Sins and Scandals Collection. Nicola Cornick
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She was not sure how long she lay there, her mind utterly blank for once, all thoughts and reason fled, aware of nothing but shock and pure, wicked exhilaration. She had never felt like this before, never dreamed of feeling like this. For once she let her mind lie quiescent and simply allowed herself to experience sensation. Her body felt lush and ripe and replete. She had had no notion it could give her so much pleasure. She felt stunned to discover it.
She was dimly aware of Garrick lifting her, wrapping something about her, and then she sank deeply into the softest, deepest mattress she had ever known. She was so drained by bliss that she drifted between waking and sleeping. Somewhere at the back of her mind reality stirred, but she pushed any thoughts away before they could touch her with their cold truth.
After a while she opened her eyes and looked about her. The room was lit by the strengthening glow of the dawn now. In its light she could see Garrick stretched out beside her and her throat dried to look at him. He was masculine perfection, like the statues she had studied in the London museums. But Garrick was real, hard muscle and smooth tawny skin, his auburn hair tumbling across his brow, magnificent in his nakedness.
He leaned over and pressed soft kisses against her brow, her eyelids, her cheeks, her throat. His breath stirred her hair. She could smell the scent of his skin mingled with salt sweat and dust, and her head spun.
“It should not have been like that …” His voice was soft. “I am sorry.”
Dimly she understood what he meant. It had been wild and uncontrolled, no gentle introduction for a virgin to the art of love. Yet she had not wanted that. She had wanted him. She had wanted to celebrate their escape, the triumph of life over death. But now … The thoughts hovering in the shadows at the edge of her mind drew a little closer. She felt cold. Regrets, memories … She could not face them yet.
“Garrick—”
She reached for him, wanting to ward off the shade and drive away thought, if only for a little longer. She saw him hesitate. Then he brushed his lips against hers. Her heart fluttered. The shadows fled.
This time the kiss was slower, gentler. His mouth explored hers, teasing her, his tongue dancing with hers. Merryn quivered as an echo of their previous passion shook her. The heat and pleasure shimmered through her, softer this time, more persuasive, coiling through her body with seductive warmth. She reached for Garrick again but he shook his head, pushing her back against the bed, sliding his hands down her body in a caress that made her skin shiver and ache with need.
“Not now, not yet …” His head dipped to her breast and once again her mind swirled away to that hot dark place where pleasure drove her on. She felt his fingers against the soft skin of her inner thigh, parting her, touching her intimately. The heat built inside her as he stroked; Merryn dug her fingers into the bed and shifted against the covers, desperate to ease the torment.
Garrick slid something beneath her hips, raising her up. The rough silkiness of velvet abraded her. Tumbled on the bed, abandoned and unrestrained, she felt the brush of his cheek against her thigh, then the tip of his tongue at her core, trailing shattering pleasure. She arched helplessly, moaning with shock and delight. This was beyond any ecstasy she had experienced before. She felt as though her body was melting as white-hot rapture consumed her.
This time he entered her slowly while her body was still clenching with intense bliss and she gasped to feel him take her. It seemed impossible. She was tight; her climax still rippled through her belly in endless waves. She writhed beneath him and he held her hips down against the velvet and slid inside her gently, inexorably. Merryn had thought that her body could not take any further sensation but Garrick raised himself above her, pushing the tangled hair away from her flushed face, kissing her with the same deep intimacy with which he took her body.
“Open your eyes,” he said softly, and her lashes fluttered open so that she met the dark molten heat in his. His body plundered hers with slow, relentless strokes, his eyes held hers. She could not break the connection between them, did not want to, captured and held by the fierce passion beneath his gentleness. With aching tenderness he drove her to the edge again and she hung there for endless moments, her body strung out with acute desire, her mind reeling with the onslaught of unimaginable pleasure. And then she fell again, shocked beyond measure, powerless, her mind and body dazzled.
Delicious exhaustion washed through her. She could not move other than to curl against him and succumb utterly to sleep, Garrick’s arms about her, his body curved protectively about hers.
Merryn did not know how long she slept for but when she awoke it was to hear a hammering at the door and the sound of voices in the corridor outside and then the room was full of people. There was Joanna and Alex and Tess and a whole host of others whom she did not recognize but who were all staring at her, some in shock, some in horror, all in appalled surprise. Merryn blinked as she opened her eyes fully and the last shreds of the dream fled. Now she could not escape the thoughts that crowded back into her mind.
The room she was lying in was, self-evidently, a bordello. Either that or the owner of the house had very exotic tastes. The bed was covered in lush pink silk and draped with diaphanous curtains trimmed with silver and gold. On the dresser lay a wicked-looking whip with a shiny, carved handle. Rich velvet cushions lay scattered across the room. Merryn’s gaze fell on one lying on the bedcover and she blushed. The blush spread down her throat and across her whole body, naked as it was beneath the pink silk cover. She turned her head very slowly. Garrick was lying beside her still, despite the crush of people now in the room, deeply asleep. One strong brown arm lay possessively across her stomach, drawing her close to his side.
No wonder he was still sleeping. He must have been exhausted—for various reasons. The memories slid into her head like a disconnected pattern: Garrick comforting her when she had woken in terror in the darkness of the night, Garrick protecting her with his body when the walls had fallen, Garrick’s hands moving over her with such sure skill and endless pleasure. Garrick. Her lover.
She had slept with her enemy, the man who had killed her brother.
A wave of shock and self-loathing hit her so hard that she turned cold to her bones. The sickness rose in her throat. She was lying naked in a bordello with a man who was her sworn enemy. She had allowed him the most impossible intimacies with her body. She had lost her virginity. She was ruined.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“FARNE.”
Alex Grant’s tone was colder than the polar ice, his gray gaze hard as flint. In fact, Garrick reflected ruefully, he had had a warmer welcome from Spanish guerrillas than he was getting now from Lord Grant. Which was hardly surprising. He had comprehensively ruined the reputation of Grant’s sister-in-law and plunged the family into outrageous scandal. The only mystery was why Grant was wasting any time at all in speaking to him rather than simply putting a bullet through him.
“A glass of wine?” Alex asked, gesturing to the decanter that sat on the rosewood library table. “Or perhaps—” his gaze appraised Garrick’s face keenly “—we should make that brandy?”
“Thank you,” Garrick said. He felt a tiny amount of tension slip from his shoulders. So they were to be civilized about this. With a man such as Grant, who had allegedly wrestled a polar bear single-handed and had successfully saved his crew from certain death trapped in the Arctic ice, one could not be sure. Grant was a gentleman, of course, but Garrick was all too aware that he had broken every last tenet of honorable behavior and deserved no clemency.
“I cannot call you out,” Alex said precisely, as though reading Garrick’s thoughts. He strolled across to the decanter, poured for both of them and handed Garrick his glass. His gaze was still as cold as the polar sea. “Please do not misunderstand me,” he continued. “The idea has some appeal.” His gaze went to the pristine white bandage about Garrick’s left wrist. “Though I would wait until you were recovered, of course. Killing a wounded man is not my style.”
Garrick prudently kept quiet. He was not at all sure that Grant was joking.