He caressed the sensitive peak, and it swelled. She was clutching his coat, making soft, breathless sounds, trying to burrow into his hard body. Like a frightened kitten. But she wasn’t frightened. She trusted him. His own trusting kitten. Innocent. So fragile.
“Oh, Jess, you’re so tiny,” he murmured, despairing.
He stroked gently inside her, but slick and hot as she was, the way was too small, too tight for him.
His lust-swollen rod strained furiously against his trousers, a great, monstrous invader that would tear her to pieces. He wanted to weep, to howl.
“So tight,” he said, his voice raw with misery, because he couldn’t stop touching her, couldn’t stop caressing what he couldn’t, dare not, have.
She didn’t hear him. She was lost in the fever he was feeding. She was touching him, kissing him.
So restless her hands, her innocently wanton mouth. She was smoldering in the fire he’d built to conquer her, and he could not stop adding fuel to the blaze.
“Oh, don’t…yes…please.”
He heard her gasp, then a sob…and her body shuddered, and the tight flesh clenched against his fingers…and eased…and clenched again, as another climax shook her slender frame.
He drew his hand away and found it was shaking. Every muscle in his body was taut with strain, aching with the effort it had cost him to keep from ripping her apart. His groin felt as though it had been clamped in Satan’s own vise.
He drew a ragged breath. And another. And another, waiting for her to come back to the world, and hoping his loins would calm before then, before he had to move.
He waited, but nothing happened. He knew she wasn’t dead. He could hear, feel, her breathing…slow, steady, peaceful…too peaceful.
He stared at her incredulously. “Jess?”
She murmured and burrowed in, nestling her head in the cradle of his shoulder.
For another full minute he gazed, slack-jawed, into her beautiful tranquil,slumberingface.
Just like a damned man, he thought exasperatedly. She got what she wanted, then curled up and went to sleep.
That was whathewas supposed to do, blast and confound her bloody impudence. And now—curse her for a selfish ingrate—he would have to figure out how—with only one arm working—to get her to bed without waking her.
Chapter 13
Jessica wasn’t sure when exactly she’d become aware she was being carried up the stairs. It all seemed part of a dream or part of long ago, when she was a sleepy little girl, so tiny that even Uncle Frederick, who was the smallest of her uncles, could easily scoop her up in one arm and carry her up the stairs to the nursery. An uncle’s arm made a hard seat, true, and the ride was bumpy, but she was perfectly safe, snugly braced against a big male body, her head nestled upon a broad shoulder.
Gradually the fog of sleep cleared, and even before she opened her heavy eyes, Jessica knew who was carrying her.
She also remembered what had happened. Or most of it. A great deal was lost in the delirious whirlpool Dain had pulled her into.
“I’m awake,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep. She was still weary, and her mind was thick as pudding. “I can walk the rest of the way.”
“You’ll tumble down the stairs,” Dain said gruffly. “At any rate, we’re nearly there.”
There, it turned out, was Her Ladyship’s Apartments. The Grand Catacombs, she silently renamed them, as Dain carried her into the dimly lit cavern of her bedchamber.
He set her down very carefully upon the bed.
Then he rang for her maid…and left. Without another word, and in rather a hurry.
Jessica sat gazing at the empty doorway, listening to his carpet-muffled footsteps as he strode down the long hallway, until she heard the faint thud of his door closing.
Sighing, she bent to remove the stocking he’d loosened, which had slid down to her ankle.
She had known from the minute she’d agreed to marry him that it wouldn’t be easy, she reminded herself. She had known he was in an exceedingly prickly humor this evening—all day, in fact. She could not expect him to behave rationally…and bed her properly…and sleep with her.
Bridget appeared then, and without appearing to notice her mistress’s disordered state of dress or distracted state of mind, quietly and efficiently prepared Her Ladyship for bed.
