He sat down on the couch beside her. From the corner of her eye she could see the way the cloth of his trousers strained over powerful thigh muscles. “Ah, but I gain something from this marriage too,” he said. “You are exquisitely beautiful, intelligent, and I even like that brutal honesty you display at times. You should call me Simon, don’t you think?”
When he said nothing further, she finally had to look at him.
His eyes had such a wicked glint in them that a wave of heat rushed up her neck. How could he want her? No one wanted—
He kissed her as gently as a dandelion blows on the wind, but it made her feel scorched.
He wanted her.
32
Honey…the Nectar of the Gods
There was no getting around it. Esme was not going to be able to sleep. The bed had never seemed larger, or lonelier. And she was hungry. She was hungry all the time, so that wasn’t a great surprise. But this was the sort of gnawing hunger that settled in at her backbone and told her that she wouldn’t be able to sleep until she ate buttered toast.
Of course, she could ring a bell, and that would wake up some poor servant who would have to traipse up here and then straggle back down to the kitchen and make her toast. She’d never been that kind of mistress, though.
Why she was even bothering to argue with herself, she didn’t know.
She had a slave, after all, didn’t she?
She was the nymph Calypso, and out in that tiny island of the gardener’s hut…well, the gardener could make her a piece of toast. He couldn’t complain if she woke him up, or say that she was a harsh taskmaster, behind her back. He could be kicked off the island if he misbehaved.
It took a moment to find her pelisse by the light of one candle, but Esme managed. It was even harder to get on her boots—she had taken to allowing her maid to button them, since she couldn’t reach her feet anymore, but she managed that too, by leaving all the buttons undone.
Finally, she crept from her room. The house was large and echoing at night. She walked down the corridor into the front hall. The black-and-white marble shone ghostly white in the moonlight. She eyed the front door but Slope had it bolted for the night. She turned and went through the Rose Salon, slipped out the side door through the conservatory with no more ado than a mouse traveling its familiar path.
It wasn’t quite dark outside, because the moon shone like a misshapen lemon. The lawn stretched away from her, down the slope toward the rose arbor, looking quite strange and magical in the moonlight. Somewhere a bird was singing a rather raspy song, stopping and starting again as if he’d lost track of the point.
Esme started down the slope, her shoes leaving little dark trails in the dew.
The hut was pitch-dark, of course. For a moment she felt a pulse of guilt. Sebastian was probably not used to putting in a full day’s labor as a gardener. He needed his sleep. But she hadn’t come this far to leave without buttered toast.
She walked up to the door and knocked. There was no answer. Of course, he was asleep. She knocked again. Still no answer.
Was he in the village? But the pub had closed its doors hours before. What could he be doing? She narrowed her eyes. Perhaps he had found some slattern who was broadening his education.
Without further ado, she pushed open the door and walked in.
It was rather alarming to realize how relieved she felt to see a large mound of body under the blankets in the corner. Moonlight streamed in the open door over her shoulder, and she could see a patch of his tousled white-blond hair over the rough blanket, and his copy of The Odyssey splay-backed next to the bed.
She walked forward, not bothering to tiptoe. “Sebastian,” she said. “Oh, Sebastian.”
The blankets rustled, but he slumped back into sleep.
So she touched his shoulder. “Sebastian! Wake up, I’m hungry!”
“Mumph,” was all he said.
She rocked his shoulder. Really, this was worse than waking up a child. “Sebastian, wake up!”
Finally, he sat up, blinking in the moonlight. He was sleeping without a nightshirt, and the moonlight picked out a chest of perfectly defined muscles. She froze, staring at him.
For his part, he blinked at her and then reached out one arm and pulled her to him. “Oh, good,” he said sleepily. And with no further ado, he hoisted her, great stomach and all, up on the bed, leaned over her, and his tongue slid into her mouth before she even took a breath.
Her unbuttoned boots fell off. One plopped to the floor. She wound an arm around his neck.
Of course she didn’t want buttered toast. She wanted him, the smoky male taste of him, that broad chest pressing against her breasts, the callused hands moving over her body as if they couldn’t get enough. He kissed her until she writhed against him, until her body was drenched with desire, every nerve singing with a wish to be closer to him.
Then he pulled back and looked down at her. He looked serious, of course. For a moment she thought he was going to say something about propriety, or impropriety, but this was the Sebastian of the garden, not the marquess.
“I need to remove your pelisse,” he said. “I am going to hold you, Esme.” His gaze was fierce, and she felt a lick of fire in her legs. “I am going to kiss you. All of you.” He had her pelisse off in a moment.
She was wearing one of the lovely nightgowns that Helene brought her from London, a generous fall of the palest pink silk. He didn’t seem to notice, just began pulling it up, as if to take it over her head.
Esme promptly returned to her senses. “What are you doing?” she demanded. There was no way in heaven that she would allow Sebastian to see her body in its current condition. She held the silk tightly at her hip level to make certain that he couldn’t unclothe her cumbersome body.
He stopped pulling. “I have to see you, Esme.” His voice was hoarse. “I have to…” His voice died away. He was looking down at her breasts, sharply outlined by the silk. Esme felt a pulse of embarrassment. Pregnancy made her nipples stand out like little rocks, rather than blending into her skin the way they used to.
