Erienne pushed the small slip of paper back inside the reticule and returned it to the shelf. Then she wandered back into her bedchamber and stared blindly at the bed for a few moments. She knew sleep would be a stranger tonight, but she refused to return to the dining room. Instead, she trailed her way down the corridor to the servants’ staircase at the back of the house, descended to the main floor, and slipped outside.
Slowly making her way around the side of the building to the manicured gardens outside the library, she breathed in the jasmine that filled the late-summer night air, and paused to revel in it as she passed beneath a trellis covered in the pungent vine. Moonlight glinted off the dark green leaves.
“There’s a sycamore tree by the lake.” Collin’s deep voice sounded from behind her in the darkness. “I’d invite you there, but something tells me you’d refuse.”
Erienne closed her eyes. Pain clenched her heart. He remembered the sycamore tree. “You’d be right,” she said without turning.
Gravel crunched beneath his boots as he came closer. “I hope you didn’t leave dinner on my account.”
What could she possibly say to that? She finally faced him and found him partially lost in shadow. “I ... needed some air.”
“Do you want me to leave?” he asked even as he drew nearer.
The question took her by surprise, but she shook her head curtly. “This is your brother’s house. I’d never be so rude as to ask you to leave.”
“I’d leave if you asked me to, Air.” His voice was soft, caring. Heartbreakingly familiar.
She couldn’t take it if he called her Air. She concentrated on breathing normally, in and out. “At dinner you asked about a viscount. What did you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter now. I realized that I’d been ... misinformed about your whereabouts.”
“Misinformed? By whom?”
His gaze captured hers, his eyes glinting in the darkness. “Does it matter after all these years, Erienne?”
She glanced away and kicked at a pebble on the path with her slipper. It did something to her middle to hear her name on his lips. “I suppose it doesn’t.”
He was close enough now that she could smell his cologne beneath the jasmine, the familiar scent of him she remembered from all those years ago. It catapulted her back in time. She clenched her jaw against the memories that threatened to overwhelm her, fighting to keep from turning to flee.
“I missed you.” The warm timber of his voice sent shock waves pounding through her body.
She wrapped her arms around her middle and swallowed hard. “Why would you say that to me, after all these years?” She could hear the anguish in her own voice, but there was nothing to be done. She’d never been anything but truthful with him.
He took a final step toward her, and the heat from his body warmed her cool skin. “Because it’s true,” he said softly. “Did you miss me?”
She didn’t want to answer him. It was unfair of him to ask. But to deny it would be a lie.
He swayed closer, his shadow enveloping her. He lowered his head and lifted her chin with his finger. Every brick in the wall that had surrounded her heart for so long seemed to fly away like so much dust in a brisk wind.
He searched her face in the darkness. “I hurt you, didn’t I, Erienne?”
She refused to answer that too. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing it for certain. “You asked me to let you go, and I did.” It was all she would give him, all she would admit.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed. “For hurting you, and I’ll probably be sorry for this.” He closed the few scarce inches between them and kissed her. His lips slanted fiercely over hers, and she clutched at the lapels of his coat to steady herself. They kissed like that, endlessly, before Collin pulled away from her, breathing heavily. He pressed his forehead to hers. “Come with me,” he said, tugging her by the hand behind him as he made his way toward the French doors that opened into the house. “I know somewhere even better than the sycamore tree.”
Erienne allowed herself to be led, unable—or perhaps merely unwilling—to say a word. They were going somewhere to continue kissing, and possibly to do more. She knew she shouldn’t want to, shouldn’t accompany him, and yet she couldn’t make her mouth speak a protest or her feet stop moving forward. It was if her mind had relinquished its role in making her decisions. Clearly, her body and heart had taken over.
Collin pulled her into a room that a brief glance showed was a library and closed the door behind them. It was completely dark inside, save for the banked fire in the fireplace at the far end. The fire gave a soft glow to the large space, but did not illuminate it. He led her over to a wide leather sofa in the center of the room and drew her back into his arms to kiss her again before urging her down to the cushions. She found herself atop him. His body was hard and hot and he smelled so good. She couldn’t get enough of him. He sat up and wrestled out of his coat, never allowing their lips to part, and then he tugged her over him again, this time while he sat at an angle in the turn of the sofa so that she was half atop his lap. It was a most unseemly position ... and she loved every moment of it.
His lips moved to her ear and he sucked in the lobe. “God, Erienne, I missed you. I’ve wanted you all these years,” he whispered.
Oh, God. If only he wouldn’t speak, it would be easier to pretend that way. She pressed her mouth against his once more to silence him, so he spoke in a different way—a lover’s way. Without hesitation, his strong, rough hand moved to the hem of her skirt and lifted it. He maneuvered them so that they lay side-by-side on the sofa, and his hand made its way up to the juncture between her thighs. She should move away, ask him to stop, but she couldn’t force herself to. She wanted his touch, had longed for it for the last fourteen years. Erienne knew the basics of conjugal relations, but not the particulars—these lovely particulars she hadn’t imagined could be so thrilling.
“May I touch you, Erienne?”
“Yes.” She breathed the word and his fingers deftly pushed aside her shift and drawers. Cool air brushed across the damp, heated flesh between her thighs, and then his touch, and she jolted at that too-intimate, too-wonderful caress, at the circular dance of—was that his thumb? It played her like an instrument, inciting the most restless pleasure with each stroke, over and over.
Erienne wanted to cry out, to beg him to stop, and never to stop. Her head fell back against the side of the sofa and she clenched her eyes shut. Her thighs tensed and she sobbed in the back of her throat. Never in her life had she experienced pleasure like this, and the fact that it was Collin Hunt giving it to her made it all the more bittersweet. Then, somehow, his touch was within her too. One long finger perhaps, sliding inside her so easily, so sinuously, she bit her lip to stop her cry. How could this mad pleasure increase? It felt so wonderful.
His hand moved as if to withdraw, and she immediately clamped her thighs around it until it obediently regained its delicious, probing depth within her. She thought he might have released a huff of laughter against her cheek, but then he was whispering hot words in her ear, telling her how beautiful and soft and lovely she was, and she wanted to melt. No moment could have been more perfect, no delight more astonishing ... until his thumb found that other spot she'd forgotten about, and circled it, and stroked it, while inside her ... inside her, was it one finger or two that played the perfect notes and drove the music through her body until it was no longer her own? It was too much. The last thing she remembered was the tender press of his kiss on her bowed throat as she thrashed into a blind, mindless pleasure she never had dreamed existed.
A few minutes passed, during which Erienne got her breathing right once more, before she sensed the gentle withdrawal of his touch. Instantly, the insanity of what she’d just allowed whipped through her mind. What in heaven’s name had she just done?