“I’m sorry I interrupted your plans for the day.” When he threw her an annoyed look, she reddened and looked away. “What I really mean is…”
Before she could finish, he knelt at her feet, took her face in his hands and covered her mouth with his.
After a moment of resistance, she melted beneath his lips and clung to him like a woman who’d stumbled into an oasis after a long walk through the desert.
He pressed his fingers into the heavy woolen pelisse covering her shoulders. “We have to do something about this.”
She fussed with the silver clasp at her neck until the wrap fell open. He swept the cloak to the floor with an impatient hand and deepened the kiss. He’d begun to feather his fingers beneath the fichu filling the low neckline of her dress when reality slapped at him like a snapping flag. He suddenly remembered where they were, and, more importantly, who she was.
He grasped both of her hands in his and kissed her fingertips. “We have to stop.”
“Why?” She stared at him, her mouth open in an “O,” her lips swollen and bruised a dark red from the kind of kisses new lovers share. The kind of kisses that are ripe with taste and touch and scent. The kind of kisses that lead to hurried caresses and coming together beneath linen sheets.
Similar feelings had inhabited Richard’s heart before, but not like this. This was different. She was a beautiful widow with responsibilities far too important for him to make her another one of his passing fancies. But, if he knew anything about women, and he certainly did, he’d wager she was more than willing.
“Why? Because you are a lady, and I’m not behaving like any sort of gentleman.” There, he’d said it. This thing between them, this thing that couldn’t be. He had to make her see sense. “I can’t allow you to risk your love on me, a poor Irish Marine.”
Lady Blandford pushed him to the floor and then joined him on Thorne’s threadbare carpet in front of the hearth. “Why don’t you let me decide where and how I should risk my love?”
Richard was strong and fearless in battle, but apparently, not in love. The moment she placed her hands beneath his shirt and began to explore the dark whorls of hair on his chest with her fingertips, he surrendered. If he’d had a white flag, he would have thrown it into the air.
Harriet’s heartbeat as if it were trapped in an iron cage and bouncing against the bars trying to escape. She pulled the blanket from the chair and wrapped it around her shoulders before pushing him back and straddling him at the waist where she could lean over and plunder his lips at will.
Richard—she decided her wanton behavior precluded thinking of him as Lieutenant Bourne—did not require any more encouragement and swept his hands beneath her skirts, stroking the tender skin inside her thighs. She moved against him, rubbing against the hard ridge of his cock through the heavy cloth of his trousers between them.
The fire she’d been stoking for days with her imagination broke forth and raced between them, like dangerously hot coals escaping from a brazier.
He’d transferred his hands to the front of her dress and deftly freed both of her breasts. Her nipples were engorged and goosebumps raised on the aureoles. She was pretty sure what she was feeling had little to do with the frigid air in the cottage.
She could not get enough of his lips. Each kiss led to another, because she had to taste all of him. She needed to breathe in the essence of the man. Their bodies fit together like two missing pieces of a puzzle. When his mouth left hers and he moved to a half-sitting position, she wanted to protest, but decided his idea was better when his lips closed over one of her nipples. When he began to suckle her, what little doubt or fear she had left dribbled out of her in the moistness between her thighs.
When she moaned, he suckled harder and kneaded her other breast. Richard was lost. He knew he was in dangerous waters but didn’t care. He’d abandoned all fear and self-loathing, because at this particular moment all that mattered was the woman writhing in pleasure above him.
She leaned back, her eyes wide. “Take off those trousers,” she commanded, and rolled away from him.
As a loyal Marine, he was particularly good at taking orders, especially from a green-eyed nymph whose russet curls were escaping her formerly neat bun and tumbling over her bare shoulders. His mouth was deadly dry, but that didn’t matter, because he had no idea what he would say even if he could speak. He was certainly in no condition to deny her what she wanted. So he stood and slipped free of his braces, dropping his trousers to the floor. His smallclothes followed in haste before he re-joined her beneath the blanket.
She straddled him once again, and he thought he would die while she took him inside her a bit at a time before sinking until his cock was fully sheathed within her. Richard’s hard rule of withdrawal before spending himself inside a woman was sorely strained, and when he tried to roll to the side to release from her in time, she grasped his hips and made him stay. Her gaze bore into him, and he could not look away. He claimed her mouth for a long kiss while he buried his seed within her.
When the walls of her sex clenched around him, he shuddered at the enormity of what he’d done. The huge difference in their social classes no longer mattered. He had no right to claim this woman, but all the same, she belonged to him. She just didn’t know it yet.
7
The deep grumble of Max’s bark and the higher-pitched sound of childish laughter threw Harriet’s heart into double-time. She frantically re-buttoned her bodice while Richard helped brush and pin her hair into some semblance of order.
She grinned at the thought of how good her Marine was at dressing a lady’s tresses. If he ever had to leave the Royal Navy, he could always work as a lady’s maid. She refused to dwell on the real reason he was so proficient at putting a lady back together.
She hadn’t wanted to leave the warmth of Richard’s arms. The feel of their bodies close, bare skin against bare skin, felt right. She’d nearly cried at discovering how much she’d missed the simple pleasures of a man’s body while she’d lain with him on Captain Thorne’s old threadbare rug, under the cover of a rough woolen blanket.
Her grin faded when she realized she probably should be worried about getting caught with child, but after all, it had taken a while for her to conceive with Nicholas. And then there was the other problem.
If her cousin had his way, he’d hold her to her half-hearted promise the year before to marry the man who owned the farmlands next to his, the old Viscount Grantham. She’d been putting off both men ever since, with one excuse after another. But with her cousin’s return from the continent, she feared she’d finally run out of reasons to delay wedding the man.
At least now, after having made love to Richard, the thought of sharing a bed with a man in his seventies was a little more bearable. More importantly, she and Nicholas would be protected from her husband’s conniving brother-in-law. A small price to pay for her son’s safety.
She’d been so much lost in her thoughts that she started in surprise to find Richard leaning toward her with an intent look on his face. “Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what’s going on behind those green eyes.”
She swallowed the guilt his question provoked. “Nothing but gossamer daydreams that can never come true.”
