She raised her head and propped her chin on his chest. Her eyes were still heavy-lidded with sleep, but sparkled with incipient desire. “Are you encouraging sloth and other wickedness?”
He clicked his tongue as he turned onto his side, tugging her knee up to his waist. “Not at all. It’s not wicked, and decidedly not sloth.” He was already hard and ready, and Bianca moaned softly as his length pressed between her legs.
“Jennie will come in,” she said, her mouth against his.
“Lawrence will keep her away,” he countered.
She smiled, opening her glorious eyes, fathoms-deep ocean blue. “Then say good morning properly to your wife, Mr. St. James.”
With a tilt of his hips he pushed inside her. She gasped, but she was already slick and ready. Leisurely Max moved against her, exploring her body as he’d dreamed of doing for weeks. He lavished attention on that beauty mark, now freely displayed to him. She was ticklish on her ribs but threw back her head in pleasure when he kissed her neck below her ear.
When she was clinging to him with arms and legs, Max flipped them over. She sat up, a wanton goddess with her hair wild around her. Heart hammering, climax building inside him, he shoved himself up on the pillows and touched her, burning to feel her come.
And his wife clasped her hands behind his neck and rocked back and forth until the color rolled up her face and she gasped in ecstasy. He seized her hips and felt his soul come apart with his climax.
Shaking, he pulled her to him for a deep kiss. Never, not even in his most fanciful dreams, had he imagined it would be this way. He’d wanted Perusia for the occupation, for the chance to prove himself not a useless fribble and to find some benefit in his rake’s history. He’d wanted a marriage for the fortune, so he would never be penniless again, jerked about by the Duchess of Carlyle’s whim. He’d thought it would be distant, polite, perhaps cordial.
Instead he gazed helplessly into Bianca’s glowing eyes and wondered how he’d ended up so deeply in love without even noticing he was falling.
“I’ve wondered about one thing,” she said, smiling dreamily. “When we were first married, you were downstairs every morning before I was. Do you always rise appallingly early?”
“Ah. That.” He chuckled, sliding down the pillows again. Bianca curled up against him, stretching her legs over his. Max thought he would never find a petite woman attractive again, after having her long legs wrapped around him. “Rather amusing, really. This wall”—he reached up and knocked his knuckles on the panel behind his head—“is not so thick as it looks. When Jennie brings your morning wash water, the door makes a particular squeal—”
She sat bolt upright. “Do you mean to say—?”
He folded his arm behind his head and smiled modestly. “As soon as I heard her come in, I would leap out of bed and hurry into my clothes, so that I would be ready to greet my wife at the breakfast table...”
She slapped his shoulder. “I thought you must not need sleep! Every morning—!”
Max gave her a sly look. “The back stairs are very conveniently near my door, and in stockinged feet, it’s possible to creep down without a sound.”
“Oh!” Eyes flashing, she flung herself onto the other side of the bed. “How perfectly vile of you!”
“Once,” he said, crawling after her, “I barely made it—if you’d looked closely, you would have noticed my shoes were thrown under my chair instead of on my feet—”
“I rose earlier and earlier!” she cried. “It was stilldark!”
Laughing, Max wrapped his arms around her. “And you were a vision of beauty every morning, even with that piqued little frown on your brow. Well worth scrambling down the stairs without a candle.”
“Why?” she demanded in indignation. “What did you win?”
“My dear Mrs. St. James,” he teased, “was our marriage a contest to you?”
She flushed pink. “You know it was! That’s why you ran down the stairs, in the dark, without your shoes, just to be there before me. You wanted to prove that no matter what standard I held up, you could meet it.” She punctuated the last few words with a finger to his chest.
Max gave her a sinful smile in reply. “No, madam, you are wrong. I meant to show you I wouldexceedthem, each and every one.”
“So itwasa contest!” Finally she laughed. “Wretched man,” she said, letting him hold her closer. “I was exhausted.”
“I promise not to wake so early again,” he told her. “Or perhaps I will have more reason to stay abed later in the mornings...”
She laughed again, twisting in his arms to face him. Still smiling, she put her hand on his cheek. Her hair was wild and her face was glowing and her eyes were warm. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, and so precious to him it was almost painful.
Max barely breathed; the words seemed to be swelling inside him, about to burst from his lips. He’d never told a woman he loved her, not since his mother...
“This is not what I imagined,” she said softly. “When I helped Cathy elope.”
Max let out his breath. Her sister. What a brilliant stroke of luck the quiet sister had been in love with someone else. If Catherine Tate had dutifully walked down the aisle to meet him... “I am unspeakably happy that you did.”
