Bianca bolted up the pitch, shrieking, “You did it! You did it!” Max flipped aside his bat and caught her as she flung herself into his arms.
“Wedid it,” he said roughly, and then he kissed her, hard, on the mouth, not caring that half of Marslip was watching, that the players streaming forward to celebrate were gasping in scandalized astonishment, or that Mannox and all his side were protesting loudly to the umpires that the last ball had not actually cleared the boundary.
Bianca was kissing him back. Hungrily, desperately, her fingers in his hair and her body straining against his.
By God, helovedher. He was mad for her. And tonight he was going to make love to her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bianca wasn’t sure how they got home to Poplar House. The thrill of defeating Mannox—for the first time in four years—carried her in a blaze of elation through the celebration at the Two Foxes, through the triumphal procession back to Perusia Hall, even through her father coming out to hear the news and bringing out a barrel of ale and tapping it, no matter that he was contributing to the drinking that would idle his factory another day. Papa hated to lose atanythingto Mannox. When Max gave him the small pottery vase that was the victor’s right—which Tom Mannox had handed over very ungraciously at the Foxes—Papa lifted it above his head with a shout of victory, and the crowd of his workmen and neighbors roared back.
Then she and Max were stumbling home, arm in arm, a little bit tipsy and still reveling in the victory. The servants at Poplar House had heard the news as well, and they were waiting to give one last cheer. The stable lads wanted Max to relate every bowl and strike, and Bianca went inside to do the same for Jennie, who had gone home early to see her mother and was beside herself, in tears to have missed the match.
By the time she finished the tale, Jennie had brushed out her hair and helped her change into her nightdress. Bianca dismissed her but was too excited still to sleep. She paced her room restlessly, recalling in exquisite detail how Max had looked with his bat at the ready, how easily he’d sent that last ball for six, how he’d snatched her off her feet at the end and kissed her.
That was why her heart hadn’t yet slowed down: the way he’d turned to her, his arms open and ready to catch her, the way he shared his triumph with her, the way he kissed her as if he didn’t give a damn who saw.
When she finally heard his voice in the adjoining room, she flung open the door without so much as a knock. “Why didn’t you tell me you could bat like that?”
He looked up. His dark hair was wild around his face, having escaped the tie long ago. He had never put his coat and waistcoat back on, and his sleeves were still rolled up over his forearms, as when he’d strode to the crease like Colossus and punished Tom Mannox’s bowling with savage precision.
“You never asked about my cricket abilities,” he replied to her question. He motioned at Lawrence, and the valet withdrew silently.
Bianca gave an incredulous laugh. “I never thought to!”
He grinned as he pulled loose his neckcloth. It was limp and bedraggled, and he threw it on the chair. “Now you know.”
“What else have you kept from me?” she demanded. “Are you a master at chess? A skilled archer? Will I discover you’re a sculptor or a celebrated musician?”
He leaned back, spreading wide his well-muscled arms. “Will you? Only if you look hard enough, I suppose.”
She raised her brows. She did look. She liked to look at him; it had vexed her from the start, but now she gave in and openly admired him. As beautiful as he’d been in London, sleek and dangerous in his black domino on his knees in front of her, this Max—rumpled and sweaty and unabashedly male—obliterated her remaining resistance.
With a clink she set down the cup of tea Jennie had brought, and closed the door to her bedroom. “How closely should I look?”
His eyes were almost black. “As closely as you want,” he replied in a low voice.
She laid her palm on his chest, feeling the beat of his heart. “You promised I could touch, too.”
His expression didn’t falter, but his breathing sped up. “Yes.”
Bianca undid the remaining button at his throat, then paused. “Don’t you want to touch me? Or kiss me?”
“I want you to want me,” he growled. “I want to hear you say you want to be here, in my bed, for the rest of this night and every other night of our marriage.” He inhaled roughly as her eyes widened. “Until then, I don’t dare touch you or kiss you, because I might combust on the spot if I can’t have all of you.”
No one had ever spoken to her like that. No one had ever looked at her this way. It made her feel wild and beautiful and powerful, thatthisman wanted her. She had wondered why, after Vauxhall, he hadn’t pursued her, why he hadn’t pressed her for more even as he watched her with banked desire in his eyes. After Vauxhall, he could have persuaded her, far more easily than she would have admitted to anyone.
Someday you’ll come to me...
Deliberately, with both hands, she pushed his shirt open and pressed her lips to his bare chest. “Yes,” she whispered. “I want you.”
His chest heaved. He lifted her face and kissed her, lightly at first but quickly growing feverish. Bianca kissed him back, sucking on his tongue and holding on to his shirt as if for dear life.
Suddenly she couldn’t be too close to him. She was on her toes, clinging to him, meeting his ravenous kisses with her own. She barely felt him strip off her dressing gown, though she quaked when his broad hands stroked firmly down her back, lifting her against him.
She yanked at his shirt, wanting to touch him as promised, and when she got it loose, Max broke the kiss long enough to whip it over his head. Bianca slid her hands over his bare chest, marveling at the heat pulsing from him. No cold stone statue, as Lady Dalway and Mrs. Farquhar had tittered over in the gallery, but a hot-blooded man of firm muscle and ragged breath, pulling loose the tie of her nightgown and cupping his hand around her bare breast.
Bianca gasped, her hands closing convulsively on Max’s arms.
