“Jess, how the devil am I to climb the stairs in this condition?” he asked hoarsely. “How is a man to see straight when you do such things to him?”
She licked the hollow of his throat. “I like the way you taste,” she murmured. She drew her parted lips over his collarbone. “And the way your skin feels against my mouth. And the way you smell…of soap and cologne andmale. I love your big, warm hands…and your big, warm body…and your immense, throbbing—”
He dragged her head up and clamped his mouth over hers. She parted instantly, inviting him in.
She was wicked, afemme fatale, but the taste of her was fresh and clean. She tasted like rain, and he drank her in. He inhaled the chamomile scent mingled with the fragrance that was uniquely hers. He traced the delectable shape of her with his big, dark hands…the graceful column of her neck, the gentle slope of her shoulders, the silken curve of her breasts with their taut, dusky buds.
He slid back and down upon the table, and drew her down on top of him, and traced those feminine outlines again with his mouth, his tongue.
He stroked down her smooth, supple back and molded his hands to the sinuous turn of her slim waist and the gentle flare of her hips.
“I’m clay in your hands,” she breathed against his ear. “I love you madly. I want you so much.”
The soft voice, husky with desire, swam in his head and sang in his veins, and whirled its mad music through his heart.
“Sono completamente tuo, tesoro mio,” he answered. “I’m all yours, my treasure.”
He grasped her sweet rump and lifted her onto his manhood…and groaned as she guided him into her. “Oh,Jess.”
“All mine.” She sank, slowly, down upon his shaft.
“Sweet Jesus.” Pleasure forked through him, jagged and white-hot. “Oh, Dio. I’m going to die.”
“All mine,” she said.
“Yes. Kill me, Jess. Do it again.”
She came up and sank again, with the same torturous slowness. Another lightning bolt. Scorching. Rapturous.
He begged for more. She gave him more, riding him, controlling him. He wanted it that way, because it was love that mastered him, happiness that shackled him. She was passionate chatelaine of his body, loving mistress of his heart.
When the storm broke at last and, trembling in the aftermath, she fell into his arms, he held her tight against the hammering heart she ruled…where the secret he’d hidden for so long pounded in his breast.
But he wanted no more such secrets. He could say the words now. So easy it was, when all that had been frozen and buried inside him had thawed and bubbled up, fresh as the Dartmoor streams in springtime.
With a shaky laugh, he brought her head up and lightly kissed her.
“Ti amo,” he said. And so ridiculously simple it was that he said it again, in English this time. “I love you, Jess.”
If love had not exploded into his life, her husband informed Jessica a short time later, he might have made a mistake he’d never forgive himself for.
The sun was inching up from the horizon when they returned to the master bedroom, but Dain wasn’t ready to sleep until the evening’s events were clarified, explained, and settled.
He lay on his back, gazing up at the canopy’s golden dragons. “Being besotted myself,” he was saying, “I was forced to see how easily any man—especially one of Vawtry’s limited intelligence—could stumble into a quagmire.”
In a few contemptuous sentences, he told her of his suspicions about Beaumont’s role in the Paris farce, and how the spitefulness had continued. Jessica wasn’t much surprised. She had always considered Beaumont a particularly unpleasant human being and wondered why his wife hadn’t left him long since.
She was, however, both surprised and amused by her husband’s approach to the problem. By the time Dain had finished describing his intriguing methods for dealing with both Vawtry and the repellent Beaumont, Jessica was laughing helplessly.
“Oh, Sebastian,” she gasped. “You are too wicked. I should give anything to see the expression on Beaumont’s face when he reads Vawtry’s th-thank you n-note,” she sputtered. Then she went off into whoops again.
“Only you would appreciate the humor of the situation,” he said when she’d quieted.
“And the artistry of it,” she said. “Vawtry, Charity—even that spiteful sod Beaumont—all dealt with, settled in a matter of minutes. And all without your needing to lift a finger.”
“Except to count out bank notes,” Dain said. “It’s costing me, remember?”
“Vawtry will be grateful to you for the rest of his life,” she said. “He will race to the ends of the earth to do your bidding. And Charity will be content, because she’ll be set up comfortably with a man who adores her. That’s all she wanted, you know. A life of idle luxury. That’s why she had Dominick.”
