a damned revelation, like one of those saints waking up being able to talk to the birds or bounce arrows off his arse. I may not understand how this happened, but it has, and whether you are comfortable with it or not, you have become the most important thing in my life.’ He drew a sharp breath and shook his head. ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be with you because I want to bed you, I want to bed you because I want to be with you. This is love. I love you. And I’m in love with you. Those two seem to be two different things, but they’re both true in my case. Look at me and tell me you don’t know I love you.’
Phoebe shook her head, fear caught like a fist in her throat. ‘No one has ever been in love with me before, Dominic.’
His voice softened and some of the serious harshness in his expression fled. ‘I’d wager you never gave them half a chance. You certainly did your best to get rid of me, too, but I’m a persistent fellow. And no one has never been in love with me, either.’
‘That is patently untrue. I’ve seen—’
He interrupted her. ‘No one has been in love with me. Are...are you trying to tell me you are or that you aren’t? Or can’t? Or won’t?’
She was terrified, but even more, she couldn’t bear him hurting. And there was only one answer, after all. Everything else would have to follow.
‘I am trying to tell you I don’t want to lose what I am, but I cannot bear losing you, either. I don’t know how to bring those two together. I love you so much that I am terrified, and I hate being terrified. It isn’t me.’
The coldness evaporated from Dominic’s eyes like the sun breaking through a cloud, but his voice was taut when he spoke. ‘Say that again. The good part only. We’ll deal with the rest in a moment.’
‘Oh, damn you, Dominic. I love you.’ The words were part strangled sob, part accusation. ‘You must know I do. I’ve never made such a fool of myself in all my life. Never. I love being with you and I love the way you make me do things and tell you things I think I don’t wish to, but I actually do wish to...and it would break my heart to walk away. It did break my heart... I can’t do it. I don’t want to. I need to be myself, but I need you too and I don’t know how to do both.’
His hand shook a little as he brushed her cheek with his palm.
‘Phoebe. My brilliant, brave darling... I’m willing to find whatever compromise you feel you can bear. But a compromise means you must give ground, too. All I want is to be part of your life. That isn’t so horrible, is it?’
Phoebe’s heart ached, her chest ached, her throat was burning. It was horrid that being in love felt like an apoplexy. She pressed one hand to her heart, the other to her mouth, but it didn’t help. The tears welled out and a muted cry pushed past her barrier.
‘It is horrible. It is horribly wonderful,’ she sobbed, covering her face. ‘I don’t do wonderful.’
She didn’t stop crying when he pulled her into his arms, wrapping her in warmth, stroking her hair. ‘I think you do wonderful wonderfully, love.’
She sobbed harder. ‘Stop being so good to me.’
‘Can’t. I love being good to you. It’s become an object of mine to make you happy. If it makes you feel any better, it is purely selfish on my part. Making you happy is a potent aphrodisiac. Even making you cry is making me hard—that’s how bad an influence you are on me, Phoebe.’
Her laugh was watery and she hauled the sheet to her and wiped her cheeks with it. For a moment they sat in silence, her head against his shoulder, just breathing him, trying to find strength to step off the head of the needle she was teetering on.
‘Why don’t we try?’ he said at last as he stroked her hair, her back, his hands just as soothing as his voice. ‘We have a few weeks to practise in Verona while all those idiot politicians and diplomats make another mess of the world. All I’m asking is that you try. What is the worst that could happen?’
‘The worse that could happen is that I will fall even more in love with you. And then I might lose you. Or lose myself. Or both.’
His arms closed about her, tight, just like his breathing. When her own breathing calmed a little, he unlocked his arms and dried her face, brushing her hair back from her damp cheeks.
‘Nothing could be more awful than not having you in my life, Phoebe. Not a damn thing. I’m as out of my depth as you are, which is a damned awkward way to begin something I fully intend to last us a lifetime, but whatever it takes to work through this, that is what we will do. We will go at your pace, we will find a way to make this work with you and Milly and Oswald and Marcus. I am willing to compromise on quite a few fronts to make this work, but there is one thing I absolutely will not concede an inch on.’
She needed his touch, so she took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. The firm warmth of his skin against hers felt so right it made her want to cry again.
‘What is that thing?’
‘This is one mission we undertake together. We work through the details, the problems, the pitfalls together. No running away when we’re frightened, which we probably will be. When you want to run you tell me to my face and we both try and work our way through it. And even if you decide you want none of me, you tell me so.’
She tightened her hold on his hand and flung herself off the cliff. ‘Yes.’
‘Yes, as in you want none of me?’
She buried her face against his neck. ‘Yes, I want all of you. As soon as possible.’
He laughed and his hand curved over her behind, bringing her even closer, but he shook his head. ‘Not good enough, Phoebe, my love. The correct answer is: yes, I agree to your terms, Dominic. I will stand and fight with you for what I want.’
‘I would rather lie down and make love to you until you beg for mercy.’
‘I’m very, very happy to hear that because I’m all but bursting at the seams here, but I need to hear you say it, love. That you want to do this with me.’
She loved that he didn’t try to hide his uncertainty, his need. It made her feel...safe.
