Louise Allen - A Regency Rake's Redemption

‘Yes,’ he said, putting down the lantern and coming to pull her into his arms. ‘What do you want, Dita?’

‘I don’t know.’ She tugged at his waistcoat buttons. ‘You.’

‘I want you, too,’ he said as she undid the last of them and began to pull his shirt from his waistband. ‘I only meant to kiss you: I should have known it wouldn’t stop there. Trust me a little more, Dita? Trust me to pleasure you?’

‘Yes,’ she said, not quite understanding what he was asking, what it meant. ‘I need to touch you. Aah …’ Her hands slid around his waist against the hot skin and she stood there, resting against him, catching her breath and feeling him tense under her caress.

That evening so long ago, there had been no time to simply hold each other. He had reached for her, she had stumbled into his arms, thinking to give comfort for whatever was causing him such pain, finding her innocent intentions going up in a blaze of scarce-understood desire in the arms of a young man who had been, it seemed, as desperate as she had been and who had somehow found the control to be gentle despite their urgency.

Alistair moved and lifted her and then they were lying on the bunk and her skirts were around her thighs and her hand was cupped around his erection through his trousers and he groaned as he stroked up her legs. She trembled as he pressed them apart, opened her, slid his fingers into the slick folds that parted for him with no resistance. She had fought Stephen off before he touched her with such intimacy; now she had no shame and no fear, only the desperate need for this man.

That time before she had been passive and uncertain under his seeking hands and urgent mouth; now she wanted to touch him, all of him.

‘Touch me,’ he said against her mouth, echoing her thoughts, and she struggled to understand for a moment. She was touching him. Then she found the fall of his trousers and somehow undid them, slid her hand inside, found the hot, hard length of him and closed her fingers. ‘More. Dita …’

She squeezed and stroked and he shuddered and slipped one finger inside her as she clung to him. Then another, and his thumb found a place that felt hard and tight with tension and stroked and she cried out until he stopped her mouth with his, pressing into her circling hand, stroking and squeezing until she screamed silently, arching upwards as everything broke inside her and he surged in her grasp and shuddered above her and the world spun out of its orbit.

‘Dita, sweetheart. Are you all right?’

‘Hmm?’ She was on a bed, in a strange cabin, with Alistair, and he had made love to her—and she had made love to him and it had been everything she remembered yet different. ‘Yes. Yes, I am quite all right.’

He was sitting up, putting his clothing to rights and she lay there, just looking at him in the lamplight. Beautiful, mysterious, male. Even more mysterious now he had let her come so close to him again. As close, almost, as it was possible to be. Alistair gave her his handkerchief and got up, his back turned, while she tidied herself and got unsteadily to her feet.

‘Are you all right?’ He turned to look at her in the lamplight and she smiled. ‘That wasn’t what I really want, you know that.’ He reached out and began to put her hair into order. ‘There. I’ll leave the mistletoe in place for some other lucky fellows to snatch a kiss.’

‘What do you want?’ she asked, ignoring her hair, not caring about any other men and their kisses.

‘To make love with you, fully. But I won’t take that risk, Dita. You said it yourself—one slip would be fatal to your reputation. This was certainly a slip—but I think we’ll get away with it.’ He pulled her closer. ‘Was it all right for you, our loving, even though it was not complete?’

She answered him truthfully. ‘You gave me more pleasure just now than Stephen did in two days and nights.’ You gave me as much pleasure as that boy had done, so long ago, even though I ache because I need you inside me.

Alistair laughed and caught her to him for another kiss. As they stood there, her arms twined round his neck she said, ‘Do you want your gift?

‘Of course!’ He sounded eager, almost the young Alistair that the present had been intended for all those years ago.

‘Where is my reticule?’ They found it on the floor and she pulled out the package and handed it to him and watched as he flattened out the crumpled label.

‘Happy birthday?’

‘I was going to give it to you the day you left home. I tossed it into the secret drawer of my jewellery box when I realised you were gone. Then I found it again, quite recently. I thought it might amuse you.’ She shrugged, ‘I will not vouch for the embroidery—I think I will have improved since I was sixteen.’

‘You were sixteen when I left?’ He frowned at her. ‘I suppose you must have been. Dita, did we quarrel, that last day? There was something, some memory in the back of my mind that I cannot catch hold of. Dreams like smoke. A kiss? But that cannot be right: I would not have kissed you.’ She thought he muttered, Let alone more, but she was not certain. ‘God, I was drunk that night. The whole thing was such a hellish mess I can’t recall properly.’

‘Yes, we quarrelled,’ she lied. He does not recall making love, his anger, the things he said afterwards. He must have been beside himself. ‘And I cried and you … I left.’

‘Ah.’ The tarnished silver paper flashed in the light as he turned it over in his hands. ‘What are you going to give me for my birthday this year if I open this now?’

‘It depends upon what you deserve,’ she said, and tried to keep her voice light to match his tone.

‘Mmm.’ The low growl held a wealth of promise as the paper tore away to reveal the comb case, wavy stripes of amber and gold and black on one side, on the other a tiger, copied painstakingly from a print in her father’s library. The stitching was a little uneven, the sewing not quite smooth.

‘You made me a tiger?’ Alistair slid the comb out and then back, turning the case in his hands. ‘You had powers of prediction?’

‘No. I always thought you had tiger’s eyes,’ she confessed. ‘When I was a little girl I used to dream you would turn into a tiger at night and stalk the corridors of the castle.’

Alistair stared at her from those same uncanny amber eyes. ‘I frightened you that much?’

‘No, of course not. I thought it was exciting. You know you never frightened me, even when you were angry with me. You looked after me.’

‘I did, didn’t I.’ There was a silence that was strangely awkward while he stood there, quite still except for the restless fingers that turned the comb case over in his hands. Then, just as she opened her mouth to break it, he pushed the gift into his pocket and took up the lantern.

‘We shouldn’t have done that, Dita,’ he said flatly. She stared at him as he turned the magic of their lovemaking into an ill-judged romp with his matter-of-fact words. ‘You look a little ruffled—we had best go up the companionway at the end here and account for that with some sea air. Ready?’

It was as though another man entirely had come into the cabin: brisk, efficient and practical. ‘A good idea,’ Dita said, chilled, and followed him as he stepped with wary care into the corridor.

Alistair looked from the charming, slightly clumsy piece of embroidery in his hands and up to the generous mouth he had kissed until it was red and swollen. And then up again and into the green eyes that were Dita’s, just as they always looked, unchanged even though he had taken her with careless lust. He had seen the sophisticated, adult Dita at Government House and somehow she and the girl in his memory had seemed separate individuals; now, with her gift in his hand, the two slid together, became one.