A Time Apart: Book One of The Macauley Series Page 14

  “I think you’ll find we’re generally a relaxed household. I’m sure you’ll be no problem whatsoever,” Seamus responded affably.

  Standing next to William, in front of his majordomo, it occurred to Olivia that while this was William’s home, because of the hours he kept, Seamus was likely in charge of everything that went on during the day – from dealing with the cooks and the maids to all the other necessities that go in to running an estate of its size. She hoped very much that her presence wouldn’t be too much of a burden and that he wouldn’t feel the need to entertain her while William was … resting.

  As Seamus stepped aside so that they could enter, Olivia was immediately struck by how beautiful the space was, even more so than the photographs had indicated. Focusing on everything at once, taking in all the beauty, she was overcome by its combination of grandeur and comfort. It was simply perfection. She turned to tell William what a beautiful home he had only to find him leaning against the door jam, arms folded across his chest, an impish grin on his face.

  “I take it you approve?” he asked as he pushed away from the doorway and moved to stand next to her. His grin did crazy things to her physically, causing a whole new wave of jitters in the pit of her stomach. She found him devastatingly beautiful.

  “You know I approve,” she responded. “And you know as well as I do that not only do I approve, but I’m in love.”

  William drew up in front of her, his grin giving way to a satisfied smirk. “Ah, well. Let’s not get carried away just yet.”

  And just like that Olivia realized her verbal blunder.

  “Are colloquialisms going to be a problem?” she demanded fiercely, hoping that belligerence would cover up her embarrassment and put an end to the awkward moment he’d created by purposely twisting a simple turn of phrase.

  “No, we’re good.”

  He chuckled. Chuckled! She was standing in the foyer of a 600-year old castle being teased by a 362-year old vampire, and in front of his employee no less. Nothing about the situation as far as she could tell was laughable, although she did have to admit that it made better sense to laugh than to sob as she had been doing earlier at the hotel.

  Oh god, what a mess!

  “Alright then,” she shot back, still quite vexed over the whole exchange. “Give me the rest of the tour.”

  “I’m going to leave the rest of it to you and William,” interjected Seamus, reminding them that he was still in the room. “If you need me, I’ll be in my room. Goodnight Olivia. And again, welcome.”

  He turned to William and gave him a look that Olivia interpreted as clearly communicating something of import to William but she was at a loss as to interpret what that something was.

  “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay,” he said before turning on his heels and walking away. With that, Seamus disappeared up the stairs leaving she and William alone once again.

  The air suddenly thick with uncertainty, William rested the palm of his hand against the small of Olivia’s back, sending currents of both fire and ice down her spine, and then he guided her into the castle’s great room.

  If she had thought the foyer was impressive, the room before her was magnificent! On one side stood a stone fireplace tall and wide enough to fit three adults standing shoulder-to-shoulder. Above the fireplace was a tapestry of splendid reds, golds, and blues depicting what she recognized from legend to be the Battle of the Boyne. A low, crackling fire kept the room warm with its dancing flames. On the other side of the great room, spread out on a large bed made of tartan slept two giant Irish Wolfhounds, their snores a low rumble in her ears.

  “That’s Edward and Bella,” William said, motioning toward the sleeping canines, cracking a broad smile that at once dared her to comment on their improbable names.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “At first I was. And then the names just stuck. You don’t care for the irony?”

  “Are you going to breed them?” she asked, not bothering to verbally acknowledge that William had named his dogs after the main characters in a notorious – albeit completely fictionalized – vampire novel.

  “No, they’re from the same litter – brother and sister.” He chuckled again, realizing then that his unconventional naming was even worse than he had initially thought.

  “Okay, now that’s just sick.” Turning toward the dogs she said to them half jokingly, “Poor puppies. Daddy hates you and you don’t even know it.”

