She could not wait for him. She took, rolling her body into his leg, throwing her head back as he kissed the line of her throat. Why had she come here?
For this.
No.Something else.
What else was there?
She’d had a plan…
“Oh!” She yanked away. She’d planned to seduce him away from Hawthorne, but… how could she if he kissed her like this, like he wanted her above all else?
He spoke, low and raspy, eyes closed still, and his honey-dark lashes resting against his cheek. “What have I done to deserve such sweet dreams?”
Dreams? Did he think this… was he kissing her without knowing… Trapped between dreaming and waking, he must have been holding some other, more desirable woman in his arms.
“Oh.” She’d not meant that single syllable to sound so sad.
She wanted to sink back into the mindlessness of his embrace.
But the spell was broken.
Good thing.Losing herself in her husband’s arms had never been part of any of her plans.
Harden the heart, turn the mouth into a weapon of destruction instead of an instrument of pleasure.
“I am quite apologetic, Felix,” she said. “If you wake up enough, you’ll find reality much more bitter than your dreams.”She leaned low over him and whispered in his ear. “It’s not some sweet-tempered maid you’re kissing. It’s your wife.”
Leave it toCaroline to wake him with her lovely body only to speak of it as a threat, a punishment, a mistake.
To speak as if he wasn’t enjoying it… didn’t want it. With her?Good God.If she believedthat—what a little fool.
He’d teach her otherwise.
Surging up, he cradled her tightly, flipped her gently, and rested her back on the hard marble. She cried out, gripping his shoulders, eyes wide. Scared. She should be. Now, he had her caged between his body and the floor, and he hadn’t quite decided if he was going to let her go.
Until he did, he’d play with her a bit, use her fire to blind his nightmares. “Who do you think I’m dreaming of, wife?” More and more he… loved that word. A word was a safe thing to love. Much easier than loving a person.
“How should I know?” She ran a finger down the middle of his chest, hesitance in her eyes. Then heat. “But it’s me here in reality. And I might just come here every morning… until you leave.” She peeked up at him, expectant.
Of what? “Do you promise?” he growled.
With wide eyes and something of a snort, she said, “You do not mean that.”
He laughed as he leaned in to smell the lovely little curve of her neck. “Waking up to the touch of the woman I’d been pleasuring in my dream? I think I do mean that.”
First, a touch had stolen into his nightmare, soft fingers beckoning him away from dark places. Those fingers—that little had pulled him into wakefulness, her kind brown eyes staringdown at him. Comfort had come for him. A surprise. In the form of his wife. More surprising still.
He’d grasped it with both hands. And both lips because he was a devil and she was his bloody wife, and… hell… he’d needed her. His very first memory of her was a comforting one. A stout little girl, a wingless angel with serious eyes in a field dotted with wildflowers behind his grandfather’s house. She’d asked him riddles until he’d forgotten his grief.
And this morning he’d kissed her to do the same.
She’d kissed him back, clad only in her shift and wrapper. More than that. She’d ground her sweet little cunny against his thigh, moaning for more. He recalled that night at Lyon’s Den when he’d thought, unable to help himself:luscious.
He’d been right.
Caroline would be wild at heart. Under her plans and her prim gowns, she’d be a seductress.
“You were not dreaming ofme.” She scrambled to escape him, to lean against the wall, the head of his pitifully cold bed. This uncomfortable marble better than that cursed house. Her eyes were serious again, as they had been when they’d first met. Large and dark, you could almost see her big brain tick, tick, ticking away behind them. But now they were a bit clouded. With lust.
