The last words were too bold, even for her. They hung in the air, though, unspoken yet somehow still there, vibrating with potency.
He kissed her ear. “If I consummate this marriage, we can never undo what has been done.”
Had he intended to undo it? Her mind whirled, the spell of desire disrupted. There were no causes for divorce, so that meant he had contemplated an annulment. Perhaps that was the true reason behind his sudden trip to Shropshire.
Hurt lanced her heart. She could not help it. Helena wished he had not said anything at all. She ought to push him away, to stop this madness. Should she truly surrender her body and heart to a man who had been secretly contemplating abandoning her?
“Helena?” He lifted his head until his face hovered over hers.
She wished she could look away, but he stole all her attention as ever. There had never been anyone but him. He was the only one she longed for. The only man who had ever made her feel those queer little sparks fluttering through her, the tightening in her belly, the breathlessness and heart-fluttering moments when their eyes connected. And when he touched her,good Lord…
But still, she had her pride.
She cupped his face, the prickle of his whiskers, reemerging after his morning shave, stinging her palms in a delicious rasp. “Do you mean to annul our marriage?”
She had to know.
She did not want to know.
His eyes did not flit from hers. “I had considered the possibility.”
No subterfuge from him, then. She could respect his honesty, if not his intentions.
They were almost as close as man and woman could be, their naked bodies pressed together, and yet, he still held a part of himself from her. She did not know if he would ever relent enough to allow her into his heart. To welcome her there. When she had spent the last few weeks plotting to rid herself of Lord Hamish, somehow, she had been desperate to do everything in her power to keep from marrying a man she could never love.
In her haste, she had never stopped to think about what it would be like to marry a man who could never loveher.
“And now?” she asked him, needing to hear his answer, no matter the damage it would do her.
“I want you,” he said, the raw confession sounding as if it had been torn from him. He moved, and for the first time, she knew the sensation of his rigid manhood rubbing over her, the tip of him brushing over her pearl until she quaked with a renewed sense of urgency. “Do you not feel how much?”
She did feel. And it was marvelous. Helena jerked against him, undulating her hips so that his length rubbed up and down her needy flesh. But still, he had not answered her question. She would not lie with him if he was uncertain about what he wanted, the lust inspiring him notwithstanding.
She understood well enough the way it was between a man and a woman. A man could want a woman without loving her, and the same was true for a woman. The problem was, in this instance, the woman was desperately in love with the man, and her heart could not bear to be split in two.
She was still holding his face in her hands. Her thumbs investigated the sharp delineations of his cheekbones as she studied his face. “That is not an answer, my lord. Do you wish to remain married to me, or would you rather be free? I cannot bear the thought of you spending the rest of our lives resenting me. If you shall hate me forever, then I set you free before we go too far.”
“We have already gone too far,” he told her, turning his head to drop a kiss upon first her left palm, then her right.
Still, this was not the answer she sought.
“I have to be inside you. It is a need which supplants all else. Therefore, I surrender. You have won.” He lowered his head and sealed his lips to hers.
Helena did not want his surrender. Nor did she want to win. She wanted his love. But if there remained the chance she might ensnare that, surely she owed it to herself to try…
He licked along the seam of her lips. She opened to him. Their tongues tangled, and the musk of her sex invaded her mouth along with him. Her hands traveled from his face to his silken hair, then to his back. The muscles of his shoulders flexed beneath her questing touch, and she could not help but to marvel at the strength and softness of him. Smooth, warm skin encompassing rippling muscle and sinew.
It seemed at odds, much like the man himself.
One moment, he consumed her with the ardor of a lover, and the next, he viewed her with the cold reckoning of a scorned suitor. How could a man so hot also be so cold?
Any misgivings fell away beneath the power of his kisses. As he kissed her, he rubbed his shaft over her pearl again and again. She shuddered and quaked beneath him as a small tremor of renewed release passed through her. But it was not enough. Nothing was. Nothing ever had been.
Helena had been waiting her entire life for this claiming. For this man. For this night. She clung to him, kissing him back with all the frantic ardor clamoring through her. There would be no annulment. After this night, they would be bound to each other forever.
It was what she wanted. She would fret over the rest later. Not now. For now, all she wanted was this. Him.
He bit her lower lip, a low sound of need emerging from his throat. “Ready for me, hellion?”
