But evidently his mouth was not quite ready to listen to his brain. Nor his hand, which did not break contact with her. “Have you any other scratches?”
Beneath your dressing gown?suggested his prick, which had gone from desperate to frankly anarchic.
Matilda’s eyes blinked open.
God, he couldn’t think when she looked like that. A little blurred, her lips shining from where her tongue had moistened them. Her pupils wide, dark on blue.
“I can’t recall,” she said, a trifle breathless, a little amused. “I don’t believe so. No, I’m fine.”
He made himself drop his hand.
And then he made himself put some space between them. He stood up. He crossed the room toward the door, shoving his spectacles back into his travel bag as he passed it. “Good,” he said. “Take the bed. I’ll go—”
He had not thought this through. Where would he go? Down to the public room, perhaps? Maybe if he got good and drunk he would forget her up here in her sweet white dressing gown, tucked up in his bed, soft as the devil and smelling of roses.
Although, he reflected, his previous attempt to get drunk and stop thinking about Matilda had been nothing short of disastrous. So perhaps not.
She bounded to her feet, taking a step in his direction. “You cannotgo.That’s—it’s—absurd. We are meant to be a married couple.”
Christian wished she had not reminded him. “I’ll take the floor then.”
Her lips turned down. “Don’t be ridiculous. If anything,Ishould take the floor. It’s your bed. Mine is out of commission due to my own impetuosity.”
He could not precisely argue with that. “Matilda, I would have to be on my deathbed to sleep on the mattress whilst you sleep upon the cold floor.”
She crossed her arms over her breasts. “And do you not imagine that I feel the same?”
He paused. Actually, no. He had not imagined such a thing.
Grace would have taken the bed, and happily. But—God, what an idiotic thing to think of now. Grace would not have brought a stray cat in from the cold and attempted to make a present of it to his sister.
Matilda was not Grace. She was only herself, vibrant and softhearted and devastating.
“I would share the bed with you,” Matilda said, and she put her chin up in the way he liked so much. “I would lie with you, Christian, if you wish it. Or if you do not, I would lie beside you and share nothing but bedcovers. You have only to tell me what you want.”
Everything seemed to go out of focus but Matilda. He could see her—clean and sweet-faced, her hair falling down her back—and he could see the afterimage of her, flushed and half-naked on the ground.
She was like an explosion, detonating inside his mind, inside his ribs. He wanted her so much he could not stand it—and headmiredher. God, he admired her fearless, determined spirit.
Except—he could see her pulse beating hard at the side of her throat.
She was not fearless, was she? She was afraid of what he might say. She was afraid, he realized, that he would turn her down.
Fearless was not the word then. Brave, rather. Braver than he had ever been in his life. It shamed him, how much more brave she was than he, this slip of a girl thirteen years his junior. And it made him want to meet her halfway. She had put out her hand, stretched it across the sharp gulf between them, and he had only to take it.
He had been quiet too long. She took one half-step toward him, then dropped her arms to her sides.
And as she did, her dressing gown slid down off her shoulder.
Her shoulder was bare. There were freckles—a whole sky’s worth of stars on her shoulder. He had not known that before.
He took one step toward her. Then another, and another, and he was across the room, drawn straight toward her, a planet pulled into her orbit.
“Matilda,” he said, and it was his dark voice again. Low and commanding. He had not heard himself use that voice in a very long time. “Are you naked underneath that dressing gown?”
She looked up at him, and it was a long way up. He stood over her, his presence not quite a threat.
And oh, shelikedthat. She shivered, and the dressing gown slipped farther off her shoulder, baring the top of one breast.