‘I want to do this with you more than I have ever wanted anything in my life, Dominic. I love you so much I ache with it all the time, right here.’ She took his hand and pressed it to the ache in below her breasts. ‘I never knew heartache was something real, but it actually hurts when I force myself to think of leaving you.’
His hand softened on her ribs, rubbing gently. ‘There’s a remedy for that, you know. Stop thinking about leaving me and start putting that clever mind of yours to work figuring out how to make this work. I have more faith in you than you do yourself, sweetheart. If there is something you want, you can achieve it.’
‘The only thing I want is for you to love me back.’
‘Done. That was too easy, try something harder.’
‘Don’t be flippant.’
‘One of us has to be—you are far too serious. Now, move over and let me lie down so you can have your evil way with me again.’
Epilogue
Ten years later, Sherbourne Hall, Hampshire
‘It was a good kick. Right into the corner. At least it would have been if Ginnie hadn’t shoved me.’
The words were defiant, but Dominic could hear the waver of worry beneath his son’s voice and there was a sheen of tears in his gold-flecked eyes.
He went down on his haunches and brushed a smudge of dirt from Sebastian’s soft cheek. At eight years old he was beginning to show all the signs of being a beautiful boy and Dominic’s heart twisted inside him even as he reminded himself that, despite his and Phoebe’s peculiar occupation, their children were being raised in a house full of love and laughter and friends. That they were being raised as children, not as objects.
He smiled at his son. ‘It was a damn good kick. I saw it from the window. You curved it like the best of calcio players.’
Sebastian’s face broke into a smile and he rubbed away the threatening tears. ‘I’m sorry about the greenhouse. Will Uncle Marcus be angry?’
‘You know full well that Uncle Marcus is almost never angry. He’s very annoying that way. But try not to break the rest of the hall while Mama and I are away, yes?’
Sebastian’s smile flickered and fled as they faced the real issue at hand. ‘I wish I could go with you, Papa. I like it when we travel together and see places.’
‘I know, Sebastian, and we shall continue to travel together often, but not this time. Mama and I are celebrating ten years together and you and Ginnie will have a grand time with Milly and Lily and Marcus and the children and the rest of the Sherbourne madhouse.’
‘I know. I do love being here. It is only...’ He shrugged. ‘I shall miss you and Mama.’
‘We’ll miss you more. Mama will likely write to you every day and worry every night. Have you and Ginnie practised your code?’
Sebastian’s eyes lit up. Dominic was both proud and alarmed by his children’s skill with numbers. What he and Phoebe had learned through years of practice was a game for them. It was early days yet for five-year-old Ginnie, but it was clear that Sebastian already had all the makings of an excellent code-breaker. And calcio-player. Neither was an occupation Dominic wished for his son and the future Duke of Rutherford, but he knew better than to interfere with what gave his children pleasure.
‘We have,’ Sebastian replied happily, his worry receding. ‘Uncle Marcus found me a book written by Cardano. I think I shall add imaginary numbers to the code, though Ginnie doesn’t know square roots yet, so I shall have to explain...’
Dominic listened to his son’s excited chatter as he led him up to the nursery to wash. Lily and Marcus’s brood of four were already there and making a great deal of noise as usual. Both the Sherbourne and Wrexham clans showed definite evidence of Italian roots in both their looks and exuberant behaviour. Ginnie caught sight of them and dashed over, tossing herself into her father’s arms, only to bestow a wet kiss on his cheek and wiggle out of his embrace, inserting herself back into the happy fray. Dominic stood watching them all for a moment, his heart thumping with that ineffable sensation people called love, and then went to find his wife.
* * *
Phoebe looked up from her book when he entered their bedroom.
‘Crisis averted?’
Dominic plucked the book from her hands and tossed it aside, settling himself on the side of the bed next to her, his thigh against hers. The need to be close hadn’t changed in the decade since their unusual courtship. He smiled at his wife and tucked her long, silky hair behind her ear.
‘Poor fellow was feeling guilty. That’s why he hid. I wish he was less scrupulous. It was a damned good kick, though. He’s better than I am.’
‘Both our children are an improvement on us, thank goodness.’ Phoebe laughed lightly and raised his hand to brush a kiss across his knuckles, sending tingling warmth up his arm. He shifted closer.
‘He’s worried about us leaving. It will be our first time on a mission without them and Milly.’
The warmth in her eyes faltered and the line between her eyes appeared. ‘Maybe we should...’
‘No. We discussed this. You know they will be absolutely fine here. We spend as much time here as at home anyway. And with Milly here and even Oswald as honorary uncle... How the devil Milly managed to snare that dry stick, I’ll never know.’
Phoebe laughed, the worry melting away as he had hoped. ‘She’s been in love with him for ages. I’m glad she finally turned her considerable powers into making him realise what a treasure he’d been ignoring all these years.’
She sighed, brushing her palm up his forearm so lightly the hair rose in search of her touch.
It still amazed him how easily she could wake his body. During the first couple of years after their marriage in Venice he’d waited anxiously for his body to revert to its cold shell or to manifest some other unbidden form of rebellion. But it appeared to be well pleased with its new state of devotion at the altar of Phoebe’s body. Pleased and comfortable and vividly alive. Because of the woman who had changed his life.
