CHAPTER FIVE #4
“I will raise her with the Cavanaugh name and as the daughter of a duke, giving her the best education possible and ensuring an allowance large enough to keep her comfortably for the rest of her life,” he repeated the practiced mantra he’d given to Verity since the girl was born. “She will never want for anything.”
“Except the love of a father.”
He coolly arched a brow. “Then she’ll be raised exactly like most society daughters.”
She shook her head. “If I’m to be her mother, then—”
“Alice will have no bearing on our marriage or the children we’ll have together.” He leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees, and his eyes locked with hers. He wanted no misunderstanding of his next words. “And I do expect children, Helena. Ours will be a true marriage, in that at least.”
He pushed himself out of the chair and closed the distance between them with a single step. To her credit, she didn’t retreat, but damnation, the warmth of the fire behind her and the soft play of shadows across her face made her more alluring than any other woman he’d seen in years. Perhaps ever.
“But until then,” he warned, his voice low, “you shouldn’t be in a dark room alone with me, certainly not dressed like that.”
He untied her belt and let her dressing robe hang open to reveal the white cotton nightgown beneath. He lowered his gaze and swept it slowly down her front, allowing the rakish look speak for him.
“It’s only an old night rail and robe,” she countered but couldn’t keep a husky breathlessness from her voice.
He bit back a laugh. She had no idea how tempting she was in that old cotton thing.
He knew exactly how soft her body would be as it melted against his, how smooth and warm her skin, how wonderful her curves beneath his hands.
Even now he ached to touch her—no, to do far more than that.
He ached to sweep her into his arms and carry her upstairs to his bed, strip that dowdy gown away, and make love to her.
“Don’t tempt me, Helena,” he warned.
Her mouth fell open in surprise. She gestured toward her front. “This is tempting? A frayed neckline and—”
She cut herself off as his gaze fell hungrily to her bosom, the top swells of her breasts just visible above the stretch of old lace. She swallowed so hard he could hear it.
He stifled a tremble. He longed to put his mouth right there on her elegant throat and feel the soft undulation beneath his lips, burned to lick his tongue across her wildly beating pulse in the hollow at the base of her throat. And with that, be irredeemably damned.
“Gabe…” His name emerged inexplicably as both a plea for mercy and a whisper of surrender.
The dark desire inside him won. He stepped forward to cup her face between his hands, then lowered his head and captured her mouth beneath his.
The pleasure-pain of kissing her again after so long spiraled through him like a tightening spring, even as she softened and leaned against him.
Her hand rose to rest on his chest, and her fingers clenched into the satin waistcoat as if attempting to clutch at his heart.
But it was no use, he knew. He’d long ago lost that part of him, even to her.
Yet kissing her turned back time until the last five years seemed like nothing more than a terrible dream.
He drank in the spicy-sweet taste of her lips and the scent of her that had always reminded him of wild heather on a storm-tossed morning.
Her mouth moved against his, and when she parted her lips in invitation to deepen the kiss, he slipped his tongue between them with a low groan.
As he continued to kiss her, he swept his hands up and down her back in long, slow circles, more to prove to himself that she was real than to stoke the growing desire between them.
God knew he didn’t need to do that. Even now, she arched herself into him and slid her tongue over his in a twirling caress that spiked his pulse.
His restraint pushed to the breaking point, and his hand trembled as it moved up her side to her breast.
She exhaled a long sigh of capitulation as she melted against his palm.
All the memories of stolen caresses rushed back to him, along with waltzes in which he’d scandalously held her too close and with whispered conversations that weren’t at all proper.
He remembered, too, her sharp mind and how she had held her own in discussions ranging from politics to the corn laws, how beautifully she played the pianoforte and sang.
But what struck him most were the quiet memories of moments together in some friend’s garden when they’d sat on sun-dappled benches, watched the birds in the trees and the flowers stirring on the breeze, and said nothing at all.
He had lost all of that. Fate had ripped it away from him. But now—a soft sound of pleasure fell from her lips as he teased her nipple through the thin cotton—now she simply couldn’t be real.
She slid her mouth away from his and back along his jaw. “You said a true marriage,” she murmured into his ear, somehow managing to be understood through the soft moan he coaxed from her. “Do you…honestly mean that?”
“Yes.” He promised what passions they would share with a teasing squeeze to her bottom. “I need an heir.”
“No, I mean—” She pulled in a deep breath as if to steady herself. “An equal partnership of respect, warmth, encouragement—that’s what a true marriage is. But you keep referring to it as if it will be nothing more than some sort of business agreement.”
“Because that’s exactly what it will be.”
She pulled away just far enough to gaze up at him and search his face. “We once had much more than that.”
Once. That single word conveyed so much more meaning than she realized.
Regret quenched the growing need inside him, and a coldness he’d long ago come to embrace like armor seeped over him. Slowly, he released her. Then he closed her robe and tied the belt at her waist, sealing away the temptation of her body.
“Those days are gone,” he explained quietly, wanting her to accept the truth of their situation, yet not wanting to hurt her. “I’m no longer the man you knew.” He dropped his hands to his sides and stepped back. “The sooner you realize that, the happier we’ll both be.”
*****
Oh, that man!