Chapter 27

The long day had strained Muriel beyond her limit. She stripped off her filthy gown, washed, changed, and crawled into the bed, eyelids sliding down with the weight of sandbags. Through her torpor, she was vaguely aware that Kit was padding around the dark room. She rolled onto her side and watched him through her lashes. He was tossing his necktie on a chair, crossing in front of the fire, backlit, face in shadow. Her lashes fluttered down. When she lifted them, he was standing at an angle to the fire, shirt gaping at the neck, golden light on his bare throat and collarbones. He looked honey-painted, and beautiful, and the air seemed to shimmer around him. He was watching her.

"I like…" Her whisper trailed off. She started awake and met his gaze. "Your eyes," she finished.

"My brown eyes." He teased her with a smile.

"They're not brown." She wiggled into her pillow. "They're…eternity."

"You're asleep," he observed. "I don't think eternity is a color. If it was, I'd have bought the pigment."

"They're silvery, like stars, and stars are in the heavens, and the heavens are eternity." Her lids drifted back down. "And when you look at me, I feel like I'm at the center of the galaxy." She heard herself suddenly, realized with vague alarm that this speech was more incautious than her leap down the escarpment. "Don't worry, though," she murmured, maybe to herself, maybe to him. "I know it's not personal. It's just a property of your irises."

She heard his soft tread and felt the mattress dip as he sat.

"Penny." He brushed his fingers over her unbound hair. "Of course it's personal."

"Personal with many persons." She was slurring her words. She wanted to say that she wasn't hurt, that she understood the goodness of his rakery, that every farm girl and bluestocking and suffragist and widow should share this magical feeling, and so she could share him. Not that he was hers to share. And if he was, maybe she would insist that certain things—just a few—were personal to the two of them only.

"Many Muriels," she slurred. "Curtains, knees, pugs, seaweed."

"I've never been one for lasting attachments." His voice was low. "You know that."

"Why?" She wasn't asleep. She was drifting between sleep and wake, which was far more dangerous. Just alert enough to ask questions her slumbering inhibitions should have silenced. "Because you wanted someone you couldn't have?"

Lucy appeared at the bedside, beautiful in her bridal gown. The room grew tall and vaulted. It was a church, and Lucy waved goodbye to Kit and glided toward the man who waited by the altar. He wore a jeweled crown. He was a prince. No, he was a duke. He was Charles Heywood, chasing her through the lecture hall, out into the busy New York street, which teemed with staring strangers.

Sometime later, she opened her eyes. Kit was behind her, his arm around her waist, their legs tangled, his chin in her hair. He'd washed too, and smelled of lemon verbena. She breathed deeply, settling herself in his arms, relaxing something so deep inside that she felt like the sigh she released. Sometime after that, the storm woke her. Her pulse jumped with every crack and thud.

"Are you frightened?" Kit's breath sifted through her hair.

She gasped at the next thud.

"So am I." His smiling lips brushed her ear. "This storm is bloodcurdlingly gothic. Let's hope it's over by morning."

Morning. When they'd ride, rain or shine, to the rugged north coast and west to St. Ives. This was their final night on the road. Thank God she'd fallen asleep before she'd spouted any more foolishness. Eternity. Lucy. Her eyes were wide open now. The fire had burned low, and the air on her face felt clammy and cold.

"I'm not frightened." She wriggled around, facing him.

"Nor do you seem tired," he drawled. "And we need our rest for tomorrow."

"I can't rest in this weather."

"Hmm." His eternity eyes glimmered. "Let me help with that." His lips covered hers, all silken heat and greed, and she let him consume her, surrendering to sensation. Her fingers twisted in the thick silk of his hair, the slide of tongues between their joined mouths sending licks of fire down to her belly, her legs, her curling toes. She jumped as the wind shook the walls, and he laughed a dark laugh, lifting away.

"So tense." He pushed her onto her back and kicked off the blanket, cold air dropping into the void, making her shiver. "Pull up your shift."

She blushed and lifted her hips, tugging the cotton up to her waist. The bed's white dimity hangings took on an ethereal quality. Shadows from the fire's flickering coals wheeled above. Her shiver became a full-body shudder of gothic excitement.

"Higher, please."

The crisp demand made warmth rush between her legs. She rolled the fabric up, exposing her breasts. She had gooseflesh from the chill, and he chased it with his hand, stroking up her belly, rolling her breast beneath his rough palm.

"Will you take off your shirt?" Her voice hitched. He hadn't ever, except for that first night, in the tub. He always kept himself partially clothed, and she'd learned not to let her hands roam. "I want to see you too." She swallowed, momentarily shy. "And touch you."

He lay still beside her, her heart thumping into his motionless hand.

"That's not something I often do." He spoke slowly. "I have difficulty trusting that I will be seen how I need to be seen. And touched how I need to be touched."

"Can you show me? Show me how?"

