She felt peace. With this man. This man who did not love. Who did not stay. A man who would seduce. Who would make a wager because he was so convinced he could do so. A man who would run as far and as fast as he could from a future. But when she was with him, she didn’t care.
“What do you want?” she murmured.
That answer leapt to her mind so easily. She wanted Robert. Only him. Despite the contentious element that came into their interactions. Despite the pain he had caused her in the past and the wager she still knew existed…or did it? After all, Robert had made no move to take her.
In fact, she was the one who longed for that now.
She shook away her troubled thoughts and knocked on his door, at last. It opened in a moment and Robert stood there. Tonight he was still formally dressed in his evening clothes and she almost felt disappointed. She was getting very accustomed to enjoying the view of his muscular chest and touching his warm skin while he pleasured her mercilessly.
He stepped back and motioned her into the room, shutting the door behind him and leaning back against it as he stared at her. “I wasn’t sure you’d come,” he said, his voice heavy with strain.
She wrinkled her brow. “Why?”
“You have to ask?” he said. “We talked about it while we danced. There was such…tension between us today. I didn’t like it.”
“I didn’t either,” she admitted.
He stepped forward, and it was clear he wanted to address their kiss, the interruption, her reaction. And she…didn’t. Talking wasn’t what she’d come here to do. Especially about such troubling topics. She feared if she started telling him about her heart, it would open her up to spilling it all. Including how connected she was beginning to feel to him.
How much she wanted him, not just in this chamber, but in her life.
She wasn’t ready for that. She wasn’t ready for him to turn away from her as he had on a night that seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Katherine—” he began.
She moved toward him and lifted her hand, covering his lips with her fingers. She felt the warmth of his breath against her flesh and it took every ounce of her control to speak.
“I didn’t come here to do anything but touch you,” she whispered. “I came here to let you touch me. Please, Robert. Let’s leave the rest of the world outside for a while. Let’s just give each other pleasure.”
His eyes widened and he kissed her fingertips before he caught her hand and moved it aside. “You want…to touch me?”
She nodded slowly. “Yes. I do. Tonight I want to touch you as you’ve touched me. Please.”
She didn’t have to ask him twice. He caught her waist, dragging her against him and lowered his lips. “I am at your command, my lady.”
She shivered as he kissed her. At her command? She could not imagine that. She’d never had a man at her command before. Her husband had certainly never allowed her any power, alongside his denial of pleasure.
And Robert? Well, he was a force of nature. She’d been swept up in him for days, never expecting he would allow anything but that.
She pulled away, even though his kiss was heaven, and looked over his shoulder toward the bedchamber. The one they’d never made it to before. Shaking, she took his hand and drew him into that adjoining room. She stopped beside the big bed and took a long breath that did nothing to calm her racing heart.
“Take off your clothes?” she asked.
He smiled. “All of them?”
Her heart stuttered. She’d not seen the man naked yet. An imbalance in the power of their relationship that matched all the others. She wanted to now. Wanted to desperately.
“For what I want to do, you can’t have anything on.”
The smile faded from his face. So did the brash swagger. He nodded and she watched, motionless, as he slowly shed every item he wore, starting with the jacket. He moved with grace, elegance, strength. She stared at rippling muscle that she wanted to trace with her fingers and then her tongue. She watched the casual way he tossed aside his expensive waistcoat. The way he held her gaze as he tugged his shirt over his head.
And then he was naked from the waist up, as he’d been the first time she came here. She caught her breath, stepping forward to lay her hand on the plane of his chest.
“Katherine,” he whispered.
She blinked, forcing herself to look into his face and not at the body that drew her in to places that were frankly terrifying to go. “Yes?”
“I may need help with the boots,” he said, one corner of his lips lifting.
