The urge to give her a piece of him rose, strong. Undeniable. He kissed her ear, her throat, the delicate curve of her shoulder. “Richard.”
“Pardon?”
He dragged his mouth across her collarbone, absorbing the silken warmth of her with his lips. “The name I was born with. It’s Richard Barlow, after my mother’s maiden name and my mother’s father. I became Blade Winter later.”
“Richard,” she said softly, her hands on him, caressing.
His heart thudded. This was a part of himself he had not shared with anyone. No one had spoken his true name since he had been a lad. “Aye. Richard.”
He kissed his way back to her delicate jaw.
Her fingers threaded through his hair. “How did you come to be Blade Winter?”
Her soft query took him by surprise. He kissed her lips again, then raised his head to study her. At this proximity, he found tiny cinnamon and gray flecks in her eyes.
He caressed her cheek. “Blade because I am a dab with daggers and knives. I could win a knife fight blindfolded, with one arm tied behind my back. Hell, I have, and won fifty beans for the trouble. I took on the name Winter after I discovered who my father was, one of my mother’s many patrons. And only on account of Blade Winter sounding better than Blade Barlow.”
“Oh, Blade. Your mother was…”
“A ladybird,” he finished for her. “And my father was a man I’ve never met. A heartless businessman who left a secret family of bastards scattered all over the East End. I’m not fit to touch a fine lady like you.”
And yet he was touching her. Because he could not stop. He ran his knuckles over her cheek.
Felicity pressed her lips to them. “There is no other man I would rather touch me.”
He had to swallow against the crashing rush of need her words invoked. He could not find words again, so he sealed their mouths, kissing her slowly, savoring her. Savoring the moment, the connection. This was a new form of intimacy, unprecedented.
When the kiss ended, he was breathless, his cock rigid and ready. But he knew he would not make love to her again. Likely, she was sore after her first time.
“Blade,” she whispered, framing his face in her elegant, smooth hands.
The hands of a lady.
She looked up at him as if she were trying to memorize every facet of him. As if she were committing this moment to memory. And he knew the feeling, because he was bloody well doing the same.
“Yes, love?” he rasped, his voice feeling rusty beneath the weight of so much newfound emotion.
“Make love to me again.”
Bloody hell.
The fire wascrackling low in the grate, and Felicity was cocooned in Blade’s bedclothes, her body deliciously sore and awakened in new places. She should have returned to her chamber hours ago. Indeed, she ought to be asleep, tucked safely into her bed at the opposite end of Abingdon Hall where no scandal could befall her.
Instead, she was waiting for him to return from the kitchens.
After they had made love a second time—the last more poignant and sweet than the first—she had lain there in his arms, reluctant to go. And her stomach had growled. Apparently, lovemaking had an effect upon not just her head and her heart, but her appetite as well.
She had been mortified, but Blade had chuckled, pressed a kiss to her crown, and declared he would sneak to the kitchens to find them both some sustenance. He was so sweet. The charming part of his nature, she had expected. But he was treating her with a reverence that was steadily chipping away at the wall she had tried to erect around her heart.
The door to the chamber opened, and there he was, bearing a tray and his handsome, roguish grin. The wall was nothing but rubble. Her heart gave a pang.
She had fallen in love with him.
With the most unsuitable man at the house party.
“I managed to scavenge some biscuits and wine,” he announced quietly.
Dear heavens.How was she going to be able to leave him and forget about this night? He had left his mark upon her as surely as the ink drawings he wore on his skin. He had told her about his past. Touched her with an admiration that left her in awe. Made love to her in a way she knew no other man ever could.
