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Chapter Twenty-One

It was raining when she woke. The steady patter against the windows sounded almost like a command to stay in bed where it was cozy and warm. Although perhaps that was due more to Nate’s presence in her bed than to the rain. He hadn’t left last night, but still slept behind her, one arm draped over her waist. Without opening her eyes Angelique sighed in bliss and relaxed into him. Let the world go hang, for one morning at least.

The door creaked as Lisette opened it, coming in to stir the fire and lay out her clothes for the day. Normally Angelique would already be awake and dressed by now, preparing to do her exercises. Today she should be especially awake and alert, planning their next step. They had a strong clue where to find Jacob Dixon, and they should act on it as quickly as possible. If she or Nate had slipped and left any sign that they’d read Dixon’s letters, Hurst might hasten to warn the man, and Dixon could vanish again. If she had any sense at all, Angelique would roust Nate from her bed at once and tell him to be ready to leave for the Pulteney in an hour.

Instead she lifted her head an inch and waved one hand in dismissal at her maid, who had stopped short. Not only was Nate still in her bed, their clothing was scattered all over the room. Lisette looked shocked, and no wonder. It looked like a whirlwind had gone through.

Lisette met her gaze, her expression dubious. “When shall I come back?” she whispered.

“When breakfast is ready,” said Nate in a sleep-roughened voice. Angelique started at the sound. He’d woken without any movement or change in breathing.

Lisette drew herself up. “When shall I return, Madame?” she asked again, pointedly stressing the last word.

“When I ring,” Angelique told her. Lisette’s mouth pinched, but she turned and left without a word.

Nate rolled over and stretched his arms above his head. “Ring and tell her to bring breakfast.”

“How romantic you are,” she replied, sitting up and swinging her feet over the side of the bed. “It is time to get up.”

“Not quite.” He caught her around the waist and pulled her back beneath the blankets, then beneath him. “It’s damned cold in this room,” he said, kissing her after every other word. “Let me stir the fire first.”

“I am used to rising in the cold,” she said, even though her arms had gone around his neck and she lifted her face unabashedly for his kisses.

“So am I. But let me spoil you this morning.” Without warning he threw aside the blankets and jumped out of bed. Angelique just had time to register the rush of cold air before he tossed the blankets back over her. “Don’t move,” he said with a grin. “Keep the bed warm for me.”

She laughed and obediently snuggled into the sheets again. Nate strode across the room to the hearth, seemingly unbothered by the chill in the air even though he was completely bare. She watched, admiring his sculpted backside and shoulders, as he knelt down to stir up the fire, coaxing a small flame from the embers, then building it into a glowing blaze. By the time he returned to the bed, she could feel warmth streaming across the room. It would be nice to rise to a warm room.

“Where was I?” he muttered, sliding beneath the sheets again and tucking her against him. “Ahhhhh….”

“You do not seem overly chilled,” she said. He was still as warm as the well-stocked fire behind her. Even his feet were warm. The cold hadn’t done anything to dampen his morning erection, either, to judge from the hard length pressing against her belly.

“You warmed me so thoroughly last night, I’ll be hot for days,” he murmured.

“But still hungry.”

“Bloody right,” he growled, biting her earlobe lightly.

“Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. “Then let me”—she shoved his shoulder and rolled on top of him, sitting up to straddle his hips—“satisfy you.”

“Be gentle,” he rasped as she took him in her hands. She just raised an eyebrow as she ran the pad of her thumb down his length to his ballocks, and he bared his teeth in a grimace of pleasure. “Or not—I’ll repay you later… somehow…”

But she had given up torturing him, just as she had abandoned hope of keeping some part of herself removed from their affair. She told herself, as she sheathed him inside her body, that she could withstand this intimacy. It was only her body being pleasured, and she would be a liar to deny that Nate pleasured her exceedingly well, especially now as his clever fingers found their way between her legs, to where his body joined hers, and stroked with unerring skill while she rode him.

There was no reason this lovemaking had to result in anything, she thought, even as Nate’s gaze grew fixed and fierce, and she knew he was fighting back his own release, waiting for her to find hers. The pleasure she found in his arms, in his bed, was a fleeting thing—but oh God, was it powerful. Climax rolled through her in strong waves, leaving her spent and gasping as Nate seized her hips and then came with a shout of his own.

Yes, she thought weakly, she could withstand it. If she wanted to.

Nate opened his eyes and looked up at her with the dazed expression of a lost man, as if he had become as unmoored from his carefully built persona as she felt from hers. She had known he wanted her from the very first day they met, when he stared at her with such frank interest in the carriage outside Bow Street. She was used to that, and dismissed it as the same passing desire she’d seen in other men’s faces. It had given her some callous comfort to think he only wanted an affair, that he would leave for America in a few days or weeks and never think of her again. It was the way men were, and she was well aware of it. She knew how to use that fever of desire for her own purposes, whatever they were, and then walk away when it was over. Her affections remained safely locked away at all times.

But in Nate’s expression there was far more than just desire. With shaking hands he tugged her down to lie atop him, her head cradled against his shoulder. His lips touched hers almost reverently. The longing in his kiss wasn’t just to seduce her. Without warning, that kiss slipped right under her guard and straight to her heart.

Whatever she told herself about his intentions, Nate cared for her. In spite of everything he had seen and heard from her, he felt more than lust. For the first time in a very long time, Angelique felt wanted for herself.

In that light, maybe she couldn’t withstand this after all.

Unnerved, she cast about for something to say. “Where did you get a scalping knife?”

“From a woman,” he murmured.