And her breasts looked sloppy. Not gracefully curved like the breasts that she used to exhibit in low-necked ball gowns. Then, even a glimpse of her pale pink nipples was guaranteed to drive a man into a frenzy. But now her nipples were dark red and swollen, and stuck out from cowlike breasts. She would never be able to contain them in the flimsy bodices she was accustomed to wearing.
Esme swallowed. What on earth was she doing in the gardener’s hut? Had she lost her mind? This was so embarrassing. She started to hoist herself upright, but he stopped her with one of those powerful hands.
“Sebastian,” she said as firmly as possible, “I’m very sorry, but you have misinterpreted my visit.”
“Hush.”
Esme was not a woman who liked to be silenced. She started to struggle. But he had smoothed the silk against her breast again, and now he lowered his mouth, without even paying heed to her obvious wish to rise from the bed.
Despite herself, Esme shivered. His mouth closed on her nipple, sucked, and she let out a startled squeak. He raised his head and grinned at her, smoothed the silk across her nipple again. It was wet now, a dark blotch showing against the faint pink shimmer. The wet made a bolt of heat shoot down her legs. He rubbed a thumb, lazily, across her breast, still looking into her eyes.
She opened her mouth, but couldn’t remember what to say.
“Esme?” he asked gently. “Was there something?”
He was rubbing wet fabric back and forth over her breast, making her feel as if steam must be rising from her skin. Before she could formulate a response, he bent his head again and sucked her nipple back into his mouth.
The sensation was exquisite. He was suckling her, and the sense of his mouth, and the rough suction, combined with the wet sliding silk against her nipple drove her mad. She cried out, hoarse with pleasure, and pressed up against him.
“I want to kiss you without the nightgown, E
sme,” he said, and she dimly noticed that his voice was husky.
She didn’t want to think, so she willed herself not to notice that her nightgown was inching up, past those legs that used to be slim and now were sturdy and mottled in various places, past her great stomach, with the silvery white marks that had appeared a few weeks ago.
By the time the nightgown went over her head she was rigid with humiliation and embarrassment. Never had she felt this way before a man. For all her reputation, she hadn’t had very many affairs, but in every encounter, whether with her husband, or another man, her body had been a luscious present she offered for his appreciation. She had always been supremely aware of the fact that she had reduced the man in question to incoherent awe.
Except, now she thought of it, perhaps with Sebastian, because he was so terribly beautiful himself.
He still was, of course. He was on his knees on the bed, gazing down at her body, no doubt in the throes of regret that he found himself in bed with a whale. Esme swallowed and looked at his body so she wouldn’t have to think about it. There wasn’t an extra ounce of flesh on his body anywhere, not that massive, masculine body, every inch of it powerful and sleek.
He wasn’t even moving. Perhaps he was so horrified he was trying to think how to leave the room. Esme cast a desperate look to the side. Where had her nightgown fallen? She could pull it on, and leave silently, and spare both of them the distress of even discussing this incident.
She would have sat up, but his hands descended on her belly. There was something fascinating about great male hands touching that stomach.
“It’s beautiful, Esme.” His voice was quiet, reverent. “You’re beautiful.”
“No, I’m not,” she said crossly, but she was pleased. Even in her current loathing of her body, she was secretly fond of her great stomach.
“You are. These look like falling stars, like streaks of moonlight.” He traced the silver rays across her stomach. “Do you mind my touch?”
“Of course not,” she said, quite resigned now. Of course the great seduction would turn into an anatomy lesson. What did she expect? No man in his right mind could think sensually about a woman in her condition.
His hands slipped to her belly, and her skin, pulled tight by the baby, tingled in his wake, left little whispers floating toward the juncture of her legs that told her that she wouldn’t mind doing something, even in her condition. He was stroking her gently when a little bump appeared, just under his hand.
The look of shock on his face was so comical that Esme laughed out loud. “That’s the baby,” she said.
“I understand,” he said, and in his voice was such a gathering of awe and joy that it almost made up for the fact he wasn’t attracted to her body anymore.
“Where did he go?”
“That was just a kick,” she said, enjoying telling him. After all, this was all new to her as well, and so far Helene had been her only confidante. “But it means the babe is awake, and perhaps—”
She could feel the next kick better than usual because his hands were against her. They lay there for perhaps fifteen minutes, the three of them, with Sebastian sweeping lazy circles over her belly and trying to entice the babe to kick him again.
“He’s not kicking you, silly,” Esme chortled. “He or she just seems to be an active sort of person.”
Finally, the baby stopped kicking, lulled (if you listened to Sebastian) by his gentle rubs. He removed his hands reluctantly and looked at her.
Quite suddenly, there was a look of bedevilment in his eyes. “Now,” he said, and his voice was deep as dark honey, “where were we before this baby woke up?”
“Oh no,” she shook her head. “We weren’t anywhere.” Somewhere in the last fifteen minutes she’d lost all embarrassment before him, so she just lay there with her puffy breasts and plump thighs.
