Chapter Eight #2
Indescribable promise rippled through her.
More.
She could not wait for him. She took, rolling her body into his leg, throwing her head back as he kissed the line of her throat. Why had she come here?
For this.
No. Something else.
What else was there?
She’d had a plan…
“Oh!” She yanked away. She’d planned to seduce him away from Hawthorne, but… how could she if he kissed her like this, like he wanted her above all else?
He spoke, low and raspy, eyes closed still, and his honey-dark lashes resting against his cheek. “What have I done to deserve such sweet dreams?”
Dreams? Did he think this… was he kissing her without knowing… Trapped between dreaming and waking, he must have been holding some other, more desirable woman in his arms.
“Oh.” She’d not meant that single syllable to sound so sad.
She wanted to sink back into the mindlessness of his embrace.
But the spell was broken.
Good thing. Losing herself in her husband’s arms had never been part of any of her plans.
Harden the heart, turn the mouth into a weapon of destruction instead of an instrument of pleasure.
“I am quite apologetic, Felix,” she said. “If you wake up enough, you’ll find reality much more bitter than your dreams.” She leaned low over him and whispered in his ear. “It’s not some sweet-tempered maid you’re kissing. It’s your wife.”
Leave it to Caroline to wake him with her lovely body only to speak of it as a threat, a punishment, a mistake.
To speak as if he wasn’t enjoying it… didn’t want it. With her? Good God. If she believed that —what a little fool.
He’d teach her otherwise.
Surging up, he cradled her tightly, flipped her gently, and rested her back on the hard marble. She cried out, gripping his shoulders, eyes wide. Scared. She should be. Now, he had her caged between his body and the floor, and he hadn’t quite decided if he was going to let her go.
Until he did, he’d play with her a bit, use her fire to blind his nightmares. “Who do you think I’m dreaming of, wife?” More and more he… loved that word. A word was a safe thing to love. Much easier than loving a person.
“How should I know?” She ran a finger down the middle of his chest, hesitance in her eyes. Then heat. “But it’s me here in reality. And I might just come here every morning… until you leave.” She peeked up at him, expectant.
Of what? “Do you promise?” he growled.
With wide eyes and something of a snort, she said, “You do not mean that.”
He laughed as he leaned in to smell the lovely little curve of her neck. “Waking up to the touch of the woman I’d been pleasuring in my dream? I think I do mean that.”
First, a touch had stolen into his nightmare, soft fingers beckoning him away from dark places. Those fingers—that little had pulled him into wakefulness, her kind brown eyes staring down at him. Comfort had come for him. A surprise. In the form of his wife. More surprising still.
He’d grasped it with both hands. And both lips because he was a devil and she was his bloody wife, and…
hell… he’d needed her. His very first memory of her was a comforting one.
A stout little girl, a wingless angel with serious eyes in a field dotted with wildflowers behind his grandfather’s house.
She’d asked him riddles until he’d forgotten his grief.
And this morning he’d kissed her to do the same.
She’d kissed him back, clad only in her shift and wrapper. More than that. She’d ground her sweet little cunny against his thigh, moaning for more. He recalled that night at Lyon’s Den when he’d thought, unable to help himself: luscious .
He’d been right.
Caroline would be wild at heart. Under her plans and her prim gowns, she’d be a seductress.
“You were not dreaming of me .” She scrambled to escape him, to lean against the wall, the head of his pitifully cold bed.
This uncomfortable marble better than that cursed house.
Her eyes were serious again, as they had been when they’d first met.
Large and dark, you could almost see her big brain tick, tick, ticking away behind them.
But now they were a bit clouded. With lust.
For him.
His cock throbbed. His breeches bound it too tightly as he sat back on his heels, facing her. He’d been hard upon waking, harder still upon finding her so clever at kissing, so eager for it. For him.
Her dark hair waved down around her shoulders.
“You’ve not put your hair up yet,” he said, throat thick with longing. He took a risk, grabbed silken hank of the stuff and wrapped it around his fist, tugged her closer.
“Why were you screaming?”
“Is that how you found me?”
She nodded, hair falling in front of her face.
He pushed it behind her ear with a gentle hand, then pulled both hands away to scrub his palms down his face.
