Here her courage faltered and she looked down at her shaking hands clutching at the fabric of her woolen skirts. But he moved, finally, for the first time since she bade him leave the candle lit, and lifted a hand as though to cup her jaw.
He didn’t touch her though—his hand hovered a bare inch from her face, close enough for her to feel the warmth of it. Like a bird too wary to light.
Intuiting what he wanted, Bess tilted her face up to the intense scrutiny of his luminous eyes. They roved her features greedily as though he would devour what he read there.
Bess held her breath and let him look. Let him see it all. If he saw through her mask and pushed her away in shock, better that it happen now.
But he didn’t.
“What did you think?” he asked, the question ripped from him unwillingly, through gritted teeth. A proud man reduced to begging.
Bess breathed in his smell, the sweat of hard use and the underlying bay laurel of his soap. This was her chance. Her chance to be ravished, to be passionate, to be touched. She had to take it.
“I thought…I’ve never been anyone’s prize.” Bess smiled up at him, though she could feel it tremble a bit at the corners. “I’d like to know how it feels.”
He drew back, pulling his hand farther away. Those strange, glittering eyes bored into her as though seeking the deepest truth behind her words. All his muscles were locked tight.
A pang of tenderness speared through the gathering tension of the moment. Bess almost smiled. He couldn’t simply let himself have this. Have her.
He needed more. So she gave it to him.
“You won me,” Bess said gently, her heart in her aching throat. She placed her hand atop his and pressed his broad palm to her cheek, savoring the heat and scrape of his calluses. “I’m your prize. Won’t you show me how it feels?”
His lips crashed into hers like a wave cresting on the shore, and Bess was dragged under instantly. She was vaguely aware of his other hand coming up to cradle her face, the delicacy of his touch at odds with the hungry, seeking stroke of his tongue and the rasp of his stubble against her lips.
The edge of his teeth caught at the plump softness of her lower lip, making her gasp and forget the thought that fluttered at the edge of her consciousness:
He kissed me.
So he can’t possibly know it’s me, because the Duke of Ashbourn would never.
It was there and then gone, jetsam swirled out to sea, caught in the tidal rush of sensation his mouth created against hers.
She moaned and he swallowed it. Bess let go of his hand, now that he had the idea, and went on tiptoe to spear her fingers into the wavy brown strands of hair at the nape of his neck. Damp with sweat, they clung to her like wet silk. His body strained against hers, solid and strong and so hungry.
An answering hunger welled up in Bess. She pressed closer, muffling a whimper into his mouth when she couldn’t seem to get close enough. His palms brushed down under her jaw, down the sides of her throat and over her shoulders to pull her in tighter. Crushed against his chest, her breasts throbbed in a way that made her twist in his arms, restless and wanting.
A light rap at the door made Nathaniel drag his mouth from hers.
They stared at one another for a moment, wild-eyed and panting, before Bess was able to calm her breath enough to say, “I asked Madame Leda for water. And bandages.”
“Don’t need them.” He dipped his head to kiss her again, and though she wanted to curse the interruption, Bess pressed her fingers to his lips before he could.
“Please,” she said. “I won’t be easy in my mind until I know you’re seen to.”
He dropped his masked forehead to rest against hers for a brief instant, those luminous eyes squeezed shut, and Bess felt as though her very bones were melting.
If he pressed her again, she wouldn’t be able to summon her common sense a second time. Luckily for her, or luckily for whatever was going on with his wound under the loose, untucked white lawn shirt he’d thrown on, he let her go.
While Nathaniel stomped over to the door to retrieve the offering from Madame Leda, Bess took a moment to press her hands to her too-hot cheeks and feel the anticipation of the evening ahead all the way down to her toes.
At least he was moving well, as far as she could see. None of the unbalanced staggering of the night before, and he didn’t seem to favor the side where he’d been cut. Mostly likely he was fine, but she would check to make sure. And then…
A steady hum of hunger thrummed beneath her skin, sensitizing her so that she felt the very brush of the air as a caress when he closed the door and turned to place a tray on the round table.
Bess considered asking him to relight the candelabra, but the moon was full and bright through the window and her eyes had long since adjusted to its silvery gleam.
That meant she could see perfectly well that in addition to a large copper bowl of steaming water and a folded pile of linen, there was a plate of cold sliced ham with mustard and hard-boiled eggs, a hunk of crusty bread and a knobbly wedge of cheese. His large hand hovered over a pair of cups sitting beside an opened bottle of wine.
