“I never dreamed,” she whispered.
He pressed a lingering kiss against her bare shoulder. Like a wanton, her breasts were still out and crushed against his chest.
They merely held each other for quite some time.
“Am I squashing you?” she asked.
“Nay,” he murmured. “I think I could hold you forev—”
He stopped himself just in time from saying that fateful word.
And it was this that seemed to sober both of them immediately.
She could feel the tension gathering in his body and her own.
A moment or so later, he eased her from his lap. They sat side by side for a moment, dazed and sated and thoughtful, while she tugged up her bodice.
He turned to her and they studied each other in yet another new light.
He smiled faintly.
He reached out and drew his thumb softly, slowly over her cheek. “Consider yourself ravished, Lady Worth.”
He stood, and adjusted himself. “I’ll bid you good night, shall I?” he said politely.
He saw hurt flash in her eyes when he looked down at her.
But it was followed swiftly by an understanding that made him feel raw: she knew he wanted to be alone with whatever it was he was feeling. He did not want her to witness it. He’d experienced all manner of things in his life, enough so that he’d developed a response or defense in nearly every possible situation.
He simply hadn’t one for this. Like a child, he wanted, needed, briefly to hide.
He was ashamed of this, and yet there it was.
Her gaze was searching. Then soft. Then accepting. She swallowed and turned away very slightly.
“Good night, Lorcan. Sleep well.”
Lorcan lay awake tracking the shadows the fire cast on his ceiling and listening to the wind hurl rain at his window. To avoid the stunned and somewhat torturous run of his thoughts, he tried to concentrate on sensations instead: the pillow beneath his head. The very good mattress. Even old aches in his bones would do.
He flexed his hand, and he remembered the soft slip of her hair between his fingers.
He’d just been willing to hand over severalhundred pounds’ worth of earring to a woman he’d known for mere days and she wouldn’t let him do it.
Moreover... he was fairly certain he’d do it again, if she’d let him.
He hadn’t anything else to offer her.
He lay, hollow with disbelief. And hungry, still, for her body. For her presence.
Beneath the rain and wind, another sound emerged.
And it nearly squeezed the breath from him.
In the room next to his, she was quietly weeping.
It scored his heart like acid.
Chapter Eighteen
