If only Cassin had mentioned that he would not spendeven one nightat Leland Park after the wedding, she could have prepared some excuse for her mother and relatives or planned to leave at the same time.
It wasn’t a catastrophic oversight, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. And the more she raged, the angrier she became.
As a rule, her packing technique was orderly and thoughtful, but now her trunk was in shambles. It would have to be redone. Poor Perry. She’d veritably shouted at the maid to get her out.
And now . . . this.
“Are you ready to be my wife in every way?” Cassin breathed, looking at her through half-lidded eyes. “Is that why you’ve led me here?”
“What?” she rasped, breathless. “I’ve led you nowhere. Youfollowedme.”
“We werehavinga conversation,” he said, “and you continued walking away.” His mouth was so close she could feel his breath on her skin. Shivers rolled down her arms. She listed toward him, and he wrapped his large hands around her waist.
“No,” she said carefully, fighting for lucidity, “a conversation would be something like, ‘Now that we’ve had the ceremony, how should we manage these next few days?’ And I would say, ‘I cannot say for sure, Cassin. What do you think?’ And you might have said, ‘Let us weigh the—’ ”
He dropped his mouth to hers and kissed her.
Consciousness took flight, spiraling upward, while their bodies snapped together like magnets.
One minute she’d been having two sides of a hypothetical conversation, and the next he was kissing her, andoh good lord, yes. . .
How she had missed the all-consuming feel of his kiss, the strength of his body pressed against her, the steadiness of his large hands gripping her. Without hesitation, she looped her arms around his neck.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” he panted, “I am incapable of conversing with you, sweetheart, because every sensible, provoking thing you say makes me stupid with lust.”
“And all this time, I thought you were just stu—”
He cut her off with a throaty laugh and another kiss. She laughed, too, laughed and kissed him, tangling her fingers into his hair.
“Your bedroom is like a harem enclave,” he growled, pulling away to breathe.
“It’s merely white . . . virginal,” she countered, seeking his mouth.
He pulled away to laugh. “In no way is it virginal.” He widened his stance to grab her by the bottom and rake her against him, descending on her mouth again.
The embrace was almost immediately familiar. The rare and precious contact they’d stolen before informed him of where his hands fit, of how to slide them down the curve of her waist until he reached exactly the right spot, of how to squeeze and grind her against him until she cried out in pleasure. She knew the angle at which to tilt her head, she knew that if she dropped her head back, he would move to her exposed neck, kissing and sucking and scraping her with the roughness of his beard.
Faintly, in the back of her mind, there was so much more to say. She had been earnestly angry about being the last to know. And she would hear more about his visit to Aunt Mary’s. But this . . .this kiss. . . seemed to take urgent precedence over any words that could be effectively spoken, almost as if every non-kissing thing they’d managed that day had been a half effort, playacting, until the urgent business of what they really wanted finally collided them together.
After, she thought idly, holding his head to hers.After the kiss, we will speak.
“I’ve wanted you since the last time,” he breathed, sweeping his hands up her body to cradle her face. “I wanted you every moment in your workshop. I thought I would expire from wanting you.”
I’m expiring now, she thought, and he scooped her up by the bottom, higher his time, entirely off the ground. He bounced her once to slide his hands from her hips to her thighs, urging her legs around his hips.
She complied without thinking, laughing at how natural it felt, and he carried her, face-to-face, to the bed.
And now he dumped her backward into the fluffy white coverlet. The lace canopy swung into view above her, but only for a moment because he followed her down and fell on top of her.
She laughed again and reached for him, reveling in the hard, solid weight of him. She buried her fingers in his hair and kissed him as if he would sail for Barbadoes in the next five minutes—which, she thought idly,he might do. She whimpered at the thought and kissed him harder.
“This is madness,” he mumbled, grazing his fingers beneath the shoulder of her gown, nudging the fabric down. Lower still, just beneath the top of the bodice, his fingers sliding to the neckline. She arched, willing him to feel lower, deeper.“Yes,”she said.
He groaned and followed his fingers with his mouth, kissing first her shoulder and then licking his way down to her breasts. Willow whimpered and raised her knees, wanting urgent closeness. He grabbed her leg through her skirt and hitched it higher on his hip and held it there, aligning their bodies in a way that caused Willow’s eyes to fly open. She blinked at the canopy again, seeing nothing, and raised the other knee. Cassin laughed and nudged the neckline of her gown lower, setting her skin aflame with his whisker-bristled chin.
She was just about to wrap her legs around his waist, to hook her feet at the ankles and arch up, when they heard a scream from the doorway, followed by a chorus of barking.
The sound shattered the haze of pleasure and desire, and they froze.
