“Will she listen?” he asked in a ragged murmur. “Or will I have to spirit you off?”
“What an intriguing . . . idea . . .”
The man knew just what to say to make her melt. And ache.Everywhere. Who would have thought it of the gruff major?
Then he slipped his hands inside her gown and around to the front so he could tug her stays down to free her breasts for his fondling. She got decidedly warm down below, even though he was caressing her through her shift. And when he thumbed her nipples erect? The thrill of it had her sighing aloud.
“I honestly don’t understand why some gentleman hasn’t snapped you up before now,” he whispered in her ear. “Don’t think I didn’t see that pile of visiting cards when we came in this afternoon. I’m not surprised. You looked like a goddess last night.” His voice hardened. “I daresay by the end of the week, half the eligible bachelors in London will be offering for you.”
She caught her breath, unsure whether to exult in his being jealous or to wonder at the way he put it, as if he half-expected her to take one of those offers. She waited for him to mention her inheritance, as he had that day at Cambridge, as if it were all she had in her favor. If he did, she would walk right out of the room.
“I hated every fellow who danced with you when I could not,” he said, “who got to talk to you and smell your lovely scent.” He nuzzled her hair. “You smell like lemons and honey, like a fresh summer rain, and your silky skin makes me want to rub you all over myself.” He paused. “That sounds odd, doesn’t it? I’m not very poetic, I’m afraid.”
Perhaps not, but sometimes he could be downright sweet. Though she didn’t think she’d better say that. Men didn’t like to be considered “sweet.”
The most important thing was that he desiredher, not her money. “Oh, I’ve heard you be poetic a time or two. Though it’s not poetry I want from you just now.” She covered one of his hands and urged it down to the place between her thighs that yearned and burned for him. “I wantthis—you touching me in the most intimate ways. You inside me.”
He moaned. “God save me, dearling, don’t say things like that or I may finish before I’ve begun. I’m damned well about to perish just from holding you like this.” He pressed his stiffening flesh against her bottom. “Can you feel what you do to me? I’m desperate to be inside you already.”
“Then what’s stopping you?” she rasped.
“My determination to make you as mad for me as I am for you. To make you understand how badly I wish to marry you.”
When he rubbed her between her legs, she gasped. “Marriage . . . and desire are two different things.” Or a woman should keep them separate anyway. Otherwise, she could end up in serious trouble.
“How would you know? You haven’t married. Yet.” Joshua moved his other hand from her breast, but only so he could tug gently on her coiffure to dislodge her hairpins.
As he spread her long, unruly locks down her back, his voice roughened. “Your hair’s like liquid fire. You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to run my fingers through it.”
“Then you should have tried sooner,” she teased, almost giddy with the confirmation that it wasn’t her fortune he was after.
“I doubt your family would have approved.” He stroked her hair so tenderly that a lump formed in her throat. “Probably still wouldn’t.”
She turned to face him. “So we won’t tell them.”
“At least not until you accept my offer of marriage.”
“Exactly,” she lied, his earlier words still stuck in her head:Just because Malet abandoned you after bedding you doesn’t mean I would.
There he went, being noble. She didn’t want him doing that. Besides, his proposal probably wouldn’t be forthcoming once she told him the rest of her secrets, but there was no point in bringing up any of that right now. Because before she did, she meant to have him in her bed.
She pulled at his coat, trying fruitlessly to get it off, until he took over and shrugged out of it. Running her hands down his sleeves, she marveled at the muscles she could feel bunching beneath her fingers. “This is whatI’vebeen wanting to do: touch you, caress you, know every part of you.”
“Hell, Gwyn, you have a way of seducing a man with words.” He pulled on the sleeves of her gown until he had the whole thing pooling on the floor.
“Is that what I’m doing? Seducing you?” She sucked in a sharp breath when he untied her shift, then brought both that and her stays down in one quick motion, leaving her in only her stockings and shoes. “Because it surely seems as if you’re seducingme.”
“I’m flattered you noticed.” He stepped back to look her over, and the already noticeable bulge in his trousers grew. “You are so damned beautiful. And funny and clever and kind. Malet must have been out of his mind to take mere money instead of you.”
The words shattered once and for all the hard kernel of betrayal that had lain inside her for years, that she’d barely even realized was there until Joshua took a hammer to it.
And now he seemed determined to replace it with a heat that soaked into her everywhere. He came close to cup her between her legs, making her shiver deliciously, and his voice grew ragged. “I love the feel of your damp curls and your soft, warm mons. It makes me half mad for you.”
Her breath had begun to quicken, as had his. Frantic to see him as naked as she, she unbuttoned his waistcoat and the few buttons of his shirt, and then tore both off, leaving his chest bared for her eager gaze.
Just as she’d imagined, it was magnificent. Though scars appeared here and there that looked as if they might have come from swordplay, they didn’t detract from his well-wrought muscles. Dark curls dotted his upper chest, then trickled down the center to his belly until they petered out at his navel.
She spread her hands over that glorious expanse of male flesh and gave him a coquettish look. “My, my, Major Wolfe, what fine muscles you have.”
