Chapter 6 #3
“Have mercy, sweet,” he rasped at last, blinking open those lustrous silver eyes that glowed like stars in the moonlight. “I’m only a man.”
Caroline buried her face in his shoulder. She didn’t know the words for what she wanted.
Luckily, Fitz seemed able to read her mind.
Or perhaps he was reading her body, the cues of their private mating dance.
In any case, he smoothed a hand down her spine all the way to the curve of her buttocks, an intimate touch that made her gasp.
She felt it like a brand, hot and possessive and inexorably tilting her hips to notch more firmly against his. And he began to move.
Long, sinuous shoves of his hips, pressing her down against him at the same time.
The first thrust made Caroline moan open-mouthed against the muscle of his shoulder.
Everything in the world faded away; there was only the friction coiling the knot of hunger tighter and tighter and tighter until it broke apart in an ecstatic release that sent waves of shivering delight through all her limbs.
“Ah, God,” Fitz gasped, still holding her bottom, his other hand tangled in her hair. His hips churned for an instant then his whole body went rigid and Caroline bit down on his shoulder, instinctively claiming him for her own in his moment of crisis.
They clung together for long moments like survivors of a shipwreck, tossed on stormy seas. The ability to breathe returned along with the ability to think clearly. Caroline, for her part, regretted the loss of the haze of passion. It had been nice not to have to think so much, for a bit.
Reluctantly, she began to shift her weight, meaning to untangle herself from Fitz’s arms and bedsheets and dangerously addictive touch…but the moment she lifted her head, her eyes fell on the bite she’d left on his shoulder, and the heat that had been so sweetly waning began to simmer once more.
Fitz saw her looking and lifted one hand to prod a blunt fingertip at the indentation of her teeth. He winced a bit but the smile that lit his face was pure delight. “Sweet…and sharp,” he murmured. “You’ve marked me.”
She could tell by his face and by the way he kept lightly stroking the marks, he didn’t want an apology. So she didn’t give him one. Instead, she gathered herself to climb off his lap, shaking out the crumpled fabric of her long white night dress and marveling at the warm lassitude of her body.
“Let that mark serve as a reminder tomorrow,” Caroline told him, backing toward his chamber door and keeping her gaze on his all the while.
He watched her go as though transfixed. “Every time you feel a pang in your shoulder while we walk through Swinley Forest, imagine me whispering in your ear a reminder to stay focused. Nothing can be allowed to get in the way of our parents finding love together.”
But as she closed his bedchamber door softly and leaned back against it to catch her breath, Caroline knew that she was the one who needed the reminder.
She could still feel the heat of his hands on her body, the surging strength of him between her thighs…
the heady wonder of his intent, attentive eyes looking deep into her as though striving to discover her very soul.
And Caroline’s spirit, which should still be sated by the climax of pleasure he’d brought her to, yearned for nothing more than to fling the door open and leap back into Fitz’s arms.
Together, they had satisfied the physical cravings he awakened in her body…but she very much feared that the act had only intensified her longing for closeness of another kind. The kind that bound two people together for longer than the space of an hour or a night.
The kind she could not afford to indulge.
Fitz would never marry her. He’d told her as much from the beginning.
His aversion to marriage was the entire reason behind his involvement with her, and Caroline was not so vain as to think she would change his mind.
No doubt he’d dallied with many a lady in his bedchamber—what they’d just done would not have altered him as she could already feel it altering the landscape of her own mind and heart.
No, what happened tonight could not be allowed to happen again, she told herself as she stole back to her rooms in the darkness of the sleeping manor.
It was far too dangerous; she had no self-control where Fitz was concerned.
Every touch, every kiss, every shared secret left her wanting more—wanting all of him—wanting a future that she absolutely could not have.
For she had to admit, alone behind the drawn curtains of her solitary bed and with an ache in her chest, that her own feelings on the subject of matrimony had undergone something of a metamorphosis.
She understood, now, what her mother had tried to tell her back in London. Just as all loves were not the same, neither were all marriages created equal. And though any lifelong commitment was a risk…it might be a risk worth taking, if only one found the right partner.
But since Fitz would never consider it, no matter how many spine-melting kisses they shared, Caroline would need to take steps to protect herself.
If all went to plan, she would be leaving her family behind in London…Caroline could not afford to leave her heart as well.