Again the Magic (22 page)

McKenna bent to lift the twisted hem of her chemise. The rough silk of his tongue stroked the place on her abdomen where the structure of her corset compressed her pale flesh. Leaning weakly against the tree, Aline stared at the top of his dark head. “McKenna,” she said, flooded with riotous heat as he knelt to inhale the scent of her body. Remembering the scars, she reached down to tug her garters upward, then pushed at him helplessly. “Wait…” But his mouth was already on her, nuzzling into the wet cleft, his tongue sliding past the thick curls.

Aline’s legs trembled violently. If not for the support of the oak behind her, she would have melted to the ground. Her shaking hands went to his head, her fingers tangling in the close-cropped locks. “McKenna,” she moaned, unable to believe what he was doing to her.

He licked deeper into the furrow of her sex, his tongue invading the melting tenderness until she fell silent, her labored breaths puncturing the air. Tension gathered once more, coiling with every tug of his mouth.

“I can’t bear it,” she gasped. “Please, McKenna… please…”

Apparently those words were what he had been waiting for. Standing, he gathered her against his body and lifted her with incredible ease. One of his arms shielded her back from the scrape of the tree trunk, while the other hooked neatly beneath her buttocks. She was completely helpless, unable to move or even squirm. Her scars pulled, and she shifted her knee upward to ease the tension.

McKenna kissed her, his hot breath filling her mouth. She felt the blunt pressure of his sex, the hardness pushing into the vulnerable cove of her body. Her flesh resisted, tightening against the threat of pain. The tip of his shaft entered her, and as McKenna felt the hot, snug clasp of her, his urgency seemed to magnify a hundred times. He pushed upward, while at the same time allowing Aline’s own weight to impel her onto his engorged length. A broken gasp came from Aline’s throat as her body gave way to the unrelenting invasion. Suddenly he was inside her, rending and filling and stretching the soft tissues. Aline arched in shock, her hands fisted against his back.

McKenna froze as the signs of her pain registered in his lust-clouded brain. Realizing what the peculiar resistance of her body had meant, he let out an astonished breath. “My God. You’re not a virgin. You can’t be.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she gasped. “Don’t stop. It’s all right. Don’t stop.”

But he remained still, staring at her in the secret darkness, his arms clamping around her until she could barely breathe. He was part of her, finally, in this ultimate and necessary act that her entire life had led to. She held on to him with every part of herself, drawing him deep, binding him in the light, secure grasp of her arms. Feeling the rhythmic squeeze of her inner muscles, McKenna bent to kiss her fiercely, his tongue stroking the edge of her teeth and probing the dark sweetness beyond. Aline clenched her stockinged legs around his waist, while he began to thrust in slow, tireless movements. The stinging eased, though it did not fade completely — and Aline didn’t care. All that mattered was possessing him, containing his rising flesh, her body and soul changed forever by his passionate invasion.

Groaning between his clenched teeth, McKenna braced his feet and pumped harder, burrowed deeper, sweating with pleasure and exertion. He spurted inside her, his climax primitive, fierce, endless. Aline wrapped herself around him, dragging her open mouth over his face and neck, licking greedily at the trails of sweat.

McKenna panted and shivered and held himself inside her for a long time. Slowly the tension drained from Aline’s body, leaving her exhausted. As McKenna withdrew from her, she felt hot liquid seeping between her thighs. Realizing that her stockings had slipped, she wriggled in sudden anxiety. “Please let me down.”

Lowering her carefully to the ground, McKenna steadied her with his hands, while she fumbled to yank her stockings upward, and pull the straps of her chemise back over her shoulders. When she was safely covered, she reached for the bedraggled heap of her gown. Oh, how she wanted to lie with him somewhere, and sleep nestled against his body, and awaken to the sight of him in the morning sunlight. If only that were possible.

Clumsily jerking on the rest of her clothes, Aline stood with her face averted, and let McKenna fasten the back of her gown. Something had happened to one of her shoes… she had kicked it off during their encounter, and it took a minute of dedicated searching before McKenna finally located it behind a tree root.

Aline’s lips twitched with reluctant humor as he brought the shoe to her. “Thank you.”

