Let Me Be The One Read online

  He kissed her bare breasts. She raised her knees. He suckled her. She cradled him. Her fingers wound in his hair. His fingers slipped between her thighs. Two went inside her. They both felt how ready she was for him, how slick and sweetly prepared her body was... and how tight.

  He could feel her contracting around his fingers. He eased them out of her and thrust again. She moaned. Her hips lifted. He released her and raised himself up so he was kneeling between her thighs. His hands went to the small of her back, then lower. He cupped her bottom, lifted it. Her fingers curled in the tangle of bedclothes. At the first hint of his entry her teeth caught her bottom lip. She took a shallow breath, sipping the air as he pushed himself slowly inside her. She was tender and tight. It was true she was no virgin, but it had been a very long time.

  Joined, he paused, leaning forward carefully, letting her get used to the size and pressure of him. He nuzzled her neck, the hollow of her throat. She was all around him, tight inside and out. Her breathing had slowed. It came evenly now, in a measured tempo. She was holding back, forcing herself to lie still and quiet and wait for his lead. He felt the pulse in her throat against his lips and the one that thrummed inside her against the length of his arousal. She contracted a little around him. The movement made him thrust upward. She gasped.

  He pressed a hard kiss to her mouth, wrenching another cry from her. She took his face in her hands and held it when he drew back. "You must..." She forced herself to keep her eyes open as he began to move between her thighs. "You must not..." Her body continued to stretch and adapt to accommodate him. The pressure was insistent, the ache spreading from the tip of her womb all the way to her fingertips. Her hands left his face and she gripped his shoulders instead. "Promise..." she said on a thread of sound. "Promise you will not leave your seed in me."

  Elizabeth felt rather than saw the change her words had wrought. Beneath her fingers his shoulders bunched. Every one of his muscles tensed. He did not strike her, though she suspected some part of him wanted to. He used all of his body to punish her instead, thrusting into her deeply, no longer mindful of her pleasure. He did not kiss her again, and she felt the absence of his mouth as keenly as she felt his presence elsewhere. His strokes were long and hard, jerking her back each time he ground himself against her. She strove to meet him, wrapping her legs around him, clutching his upper arms. She closed her eyes against what she imagined she saw in his face and caught the inside of her upper lip. On his next thrust she tasted her own blood.

  It was fitting, she thought, that he should have found this way to make her bleed. The pain of it was not even unwelcome. She could not give him her virginity, but this, this small sharp stab of pain mingling with the warm metallic taste of her blood was easily made his. Reaching up, she grasped his head and pulled his mouth to hers, making him take what his anger had wrested from her.

  She did not expect it to make a difference.

  North stilled. The taste of her blood was on the tip of his tongue. His inarticulate groan was muffled by the pressure of her mouth on his. He raised his head slowly. Her hands fell away from his face and lay palm up on either side of her head.

  His chest felt tight with the pressure of the breath he held. He let it out slowly. "I'm sorry," he said. "I've never..." He stopped because she was shaking her head from side to side. Her features were lost in the deep shadows of the room, but he could make out the movement, the refusal to allow his apology.

  "It doesn't matter," she whispered.

  But it did, to him. There was no denying that he had meant to hurt her. He could not excuse himself that it had been unintentional. It was a new experience for him, to set about trying to hurt a woman in any manner, but to do it in this particular way, with his mouth and his hands and his cock... It came to him then that he was fucking her, just as she had insisted he wanted to. Elizabeth had made him say it, and then she had set about proving how very true it was.

  He started to withdraw, but her legs tightened around his hips. He was not proof against this or the contractions that held him more intimately.

  She touched his face gently, brushing aside a lock of hair on his brow. Beneath his fingertips she could feel the strain that it took to remain so still inside her. "You forgot for a while, didn't you? Forgot there was someone else before you. I knew you had." She lightly touched his temple, then his cheek. "I cannot be a virgin for you, no matter how you make me bleed." Her hand slid to the back of his neck when he tried to pull away. "No. Don't leave me. Please. I want this."

