The Legend of Nimway Hall_1940_Josie Read online

  “Proving to you that I’ve been well-trained in all subjects.” She smiled up at him. “I know you still doubt my skills as an intelligence agent.”

  “I don’t, Josie. Truly. My reticence speaks only to my fear for your safety.” He lifted her chin and kissed her, realized only then what she had said and that she was tugging his shirt tails from his trousers. “Well-trained for what exactly?”

  “For every eventuality.” Out came his shirt tails.

  “Josie.” He caught her hand as she went for his belt, tipped her chin again and looked into her eyes. “What training are you talking about?”

  “Special operations.” Said with a highly provocative wink and a wriggle of her shoulders. “Coleshill.”

  He could only blink back at her, trying not to imagine the kind of training she meant. He knew of MI6 officers who performed ‘special duties’ when necessary for a particular operation: infiltrations, kidnaping, the occasional ‘removal’ of a threat, but—

  “How special do you mean, Josie? And where did you receive this training?” The training that allowed her to unclasp his belt buckle without him realizing.

  “Special intelligence training, given just to women. Weapons of Espionage for the Femme Fatale.” She gave a tug and his belt zipped through the loops at his waist, came off in her hands and in a flash she’d reached around and corralled him with it, pulled him tightly against her, her hips against his thighs, his erection against her belly. “Using anything at hand to subdue one’s male target.”

  “Male target? Josie, no!” Horror shook him, the full panorama of the danger she was in. His Arcturus. His dearest love. He lifted her off her feet, carried her to the bed, pressed her back against the bank of pillows and trapped her knees with his bad knee, supporting himself above her on the good one.

  “What kind of training have you been given? Where in God’s name are they planning to send you?” Here is where he would draw the line, sharp and deep.

  “It’s not like that, Gideon.” Her smile softened as she looked up at him, her eyes bright and damp.

  “But you’ve been trained in this?” She was an agent. She damn well better have been trained. By whom? To do what? Jealousy warred with fear for her.

  “Of course, I’ve had a good deal of training over the past year. Radios and wiring and such. But not seduction.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “What do you mean, ‘am I sure?’” She shoved him away and came forward onto her knees, arms crossed over her chest, just under her perfect breasts. “I think I would have noticed had my homework assignment been to seduce a handsome fellow agent.”

  She was beautiful in the shadows, the amber of the bedside lamp making a halo of her hair as she knelt in the middle of the bed like a forest nymph who’d sneaked indoors on a whim. A wave of heat and delight swept over him, that Josie loved him.

  “This fellow agent would have volunteered as your practicum.”

  “I would have chosen you. My Invictus.” She slipped off the bed and ran her fingers through her hair, loosened the long golden tendrils to fall behind her shoulders, causing the dark peaks of her breasts to press against the tight fit of her jersey, beckoning his hand to caress them, his mouth to taste her. “Lt. Colonel Gideon Fletcher, you are my superior officer when it comes to this sort of training, experience-wise, I assume. And I suspect you’ve a lot to teach me about the most effective methods of seduction.”

  “You were doing quite well on your own, my love. Too well.” Too rousing. He ought to leave right now, shut the door behind him and sleep until the clear light of day when his head would be clearer, his hunger for her not so fierce.

  But she was walking toward him, hips swaying beneath those capacious pajama bottoms, her long, golden hair hanging free around her shoulders, hiding the curves he longed to explore.

  “I know this much, Colonel, that your shirt goes first.”

  And so he let her peel him of his shirt and stood breathing like a stag in rut, certain he couldn’t last through her tutorial, but willing to try.

  “As you wish,” he said, kissing her neck, working free the buttons of her jersey, nuzzling the warmth in the V between her breasts, caught her as she leaned back and opened to him. He pulled aside the fabric and took her nipple into his mouth, nearly bursting with his need for her when she moaned, the sound lingering like a howl.

  “Oh, Gideon! Yes, there! Oh yes!” His wild partner ground her hips against him, his erection hard and throbbing. “Please!”