  All kidding aside, the room – while cavernous – was the very picture of sophisticated relaxation. Somehow even though everything must have cost a fortune, nothing felt stuffy or overdone. Olivia walked over to a mammoth leather sofa and plopped down, letting her body sink into the plush mahogany cushions. She could get used to a room like this, especially for writing on cold, wet, winter days.

  “Don’t you want to see your room?”

  My room?

  Olivia was taken aback to realize that her coming with him had been a foregone conclusion. At first she was offended by his highhandedness, but then she remembered his earlier uncertainty and shyness and she came to the conclusion that her having a room set aside wasn’t borne out of confidence, but rather of hope.

  “Later,” she said, no longer irritated at him, but wanting to put off seeing the room for as long as possible. Even though they would be lovers before long, she didn’t want to jump into bed with him straight away. For one, there was the exquisite, yet tormenting, anticipation building between them. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Olivia wanted more time to get to know him so that when she did finally take him to her bed she could tell herself that she hadn’t made love to a total stranger.

  That’s what she told herself. And yet as William walked over to join her on the couch, she shot him a coy, come hither smile that Heather had once told her brought men to their knees. William stopped short, staring at her long and hard. Realizing that he’d stopped dead in his tracks, and that he’d been staring at her, not saying anything for a very long time, he sighed, almost wistfully, and ran his hand over his face and down along his chin.

  “God, you’re exquisite. You know that right?”

  Olivia shrugged. “I do alright.”

  “No really, when was the last time you looked at yourself? I mean, really, truly looked?”

  “I don’t spend a lot of time gazing at myself in the mirror, if that’s what you’re asking. And while I’ve had my fair share of lovers” – he cocked an eyebrow at her bold statement – “none have ever professed undying love and devotion to my beauty.”

  “Clearly you’ve been with the wrong men.”

  His statement was charged with an undercurrent of possessiveness. A possessiveness, that he didn’t deserve to have – not yet – and yet one that paradoxically sent shivers down her spine and made her quite simply a very happy woman. She shrugged again, acknowledging his words.

  “Perhaps I have.”

  Knowing that they were treading on dangerous, sexually charged ground, Olivia put aside their verbal foreplay and set out to talk learn more about him.

  “Anyway, enough about that. Come sit next to me,” she motioned to the cushion to her left. “I have about one hundred questions running through my head and you promised that you’d give me the whole story.”

  William sat, but he didn’t take the seat next to her; instead he sat rigidly at the other end of the sofa, close enough that she could feel the weight of him but not so close as to prove a distraction. She noticed that while she had settled in comfortably for what she had assumed would be an all night discussion, he sat stiffly, fully upright, nothing relaxed about his posture at all.

  “Where do you want me to begin?”

  “Let’s start by having you relax a bit. If we’re going to be here all night, there’s no point in you not getting comfortable.”

  “I am comfortable. Or rather, I’m not uncomfortable. This doesn’t bother me.” He ran his hand in an up and down motion along his torso, meant to convey his
erect stature.

  “Well, it bothers me to look at you. I’d prefer not to converse with someone that looks like they’re sitting down to an interrogation.”

  William exhaled ever so slightly, and then leaned back into the plush cushions, turning his body just a fraction in order to face her. He brought his right leg up onto the seat and rested his forearm against his knee. The movement was so quick that had Olivia not been staring at him, she wouldn’t have seen the transition take place. With him sitting there, looking like that, she thought maybe it was better when he’d looked tense and uncomfortable. The relaxed version of him brought back the unsettled, anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  “Better?” he asked, conscientiously.

  She swallowed, and the sound seemed to fill the stillness of the room. “Yes, much. How do you do that?”

  “Do what?” he asked.

  “Go from looking like a statue one minute to a man without a care in the world the next.”

  “Movement isn’t something I really think about. I could sit completely frozen for the entire day if I had to. It doesn’t bother me at all. A lot of the body language I’ve picked up over the years is more about keeping the people around me comfortable rather than myself.”

  “So why this charade?” she asked, indicating the completely relaxed pose before her. “If it doesn’t matter one way or the other, why not just sit normally … instead of like that?” she asked, flapping her hand exasperatedly in his direction.