His hand descended on her breast, claimed it and shaped it as a rough thumb rubbed across her nipple. Her mind felt instantly drunk with desire, which must explain why she didn’t simply rise and put on her nightgown.
Desire had never deserted Sebastian; he was in the same burning, desperate condition he always found himself in around Esme. His own, beautiful Esme.
“I want you, Esme,” he whispered.
He licked her ear, made his way over her cheek to her lush lips, laid siege to her body with his hands. He knew from the way their tongues lazily tumbled over each other that she was his. Once again, and for this moment, but the moment was good enough.
That was a lesson he’d learned as a gardener and a pariah.
Her fingers ran through his hair and pulled him closer. Finally, he trailed kisses down her neck and made his way toward her lavish breasts. He couldn’t help rising up on his knees to see them better, to feast on their beauty. “You look different,” he said achingly, just before his mouth claimed possession. For a few minutes he was intoxicated, drunk with their creamy smoothness, with the dark rosebuds begging for his attention, with the broken pants coming from her lips.
His hands fell lower, shaped her lovely hips, found a sweet curve of bottom that a man could hang on to while he sunk between a woman’s thighs. Just one thought managed to fight through the haze in his brain, but it was an important one. How was he to sink into her without putting pressure on her belly?
A man in this sort of extremity can usually think of something. He shaped the round fullness of her lovely bottom in his hands and lifted her slightly, pulled her toward the end of his bed, and then returned to her side. He wasn’t ready to bypass the feast and go for dessert. His hand trailed up her legs, slipped between, and now he wasn’t so sure that he could stand up anyway. His blood was pounding through his veins. Telling him to stand up and bury himself between those gorgeous legs, over and over until they both cried for mercy.
He had a mouth on her breast, and a hand between her legs, his breath was like fire in his chest, and his loins were clamoring for attention, and yet…and yet. A niggling worry had entered his mind. She wasn’t herself, not his imperious, lusty Esme, the Esme who walked over to a sofa wearing only a French corset and then gave him a look that brought him to his knees.
She wasn’t the same Esme who told him where to place his hands, and taught him how to move and how to touch, and then, by touching him, taught him how to beg. She wasn’t watching their bodies together with that frank enjoyment she showed last time. She had her eyes closed, and even though her breath was catching in her throat, and her body moved urgently under his touch, as if it longed for him, she wasn’t doing much more than trailing her hands over his chest.
He hovered over her, uncertain for a moment what to do.
Then he rolled to his side, propped his head on his elbow, and waited for her to open her eyes. After a startled moment, she did. She looked up blindly at the ceiling, and then over to the side where he lay. He smiled, the lazy smile of a hunting animal.
“Sebastian?” He was enormously pleased to hear a rasp in her voice.
“I need to know your pleasure, O Nymph,” he said gravely.
She blinked in a puzzled sort of way.
“I live for your pleasure.” His voice was dark with suggestion, his eyes heavy-lidded and just a glimmer of a smile around his lips. “To hear is to obey.”
Esme smiled and rose up on her elbow, but as she did so she felt the heavy weight of her breast shift and felt another flash of embarrassment.
And yet he obviously wasn’t undesirous. The sweep of his great male body lay like a tiger’s next to her. Her eyes roamed along those strong legs, caught at his thighs. God almighty, she’d forgotten that about Sebastian.
“You may touch, Nymph,” he said, and there was something more urgent about his voice this time. “I am your slave. My body is yours.” The words hung on the night air.
She reached out. It seemed almost sacrilege, to pair a body as beautiful as his with hers.
But she reached out anyway, and he jumped when she touched him. She ran her fingers over
his nipples, and he made a low growling noise in his throat. Ran her hand down his flat stomach, and she heard the breath catch in his chest. Curled her hand around him…hot and smooth and male.
He was watching her, looking at her body, and she tried not to let it bother her.
“You are more beautiful than you were last summer.” His hand delicately ran up her leg. His fingers played between her legs, teasingly danced in her curves.
Slowly she moved her hand, an unspoken thank-you.
His eyes closed in torment, lashes black against his cheek.
“Tell me more,” she commanded.
His eyes opened. “You must have seen the changes in your breasts, Esme.” In his eyes she saw the truth of it. To a man, the generosity of her chest didn’t raise a query about flimsy bodices. It was cause for celebration. His eyes turned dusky blue as he watched creamy flesh swell around his fingers.
She arched her back, and a hoarse noise came from his throat. His fingers closed around the deep crimson of her nipples, and she moaned.
“More,” she demanded.
“I need a better perspective,” he said, rolling swiftly off the bed and standing at the end.
Looking at him, she felt a surge of her old siren power. Lazily she drew up one leg, and trailed her fingers down her thigh. Her skin felt satiny smooth…perfection. His eyes were black with hunger now.
“Well?” she prompted, letting her leg fall open just slightly.
“May I touch you, O Nymph?” His voice was thick.
“I think not.” She trailed her fingers closer to the curls at the juncture of her legs, to the place that ached for him.
He disobeyed her, reached out and curved his hands around her plump, firm bottom, pulled her a little closer to the end of the bed. “Don’t tell me you’ll lose these curves, Esme,” he said hoarsely, his fingers burning into her flesh.