  “These go next, my love.” He fit his hands to her hips, stuck his thumbs into the elastic waistband of her pajama bottoms and had them off her a moment later.

  He stood away to look his fill at the woman who had lifted him out of himself and set him down in the middle of her life, her jersey hanging loose around her naked breast, the fair patch at the cleaving of her thighs, her legs bare and her fists clenched.

  “I want you, Gideon.” She lifted her shirt up and off over her head, tossed it across the room. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll let me have you.”

  “You remind me of the orb.” He shucked out of his vest and his trousers as she watched. Struggled to shuck his knickers around the fierceness of his erection. Finally stood as naked as she, unmoving for fear of ravishing her on the spot.

  “The orb, Gideon?” Her smile was languid and lovely as she came toward him. He drew in a long, shaggy breath as she placed the palm of her hand on the middle of his chest. “Why do you think that?”

  Aching to form his hands to the shape of her breasts, to stray further to the curls he knew would be damp with wanting, he held back, knowing that to act would be the end of his restraint. “Because you’re pushy and rude and think you know best.”

  “Yes, I do know best.” She grazed her hands down to his hips, the silk of her palms arousing enough to shatter his patience, but when she bent on her knee in front of him, he caught her elbows and raised her swiftly.

  “What are you doing, woman?”

  “I know what I’d like to do, Gideon.” She looked down at his very erect penis, then back up into his eyes, mischief alive in her smile. “But I was just going to check the dressing, before we ravished each other in my bed.”

  “I did as well as I could with the dressing after my bath.” When she knelt again, he was startled enough to let her look, to let her touch both sides of his knee with her fingertips. “Looks fine, quite fine, in fact.” She rose with that same smile and wrapped her arms around his neck, whispering, “The dressing looks good too. Now, please, Gideon, can we continue my lesson.”

  Bloody hell, could a man be more lucky?

  “At your service, my love.” He drew her against him and kissed her, meeting her tongue in a dance of fire, plunging and probing, collecting her moans of pleasure, his hands never still for wanting all of her, his arms quaking.

  “To the bed, please,” she whispered, rising on her toes and climbing eagerly into his embrace. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he caught her backside, holding her against him, her desire a soft and slick heat against his belly. Oh, how he wanted to play there. To taste her.

  “To the bed, my love.” He carried her there, to the center of the bank of pillows and winced when he bent his bad knee to kneel beside her.

  “You’ll not be able to use that knee anytime soon, Gideon.” As though she’d found a cure, she reached for his erection and took in a breath when she found it, held it. “It’s lovely!”

  He caught her hand to his chest. “Oh, God, no, Josie. Not tonight. I won’t last. Perhaps it’s for the best. We shouldn’t.”

  “Why not. I don’t mind at all that you can’t mount me in the usual way. I’ve read that there are other positions. Female superior.”

  “Good God, Josie.” He kissed her palm, rolled as far atop her as he could, hoping to still her for a moment. “It’s for the best that I can’t the regular way. Shouldn’t anyway. I can, absolutely. You can see for yourself.”
/>   “I do.” She closed her eyes and circled her hips beneath him.

  “But not tonight.”

  “Why not? You’ve asked me to marry you.”

  He had. And realized, “But you haven’t answered.”

  “I haven’t?” She smiled, caught his backside and in a single movement that defied the laws of physics, rolled with him so that he was on his back and she was straddling his hips.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m saying yes, Gideon, I’ll marry you and love you and bear your children—”

  “When?”

  “When will I bear your children?” She braced herself on all fours, raining kisses across his face, down his throat. Then she was reaching for his penis, embraced it like a marvelous pulsing glove and fit its head against her slick heat, smiling down at him like a Cheshire cat. “After we’re married, of course.”

  “Dozens?”

  “Oh, yes. And I like you here, Gideon.”

  He could hardly find a breath, held tightly to her hips, to keep himself from plunging. “When will you marry me?”

  “Tonight, if I could, my dear Gideon. Demand a special license and be married at midnight in the churchyard beneath our yew tree.”

