“Believe what you will. I may not have always offered you the truth, but what is between us Leonie, this passion,thathas never been a lie.”
She longed to believe that as well. Good heavens, how deeply and how thoroughly and how desperately she longed for it. But he had already proven her easily influenced, and she had no wish to feel any more the fool than she already did when it came to this man.
“I want to believe you,” she allowed slowly. Hesitantly.
“Believe what you must.”
“If only it were as simple as that.” She shook her head, swallowing against a fresh rise of tears. “Nothing in our marriage has ever been simple, has it, my lord?”
“I am not a simple man, I fear. But here is a simple question for you. Will you come to bed with me?”
His request startled her. It was not what she had expected. Ordinarily, he wooed her with kisses and heated caresses. He came to her, invading her chamber with his fierce masculine presence and bringing her to her knees with desire.
But that had been before she realized he had married her with the sole intention of inciting Alessandro to duel him. That had been before she understood how easily he had used her.
“I will not lie with you whilst you continue with this misguided need for revenge,” she told him firmly. Because regardless of how much she longed for his kisses and his touches—even after everything that had happened and all she had discovered about his treachery—she could not allow herself to make love to him. Not when he wished to harm Alessandro. Not when he was hell-bent upon destroying everything they had built together over the last few weeks.
But perhaps all they had shared had meant nothing to him. And if it did…no, she could not bear to think it. She could not have been that mistaken, that foolish. Earlier, before dinner, and here now in the depth of the night, Morgan seemed to have softened, even if incrementally. He was less harsh, less cold, less rigid. More vulnerable.
“I want you in my bed, Leonie,” he said then, his voice raw, his admission seemingly torn from him. “Not to make love to you—though there is nothing I long for more—but because I want you…here with me.”
His words found her heart, burrowing deep. So deep, she was unable to utter a word. Emotion rushed through her in a confused, jumbled hodgepodge. It was a confession that robbed her breath, stole her ability to speak. It was the sort of confession she had never imagined she would hear from the Marquess of Searle.
She did not say a word, because she could not, and because she did not have to. Her decision was made. She slid into the bed alongside him. Instantly, his arms encircled her, pressing her against his warmth. And she embraced him in return, clutching his lean waist, nestling her face against his bare chest, just over the steady, reassuring thump of his heart. He wore nothing beneath the bedclothes, but she refused to allow herself to be tempted regardless of how very hot, firm, and enticing the feeling of his muscular body in her arms was. Her hands traveled slowly over the deep ridges of his scarred back, savoring the feeling of him.
Savoring their closeness.
Without saying a word, she clutched him, her body molding to his, and this time—for the first time—they were entwined not because of desire but because of the connection they shared. The deep, visceral bond. He needed her, and she knew it. But she also needed him. Needed him as the man he could be rather than the man he currently was. Needed him to be strong enough to choose love over hatred, to grasp the future with both hands instead of holding desperately onto the past.
It would require time, she knew, and they had so little of it.
One more full day until the duel at dawn. Shivering, she clutched him tighter, as if she could somehow protect the both of them from what was to come. If only she could.
He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head. “Cold?”
“No.” She kissed his chest, the dusting of hair upon his skin tickling her lips. “Fearful.”
He stilled, his entire body going tense against hers. “Of me?”
“Of what you will decide,” she elaborated, kissing him once more.
“For tonight, all I have decided is that you feel at home in my arms.” His pronouncement was grim but final.
And she had to agree. Shewasat home in his arms, and she could not shake the feeling, running to her marrow, that it was where she belonged. But she could not luxuriate in it either. For she knew all too well that it, like her marriage to Searle, was founded in deceptions and half-truths.
For the moment, however, nothing felt better than being in her husband’s bed, his warm body pressed against hers. “For tonight, I agree,” she said.
And holding tight to him, she fell into deep, dreamless slumber.
*
Morgan woke withthe swell of a deliciously full, warm breast in his palm. He woke with his face buried in a sea of white-blonde curls, his arms wrapped around his wife. He woke with the most painful cockstand he had sported in recent times, a feat achieved no doubt by the combination of his lust for his wife, his several days of forced celibacy, and the fact that his prick was currently nestled against the delectable curve of Leonie’s rump.
Against her delectable, nightdress-covered rump.
There was a most unwanted scrap of fabric keeping him from his wife’s smooth, creamy skin. But it was just as well, for he had other, far greater concerns to consider than the conundrum of waking in his own bed with his glorious wife all around him, yet still unable to roll her to her back and wake her in the manner she deserved.
With his tongue upon her cunny.
