Chapter Eleven

V iv banged on Tate’s kitchen door. She’d wake the dead if she had to.

A young girl swung wide the door. “Mademoiselle?”

“ Oui, je suis désolé, ma petite. ” I do regret I am so slow to learn.

Then Viv shoved her pelisse, her hat, and her reticule into the girl’s hands, picked up her skirts, and ran up the stairs. At the second floor, she burst through the door and stood a moment, trying to remember which way she should turn.

On a whim, she went right and took the hall like the wind. She thanked heaven for snug slippers.

At Tate’s door, she paused a moment to collect her thoughts. Then, without knocking, she turned the handle and marched through. He was not in his sitting room.

She strode for his bedroom.

Not there.

His bathing room?

No, not there.

His dressing room?

There! There he stood. His frock coat gone, his waistcoat too, he stood in his shirt, breeches, and boots. Shocked at her sudden appearance, he questioned her with those magnificent blue-green eyes.

“I…I return to you. I return to you,” she said as she took a step toward him, “as you have always returned to me. In all good times and bad. With honor and the finest of intentions. I want to be here with you but fear I am not worthy of a man so wise and caring.”

He’d grown wide-eyed at her words.

“I need you, Tate Cantrell.” She gulped back tears that threatened to destroy the moment she meant to be a new beginning for them.

Not a breath did she take before he had her in his arms. His hands to her cheeks, he took her mouth. His kiss was a brand, his lips hot, fierce, and bold. He kissed her so deeply, he bent her backward in his arms. Fighting for air, she broke away but caught him by the nape and brought him back to her.

“I want to be with you,” she told him between his ravishing claiming of her mouth. “Always. I can say it a thousand times, can’t I?”

*

He sank his fingers into the coif of her hair and sent her pins flying. Her words were not love, but he could wait for them. “Say it each day, each hour. I will never stop you.”

She had come back to him, and he would never allow her to part from him for the rest of their lives. She was his, and for the first time in his life, he could go on assured of hope she could return his love.

She rose and kissed him back with a fervor that had him gathering her closer.

“I love you, Vivienne. I will until I die. You are the finest person I have ever known.”

“No, no. I am not.” She looked tormented. Why that was, he would learn. With tender care, he would tease it out of her.

“I love you. You with your optimism. Your loyalty to others. Your Louis and chickens and your ducks.”

She gulped back tears. “And Fred.”

“Dear me!” He laughed, even though he felt hot tears of his own form beneath his eyelids. “How could I forget Fred? The poor thing brayed at me like a vampire last spring when I appeared. He wanted to know how in hell I could be there and you were not. Where did she go? he seemed to cry at me. Where did my darling girl go? And I had no answers for him.”

She hugged him closer. “I want to go home, Tate. I want to go with you.”

“Do you, darling?” Now, like a rogue, he would ensure that—and so led her by the hand to his bedroom. Now it was his responsibility to show her how he adored her.

Viv followed him and stopped as she had not when she ran through before to scan the room. It was a grand affair furnished in heavy red and black Chinoiserie furniture. A century-old four-poster stood to one wall, a noble thing high off the ground. He wanted to be in it with her, forgetting the past, making new memories.

She dropped his hand and danced backward. “You’ll make love to me now.”

“Indeed I will.”

“You’ll show me how it’s done properly?”

Wicked ideas inflamed him at the mere idea of having her naked and writhing. “Not so properly at all, I vow.”

She giggled. He wanted to laugh with her, smile, embrace all the love he had for her that he had kept locked inside, far from his reach, far from her touch.

She paused in the midst of the carpet. “I’ve never done this with a man.”

“A fact I will honor.” He arched a brow and advanced toward her.

“I know how it’s done, however,” she said, waggling her finger at his clothes, “and without all these frills.”

“Care to remove them from me?”

“Oh, I would. I’ve often wondered what was beneath all these layers.”

He chuckled. The look in her eyes burned away any barriers to their union. “You have a few layers of your own.”

She gave him a moue like a singer of a bawdy Pont Neuf vaudeville. “You may remove mine, after I’m done with yours.”

He spread out his arms. “Go to it, then. I am eager, and the day grows short.”

She shot a glance at the far window. “Hmmm. Not even noon, sir.”