McKenna did not smile, however. His features were as hard as stone, his eyes gleaming dangerously. “How the hell is it possible,” he asked in controlled fury, “that you were a virgin?”

“It’s not important,” she muttered.

“It is to me.” His fingers grasped her chin none too gently, forcing her to stare at him. “Why have you never let any man bed you before tonight?”

Aline licked her dry lips as she tried to come up with a satisfactory explanation. “I… I decided to wait until I married.”

“And in the five years of knowing Sandridge, you’ve never let him touch you?”

“You needn’t sound as if that’s a crime,” she said defensively. “It was a matter of respect, and mutual choice, and—”

“It is a crime!” he exploded. “It’s unnatural, damn you, and you’re going to tell me why! And then you’re going to explain why you let
me
take your virginity!”

Aline fumbled for a lie to divert him… anything to conceal the truth. “I… suppose I felt I owed it to you, after the way I sent you from Stony Cross all those years ago.”

McKenna seized her shoulders. “And you think the debt has been paid now?” he asked incredulously. “Oh no, my lady. Let us be clear on that point… you haven’t begun to make amends for that. You’re going to reimburse me in more ways than you can imagine — with interest.”

Aline turned cold with alarm. “I’m afraid this is all I can offer, McKenna,” she said. “One night, with no promises and no regrets. I’m sorry if you want more than that. It just isn’t possible.”

“The hell it isn’t,” he muttered. “My lady, you’re about to receive an education in how to conduct an affair. Because for the duration of my stay at Stony Cross, you’re going to work off your debt to me… on your back, your knees, or any other position I desire you in.” He pulled her away from the huge oak, her gown bedraggled, and her hair mussed and littered with flecks of bark. Jerking her forward, he covered her mouth with his, kissing her not with the intent to please, but to demonstrate his ownership. Although Aline knew it would be to her advantage to keep from responding, his kiss was too compelling for her to resist. She did not have the strength to break free of his inexorable grasp, nor could she avoid his compelling mouth, and before long she melted against him with a shaken moan, her lips feverishly answering his.

Only when her response was obvious to both of them did McKenna lift his head. His rapid breath mingled with hers as he spoke. “I’m going to come to your room tonight.”

Aline wrenched herself away from him, stumbling back to the forest path. “I’ll lock the door.”

“I’ll break it down, then.”

“Don’t be an ass,” she said with a touch of exasperation, hastening her stride despite the protests of her much-abused legs.

The rest of the walk back to the manor was silent, except for the sound of their feet crunching leaves and twigs and gravel. Aline was increasingly uncomfortable, becoming aware of a multitude of twinges and aches, not to mention the cold stickiness between her thighs. Her scars had begun to itch and burn. She had never wanted a hot bath so badly in her life. She only prayed that McKenna was too preoccupied to notice the pained hobble of her gait.

The manor was dark and quiet, only a few lights burning as a concession to guests who had decided to prolong their revels. McKenna walked Aline to a servants’ entrance at the side of the house, where there was far less likelihood of either of them being seen. Anyone who witnessed Aline’s disheveled condition would easily guess what she had been doing.

“Tomorrow, then,” McKenna warned her, standing in the entrance… watching as she made her slow, painstaking way upstairs.

M
cKenna wandered to the back terrace in a kind of stupor, feeling drugged and floundering… no doubt similar to the way Gideon Shaw had felt while he was drunk and drowning in a storm-swept ocean. In all of McKenna’s imaginings of this night, he had always pictured himself as completely in control. He was experienced with women, cognizant of his own sexual needs and the responses of his partners. He had known exactly what he was going to do with Aline, and how the scene would be played out. And then Aline had changed everything.

Sitting at an outside table in the shadows, McKenna clasped his head in his hands and closed his eyes. The faint mingled scents of oak and sap and female arousal clung to his hands… he inhaled the fragrance greedily and felt heat stirring in his groin. He remembered the feeling of sliding inside her, the lush flesh that had surrounded him so tightly. The gasps that had come from her throat. The taste of her mouth, spiced with wine and ginger. She had satisfied him more than anyone ever had, and yet he already desired her again.

