Her hand flattened over his chest above his heart, setting his body aflame with a hundred thousand fires of raw, desperate want. He settled his left palm over hers, holding her fast lest she think to withdraw. Their fingers intertwined. Still, neither of them spoke.
Words had never been more superfluous.
He cupped her nape, guided her head back, and slammed his lips to hers. He knew she was an innocent and he should be tender and slow and gentle, but his body ached to claim her. He could not control himself, could not quell the vicious ardor that made him want to take everything she would offer.
And then take more.
But his inner battle over reining in his inner beast became moot the moment she kissed him back. She was fierce in her response as she was in all things. She opened, sighing into his mouth, clutching at his shoulder as if she could not get him close enough. Her tongue tangled with his, battling him, it seemed, for dominance.
What a sweet skirmish this would be. His cock went rigid. He ground it against her softness, letting her feel him, letting her know who would ultimately win in this bedding. Letting her know it would be her flat on her back, him inside her, taking what was his.
Damnation.
His ballocks tightened at the thought of knowing Jacinda Turnbow so intimately, loving her so well she would never forget the way he tasted on her tongue or the way he felt atop her. That she would never bed another man without wishing it was him.
Nay, strike that thought.That she would never bed another man. Ever. He wanted this—her—beneath him, astride him. He wanted her hair unbound, its glorious red strands a curtain over his chest as she kissed a path to his cock. He wanted her on her knees as he drove into her from behind. He wanted pleasure her with his tongue until she came undone. To wake up with the scent of jasmine in his nose and her lush breasts in his hands.
He wanted her to be his always, and he knew it now with a finality that should have alarmed him, but somehow, it settled into his gut with an air of rightness. One night would never be enough. Nor would one week or one month or one year. Jacinda was a conflagration in his blood, coursing through him. She made him…
Beelzebub and hellfire, she made him feel alive again.
He nipped her lip, licked into her mouth. She met him kiss for kiss, her hands roaming his body, tentatively at first and then with greater urgency. Her fingers glided over his shoulders before running down his arms. Trailed over the planes of his abdomen and made a scorching path back up to his chest.
They kissed until his lips were tender from the bruising force of their mutual, mad passion. His mouth found her jaw, her ear. He caught the fleshy lobe between his teeth and tugged, a fresh surge of satisfaction unfurling when she moaned his name.
“Crispin.”
There was her capitulation, in her kiss, in the breathy exhalation of his given name, in her refusal to leave the chamber. But still, he needed both of them to be sure. To know that she went willingly to his bed because she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
“Jacinda,” he whispered into the shell of her ear before kissing the sweet hollow just below. “Tell me why you did not go.”
“Oh,” she sighed as he licked her there, working his tongue over her silken flesh in much the same manner he intended to between her legs.
He kissed down her throat. “Tell me.”
“You never say please.”
He chuckled against her skin. She was an odd little thing, this woman. Intelligent and brave when she needed to be, firm and proper yet fiery in his arms. Passionate in her kiss. And she was not wrong. He supposed he had not much use for pleasantries or manners or even humanity in the years he’d been at war.
For her, he would try, because he liked to give her contentment. Though it was a foreign notion, his head was clear, and he could acknowledge the truth. “Please, Jacinda. Tell me,please, why you are still here. Why you’re still in my arms. Because I have longed for this moment from the very first time you crossed the threshold of my study, but I would not have you here if you remain out of some sense of obligation or fear for your position.”
He found the line of buttons on the front of her nightrail through the darkness and flicked open enough that he could pull it and her dressing gown aside to reveal the soft skin he sought. He dragged his nose over her collarbone, inhaling her scent and following with a line of open-mouthed kisses.
“I did not go because it has been years since I have lain with a man, and I… I want to lie with you.” She paused. “I wish to remember what it feels like to be wanted in such a way. Just for tonight.”
Her confession gave him pause, for it was unexpected. She was not an innocent after all, and though that fact surprised him and caused an unwanted twinge of jealousy for the unknown man who had taken her maidenhead, Crispin knew an instant, sobering sense of relief. She was here because she wanted him. She was experienced enough to understand desire, to acknowledge what was happening between them.
But he had to know something first, for the very thought she had been taken and abandoned by some thoughtless cad was enough to make violence stir in his soul. “Why are you not wed, Miss Turnbow?”
“He… he was a soldier.” Her voice was hushed, steeped in sorrow. “He died on the winter march through the Galician mountains on the Peninsula.”
The retreat to Corunna. He knew it well. Thousands of men had died on the impossible journey through the mountain range with the French at their heels. He swallowed down the rising bile at the memory.
“I am sorry,” he said hoarsely, meaning it to his bloody bones. War was hell. Anyone who said otherwise had been fortunate enough to never have lived it.
“Please.” Her hands framed his face, gentle and tender, sending a wave of soothing to battle the agony that threatened to rise within him. Her thumbs traced his cheekbones, and the tempest abated. “Let us not dwell on past pains. Let tonight be free from everything. Free from past, present, the separations between us.”
The breath left him. There was nothing left to say. He pressed a kiss to each of her palms, and then he bent, scooping her into his arms in one swift motion. No more waiting. No more of anything. Tonight, they were Jacinda and Crispin, not governess and duke. And tomorrow… tomorrow could go to Hades for all he cared, but he would worry about it when the morning sun rose over the city. One way or another, he would convince her to see reason, and that was simply that.
