“Or twice. With the promise to do it again sometime.”
“How exciting.” This time Rafe’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
“I knew enough about him. I knew he doesn’t drink much. He doesn’t gamble to excess. And he would never be found with a blond in his bed.”
“He sounds like a dead bore.” Rafe unbuttoned his shirt.
Daphne swallowed. Why was he unbuttoning his shirt? Had he done that the other nights? Slept shirtless and she hadn’t noticed? How had shefailedto notice that? “That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect someone like you to say,” she replied.
“Someone like me?” He pulled his shirt over his head.
Daphne nearly gulped audibly. “Yes,” she managed to answer him, but her eyes were devouring his muscled chest. Good God. How had she missed this little nightly ritual? Or was she only imagining it due to her fuzzy head? “Do you have your shirt off?” she asked, clearing her throat.
He chuckled. “Yes. My apologies if I am offending your ladylike sensibilities. But I need a fresh one.”
“I shouldn’t be looking.”
His gaze met hers. Sparks leaped between them. “Then why are you?”
Her face heated. Her cheeks boiled. She turned away toward the wall.
“Please do explain,” Rafe continued.
“Explain what?” Daphne’s voice was muffled against the wooden wall.
“Who ‘someone like me’ is? What did you mean by that?”
She wiggled under the sheets and forced herself to turn back to face him. He was standing directly next to the bed. Daphne’s head swam. Her eyes locked to his bare chest. Fuzzy brain, indeed. She took a deep breath. “I only meant that you’re everything he’s not. You drink. You gamble. You—”
“Kiss you?” He captured her wrist, brought it to his lips and kissed it. Daphne couldn’t stop her shudder.
She snatched her hand away. “Don’t.”
“Why?” he said, looking down at her, his voice growing louder, laced with a bit of anger. “Afraid you might actually feel something? You’re right. I’m everything he’s not and I’m also much more. Do you think your Lord Fitzwell has an adventurous bone in his body? By God, the most excitement the man has had is an unexpected nosebleed. Do you think your Lord Fitzwell has fought for his country? Watched men die for his country? He hasn’t. The most he’s done is read about it in the papers and shake his head. You say I don’t know you, Daphne, but I do. I know you pretend to want to plan everything, and maybe you do, but deep down you’re adventurous, just like I am. Drawing rooms are too stuffy for you. A man like Fitzwell would bore you to tears in the space of six months. But if you want to waste your beauty and intelligence and talents on him or someone like him, by all means, don’t let me stop you.”
Tears shimmered in Daphne’s eyes. She sat up and braced herself against the wall again. “What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Don’t let me stop you.’”
“No, before that. The part about my beauty and intelligence?” Her heart hammered in her chest. She could barely breathe.
He braced both of his hands on the wooden plank that hung from the ceiling above the bunk and stared down at her still. “You heard me. You deserve better than Fitzwell. But you’re so damned stubborn and certain of yourself, you can’t even see it. You need to take your bloody list and rip it into a thousand pieces just to see what’s standing right in front of you. The thing that never made it onto the list.”
“You?” she whispered.
“Me.” Rafe let go of the plank and his mouth swooped down to capture hers.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Daphne shuddered. Rafe’s mouth shaped hers, owned hers, while lust shot through her entire body in sharp, shooting sparks. He had moved down to where she sat on the bed and she wrapped her arms around his neck, leaning into the kiss with everything she had. Who cared how this had started? All she knew was that she wanted it to continue. She wanted to make love with Rafe. She wanted to be his wife in every way.
What happened next was most likely the doing of two very fuzzy heads because five moments later, Daphne’s shirt was over her head, her breeches unbuttoned and yanked free of her body, and the linen wrapping her breasts was gone. She lay in the bunk naked. She was completely exposed in a way she had never been in front of any man before but all she could feel was… happiness and excitement.
Rafe was gazing at her, his eyes full of desire, his breathing completely unsteady. His hand rested on her knee, hot, heavy. His fingers traced up the inside of her thigh, the outside of her hip, along her rib cage.
He gently, lightly touched the outside of her left breast. Then his fingertips skimmed over her nipple and she shivered with desire. His hand traveled up to her collarbone, her neck, her cheekbone. Daphne closed her eyes and reveled in the feel of his rough touch along her sensitive skin. He had the hands of a man who had worked for a living. Not the soft hands of Lord Fitzwell. Rafe had actually done things like throwing knives and shooting pistols and riding horses and nearly dying for his country. He was right. He was nothing like Lord Fitzwell. Nothing at all.
Rafe groaned deep in his throat and lowered himself over her. He was still wearing his breeches and stockings. His hot bare chest pressed intimately to hers and made Daphne moan. The friction between them was so good. She wrapped her arms around his neck again and he kissed her deeply. Daphne’s head remained fuzzy and she was a swirling mass of lust. The spot between her legs ached and throbbed.