A virgin…
damn her
. Damn her for the feelings she roused in him, the confusion and suspicion and protectiveness and sexual hunger. He would have bet every last cent that she had taken dozens of lovers by now.

And he would have lost.

McKenna tightened his palms on his head as though he could crush out the traitorous thoughts. She was not the girl he had once loved, he reminded himself grimly. That girl had never really existed. And yet it didn’t seem to matter. Aline was his curse, his fate, his consuming desire. He would never stop wanting her, no matter what she did, no matter how many oceans and continents he managed to put between them.

God… the sweetness of her body, so tight and warm around him… the salty-fresh scent of her skin, the perfumed softness of her hair. He had felt his sanity dissolve as he took possession of her, and he had lost all thought of withdrawing at the moment of climax. It was possible that he had made her pregnant. The thought filled him with primitive satisfaction. To see her big and helpless with his child, overtaken with his seed, dependent in every way on him… yes, he thought grimly. He wanted to occupy her with his own flesh, and chain her to him with a bond she could never break. Aline didn’t realize it yet, but she would never be free of him — or the demands he would make of her.

“What a deadly dull evening,” Susan Chamberlain, Gideon Shaw’s sister, remarked sourly. They had just returned from the village fair, having left the festivities just as things began to get interesting. Apparently the provincial pleasures of having one’s palm read, or watching tumblers and fire eaters, or drinking local elder wine, was lost on people as urbane as the Shaws and their kin.

“Yes,” her husband, Mr. Chamberlain, chimed in, “the novelty of mingling with rustics wears off rather quickly, I’m afraid. It is better to spend time in one’s own company than to consort with people who have no more intelligence than the sheep and goats they herd.”

Annoyed by his snobbery, Livia could not resist making a retort. “You are fortunate, then, Mr. Chamberlain. With that attitude, it seems likely that you will indeed be spending a great deal of time in your own company.”

While both the Chamberlains glared at her, Gideon Shaw laughed freely at her impudence. “I enjoyed the fair,” he said, his blue eyes twinkling. He glanced at Susan. “And you seem to have forgotten, dear sis, that most of those so-called rustics have better bloodlines than the Shaws.”

“How could I forget?” Susan Chamberlain asked sharply. “You are always so eager to remind me.”

Livia bit the insides of her lips to keep from laughing. “I suppose I shall retire for the evening. I bid you all a good night.”

“Not yet,” Shaw said softly. “The night is still young, my lady. Shall we play a hand of cards, or have a turn at the chessboard?”

She smiled and asked ingenuously, “Do you like to play games, Mr. Shaw?”

His gaze was subtly seductive, but his tone matched hers for innocence. “Of every kind.”

Livia’s teeth caught at her lower lip in the way that had always inspired Amberley to say that she was adorable. How strange — she hadn’t consciously done that in so very long. Which made her realize how very much she wanted to attract Gideon Shaw.

“I never play when I don’t think I can win,” she told him. “Therefore, I suggest that we take a turn through the portrait gallery, and you can view
my
ancestors. You may be interested to know that our family tree boasts of a pirate. Quite a ruthless fellow, I’ve been told.”

“So was my grandfather,” Shaw remarked. “Although we politely refer to him as a sea captain, he did things that would make a pirate blush for shame.”

His sister Susan made a strangled sound. “I will not join you, Lady Olivia, as it is obvious that my brother is determined to denigrate his antecedents at every opportunity. Heaven knows for what purpose.”

Livia tried to suppress a rush of pleasure at the prospect of being alone with Shaw again, but a betraying tide of color burnished her cheeks. “Certainly, Mrs. Chamberlain. Again, I wish you good night.”

The Chamberlains’ replies, if they made any, were inaudible. And Livia wouldn’t have been able to hear them in any case: her ears were filled with the pounding of her own heartbeat. She wondered what they thought of her going somewhere unchaperoned with Shaw, and then decided in a rush of happy self-indulgence that it did not matter. The night
was
young, and for the first time in a long while, she felt young too.

Leading Shaw to the portrait gallery, Livia gave him an arch glance. “You are wicked, to tease your sister so,” she said severely.

“It is a brother’s duty to torment his older sister.”

“You perform your duty with awe-inspiring thoroughness,” she said, and his grin broadened.