"Good,” he murmured, and kissed her hair. “Good."
"But what will I do? What will I do? My flying machine...” A sound of grief came from deep in her throat. “Oh—what will I do without it?"
"Investigate fountains?” he offered. “Invent electric carriages?” He tilted her head back between his palms. The hard planes of his face were softened, hopeful. “Make love to me?"
She closed her eyes, leaking tears.
"You're my wife.” His lips moved over her skin, tasting the mingle of fountain and salt, touching the tender skin beneath her lashes with his tongue. She could hear the fountain spin lazily around them. It splashed like gentle weeping into the pool.
"You tricked me."
"I was wrong. I was impatient. I was scared a little, Merlin. I was afraid you wouldn't remember—that you wouldn't have me."
"I don't remember. Not much. I remember"—she hesitated, ducked her head—"when you came. I remember that. I remember saying I couldn't marry you."
His hands cradled her chin. Warm water caressed her where his body moved against hers. “Do you remember when I said I loved you?"
"How can you say you love me?” She pulled away. “How can you say that when you burned my aviation machine?"
"Merlin, it had crashed. It was ruined."
"And all my notes. Everything.” She looked up at him, trying to find the malice in his face that might explain that betrayal. “As if you wanted to be sure I can never build it again."
There was no trace of spite in his expression; there was only a kind of pain, and behind it, a stubborn answer to the question “Why?” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I want you safe. I want you alive. It won't fly, Merlin. It never would have."
"It did!” She jerked back away from him, coming up against the marble curve of the fountain. “Woodrow said that it did."
"It got off the ground. And it crashed. Don't you remember?"
She shook her head miserably. “No. And that's the worst of all—that I flew and I can't remember it! I remembered you, and coming here, but after that everything goes to bits and pieces, and I don't remember flying at all, or even how I did it."
"The thing fell apart in the air."
"Woodrow said it was deliberately weakened."
"Woodrow is twelve years old. Merlin, I'd thought I could let you do it—that you could build the thing and I'd hire someone else to test it. But having seen what happened...” He gripped her arms and frowned. “It's a death sentence, to put a man in a machine like that and tell him to fly."
"It's not. And how do I know you didn't change the steel screw to a copper one, if you hate the idea of flying so much?"
"Me!” He grew taut, crowding her back against the fountain. “Are you mad? Do you think I would risk—” His voice broke, seemed to fail him for a moment. His fingers closed hard on her shoulders. “God, do you suppose I give a damn whether the thing worked, except for your sake? Do you know what I felt when I saw you lying there under that wreck?” He leaned on her suddenly, taking her mouth in a bruising kiss that Merlin could not push away. “I want you,” he said in harsh answer to her struggles. “I want you. I won't lose you again."
She grew still, panting, not nearly strong enough to break his hold and knowing it. He bent and pressed his mouth to her throat, his warm tongue mingling with the water that slipped from her hair. Her wrists were trapped, pinned by his hard fingers against the marble, sliding slowly downward on the smooth film of water until their hands dipped together into the pool.
"Do you remember this?” he said against her skin. “Do you remember what it's like to have me love you?"
Merlin let out a sharp breath, feeling his body come against her through the layers of water and clothes. He was warmer than the water. She shuddered with it, with the sudden contrast of evening air on her sodden dress and the liquid heat that flowed around her and pressed into her.
"Ah, Merlin...” He buried his face in the curve of her shoulder and throat. “Don't be frightened. Let me love you."
She made a helpless sound, wanting this and not wanting it. She remembered—oh, yes, it was easy to remember what his loving was. The night had come down, but his white shirt glowed against the dark garden, defining his shape the way the sound of falling water defined a circle that enclosed them.
The muslin gown drifted and flowed about her. As her resistance softened he let go of her hands and gathered it up, tugging free the ribbon beneath her breasts. The tight bodice came loose. He pushed the filmy sleeves off her shoulders and down under the water, sliding his hands over the linen chemise that still clung to her body, kissing her bared shoulder. An ardent sound came from low in his throat, a masculine note of excitement that sent response shivering through her.
