Page 95 of Souvenir Heart

“The scar?” He said, his hand drifting to the slash that started across his forearm and continued down across his ribs and belly. “It’s ugly, I know.” He turned, reaching for his shirt. There were more scars on his back. Fainter. Almost as if he’d been whipped. More than once.

“No.” She felt suddenly, fiercely protective of this man who seemed so determined to hide any evidence of his pain, and yet so concerned with hers. She grabbed his wrist. “It’s…you…you’re beautiful.” She thought fleetingly of her portfolio of drawings. “More beautiful than I imagined.”

A tenuous expression crossed his face, as if he wanted to believe her. And as much as she wanted him to continue what he’d been doing, she wanted to touch him, to show him the truth of her words. That every part of him was beautiful to her.

She unfastened the buttons of his breeches, feeling the length of him through the fabric. When she pulled them and his small clothes down, his penis fell hot and hard against her chest. She stroked it, feeling him quiver and pulse against her hand. She looked down at it and was swept by a desire to feel him inside her. She covered the tip with her mouth.

He groaned, a sound that made her pull him in deeper. She felt his hand tangling in her hair, heard him growl, “If you keep doing that, mon coeur, this will all be over before it’s even begun. And I feel fairly certain neither of us wants that…”

They were facing each other, both kneeling. Surrounded by the tangle of their clothes. In the eerie silence of the cave, the rapid sounds of their breathing seemed amplified.

Still on their knees, they both rose in the same moment, their lips met again, the kisses this time softer, slower, deeper. She inhaled the scents of him, sunshine, leather, and musky desire. His hands slid down her back to her hips, cupping her buttocks.

She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her aching breasts against the hardness of his chest. “I want you,” she whispered.

His body tensed.

She drew back and saw pain and confusion in his cognac-colored eyes. Feeling the stir of the same emotions, she began, “Did I…do…say…something wrong?” Did I hurt you?

“No, no. Not you.” He shook his head. “I…it’s just...” He stroked her cheek with the back of one finger.

She thought about what he’d said about choices that hadn’t gone well.

“There’s no need to rush,” she said, face heating as she thought about all the things she’d like to try. She lifted her chin. “We have two or three days to get to know each other better, do we not?”

Fifty-Six

“At least two days,” Marcus said huskily, after they had touched, tasted, and explored all the different and delicious ways their bodies fit together. They lay cradled together in a tangle of clothes and blankets. The candles in the lanterns had burned down and the bubble of light that held back the bone black darkness glowed closer, warmer than before—or perhaps that was just Marguerite’s imagination.

Her body certainly felt as if it was glowing. Wondrously relaxed and at the same time, every nerve ending vibrating with pleasurable satisfaction. Marcus had not only made love to her, he’d made love with her, allowing her mouth and fingers to do whatever they wished.

Resting against his side, her head on his shoulder, she gazed at his body in wonder. Marcus Tyndale had the body of a soldier, lean, muscular, and crisscrossed with scars, on his arms, his back, his chest. She traced the ridge of the slash that ran across his forearm and down across his ribs. It ended just above his hip, her fingers continued down, feeling the shift of rough to smooth skin, over the curve of bone, down to his thigh, to the soft length of his penis.

He shifted, catching her questing fingers in his, before they could curve around it and she caught her breath. After everything they’d done together, was he going to chastise her for being unnatural? A wanton? Men were changeable like that. Marcus seemed different, but she was just getting to know him.

Gerard’s voice rose unwelcome in her head: on your back, spread your legs, keep still. Only whores move.

She braced herself, vowing she wouldn’t allow him to make her feel dirty for doing what she wanted, instead of what she was told to do.

“If there is a child, I will marry you.”

“What?” His words were so far from where her thoughts had been she struggled to make sense of them. “Marry?” Marriage was as far from her thoughts as…giraffes, or physics. She enjoyed the freedom of widowhood. Had only just begun to explore it. “That’s really unnecessary.”

“But it is.” He raised himself up on one elbow.

“Why?” The resolution in his voice startled her. She sat up, pulling a blanket around her.

“I will not leave a child behind.”

Relief and amusement swept over her. She laughed. “If that is all that concerns you, then rest assured, there will be no need to do what you English call ‘the honorable thing.’ I’ve been married since I was fourteen. Do you know what my late husband called me?” She allowed a beat to pass before repeating Gerard’s scornful name for her, “The barren mare.”

“That was unkind.”

“He often was. I learned to live with it.”

“I would not be.”

She dipped her head. “Thank you for your gracious offer, but no.”