“You want me,” he murmured, kissing her again. “You want me inside you.”
His finger moved again, and she moaned. “Yes, I want you.”
Satisfaction and desire mingled in his eyes. “I didn’t think you would.”
She ran restless hands down his back. “I shouldn’t, but I do.”
Tristan parted her legs and settled himself along her body. “There hasn’t been anyone besides me, has there?” he murmured, raising up a little on his arms and kissing her again.
“No one.”
Last time he had been patient and careful. Tonight he didn’t need to be, and she lifted her hips to meet him as he pushed inside her. She cried out, not with pain but with satisfaction. He muffled her cry against his mouth, moaning as he began to move inside her. The bed rocked with his rhythmic thrusts, another dance just for the two of them.
The tension inside her built until she thought she would die from it. Georgiana dug her fingers into his shoulders, holding herself as close to him as she could, wanting to be part of him, part of the fire sweeping them along.
“Say my name,” he murmured breathlessly, kissing her ear.
“Tristan. Oh, Tristan.” Like a gate opening, she shattered, trembling and pulsing around him. All she could feel was him, inside her and around her, holding her and loving her.
“Georgiana.” With another groan he sank hard into her again, holding himself tightly against her before he relaxed and lowered his head against her neck.
She loved the warm weight of him lying on top of her. It seemed like forever since she had felt this, that she was part of two rather than someone alone. Then she had awakened to find him gone from her bedchamber and her stocking missing. A memento, she’d thought, until she’d heard about the wager.
He ran his hands beneath her bottom and rolled, still inside her as he turned onto his back with her lying along his chest. For a long time they lay quietly like that, his fingers gently twining in her hair. As her breathing slowly returned to normal, she lifted her head enough to look down at him.
“Am I the same as I was?”
“No. You’re curvier.” With a slow, wicked smile he ran his hands over her bottom again.
She sighed. Reality was still on the other side of his dark bed curtains, and she would be very happy if it stayed there for a while longer. Her caressing hands moved up his chest, pausing at a small indentation along his left collarbone. “This is new,” she said. “What did this?”
“A horse threw me about three years ago and I landed on a rock. Hurt like the devil.” He brushed hair from her eyes, tilting his head a little to meet her gaze. “You remember that well, to notice a scar?”
I remember everything, she started to say, but didn’t. “I thought maybe it was one I had given you.”
He chuckled, warm and quiet. “Not for lack of trying, Georgie. My toes are still bruised, and my knuckles let me know when the weather’s changing.”
“You exaggerate.”
“Maybe a little.” He kissed her forehead. “Are you cold?”
“I’m starting to be.”
“Here.”
Sliding out from under her, he pulled the blankets up around them. He lay back again and she tucked her head against his shoulder, her hand curled across his chest.
She felt relaxed, ready to sleep for weeks tucked beside him, with his arm around her shoulder keeping her close. Still—“What about Amelia Johns?”
“I’ll deal with her later. Talk about something else, my sweet one.”
She meant to question him further, but her eyes drooped shut, and she fell asleep to the soft sound of his breathing and the steady beat of his heart. When she awoke, gray dawn was peeking around the edge of his blue curtains. She lay still, feeling the slow rise and fall of his chest beneath her cheek.
She didn’t want to leave. Neither, though, could she stay. Carefully shifting his arm from her shoulder, she sat up. He stirred, turning his face toward her but not waking. She wanted to kiss his cheek, but steeled herself against it.
He’d finally let her in, had decided she’d forgiven him. Well, she had—and she hadn’t. But that didn’t matter, because she could never trust him with her heart. What had happened last night was merely lust, the pent-up frustration of six years of antagonism.
Moving cautiously, she slipped off the bed and pulled her shift back on. A stocking tumbled to the floor, and she looked at it for a moment. It would serve him right. And it would ensure that he understood he’d been taught not to trifle with her, or with the heart of any female.