  “Does this bother you too?”

  Olivia looked away, but not before seeing the same self-assured smirk that she’d noticed the last time he had been teasing her. Clearly he enjoyed their banter.

  He enjoys teasing me a little too much for my liking, but at least I know he isn’t always so serious.

  “I find it hard to concentrate when you look like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, come on! Surely you know the affect you have on people. Women, particularly.”

  “You specifically?”

  “Yes, alright. Me specifically. Like I said, I can’t think when you’re sitting there looking like that … when you’re looking at me like that. You know I want you, so why do you have to make this harder than it needs to be?”

  William leaned forward and Olivia scooted back, feeling like a field mouse under his watchful feline grace.

  “So why are you fighting it?” he asked seductively. The lowered timbre of his voice sent goose bumps down her body. “Like you said, you want me. I want you to want me. More than you can possibly guess.”

  He moved again, too quickly for Olivia’s eyes to process his intentions. In less than two heartbeats he was leaning over her, his right knee between her thighs, both of his hands on the arm of the couch behind her head. She felt trapped, not only physically but emotionally as well.

  Staring into his eyes, William’s face gave away nothing of his thoughts. Olivia was adult enough to admit that his stare did strange things to her, made her feel things no other man before had made her feel, and it wasn’t an entirely unwelcome sensation. While unnerving, for once she felt alive, her senses on full alert, body teeming with awareness.

  While William had touched her a few times at the hotel, she only now realized that at the time his hands had been warm. And then she remembered him moving back and forth between the fire and the couch. In the car, he had put his hand on her thigh, leaving a frigid patch of skin in its wake. Having felt William’s cold, steely palm against her clothed body, she knew that at least that part of the legends was true, but sitting here like this – held captive by both his body and his eyes – she was conscious of a monumental heat flowing between their bodies, a warmth born of an intense mutual desire and the magic that was their connection.

  “Don’t fight it.”

  She couldn’t. She didn’t.

  She gave in to what they both wanted desperately – each other.

  CHAPTER 17

  Olivia reached up and placed both of her hands on either side of Williams’s face, drawing him down so that their lips could meet. But before their mouths touched, she halted. Feeling his icy breath gently caress her trembling bottom lip, she shivered in anticipation. Olivia stared into the deep, nearly fathomless azure of William’s eyes, willing him to see into the depths of her soul and accept her for the woman that she was today, not the one she had been in 1658, the one he had loved with a deep and abiding passion that had spanned hundreds of years.

  “I’m yours,” she told him. “Me, Olivia. Not Ceara. You can have all of me – heart, body, mind, and soul – but it has to be me you want, not her.”

  So close and yet still too far apart for his liking, William slowly eased himself down so that their bodies were connected hip to chest, and his face was nestled in the crook of her neck. Olivia felt a tender kiss on her skin, and then he leaned back and gazed back at her.

  She heard his voice in her head: “I honor you, Olivia. You are mine.”

  Her body quaked with a longing she’d never known before. For him, for honor, for love and respect, and for the two of them – William and Olivia – and all that they could be.

  A low, rumbling growl escaped from his mouth. Olivia gasped, startled by the fierce longing she heard echoed back at her in that one fleeting sound. William lowered his head to hers so that their foreheads rested against one another. As he gently caressed her face and neck with his strong, icy hands, his eyes never once left her. He closed his eyes then and moaned softly before capturing her mouth in a wave of desire and yearning. Conquering his luscious mouth with her own, it was as if Olivia had finally found the piece of her that had been missing. At long last she was home.

  Olivia pulled away from what had been an all-too-brief yet highly intoxicating kiss, her glistening lips full and pulsing with an aching hunger for more.

  “Tell me,” she whispered. “Tell me you want me as much as I want you.”

  “I’ve waited several lifetimes for you. You cannot know how badly I want you.”