  He lowered his head and brought his mouth close to hers. "It should not be a punishment," he whispered.

  "You cannot always have your way, my lord." Her hand fell lightly on his shoulder. "Sometimes it can be nothing else."

  A growl was trapped at the back of his throat. He kissed her once, hard and deeply, and then his body began to move, lifting, stroking, taking her with the reckless force she wanted, her small cries urging him on.

  He felt heat coil inside him, sparked by the liquid heat of her body around his. Tension skittered under his skin, drawing on his muscles, stretching them. His shoulders lifted, his back curved with the downward force of his hips. He strained to get closer, deeper, and felt her strain in exactly the opposite way, digging her heels into the mattress, arching her pelvis, throwing her head back and lifting her breasts and...

  At the last Northam remembered what promise she had wanted. He had never given his word, but he knew, even as he had been angered by her asking, that he would do it. Still, he almost left it to too late. With a cry, and all the effort he could bring to bear, he withdrew from her and spilled his seed onto her flat belly and then into the tangled sheets.

  Elizabeth lay quietly under him, listening to his breathing steady, comforted by the weight of him and the knowledge that his warm liquid seed was on her belly and not in it. For a time she was content to stroke his back. When he rolled away, she did not try to hold him to her.

  Without a word she rose from the bed. She raised the neckline of her bunched nightgown to her shoulders and let the hem fall to her ankles. Her bare feet made no sound as she crossed the carpet to the dressing room.

  Northam turned on his side and slipped one arm under the pillow at his head. He watched the door to the dressing room swing slowly toward him until only a strip of candlelight was visible along the frame. He heard her pour water from a pitcher into a bowl. Briefly there was a sound of splashing. He imagined her cooling her heated face, runnels of water slipping over her brow, cheeks, and then past her throat, dampening the neckline of her gown. He wondered if she was looking in a mirror, and what she would see if she did.

  Satisfaction? Self-loathing?

  He did not reflect on his own emotions as carefully as he considered hers, and he reasoned it might be no different for her. She might have no more desire than he to give much thought to what had passed between them and, more importantly, to what feelings were sustained in the wake.

  There was silence in the other room. In his mind's eye he saw her lifting the gown and using a damp cloth to wipe away the last traces of his seed. She would raise one leg on a stool and touch it to her belly, her hip, and slide it between her thighs. Water would glisten on her skin and on the damp gold-tipped hair of her mons. She had been right, he thought, to insist on his withdrawal. He had done it before with one of the regimental whores because the thought of putting a child in her belly filled him with dread. After that he had used a length of sheep's gut, which he heard could also protect him against the pox. His mistresses had never demanded it of him. He knew they had ways of protecting themselves, and it was borne out over the years when none of the women he slept with presented him with a son or daughter.

  He should have been relieved, he told himself, yet he knew there was a part of him that wondered if he could sire a child. His mother was certainly impatient for him to provide heirs. He was not sure she cared any longer if they were legitimate. And one son was not enough, she had reminded him, though t
his last admonition was unnecessary. He well understood the reasons for conceiving a second son. He was one. Not an afterthought at all, but insurance against tragedy.

  Elizabeth stood in the doorway. She carried a candlestick in one hand, the light of which barely reached the bed. Still, it afforded her an unrestricted view of the golden god who lay atop it. Bright yellow hair fell across his forehead; some strands lay like gossamer threads on the pillowcase. He was naked. One knee was raised toward his chest, not in a self-conscious way, but in a manner that spoke of replete and sated senses. The taut curve of his hip and thigh glowed just at the edge of the candlelight.

  Elizabeth walked to the bedside table and touched her candle to the one that was there, doubling the brightness of the light that caressed his body. She stared at his beautiful face, so youthful in sleep. She knew he was older than she in years, but it seemed he was younger in fact. Elizabeth did not think her own face was so untroubled when she slept. At least she hoped it wasn't. She had not earned the right to rest in such a careless web of dreams.

