should forget—like how she had once cared for him so very much.
“I’m sure you remember how many other delightful things there are to do,” he whispered. “With hands and tongues …”
Celia pressed the cloth hard to his wound and he straightened up with a hiss. His hand fell from her hair.
“I need to finish this,” she said quietly. “Unless you want it to fester until you lose the leg—among other things.”
He chuckled and leaned back as he placed his palms flat behind him. “Do your worst, then, Celia. But I know you do remember.”
He said nothing more as she finished cleaning and binding the wound. She tied off the ends of the bandage and sat back on her heels to look up at him.
A half-smile lingered on his lips as he watched her, his eyes dark, his skin gilded a molten gold in the firelight. His doublet hung open, his shirt half unlaced to reveal a chest damp with the sweat of the fight. He looked lazy, considering—like some Eastern king watching a slave who had been delivered to his feet.
Celia suddenly wanted to shatter his laziness, that look of casual possessiveness. She gave him a smile, and his own faded.
Slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward and rested her hand on his unwounded thigh. His whole body grew taut and wary. Celia held onto him and placed her parted lips on the skin left bare by the torn breeches. She moved her mouth over him, tasting him.
“Celia …” he said hoarsely.
She pressed her hand tighter on his leg and he went still. She closed her eyes and kissed her way higher, over the velvet fabric that lay tight over his upper thigh, until she could trail the tip of her tongue along the crease between leg and groin.
She could smell him there, the faint scent of sweat and musk she had once known meant he wanted her. He had left her, but he still wanted this, and the knowledge gave her a sudden surge of satisfaction. Of pleasure. At least she still had that. And now she wanted more, wanted to know all of him.
Her feelings surged inside her, so tangled and confused.
Her hand slid up his leg to just beneath his codpiece, cradling him in her fingers. He was already hard, but he grew even harder, longer. She found the vein on his underside beneath the cloth and slid her fingertips along it.
“Oh, aye,” she whispered. “I remember all the things one can do with hands and mouths …”
She’d just barely touched her lips to the tip of him when she felt his fingers dive into her hair, tumbling the few pins that were left there free. He pulled her head back until she stared up into his eyes.
Those burning eyes that pierced right through her tore her careful defences down one by one and destroyed them until they were ashes around her.
“Celia, you drive me mad,” he growled. Then his mouth drove down onto hers.
His tongue plunged inside, tasting her, claiming her—every part of her. She tried to draw back but he held her fast, his hand tight in her hair, his mouth sealed over hers.
She moaned and tried to push his tongue out with hers, but instead she found it twisting with his, tasting him return. He tasted dark and sweet, like wine and the night and John, and she wanted it. She wanted it with such raw longing it terrified her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t reason. He was all around her, all she knew.
His other arm came around her shoulders and drew her up until she sat on his lap, balanced on his unwounded thigh. He never broke the desperate rhythm of the kiss, only drove deeper into her.
She wrapped her hands around his neck and felt the soft hair at his nape brush over her fingers. She caressed him there, trying to learn the feel of his skin, the essence of him, all over again. John groaned, and untangled his hand from her hair to touch the base of her throat, pressing over her pulse.
He brushed aside the edges of her surcoat and traced his fingertips over the bare swell of her breasts above her bodice. His fingers were rough on that soft skin, and she wanted more. She arched her back with a soft moan into his mouth and his palm flattened over her breast.
One finger slid beneath the brocade and swept over her aching nipple once, twice, then harder, making her cry out. His thumb slid in with the finger and he pinched her between them.
Pleasure shot through her, and Celia accidentally fell back on his lap. She kicked his wounded leg with her slipping foot and he gasped.
“Oh, hell!” she cried, tearing her mouth away from his. She pushed out of his arms and leaped to her feet.
He reached out for her, but she could see the fresh blood spotting his bandage.
It brought her coldly to her senses as nothing else could. He had held her captive in their own hidden world where there were only the senses, the way he made her feel. She couldn’t stay there, no matter how much she wanted to. It had already destroyed her once.
“I—I will send someone in to finish tending to your wound,” she stammered. John reached out for her, but she shook her head and spun round to run out of the room. She was always fleeing from him, from whatever terrible power lay between them, but it seemed it was all she could do.
Clutching her surcoat closed, she dashed through the near-empty great room and up the stairs. Past the sleeping bodies to the palette where Lady Allison already slumbered.
Trembling, Celia shed her clothes as best as she could and slid under the blankets in her chemise. She closed her eyes tightly, trying to find sleep, to forget John Brandon, even as her body still felt tingling with newly aroused life.
“Why, Mistress Sutton,” she heard Lady Allison whisper, “you naughty thing.”
Celia’s eyes flew open and she peered at Allison over her shoulder. Allison grinned at her, as if they were conspirators.
“Is he as wonderfully skilled as they say?” Allison whispered.
Celia felt her cheeks grow warm. Ashamed of that ridiculous blush, she turned away and closed her eyes again as Lady Allison softly laughed.
Oh, aye, she thought bitterly. John Brandon was entirely too skilled for any woman’s good.
John shifted in his saddle, trying not to wince as his bandaged leg brushed the hard leather. It had been some time since he had indulged in a tavern brawl, despite his reputation for wildness, and he felt every bit of the violence in his bruised muscles and the healing gash on his leg.
But it was worth every ache just to remember how Celia had cared for him, bandaging his wound, kneeling between his knees. Kissing him so passionately, so wildly, as if he was all that mattered to her.
Just as he had felt when his lips touched her, tasted her. Nothing else existed. Nothing had ever come between them.
That had been last night. Everything was always different in the cold light of day.
And a damnably cold day it was. Snow had set in soon after their hasty midday meal of bread and cheese—great fat flakes that melted on his cloak and drifted into white piles at the side of the road. The wind felt like needles as it swept around them. Even Lord Darnley, his pretty face bruised and sulky after last night, has subsided into the silence of endurance.
John looked to where Celia rode in one of the carts, lodged between the meagre shelter of two travel trunks. The hood of her black cloak was drawn over her hair, and he could see only the curve of one pale cheek. The long, thick lashes that cast shadows over her cheekbone as she stared down at the book in her gloved hands.
She hadn’t turned a page in fully fifteen minutes. John knew because he had been watching her the whole time. Yet she was not asleep. Her shoulders and slim back were too stiff and straight.