There wasn’t a single thing he could do to fix this. All that he owned, all that he was…none of it gave him any power to shape this moment to his will. It was in her hands. His life. His heart. There wasn’t a single thing he could do except hope.
She took a shaky breath. Her head turned. She moved her mouth to brush against his.
All thought stopped.
“I want you,” she breathed.
Thirty-Three
Sebastian paused, entirely stillexcept for his heart. She could feel it. Her hand was on his chest. She didn’t remember putting it there, but his skin was hot through the thin, damp fabric of his shirt, and his heart was racing.
I want you.
It wasn’tI love you. It wasn’tI’ll marry you. She knew the pause was him registering that. Taking a moment to parcel away the pain and tuck it deep inside him along all the other pains he kept hidden.
“Madelaine.” He whispered her name. They were so close the faintest breath told each other everything. “You have me.”
It was all she could give him right now, all she had the courage to offer up. But then he kissed her. Not hot and heated like before, at the society’s ball, but slowly.
Slowly, without hesitation, without doubt…even his tenderness had strength. He kissed her to sayI love you, I’m here, I’m yours.Every brush of his mouth laid him open even asit claimed her. He was opening himself up, and she fell further inside him with every slide of his mouth.
His tongue touched her lip, and he even took her gasp, breathing her in with a shuddering rise of his chest as his hands moved down from cupping her face, slid down her arms, settled on her hips.
They shared one look, a tight gaze of ask and answer, then he picked her up as he stood. Her legs wrapped around his waist, around his wet shirt, and he kissed her again as he carried her across the tiny cabin to where two small beds lay on either side, a threadbare rug and a three-legged wooden table between them.
“You’re soaking my shift,” she pretended to grumble, her mouth against his neck. He was strong there too. Entirely masculine. His stubble brushed her temple, and she felt the rumble of a silent laugh in the firm column of his throat. His shirt had dampened her front, dampened the thin linen bunched along her thighs where they wrapped his firm waist.
“We’ll both be out of these clothes soon enough.”
Yes. And then she’d see him stripped bare.
An impulse, an instinct, had made her bring him here. She understood it now. Without all his grand clothes, without his fine home, away from society, away from London… He was in her territory now; this was her land—no, not even land. They were on a boat, moored in the estuarine forces where two elements met.
Here, in bed, both of them naked… This was where she’d finally get to know him. And she had to know him before she could trust him. She had to trust him before she could love him. She had to knowwhoshe would take for a husband.
Having been married before, she knew exactly what a husband could be, how entwined two lives could become. And she knew very well what happened in bed between man and woman. The French called itla petite mort,the little death. She would bringSebastian to that point of no control. And then she would know him.
But her plan met difficulties as he set one knee on the low bed and put her down. He pulled off his shirt, and even though he was the one stripped bare, he still seemed to be the one in control. He smiled faintly at the way her gaze slipped down his body.
He was still capable of smirking with his whole jaw.
“You said you were soaking?” He knelt before her, running his hands up her thighs, his thumbs catching in the fabric of her shift and rucking it up. Her hem skated over her knee.
She knew what he meant. But she met his look blandly.
“And getting cold.”
“Well then.”
He smiled again, just a crook in the corner of his mouth. The dark light in his eyes was unholy, but it softened as he leant forward to kiss her; it became reverent as he sat back and reached for the bow of her stays.
They both watched his hands as he unlaced her. She thought inevitably of fishermen and their nets, of sailors slacking rope, deft and sure and skillful. He was scarcely less muscled than any of those men she saw on the dock, but he wasn’t harrowed to sinew and tanned ribs. His body was a sculpture, deliberately honed, built to aesthetic ideals purely through the strength of his will and his discipline.A man ought to look like this,the breadth of his shoulders said,and so this is how I look.
How didshelook? A flutter of nerves went through her as he drew her stays free and dropped them to the floor. Her chemise was finished with the thinnest of blue ribbons, a bow over her breasts. She’d sewed it herself, two or three years ago. Some small urge of vanity, of impracticality, always made her add ornament where no one would see it. An edge of lace, a puff-gathered sleeve. Sebastian lingered on the bow, rolling theknot between his fingers. His palm was hot and heavy, resting just between her breasts. This thin linen was all that remained between them. He pulled the bow free, knuckles white, as though he held on for life in a heavy storm.
She let out a breath as his hands settled once more on her thighs, intensely hot as they slid under the fabric, bunched it up, urged her to lift her hips so he could lift it higher. Obediently, she raised her arms. He pulled her chemise over her head and dropped it at his side.
“God…” His whisper was hoarse. Had she felt nervous that her body, not far from thirty years, might not appeal to a man? She’d been nineteen the last time. She’d been as slim and smooth as a fresh reed. Now she was heavier. Fuller. A few lines marred her thighs.