“Nightmares. Old friends. It’s been”—a huff—“years since I’ve had them.
” He’d thought them gone. Returning here had been a mistake, no matter how necessary.
“Why do you think I have no… carnal interest in you?”
That chin knew its way into the air well. “You never have. I repulse you. And if you insist on remaining here, I’ll insist on taking my marital rights.” She crossed her arms over her chest with a self-righteous humph . She thought she had him, didn’t she?
He wanted to laugh. God, he wanted to fall to his back and laugh until his belly hurt.
Instead, he said, and with no goddamn good reason for it, “Let me disabuse you of that notion.” Hitting his hands and knees, he prowled toward her.
When he was close enough to feel her little puffs of frantic breaths against his lips, he paused, took a moment to stare deeply into her wide eyes.
Poor little fox. He’d run her to ground, and now he was going to feel her neck beneath his teeth.
“You may be disappointed to learn, Caroline, that marital relations will not scare me off. In fact”—he kissed her, a little nip of her bottom lip as she gasped—“it’s a decided reason to stay .
Now that I’ve finally kissed you, I’m not entirely sure I can stop.
” He sighed. Perhaps she was the hound and he the fox.
Her teeth had sunk into his neck. And he liked it.
“Knew that would happen. Not sure I want to stop, either. In fact, I want to bury myself deep inside you and make your entire body quake. But somehow, I do not think you will believe me. So I intend to prove it.” He held her gaze first, looking for a reason to stop.
He found only curiosity there, and a soft sort of relief. She was glad she didn’t repel him.
Which likely meant he did not repel her.
He wrapped one of his hands around the nape of her neck and dragged her to the ground, caging her in once more, every second of the journey trapped inside a hot kiss.
So much to make up for. So many wrong messages. Dangerous to disabuse her of her notions. But he couldn’t let them stand.
Lowering his body to rest alongside hers, he moved his mouth lower, tasting the curve of her stubborn jaw. “See, Caro. I like this very much.”
She moaned, her hands clenched at her heart as if she did not know what else to do with them. But her body knew something. She rolled her head to the side, opening up the slope of her neck for his exploration. “You… but no… the note. The footman.”
“That?” He ran his lips down her soft skin to her collarbone.
“I wish I’d kissed you back then. I’d wanted to.
If I had, it would have been…” He paused, studying her, remembering the girl of sunlight she used to be, all spring-green innocence and curiosity.
“Like this.” He set his lips against her softly, slightly parted but still.
Somehow, he kept the hunger from them, kept them from taking more.
A light press, his hands cupping her cheeks as he closed his eyes and inhaled her scent.
“I would have wanted to stop the moment right there, to stay with my lips pressed to yours like this forever.” But stirrings in his body would have demanded more.
And the rabid fear in his heart would have run, screaming. That would have hurt her more, wouldn’t it have? To kiss her then leave her, no explanation.
He swallowed and settled his forehead against hers.
“Our wedding day,” she whispered. “You almost kissed me then. Pulled back.”
“Ah. That kiss would have been a claiming kiss. I would have dragged you onto my lap and taught you to look at no other man.” Hands hard, he cradled the back of her head, took a punishing sip of her, dragging her bottom lip between his teeth and gaining another moan then a gasp as she shoved space between them. As much as he’d allow.
“A”—a catch in her voice—“and the day you arrived here? At Hawthorne?”
“That would be a kiss of pure relief. Slow and thorough to ensure myself you were all of one piece, well and whole and mine .” He’d give her a thousand kisses to make up for each one he’d denied her, and he made good on several of them now, parting her mouth and finding her tongue, stroking and playing and—was this real?
She was kissing him, too, giving as good as she got.
And she’d found, finally, use for her hands, locking them around his neck where they felt better than any cravat.
He groaned, a sound of protest, when she broke the kiss. “You almost kissed me upstairs, your first full day here.”
“And I regret not doing so,” he growled, claiming her lips again.
He’d had reasons. Hadn’t he? Good ones. Forgotten now because the mere thought of parting from her lovely lips was like a bull’s horn through his gut.
Surely, he could take this without falling beyond the superficial fields of pleasure.
“And this one? What kind of kiss is this one?”