She lifted her hands to his shoulders. But he pushed her back against the smooth stone, fumbling at each tiny bow that held the wet chemise closed across her breasts. The linen garment came free and followed the gown, leaving her skin to slide uncovered in the warm lap of water at her waist.
"Are you cold?” he asked in her ear, when she trembled under his hands, under the sensation of the polished marble at her back and his palms against her naked hips beneath the pool.
She shook her head, feeling dreamlike, there and somewhere else at once, as if her body was his while her mind had gone far away. He moved back suddenly and an instant later pulled his shirt over his head in a cascade of white cambric and shimmering droplets. He let it go. It floated, a light roughness at her waist. He came to her with water coursing down his face and between their lips as he kissed her.
Merlin covered his hands at her hips and slid her palms up the slick length of his arms. Near his shoulders she paused, encountering the rough width of damp linen pinned around his upper arm.
In the darkness it was a pale slash, catching the first dim glow of moonlight above the wall. Merlin touched it, frowning. Remembering.
The place and moment came back to her clearly—another dusk gone to darkness with him, and blood flowing free instead of water.
Her fingers slipped over his glistening skin, following the curve of muscle that swept upward in a fine arc of living flesh to his shoulder—perfect harmony of form and strength. As beautiful as the symmetry in a curving wing. As precious.
"Ransom,” she whispered in the ripple of water. “I have to leave, but...” I love you, I still love you.
She did not say it. The words came from nowhere, out of memories too hazy to make sense.
Liquid murmured as he took her in his arms. “You won't leave. I won't let you."
She did not argue with him. There would be this night to keep when he wasn't there. This memory; this time with him when his intensity and his power did not try to crush her dreams, but flowed and blended with them the way the fountain poured into the waiting pool.
She closed her eyes as he caught her mouth hungrily, pressing her back against the stone. She wanted what he wanted. For now.
Ransom felt her yield, felt her body go soft and willing as she arched to fill the space between them. His own responded instantly. He was already on a violently ascending edge with the provocation of water and darkness and her sleek, warm, naked shape that had teased and withdrawn and teased again—all unknowing, all that unblinking innocence of hers that accepted his outrageous overtures as if it were the most conventional thing in nature to be undressed and ravished in a garden fountain.
It was why he loved her, he thought recklessly. Because he'd always wanted to take his wife in a fountain, and never before known it.
The moon cleared the wall behind him, pouring cool light over her face as she tilted it back under his caress. Her lips parted in naive pleasure. The tiny motion sent him soaring: the sharp edge of passion hit its limit like metal searing glass, diamond-hard, pouring sparks into his bloodstream and heat through his brain.
He groaned, regretting the formal silk breeches that kept him from touching every inch of her and too impatient to get rid of the
m. And then, moving against her, pulling her down with him as he went to his knees with his hand between them for a hasty instant to free himself, he found the smooth material was an added sensation—water and silk and her skin like no silk ever made by the hand of man.
He slid between her legs, with his knees braced where the fountain's base curved into the marble floor. Water, moonlight-silver, lapped high at his chest and covered the tips of her breasts. He held her on his thighs, put his forehead against the base of her throat, and pushed into her.
He thought he was going to explode.
He went still for a desperate moment to prevent it. His muscles trembled a little, straining to move against his will. He turned his head, tasting her throat, catching a drop of water and sweet salty skin with his lower lip, scooping the flavor into his mouth on his tongue. He could feel her pulse, strong and fast against the corner of his mouth.
She did not move. She gave him nothing, but waited on his advance, not having been taught the nuances of loving yet. He thanked God for it; his control was stretched to taut impossibility. But some devil of impatient pleasure took possession of his hands: he slid them upward and spread his palms under her arms. His thumb slipped over one nipple, rubbing a provocative circle around the soft swelling of her breast.
