He was almost distracted by the rivulets of water cascading down her perfect flesh, but he pushed away the raw, animal desires she inspired and focused on what he had to express to her. Now.
“You don’t know what it’s like to have people talk about you when you’re standing right there, talk around you like they do to me,” he signed, aware that his hands were shaking as he did so and that he fumbled to find the signs for a letter or a word. “You don’t know what it’s like to have them ask if you are stupid as well as mute. Or just assume that you are touched because you cannot speak. Or scream at you when they talk because they think you can’t hear.”
Charlotte said nothing, but he saw her bottom lip tremble as she let him go on. And he did go on. Because he had to. Because he couldn’t stop. Because the words flew from his fingers with an urgency he couldn’t define or deny anymore.
And he could tell himself he signed these things to protect her, but in truth it was because he could no longer hold them in. Not with her.
“You don’t know what it’s like to need a pad of paper and a charcoal pencil in your pocket at all times,” he signed. “Or what kind of panic can rise up in you if, God forbid, that pad and pencil are lost or damaged. You don’t know what it’s like to have your father abandon you because you’re impaired and by your existence you are a slight on his very honor. Or what it’s like to find out, upon his death, that the same father put all kinds of barriers in place to make you look incapable of taking his title. To have to fight your own brothers and your mother for that inheritance while they spit on you every time they see you and call you an animal.”
He lowered his hands and turned away. His heart was pounding, for he’d never expressed any of those things all at once to one person before. A few friends knew things here and there, his uncle had witnessed a great deal, but no one knew the whole of it. The whole of him.
But now Charlotte did.
“Ewan, please look at me.”
Her soft voice was a siren song. He was a sailor steering toward the rocks. But that didn’t stop him from doing just as she asked. When he looked at her, she had climbed from the tub. Her damp blonde locks were now around her shoulders, her body wrapped only in a towel, her dark green eyes bright with unshed tears and emotions, he couldn’t turn away.
He didn’t even want to, despite knowing what was best.
She was quiet, calm, as she always was. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s not your fault,” he signed, dropping his gaze.
She moved toward him a step, but stopped short of him. “Not for what happened, though I’m certainly sorry for that, as well. What I meant is that I’m sorry I said I knew your life. I don’t. When you say those things, I can’t imagine the pain that you must feel. The things you’ve endured are not something to be taken lightly. But—”
He moved on her now and reached out two fingers to press them to her full lips. “Please,” he signed. “The rain has begun to let up, the water will recede and the bridge maintained its integrity, so it may be only a day or two before the others come. We have very little time for this. Let it be this until it can’t be anymore. That is all I have to give.”
She pursed her lips and pressed a kiss to his fingers before he let them drop away so she could speak. He saw the pain on her face, he saw it in her eyes, and knowing he’d put it there…again…broke his heart.
But her voice was strong as she said, “Very well, Ewan. Just this. If this is all I can have, I won’t turn away from it.”
Chapter Seven
Ewan knew he should feel relief that Charlotte was acquiescing to his request. If she didn’t expect more, she wouldn’t be hurt when this was over. But that wasn’t what he felt. Instead, he couldn’t deny the disappointment that gripped him. Hehadto turn her away from the future he could see glittering in her stare. But once she accepted that, he knew from bitter experience that she would find someone else to give her a different future. She would marry again and then she would be lost to him forever.
Thiswas all he had. And he so desperately wanted to make it good for them both.
He reached out and tucked a finger into the front of her towel, then tugged so that the fabric fell away and left her naked. She reached for him, lifting her mouth to his. He took it, driving his tongue between her lips, tasting her pain and her desire as they merged into one emotion that felt too powerful to deny.
With a groan, he swept his arms beneath her knees and carried her to the bed. As he settled her back against the pillows and took a place beside her, he looked her body up and down. He was going to memorize every inch of her in the time they had left. When memory was all he had left, he’d be glad he’d done it.
She kissed him again and her legs parted ever so slightly. When he pulled away, he looked down her body. In the tub, she’d spoken of a man putting his mouth on a woman. It was all Ewan had thought about since she’d said it. To taste Charlotte so intimately…
He wanted to know her flavor too, for reference in his future fantasies. He drew his mouth down her body, tasting the sweet, clean essence of her freshly washed skin. He swirled his tongue around one puckered nipple, and she arched beneath him.
He looked up her body at the ecstasy on her face and smiled. Oh yes, he wanted to know all her flavors. He licked, mimicking the way she liked to be touched by his fingers. It was so easy to learn her pleasure, because it was such an equal pleasure to him. When she groaned beneath him, her fingers coming into his wet hair, massaging his scalp and drawing him even closer, that was heaven. Pure heaven.
He suckled harder and she panted beneath him, her legs shaking wildly. His cock was already rock hard again, throbbing in time to the pulsing of his tongue around her flesh. But he ignored it. Ignored the part of him that told him to push her legs open, to plunder and take and claim and mark.
Right now he just wanted to pleasure. To learn. There would be plenty of time for the other. He pulled away from her nipple with a pop as her wet flesh left his lips. Slowly, he nibbled a trail to the opposite breast, tracing the curve of her with his mouth and then taking her nipple deep inside to swirl his tongue around and around.
She was lifting her hips now in time to his mouth and he let his hands drift lower as he continued to pleasure her breasts. He reveled in the smooth softness of her skin across her ribcage, the swell of her hip. His nails lightly abraded there and she made a cry of pleasure.
He smiled against her skin and repeated the action as she trembled beneath him. Her responsiveness drove his own and the ricochet of her pleasure hit him in his entire being.
He wanted to touch her intimately. He drew his fingers across her hip, down her thigh, and she opened to him with a shivering sigh. He continued to lick and suck her nipple as he parted her folds and found her entrance slick and ready. Slowly, he smoothed his fingers across her, testing the way her hips jolted when he dipped the tips into her sheath, or the way she shuddered when he grazed her clitoris.
He broke his mouth from her breasts as he teased her with his fingers and let his tongue continue down her body. He licked her, making her body jolt against his hand as he moved his mouth on the same path his hand had taken.