  “My Josie.” His pagan bride, dancing naked and beribboned in the moonlight, among the tall flowers and approving spirits of her ancestors. “If only we could.”

  “This Christmas, then.” Her face was flushed with love for him, with her wild desires, her caress encircling his erection, an exquisite torture.

  “Not sure I can wait that long.”

  “Let’s not, then.” She took a long breath, met his mouth in a fury of plunging kisses, then lowered her hips and pressed him past her silken folds, rocked her hips to take him deeper and deeper until he met her final barrier and could wait no longer.

  “Together, my love.” He rose up, spread his hands across her bottom then thrust sharply through her tightness, paused to hear her sweet moan against his ear, then groaned and carried himself all the way home. Deeply. Sweetly. Rabidly, measure by measure, as she began to rock with him, kiss him, sighing and soughing and whispering his name.

  “Oh Gideon, you are—” Josie couldn’t help moaning shamelessly against Gideon’s cheek, couldn’t seem to control the throbbing rhythm of her own hips, the need to drive him deeper and deeper inside. “You’re... very... large!”

  Her whispers seemed to draw a long feral groan from the wondrous man straining beneath her. The sculpted sinew of his chest, bronze and slick with sweat. “And you, my sweet, are tight and warm and so—oh, God, so—’

  “So mad for you, Gideon! Oh, yes!” Her handsome beast was breathing like a bull against her breast, bracing her above him with his hard-muscled arms as he nuzzled a searing path to her nipple, tugging and laving and nibbling, the heat of him building a coil of pleasure that tightened her insides around his marvelous shaft and centered on the spot where she joined with him.

  “Ride slow, my love,” he said, his nostrils flaring, his fingers splayed across her bottom, kneading, pressing her closer, his voice a low rumble that echoed through her belly, “ride steady.”

  “So lovely!” So languid, like floating on a warm sea, with Gideon as her raft, warming in the sun, leaving her wanting more of him, all of him, taking him deeper, onward toward a licking fire that would surely consume them both.

  “Too soon, my love—” His breath thundered out of him as he restrained his thrusting, anchored her hips against his, his eyes wild and bright, lit with a desire that mirrored the mists that swirled inside the orb.

  “I love you, Gideon. Can’t seem to stop this squirming against you.” Feeling free and open to his gaze, she sat upright and began rocking, gasped when he sat up and wrapped his iron-bound arms around her.

  “Then squirm, my love. I’ll bear up for you.”

  “My partner, my soul.” Josie sighed and arched backward in his arms, exposed herself to him utterly, trusting his heart, his very maleness, shuddered and cried out when, at the same time, he took her nipple into his mouth and found the heat of her between her legs where they were coupled and wet and so very warm.

  “I love you, Josie!” In the next moment, Josie was lying on her back amidst the pillows, looking up at the man she loved with the whole of her heart, her legs spread wide to encourage the power of his thrusting, as he watched her, smiling, straining, pumping until the world around and above her suddenly stopped—

  “Ooh, Gideon, together!” The quake of pleasure came hard and hot, swept over her with a shattering, convulsive wildness. Wave after wave of peaks and valleys, bits of starlight and whole constellations, ripples upon ripples of ecstasy until she thought she would die of it, of him.

  Of her dear Invictus. The remarkable man who’d become the light of her life, was poised above her on his outstretched arms, growling her name between thrusts, plunging ever deeper and surer, until every muscle in his body seemed to still except the hard shaft buried inside her that pumped on its own, his seed like molten life pouring into her furrow.

  “Josie!” He shuddered and thrust again and again, then, as though sliding back to earth from the cloud they shared, her handsome secret agent finally lowered himself onto his elbows, kissed and nuzzled her neck, a conquering smile in his eyes. “Not the way I thought this night would end, my love.”

  She kissed him. “But a better welcome to Nimway Hall than I gave you on our first meeting.”

  “Now that would have a been a greeting for the ages!”

  “Do you think the orb had any part in this?”