“But we have so much to do.”

She put her fingers to his shirt and yanked it from his breeches. She hummed as she drew it over his naked shoulders and dropped it to the floor. At the sight before her, she licked her lips. His triceps and pectorals must have appealed, because she swallowed audibly. But as she ran her palms over each ridge and valley down to his hipbones, his patience died to an adventure in longing.

“You try a man’s patience.”

“Oh. What do you recommend?”

He hooted. “Want a description, do you?”

She batted her pale blonde lashes at him and flicked the top button of his flies. “I’ve never done this, so I need instructions. I won’t know what to put where.”

That aroused him as little else could, so he grabbed her and kissed her senseless. Panting, he vowed, “I know what to put where, my darling. I have things in hand.”

“Oh! But I thought I could.”

“What?” He looked confused.

“Have a few things in hand.”

He gave her a sly look. “You steal my breath.”

“Oh, marvelous. Because I was told that was allowed. I heard from my friend Kate Martin that a woman could have her husband’s”—she cleared her throat—“ accoutrements in hand and make him very happy!”

He growled. “And who is Kate Martin?”

“My friend, and one of your wise tenants.”

“I see,” he said as Viv unbuttoned his flies. “A fine lady. Married, is she?”

“Oh, yes.” Viv sank one hand against the fullness of his aching cock and held him tight. “Told me all sorts of delightful things. And I have never been able to use the knowledge. Except on myself. Of course.”

“You know a lot, then, about what you can feel?” he asked, ready to give her endless delights with his fingers, his tongue, and most especially his throbbing cock.

She put her lips to his and licked the seam. “I do. I hope you will make me feel better than that. It was…lonely.”

He clamped her to him with one hand and stroked her collarbone with the other. Across the rise of her breast, he planted tiny kisses. She wriggled in his arms as he slid down her bodice to reveal one hard, pale pink nipple. “What we will do will always be together.”

“Show me,” she said into his mouth. “I cannot breathe or think or dream any longer without you.”

Tate took her gown from her with care, though his fingers shook and his heart pounded. Her corset and her shift came next. She stood before him, her voluptuous breasts a treat he longed to savor. For a moment, she allowed him the pleasure of absorbing the sight of all of her, then she reached for him.

With a staying hand to her, he sat and pulled off his boots and stockings. Then he went to her, eager as an untried boy. For he had had women. An occasional romp, sometimes a refuge, but never one who meant to him more than the hour or the evening. He held Viv by the waist as she took down his breeches and his smalls. He stepped out of them, and she watched him as if she was memorizing each movement of his muscles.

Smiling in reassurance at her dazed expression, he scooped her up under her knees and back and laid her on his bed. With a slide of his fingers into the wealth of her silken white-gold hair, he pulled it free of pins and spread the waves over her throat and down her shoulder.

“You are so lovely, my darling. I have never seen any beauty to compare to yours.”

Putting her heel to his knee, she slid her foot along his calf. “You are soft as satin.”

“Not all of me,” he said as she undulated and pressed her belly to the rise of his shaft.

“No. Some parts are beautifully hard.” She wrapped her hand around his cock. “Beneath all that satin.”

“You do me honors, my dear, and I have much to explore of my own.” He cupped one pretty breast and sank over her nipple to lave it and suck.

She arched up. “That is…”

He sucked on her other breast. “Yes. This one too.”

He ran his hand down her ribs to her waist, so small, her hips nicely wide, and into her nether hair, thick and wet with the desire of wanting him. “I have no words,” he murmured as he sank his fingers inside her tight little channel.

She arched high into his embrace. “Yesss, there. Just…there.”

“And here,” he offered as he found her little nub, then tapped it and pinched it.

She panted. “That…”

He circled her clitoris and elicited another gasp from her pink lips. “Is wonderful.”

“And I need…”

“More?”

“Yes!”

“This?” He positioned himself at her entrance and sank in bit by bit.

“Yes, and yes,” she murmured each time he possessed her and retreated, only to repeat it all again.

Until at last, he was deep inside her velvet heat, and she clutched at his shoulders, rubbed her breasts against him, and said, “Yessss,” one sweetly torrid time. Then, with artful care for the woman whom he’d treasure like this each day for the rest of his life, he brought them both the joy they had never before known.