  Elizabeth set down her candlestick and returned to the dressing room for the small basin of water and damp cloth. She placed them on the table before she eased herself gingerly onto the mattress. It was when she turned that she saw he was watching her, his eyes on the curve of her shoulder laid bare by the fallen strap of her gown. He reached for her, touching the nape of her neck with his fingertips, ruffling the fine hairs. His large hand curved around her neck and his thumb stroked the soft underside of her chin. She swallowed hard. He smiled as if he understood what she was thinking.

  Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed her knuckles. The tenderness of the gesture made her want to weep. She had promised herself there would be no tears this time. He did not deserve that.

  "I thought you had fallen asleep," she said.

  He lowered her hand and let it rest on his chest, still cupped in his. "Would you prefer that I had?"

  "Only if you wished it."

  One brow lifted. "So accommodating. And if I wished to make love to you again?" When she was silent he thought it was because she meant to dispute the words he had chosen, and he found himself holding his breath. Her eyes, however, went to the shadowed juncture of his thighs, where his penis lay soft and heavy and still, and her expression communicated so much doubt that he could not help but laugh. "I quite understand your lack of confidence," he said, grinning. "Perhaps in a little while."

  She nodded, her eyes no longer on his thighs but on his face. His easy smile, his unselfconscious amusement, captivated her. "As you like," she said, hardly aware of her words or the fact that she was speaking.

  "What are you thinking?"

  She shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "It was..."

  "Nothing. I know. Elizabeth, I think your nothings are more interesting than what most people regard as their deepest thoughts." He gave her hand a little squeeze."Tell me."

  She hesitated. "It is foolish, really. I was thinking that your smile is without any pain." She looked away for a moment, and when she looked back she saw it was gone. Perhaps that had been her real intent, she thought, in answering his question. She was no longer caught in the spell of it. "I wondered if life has always been so easy for you."

  He studied her face. "Easier than yours, I think."

  Elizabeth had not expected that his answer would turn back on her. She felt her insides twist and made to remove her hand from his. He did not let her go, pressing his fingers more firmly around it and keeping it in place just over his heart. How was it, she wondered, that he was the one naked and she was the one exposed?

  "Do you not want to hear?" he asked gently.

  She was not at all sure she did. She took the coward's route and said nothing, letting him decide if he would tell her.

  "I spent my youngest years—how is it described?—ah, yes, in the bosom of a loving family." He watched a slight smile lift one corner of her mouth. "There was my father, the fifth Earl of Northam, my mother, my older brother Gordon, named after my father, an older sister Leticia, and two younger sisters, Pamela and Regina. You see, already it is very different from you. You are an only child, I believe."

  She started to nod, then remembered how things had changed. "That was true for a very long time. I have a half-brother now. Adam, Viscount Selden."

  "Yes, I forgot." He went on. "We had all the usual rows. Fights over who should go first at duck, duck, goose. Who should cut the cake. Who should be the pirate leader. Gordon was very good about not always winning. He could have claimed the right as the oldest, but he never pressed that too hard. Leticia was more likely to be difficult—as girls often are—and Gordon and I were usually glad when she played with our younger sisters. Pamela and Reggie did not seem to mind in the least when she ordered them about.

  "My father was very much connected to politics, rather like yours, I suspect."

  Elizabeth suspected the senior Gordon Hampton had been nothing like her father, even in the course of his politics. She inclined her head, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, and encouraged him to continue.

  "He spent a great deal of time in London and a great deal of that outside of our home, making speeches, attending to the business of government. My mother was also a favorite in social circles and she remains so to this day. Still, in spite of my parents' interests in the larger society, I believe we saw them a fair amount. They were there for the important occasions, and they always seemed to know when any of us had done something wrong." He smiled faintly at the memory of being marched into his father's study to explain how Regina's freckles had come to be connected by a narrow line of black ink. "They were not niggardly with their praise either. We knew when one or the other was proud of us. Certainly I spent more time with my mother and father than South did with his parents, for instance. Or East. Marchman did not know his father at all."

