Chapter 4 #2
Douglas lowered his hand to her gown, and said in a voice made thick with an emotion she wanted to call desire, but feared was only pity, “Can you sleep in stays?”
“I’ll wake up wishing I hadn’t. I mean, wishing I hadn’t slept in stays,” she said, also wishing words came easier.
He leaned over, his hands pressing and touching in all kinds of interesting, interesting places. But then she inhaled deeply as the stays that had been fastened around her chest suddenly loosened. How had he managed that, with her gown still on?
“Are you a magician?” she asked.
“Yes. I conjured the snowstorm,” he joked, except he didn’t laugh, and neither did she.
“You…rogue.” She could barely keep her eyes open, except that she so badly wanted to see Douglas, and to feel his mouth on hers.
She lifted up her hands and encountered his chest, earning a startled intake of breath.
She slid her hands upward to his neck, and then his jaw, rough with stubble.
It was only a few hours till morning, when he would undoubtedly be shaving again.
“You feel like a man,” she said, which was surely the most inane observation she’d ever made in her life.
Of course he looked like a man, and he felt like a man, because he was a man through and through.
He was the only man who she had ever loved, and the only man she was even faintly interested in exploring.
“I can assure you I am most definitely feeling like a man,” he told her, his eyes flickering all over her face. “Why did you drink all that wine? Why did I let you?”
“I poured myself more when you left the room once.”
“Joy.”
“I wish I hadn’t.”
“I wish you hadn’t either.”
“I must taste like wine. If you kiss me, you could tell me if that’s true.” There, she said it.
“Jesus Christ, Joy,” he muttered.
“Don’t you want to? Did you ever want to kiss me? You kissed me before. Ten years ago.”
“Yes, I did,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “And yes, I still want to.”
She allowed her eyes to slide shut, awaiting his kiss.
She felt his lips against her skin. But then she couldn’t keep track of whether she was awake or dreaming, and if her eyes were open or closed.
All she knew was that she was lost in a cinnamon-and-orange-scented cloud, with darkness and warmth surrounding her.
[section]
Douglas wanted nothing more than to kiss Joy senseless and join her in her bed and erase the last ten years of misery and mistakes with the sort of shockingly intimate actions he had in mind.
Christ, she was in absolutely no condition for such activities, and even though she was inviting him to indulge in his desires, the fact was that he couldn’t accept because it wasn’t really Joy issuing the invitation. It was the mulled wine.
And yes, perhaps Joy also wanted those things.
But if she couldn’t ask him for that without drinking half a cask, it meant she didn’t know what she wanted.
He couldn’t take advantage of her in that condition.
It wouldn’t be right. And dear God, if he had, and if by some miracle she loved everything he did to her, she might still wake in the morning feeling rage instead of pleasure, because she would resent the fact that she had made her request while under the influence of more alcohol than she probably drank in a month.
The end result was that he tucked her into her bed, then allowed himself one kiss to reassure himself that her skin was as soft as it looked.
And Christ it was. But he kissed only her cheek, because if he risked her mouth and she kissed him back, even in her drunken state, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stop.
And there were already too many regrets between them.
He left the room, locking it behind him and sliding the key under the door so that she would be able to find it in the morning, and so he wouldn’t be caught with it.
She was a widow and not subject to the same sort of restrictions as an unmarried woman, but Douglas didn’t want to harm her reputation unless he actually did something very real to ruin it.
He made his way back to the room he was sharing with the soldier.
The long couch would have been a comfortable place to sleep, if he hadn’t been dealing with a raging erection.
He fought off the intense desire to stalk right back to Joy’s room and pound on the door until she let him in.
Thank God he locked it. He was clearly the biggest threat to her tonight.
He tossed and turned. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her face and heard her voice issuing the most alluring invitation to do things to her body that he hadn’t done with any woman in a very long time.
At last, he couldn’t stand it anymore, and slowly slid his hand down to his cock and began to stroke.
He didn’t dare make a sound, mindful of the fact that he was not alone in the room, and the man who been generous enough to share wasn’t someone he knew well enough to beg forgiveness from.
He bit his lip as he fisted himself, and worked to keep his breathing as low and even as possible.
Fortunately, he was so close to the edge that it couldn’t have been more than one minute before he came, the only audible sign of it being one strangled inhale.
He spilled onto his stomach, and lay there still gripping his cock, slowly coming down from the peak of his orgasm, still needing Joy.
He didn’t know how he’d face her tomorrow. All he knew was that having found her again, the idea of life without her was unbearable.