"It's late." His hand began to move again, fingertip dragging between her breasts, then over her nipples, which responded with exquisite agony. "Someday perhaps you could touch me like this. Or like this." His teeth replaced the fingertip, and she arched her spine, helplessly encouraging the torment. He drew back with a rasping breath. "And we could lie like this, skin against skin." He eased onto her, shirt rubbing on her sensitized breasts. His mouth was on her neck and her jaw, suckling her lower lip, until she sighed, and their tongues met. He broke the kiss.

"And you could see and touch me everywhere. There are parts of my body I might wish otherwise, but I can still enjoy them." He hesitated, looking down at her. "With someone able to understand that neither man nor woman comes down to parts. Either could have any."

"I understand," she said, but perhaps there was a shade of uncertainty in her tone. At any rate, he didn't tear off his nightshirt and fall upon her naked. He rested his forehead on hers, and she felt the gossamer movement of his lashes. Her mind was turning and turning. A man could have had a boyhood or a girlhood. A man could have a smooth jaw and calloused palms, or a beard and smooth palms. He could have a muscled chest, or a soft one. She tried to think how best to express her thoughts. It was all so complicated. Or stunningly simple.

I love you.

She was far too awake to say that.

"Speaking of parts," he murmured. "Would you like to see my cock?"

Her mind lurched, and her reply was a stutter. A stuttered cock, no less, which made her cheeks glow like coals in the dark.

"I have several. Wood, glass, stone, rubber. Very soft leather packed with wool. I only brought one." He paused. "See was a euphemism, by the way."

"Oh," she said, faintly. "Would you like to see my cock didn't sound particularly euphemistic."

"Mm." She could hear his grin. "Here's the proper question. Would you like me to fuck you with my cock?"

Sweat dampened her throat, anticipation coiled between her legs, and she gave a little whimper.

"Is that a yes?"

"Depends on which you brought," she managed. "It's not the stone one?"

He laughed and stroked a thumb down her side. "Too heavy. I'm traveling light."

"I warned you I'm not imaginative." She laughed too, shakily. "I certainly can't imagine a stone…That is, a—" She coughed. "Cock. Of stone." Except maybe she could, because every moment she was coiling tighter. Intrigued. Excited.

"You might find you like it. It's hard, of course—harder than most—but smooth. I'd warm it first. And oil it. Nothing I use on bicycles, I give you my word. And I'd fuck you with it slowly, using my hand to control the strokes."

She pressed her thighs together, a pulse beating at their apex.

"And the one you did bring?" She tried to make her breathing more even.

"Packed leather. I fit it in a leather harness. Which leaves my hands free." His hands were roaming lower.

She moaned, unable to restrain herself, and he repositioned, shoving apart her legs. She couldn't wait another second, and he obliged her, no more caresses. He leaned forward and put his mouth on her. Her moan became a groan, a deep, desperate sound that she could hardly believe she was making. He pulled with his lips, lapped with his tongue. She forgot the cock. She was rolling against him, lost in the rapture of the moment. He slid two fingers inside her, working her with a slow, churning motion, and then stroked faster, once, twice, three times, and she screamed, convulsing as thunder broke, dark vibrations traveling through her. The next clap of thunder started it again, delicious tremors that took her apart. Kit sprawled on her legs, purring his satisfaction like a lazy cat. Finally, he stirred.

"Don't go anywhere," he said, as though she had muscles and bones, as though she could do anything but puddle on the bed like silk.

When he returned, he knelt at her feet, legs spread, nightshirt rucked up. His cock jutted, dark and curved, larger than she'd pictured. The sight motivated her to prop herself up on her elbows. He stroked his hand back and forth, up and down the length of it.

"Can you feel with that?" she whispered.

"I'm not frigging myself." His teeth flashed. "I'm warming the leather. Any pleasure I derive from this particular action is sourced in my mind, not this phallus. But the mind is powerful. And my desire to be inside you is more than physical."

He lunged and came down atop her, bracing the bulk of his weight with his arms. "Do you want me inside you?"

God, yes, she wanted it. She wanted it now, and tomorrow, and next week, and next year, and someday, and forever. She pushed up and kissed him, wrapping him with her arms and legs as he slid into her by slow degrees. He rolled his hips, lodging himself deeper and deeper. She was pinned, filled to the brim and quivering. She traced the taut muscles of his back, dug her nails into the hard curve of his buttocks, urging him on. He changed the angle of her legs, pressed her knees higher, thrusting faster, his teeth on her throat, and her peak slammed her head back into the pillow and kept coming on. She heard her cries mingle with the storm, and she couldn't tell if he'd cried out too, or if she'd reached the heights alone. She held him close, breathing his scent, unable to speak. She drifted off with him inside her, and woke up briefly to the sound of thunder, his body curled around her, his arm slung possessively beneath her breasts. And then, despite the storm, despite everything, she slept like the dead until morning.