She thought she heard him mumblethank God, and he dropped his palm over her breast and descended on her mouth.
The kiss was secondary to the sensations swirling through her, and she fought the distance between them, struggling to pull him closer. He dropped from his side, rolling on top of her and rocked slightly. Tessa broke from the kiss and made a little gasp.
“Alright?” he panted, and she answered by repeating the same motion, rocking up to meet him. He groaned and returned to her mouth. She grabbed him by the face, slid her hands into his hair, holding him to her.
By some instinct, she pushed his head to her throat, and lower still, to her neck. He knew what she wanted and closed a mouth over her breasts through the silk. Tessa cried out with pleasure. Joseph moaned and worshiped her breasts with his tongue.
His hands circled her waist, traced her hips, and massaged the muscles of her thigh. Her left leg was pinned beneath him, but she drew up her right leg so he could trail the shape of it all the way to her curled toes. Joseph obliged, tickling the skin beneath her knee with the silk of her night rail. He hesitated when he reached the hem of her gown and then he traced one finger around the bone of ankle.
When Tessa felt the bare skin of his fingertip touch the bare skin of her leg, she froze.
Dark grey nighttime filled her vision.
A cold chill descended, submerging her in icy fear.
She tore her head to the side and gasped.
“Wait,” she said in an airy, petrified voice.
Joseph froze.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Tessa?” Joseph said carefully. “Love? Tessa? You’re alright. Breathe, Tessa, you’re alright.”
She rolled away from him and dropped her arm over her eyes. Her eyelids were squeezed shut but tears spilled out, streaking her cheeks. She held her breath until she felt light-headed and then gasped for a breath. She drew her legs up to her chest and pressed her face into the mattress. The residual desire strumming through her clashed with her panic, and she felt sick. She willed the nausea away and reached for the anger. The pity. The hate of Captain Neil Marking.
Anything but the panic. She’d promised Joseph she would not panic. She was not, by nature, someone who panicked.
Rage won out, and she gritted her teeth and squeezed herself more tightly into a ball. She would squeeze until she was a hard, impenetrable seed. She would bury herself deep in the earth this the cold autumn, incubate all winter, and then explode to life in the spring.
But who could wait until spring? Not Joseph? Not herself. She wanted to be sensual and affectionate andherself—her daring, reckless, carefree self—right now.
Oh, she was so very angry.
Angry at herself for succumbing to the fear, angry at Neil Marking, the bastard who had given her Christian but who had taken away parts of herself that she had liked very much. He’d distorted her love of beauty and poisoned her hope for sex.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly, so softly she could barely hear it. The irony was that she sobbed so loudly in her brain.
“No,” Joseph said carefully. “No apologies. We simply try again. When you are ready. We can have quite a lot of fun trying again.”
Tessa considered this. The calm casualty of his tone called to her. She opened her eyes. She was buried beneath a tangle of her hair. She straightened one leg, and her gown rode up. She felt the cool air of the room on her exposed leg. Joseph would see that leg. Likely Joseph was staring at her leg right now. She considered this. It did not bother her. She quite liked her legs. Shewantedhim to see them. She wanted him to see all of her and for her to see all of him, but she could not predict when the panic would set in. She unfolded the other leg.
“Next time, however,” Joseph went on, “we will do itmyway.”
“We will discuss,” she said sourly.
“We will discuss, we will touch, we will taste, we will go in stages. And when we feel panicked, we will not allow it to undo us. Not me, or you. We will try again.”
She rolled over and stared at him. He was lying flat on his back, his hands behind his head, lecturing to the ceiling.
He turned his head on the pillow and looked at her. “Remember when you revealed the details of the... attack, and I ran mad? Vaulting down the stairs and threatening murder?”
She nodded.
“Thatis my version of what you are doing now. I don’t pretend to have suffered the same trauma that you did. You endured the attack and I merely heard you describe it. But madness carries us away in a manner that feels hopeless, and sometimes we require someone else to reel us in. To say, ‘All hope is not lost.’”
“It might be lost,” she said softly, but she thoughtI love you.
