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He gave a little laugh, relieved that she was as greedy as he was. “One thing at a time.”

He moved slowly at first—long strokes that pulled out of her and then slid back in as the friction built between them. She was still for the first couple, and then her body began to move. Whatever instinct drove her forward was also driving him wild. She hooked her ankles around his back, angling her hips a little higher so that he thrust deeper each time. It was heavenly, eye-rollingly good, and as he sped up their cadence, it only got better.

The way she tilted her hips and the manner in which she slammed her body into him gave him an idea. He pushed himself up on his arms so that he towered over her at a sharper angle and thrust. A cry ripped from her throat, and her head cast back against the quilt they lay on.

“Do that again,” she ordered, her words half drunk with lust.

“Demanding minx.” He laughed, but he followed her instructions.

Her eyes screwed shut and he drove into her again and again, the pressure of his own orgasm building low behind his spine as he struggled to hold back. He tried to clear his mind as he pushed into her, but all he could think of was the beautiful woman writhing beneath him. He’d been a fool to ever believe that he’d be able to forget this. Forget her.

Just as he was on the edge of losing control, Jane’s back arched and she cried out. Her muscles squeezed around his cock as she came in waves. Moving with short and shallow strokes, he came fast behind her, driving into her to push them both to the very limit. At the last moment he had the good sense to draw out and spill his seed on the sheets next to him. He wouldn’t be the man to saddle her with a child unless she wanted one, and that was certainly not something to be decided while lying naked in a barn in the middle of who knew where.

He collapsed, careful to take the bulk of his weight on his elbows and spare Jane. She was breathing just as heavily as he was, and the sound of their breath mingled with the rain on the barn’s roof.

As the pleasure ebbed from him, reality took hold. He knew there were things he should say to her. If he was the gentleman he professed to be, he should be on his knees right now asking her to marry him, but the thought that she might say no held him back. He didn’t think he could stand that. Finding her had been the one good thing to happen to him in the last few years, and he wasn’t ready to put that up to risk. Besides, what did he have to offer her? He was a land-poor, cash-poor, horse-moderately-well-off baron who had two sisters to house, feed, and marry off for their own sakes as much as his own. He’d be taking her from a situation where she earned her own money and lived in the no doubt luxurious world of the Earl of Rawson. No one could tell him that wasn’t a better life for her. He wouldn’t force her to make that choice.

His mind was beginning to pitch about like a ship tossed at sea when she wrapped her arms around him and whispered, “Thank you.”

His heart clenched as he rolled off of her and settled her into the crook of his body. His arm draped protectively over her waist as she snuggled closer to him. He drew up the quilt he’d thrown off when she first kissed him over them, and told himself that he’d work all of this out tomorrow.

Chapter Nine

Jane woke up the next morning, wrapped in Nicholas’s arms and floating on a cloud as soft as candy floss. She stretched her legs and nestled closer to the warmth of his body. His breath stirred her hair, and she could feel the thrum of his pulse where his wrist draped over her waist. It was an entirely new sensation—one she wouldn’t have traded for the world.

It was also an entirely temporary one, the stern, practical side of her brain reminded her. Nicholas was a lot of things: a baron, a gentleman, the caring brother of two sisters who were desperately in need of good marriage prospects. The fantasy of waking up in each other’s arms was too delicate to sustain in the face of all that. Reality was bound to smash it to bits.

But Jane couldn’t help secretly hoping that moment would never come. She’d longed for excitement for years, dreaming of a day when something would happen to her. And yet she’d done one better. She’d made her own adventure, choosing to be bold and brave when she’d kissed him. She’d reached out for the thing she wanted and gotten it. It was almost enough to make her believe that maybe there was a chance that the lightning bolt of luck would strike once again.

She shifted against him again, pressing her backside into his hips and wondering if maybe she could tempt him agai—

In a flash of flesh and sheets she was pinned, a very awake Nicholas grinning at her as he pressed her hands to their makeshift bed. His blond hair spilled over his forehead, making him look the rogue, and his stormy eyes sparkled with delight.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“I am.”

“Good. I’ve been waiting to do this.” And he leaned down to kiss her.

His lips worked her into a dreamy state—her body aroused but her mind muddled with the delectable haze she was quickly learning a truly great kiss could stir in a woman. When he finally pulled away, she blinked slowly, coming back down to earth.

“It’s just light enough that I can see you properly now,” he said, dropping a kiss to the underside of her chin. She shivered with delight, wondering if her body would ever stop reacting this way to him.

“You look all too pleased with yourself,” she said as she traced her hands up the plane of his back.

“Is that right?”

She nodded. “Smug, almost. I’m not entirely sure it suits you,” she said, although she knew full well just how handsome he’d be no matter what expression he wore. There was a magnetism about him that seemed to have grown the more time she spent with him, and it only made him glow brighter before her.

He pressed the growing hardness of his cock against the softness of her stomach. “Are you telling me that I don’t have something to feel smug about?”

She couldn’t help her grin. “Why don’t I be the judge of that?”

She was about to reach down under the quilt to take him in her hand when a horse neighed and stamped in its stall.

“Damn.” Nicholas dropped his head to her collarbone. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but we should probably—”

Her fingertips brushed the head of his cock and he hissed out a breath. “Are you sure?”