He got what he deserved. She tightened on him, nestling and arching in his lap. Ransom closed his eyes and tilted his head back, breathing hard. She moved again, and a low moan escaped him.
"Ransom,” she said, a faint, pleading sound, and it was not a plea he could deny. He swallowed, made himself open his eyes. He moved his thumb across her breast again, slowly. His lips drew back in savage pleasure at the way her head sank backward and her body lifted, asking for more.
He forced himself to keep his eyes open, maintaining control by watching her. Like a sea-nymph she lifted her dripping arms and circled his shoulders, sending streams of water down his back and chest. He saw her smile, saw her throat tighten as he brushed her nipples again, rotating his thumbs around and around the tender, swelling warmth of her, setting a rhythm that she began to echo with her body.
It was hard not to move with her. Watch her face; watch her face, he commanded himself, holding back his own response with grim humor. Her fingers worked at the base of his neck, slid down his shoulders, pulling her into him. He ceased to breathe. His muscles corded, wanting to match the rising tempo.
The faint mists rose around them. She looked like a living sculpture, carved from the night and the moon. There were dreams in her face, in her half-closed eyes as she arched beneath his touch. Her belly slid against his in the water, demanding whatever he had to give.
He cupped her breast and bent, licking his tongue across the tip that peeked above the water's surface.
The sound of her pleasure sent bright torture through his loins. He was shaking now, fighting himself. He played and tugged and caressed her with his tongue while every move she made drove shivers of reaction from his thighs to a place deep and unbearable in his chest.
She panted, grasping at his back. He dropped his arm, crossing it under her to help her. Like a beautiful sleek fish she flexed and rocked against him, making little moans that blended with the ripple of the fountain and the tiny waves that lapped and quaked against his skin, spreading out in a web of silver across the pool.
Her moans quickened. She wrapped her legs around him, a move that came as near to killing him as sweet agony could come. He squeezed his eyes shut and buried his face in the tender, slick skin beneath her arm, every muscle in his body frozen while she shuddered against him.
He heard his name beneath her breath, a frantic, beseeching repetition. It drew out into a long note of wordless bliss. She clutched at him. And he came up suddenly off his knees, holding her against him by the firm curve of her buttocks, shoving her back against the unyielding surface of the fountain where she could not slide away from him, where he could pump his life into her in long, deep thrusts.
Pleasure exploded around him before the water sheeting off their bodies had cascaded back into the waiting pool. He heard himself: a luxurious groan of climax, a fierce tremor, and then he was breathing in harsh gusts in the aftermath, his weight slipping downward on the film of liquid that covered everything.
Before that lazy slide could drown them both, he lifted himself, pushing away from the slick marble surface.
"Oh, my,” Merlin said. “Oh, my. That was wonderful."
He laughed. With an excess of splashing, he pulled her up and cradled her against his chest. “Wonderful.” He rocked her back and forth, setting up new webs of ripples.
She relaxed, slipping out of his embrace like quicksilver and leaning back against the fountain with her eyes closed and her faced tilted up to the moonlight. “I'd like to stay here forever."
"Not likely.” He moved next to her, leaning his elbow on the gilded fish. “I'm not spending my wedding night in a fountain."
She yawned. Ransom slid his arm around her shoulders and let her rest against him. They watched the languid streamers of water spin around them and fall in arcs of liquid light. Merlin snuggled closer and yawned again.
He kissed the curling tendrils of damp hair beneath his chin. “You're exhausted. Lord, I've pushed you hard today, and you're barely recovered.” He squeezed her. “Come, I'll take you to bed."
She let him lead her up out of the pool, where she shivered in the night air. He found his waistcoat and ran it over her shoulders and legs, soaking up the worst of the water before he draped around her the coat he'd thrown to the pavement. Merlin sat on the edge of the pool and dangled her feet as he waded back in and retrieved her gown and his shirt.