  Elizabeth nodded. "I suppose that no matter what the circumstances of our growing up, we never think of it as being different from anyone else's. We end up believing that what we know is what should be." Her sigh was nearly soundless, and though she was thinking of herself and what had passed for usual in her home, she said, "You learned differently at Hambrick, I take it."

  "Hmm. When Gordon came of age he was sent to public school. Eton. It was where my father went. I missed him terribly, envied him almost as much. When it was my turn to go, I was sent to Hambrick. My grandfather, my mother's father, had come to live with us by then, and he had gone to Hambrick. He felt as strongly about sending me there as my father did Eton. Grandfather won, though, as he usually did when he set forth his arguments."

  "Were you disappointed?"

  "Not overmuch. I was old enough then to know that being at Eton with Gordon would have forever placed me in his shadow. I would always be compared to him in a way I had never been at home. From the very beginning our parents encouraged us on different courses. My father would have seen the wisdom of sending me to Hambrick earlier if it had not been proposed by my grandfather. They never agreed on anything, beginning with my father marrying my mother."

  Elizabeth laughed. "But your grandfather did eventually agree. After all, your parents married."

  One of Northam's brows kicked up. "They eloped," he said in a stage whisper, adopting the feigned secretive tone everyone in his family had used to discuss the event. "To Gretna."

  "Really?"

  He nodded solemnly."It was a scandal." He smiled when Elizabeth laughed again. Releasing her hand, he sat up and drew a sheet modestly around his waist. He patted the space beside him and she left her place on the edge of the bed to sit in the crook of his arm. "Where was I?"

  "The scandal."

  "No, I wasn't. That's another story. I was going to tell you about Hambrick."

  "Lord Southerton told me about your Compass Club. Sworn enemies of the Society of Bishops and all that."

  "That's right."

  "He said you were an exclusive club."

  "He said that?"

/>   She tried to remember South's exact words. "Well, he said that you wouldn't let anyone else in."

  "He probably didn't mention that no one ever asked. We weren't exclusive, Elizabeth. We were excluded."

  She frowned, unable to imagine such a thing. She remembered seeing them all together on the first day of the picnic, sprawled across a blanket, laughing so boisterously when Northam juggled peaches from her still life. Who would not want to join them? She had. Not even knowing them, she had wondered what it would be like to share their blanket and their laughter. "How could that be?"

  "The simplest explanation is because of West," he said. "But that's only part of it."

  "What is it about Mr. Marchman?"

  "He's illegitimate."

  "A bastard," she said softly. She felt Northam stiffen at her side. "No, I didn't mean anything by it. It's just... it's just that I was thinking how cruel the boys could be to... to someone like him."

  "Someone like him," Northam repeated, not liking the taste of that phrase on his tongue, liking it even less that he heard it from Elizabeth."It doesn't make him different from you or me."

  "Oh, but it does."

  Northam removed his arm from around her shoulders. "Explain that to me."

  She knew he was unhappy with her but would not take back her words. It was better this way, she thought, better that he was reminded that her perspective could be at odds with his. "Illegitimacy does not make him intrinsically different," she said. "Not at birth. But soon after it changes him in some way. It could be because his mother is ashamed or his father is indifferent. It may be that someone responds more slowly when he cries or does not comfort him so easily when he is hurt. He begins to see himself as someone apart from others.

  "You cannot say that society is kind to bastards, North, and in the end society has its way. An illegitimate son learns that what he wants he must take, that nothing will ever be given to him, and that sometimes even what he earns he cannot claim. He comes to believe one of two things about himself: either that he has no right to hold his head up or that he must hold it higher than everyone else. Whatever he chooses, it soon becomes visible to others, and they respond to what they see: a young man who accepts that he is everyone's whipping boy or one who constantly challenges the biggest and strongest and cares nothing for how badly he's beaten.