He knew if he went back inside the inn, never mind to their little room, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from taking her in the way that he so desperately wanted. It had taken a titanic effort to pull back from her. He could still feel her body through that thin chemise. He could still feel her wetness through his breeches, how tight and hot she would be once he unsheathed himself and entered her. He couldn’t believe that it had really happened. It was like the fantasies of the past seven years had come to life in a single moment. He couldn’t quite believe that she hadn’t recoiled when, in that mad moment, he had brought her fingers to his lips.I would have let you,she had said to him.
Her orgasm had told him that she would have let him have all of her. He had wanted to make love to her more than he had ever wanted anything. Still, right now, he wanted to go back to that little room and bury himself in her and feel her close around him.
John groaned and ran his hands through his hair, swearing once more.
He found the hayloft, blessedly empty and warm, and lay down, hoping to quiet the tumult of his thoughts. Instead, he lay awake until dawn.
Mostly, he thought of Catherine. How glorious she had been for that brief interlude. Her skin gleaming in the moonlight. Her otherworldly blond hair spilling out like quicksilver over the pillow. Through her chemise, her breasts had been full and perfectly weighted in his hands, her nipples taut and sweet in his mouth. He had been able to trace the flare of her hips and grasp the lushness of her arse. To hear her cries as she came for him.
And, yet, he had stopped.
If you had asked him a moment before he left if he could have stopped, he would have said no. No, he couldn’t stop this exquisite pleasure. No, he couldn’t relinquish this woman from his arms.
But then the image of that day flashed across his mind, without warning or sense.
That day. When the scandal had been unleashed.
His father and Mary Forster, in the study at Edington Hall. The strange woman with that same silver-blond hair bent over and his father behind her. Their expressions contorted and alien.
Because he had not onlybeenat the party where they had been discovered.
He had discovered them.
He had been the one to expose them to the world.
And so he couldn’t get too close to Catherine Forster. He certainly couldn’t bed her. He could never tell her that he had seen his father and her aunt in the act or that he had been the one to accidentally publicize their horrible liaison to the world. He could never bear for her to know the truth—that he had been as complicit in the scandal, in ruining his family and her own, as his father had been. That his childish mistake had ruined her life and destroyed her family. It didn’t matter that he had brought harm on his own family as well. She was innocent. And he was guilty.
Further, if he bedded Catherine, it made him just like his father, the man he had spent much of his adult life tryingnotto be like. His father had shirked his responsibilities and harmed those he had a duty to protect and so John had always sought the opposite for himself. No responsibilities, no bonds of honor, no promises—only transitory pleasure. And before he had ascended to the dukedom, it had been easy to be free of such encumbrances.
Now, however, it was his duty to protect Henrietta, just like it had been his father’s responsibility to protect him and his mother from infamy and heartbreak. He should be safeguarding his sister’s interests. He shouldn’t be risking another scandal—especially not when it had the power to harm her already imperiled future. He was being irresponsible, just like his father had been.
Finally, the exhaustion of travel overcame him and he fell asleep. But even in slumber, these thoughts circled just below the surface of his consciousness, like sharks.
He awoke with a resolution.
Today, this morning, he would tell Catherine that what had happened last night could never occur between them again. The idea that he would never again taste her lips or hear her come for him—it made him want to weep. But it was the only answer. The only way he could keep his sister safe.
He climbed down from the loft, the light boring into his skull. He did not feel at all rested. Even in sleep, images of Catherine from the night before had run through his mind. In his few stretches of true unconsciousness, he hadn’t walked out of the room but he had stayed. And in the dreams, each time he stayed, she was gasping underneath him and they were both at the brink, again and again.
John shook his head, hoping to scramble the memory of such dreams.
He forced himself to run over their plan for the day in his mind. They needed to climb back into the carriage and head for Lulworth. Today, they had to find Catherine’s old nurse, Martha, and ask her about Mary Forster. He couldn’t let whateverthiswas with Catherine interfere with their plan. He couldn’t let himself get distracted. For Henrietta’s sake.
So, instead of going up to the room to see Catherine, which he immediately categorized as far too dangerous for his fragile self-control, he arranged their departure with the innkeeper.
As he turned away from this task, he nearly collided with Catherine herself. She looked very neat and very, very beautiful. She wore a dress he had never seen before and a neutral expression, as if she hadn’t thought about him once since he had left her last night. Apparently, he had pleased her and then been forgotten, like a mediocre bon-bon. Meanwhile, he was mentally and spiritually exhausted from resisting the desire to run back to their room and fall to her feet. He could still hear her cries of pleasure in his ears, for Christ’s sake. Meanwhile, she looked at him like he was stranger. No, worse, a man that she knew but who didn’t occupy her thoughts.
He also suddenly felt very aware that his night in the hayloft had most likely done him no aesthetic favors.
“I am ready to depart.”
For a mad second, he thought she meant she was ending their quest and leaving him altogether. Looking at her face, though, he realized she only meant the inn.
“The carriage will be pulled round in just a moment,” he choked out. “We leave in ten minutes.”
Catherine nodded and gave him a look that appeared almost mocking. He resisted the impulse to swear. And then she turned away from him.
He watched the line of her back head out the front door of the inn. The carriage pulled up just as she reached the drive and Marcel handed her into the enclosed space.