She thought he looked like some pagan god, emerging from the pool with the white silk breeches molded to him and water glistening on his hair and chest. But he had to wring out the garments like an everyday washerwoman. Then he gathered shoes and stockings and made a damp bundle. “Here. Carry this, if you please."
Merlin stood up to take it. As soon as she did, he swept her up and carried her out of the garden with her bare feet dangling. He was breathing a little more heavily than normal by the time he climbed the terrace and then the single set of stairs that led to an open, floor-length window in the dark wing of the house that overlooked the gardens. He ducked through the open window and set her on her feet.
He kissed her forehead. “Wait here."
Merlin obeyed, too tired even to try to peer around the room and identify it. When he came back a few moments later, he had a pair of towels. She stood passively as he rubbed her hair and his own and stripped off the sodden breeches. In a shaft of moonlight she could see him, naked, all polished planes and muscle like a work of Grecian art. In hazy curiosity she reached out and smoothed her hand over his hip, brushing the part of him that was so different from herself. He stirred as she watched in fascination; his hand tightened on the nape of her neck.
"Mmm.” He breathed lightly on her skin, pushing himself into her hand a little. “Merlin. Come to bed."
When she only stood there, swaying with weariness, he picked her up again. He carried her through one door, then laid her on a bed and sank down behind her. The bedclothes smelled of lilac. He took her in his arms and curled around her, his face in her shoulder, his legs drawn up under hers so that the warm evidence of his arousal pressed lightly at her back.
But he did not initiate any loving again. “Tomorrow,” he whispered when she asked. “There's time enough. All my tomorrows belong to you.” He stroked her skin and curled his arm beneath her breasts. “Just sleep with me tonight, sweet Wiz."
She tried, experimentally, to move away from him. His embrace tightened, holding her prisoner.
"Rest now,” he ordered softly. “Stay here and sleep."
She stared into the dark and pondered that command. So simple, and so crushing in the knowledge that he could enforce it. That all the power in this world was his—he was stronger than she, and slyer, and more ruthless. Like a prince i
n a fairy tale, he would slay all the dragons and leave none for her. She would be safe. And dull, and pointless.
She swallowed, feeling his arm relax, his chest rise and fall in steady slumber against her spine. Then she sought his fingers, entwining them with hers.
One silent tear fell on her hand. Another followed. One for being free of him. And one for being lonely.
Chapter 21
She slipped away by kissing him. There was hardly light enough to see when he half-woke as she tried to work her way out of his arms. He hugged her to him, mumbling something about no ride that morning. “Better ideas,” he murmured with a sleepy squint.
She leaned above him and whispered, “I have to get up. I'll be back in a moment."
He turned over and stretched with an indolent smile, sliding his hand around the nape of her neck and drawing her down for a slow heady kiss. Merlin's resistance flagged. She pressed herself against the length of him, fascinated by the naked, smooth power of his sleep-warmed shape. But when he crossed his leg over hers and rolled toward her, she scrambled back, out of reach and off the bed.
He lay with his eyes barely open, his hand outstretched where she'd evaded it. “Don't be...” He sighed and pulled her pillow toward him instead, shoving it up beneath his head. “...gone...” His thick lashes drifted closed. “long..."
"No,” she whispered. “I won't."
She stood by the bed. It was hard to leave him. Hard. Painful to deceive. She pressed her fist to her mouth and watched him as he rested in that drowsy, sweet contentment, believing her lie.
Knowing well that if he hadn't, it would never have been so easy.
In his dressing room she found clothes. They were Ransom's, true, a pair of tawny doeskin breeches laid neatly over the back of a chair, and a voluminous shirt on the horse by the fireplace. Merlin touched her lower lip as she looked at his midnight-blue coat, white waistcoat, and razors, all stiffly awaiting the duke's pleasure as if in silent attention.