  He laughed and raised his head like a mythical beast sniffing the air, looked around. “Where is the bloody thing, do you suppose? Do you think we’ve proven that we’re no longer in need of its assistance?”

  “The orb?” Josie nipped at his chin, bent her knee, braced her foot on the mattress then rolled him onto his back where she could perch on his chest and look him in the eye. “Last I knew it was sliding off my lap onto the carpet in the library when you were kissing me.”

  “Back into Nimue’s cave?” He skimmed his fingertips down her back, trailed them over her bottom.

  She grinned at him. “I like to believe it will linger in the library where we found it.”

  “For our stubborn daughter to find one day when she’s Guardian of Nimway Hall and is in desperate need of her own true love.”

  “Our daughter will be stubborn?” Josie made a show of being shocked.

  “As stubborn as her mother, and our sons will be as pig-headed as their father.”

  “What a romantic man you turned out to be, Gideon Fletcher.”

  “And what a very fine intelligence operative you’ve turned out to be, Arcturus. Arthur. Guinevere. Merlin. Nimue. Could I have been more dense? I should have known who you were that first day in Balesboro Wood and in the wine cellar. All that talk of King Arthur. You blinded me with your faith in everyone around you, your unwavering faith in me. Made me understand that my life had been saved so that I might rise and fight again.”

  “My love, my champion.” How could he have ever thought himself otherwise? How she loved him!

  “And you are my Josie. The best of me.”

  “But now you have me wondering, my handsome, brave hero, can you really rise and fight again so soon.” Josie flexed her fingers over his resting penis and thrilled to feel it fill her hand almost immediately. “Indeed you can!”

  Josie enfolded them inside the down coverlet and made a closer inspection of the man and all his magnificence. They teased and kissed and came to each other again until they were lying together, spent and spooning, Josie snuggled against his chest, his hand cupping her breast.

  He kissed her ear, whispered, “I’ve enjoyed tonight’s meeting more than any other we’ve had.”

  She covered his hand with her own. “Most productive of the lot. So in keeping with our agenda, I will ask: What are you up to tomorrow, Colonel?”

  “Tomorrow I ask your fat
her for your hand in marriage.”

  She laughed. “And he’ll ask what took you so long. My father agrees with the orb.”

  “Wise man.” Another kiss that stirred her fires and struck the breath from her. “And what of your day tomorrow?”

  “Indeed.” She wasn’t sure where they stood with Gideon’s new position, what that meant for the two of them. “I plan to report to Fenwick that Arcturus and Invictus have successfully established a live connection.”

  “Haven’t they, though?” His lips followed his fingers along a trail of bliss. “Invictus can’t seem to keep his hands off Arcturus.”

  “And vice versa, though I won’t tell him that detail. Wouldn’t want to shock the man.” Needing to be serious for a moment, she caught Gideon’s hand. “But I will be assigned a new partner. Continue our mission.”

  “If you’d like. Or you can assist me in this new venture with the SOE. Lots of opportunities to expand your influence in the war effort. I’ll know more in the coming week.”

  She couldn’t leave the farm, but how thrilling that he should want her for her expertise. “Would you be my superior, then? Will I have to work under you?”

  He arched a rakish brow, was fondling her in the most intimate of places. “I’d hardly call this work. But looking ahead, my love, I see an assignment for us at Christmas time. Very official. Involves a license and flowers.”

  “And music and a church? Oh, Gideon!” She was ready and aching for him again.

  “But first—” He rose up on his elbow, settling her against the pillow and turning her away. He touched his fingertip to her back near her left shoulder. “There it is! Your legendary birthmark.”

  “Do you mean the pale oval?”

  “Shaped just like the orb. It’s quite lovely. I’ve been wanting to kiss you here since the moment you mentioned it.”

  “Do, then. Please do!” He kissed her shoulder, toyed with her nipple, making it difficult to answer. Or care. She sighed and reached her arms around him.

  “The mark of the Guardian—” he kissed her shoulder again, then covered her with his fine, warm body. “Perhaps that’s where the glow of the orb will live until it’s needed again: inside your heart.”