  He adjusted his position above her so that she could feel the hardness and strength of his need nestled at the junction of her thighs. She arched her hips against him in response, in offering of a sweeter, more decadent fulfillment to come. Her breath coming fast and heady, she thrust her hands up into his blue-black hair, and none-too-gently pulled him in for a ravenous kiss that made him forget the gentle caress of the previous one. Their lips fought for supremacy, tongues battling for dominance.

  It was raw.

  It was carnal.

  It was exquisite.

  Leaving Olivia’s mouth bereft of his sensual exploration, William kissed his way down her jaw to the racing pulse point in her neck where he licked, laved, and made her delirious with desire.

  “Oh god, please,” she begged while rubbing up against him like a cat in heat, a frenzied writhing that created an even more wonderful – terrible – tension in her body.

  “I want you.”

  He pulled back from his feasting to look into her eyes, and she noticed that his breathing was a bit erratic as well.

  “And so you shall have me,” William whispered seductively.

  “Now. I want you now!” she all but screamed out.

  “Patience,” he reprimanded.

  Like a petulant child, Olivia growled in frustration and pulled him back to her for a stormy, passionate kiss. Indulging her fit of tempter, he chuckled into her mouth and kissed her back, his tongue dancing with hers, a welcomed invasion.

  Unable to withstand the simple foreplay a moment longer, Olivia grabbed William’s sweater and unceremoniously yanked it over his head, exposing the trim, coiled muscles of his abdomen. In the low light of the room he was a god, his body strong, chiseled, and all-powerful.

  He sat up and straddled Olivia’s body. As she lay pinned beneath him, she ran her hands up his stomach to his broad, muscled chest, eliciting a shiver of desire from the man taut with desire poised above her.

  My immort
al man.

  While William watched her hands explore his body, she reached down to undo the button on his slacks. His breathing labored, he grabbed Olivia’s hand to stop her.

  “No wait. It’s my turn to look at and touch you.”

  Olivia pulled her sweater off, revealing a cream lace push-up bra that gave way to alabaster skin flushed pink with passion. William ran his fingers over the exposed flesh of her jutting breasts, raising goose bumps along her body.

  Olivia felt warm and alive, her skin branded where he trailed his fingers … down the center of her torso, stopping just above the button on her jeans, and back up again to trace circles around where her aureole was hidden by the flimsy fabric, making her nipples achingly erect against the barrier. He pulled the lace down and took the tight dusty rose tip of her right nipple between his strong, capable fingers, gently squeezing and rolling it, sending an immediate jolt of fervency and want to her core. Between punctuated gasps of breath, Olivia screamed out in both agony and ecstasy.

  “Now, please,” she begged, once again.

  “Not yet.”

  “You’re torturing me.”

  Olivia could hear the pleading in her voice but she didn’t care. She closed her eyes and turned her head to the side, trying to ignore the hot, fiery ache of her nipples and the dampness pooling between her legs as she ground against him insistently.

  “Please, I can’t take it anymore. I’m falling apart.”

  She’d never in her life been so aroused, filled with such need and longing, and he hadn’t even touched her yet. Not really.

  “Look at me, Olivia,” he said, voiced laced with yearning. “Please.”

  When she turned her eyes toward William, she saw a definitive change in his appearance from just minutes before. Whereas he had seemed a god in the dim light of the lamp and the flicker of firelight, he now appeared every inch the fallen angel. Gone was any trace of the human facade he put on for the world’s benefit. Now the planes of his face were held in rigid repose, his body completely and utterly motionless, no rising and falling of his chest to indicate breathing, not a twitch of the eye or nervous gesture. He was a marble statue come to life. But the biggest difference was the change to his eyes. Previously she had thought they were like the deepest, darkest depths of the Caribbean Sea and she had longed to get lost in them. Now, those radiant, cerulean orbs glowed with an inner brilliance that made them even more resplendent. He was terrifying and he was beautiful and she ached with the knowledge that he would soon be hers.