Perhaps her circle was too wide—or perhaps he wanted to make her uneasy—because he simply shrugged. “You’ll have to be more specific.”
She shook her head in embarrassment.
“Before I took off my clothing?”
She nodded. “Yes. And took… Took the matter…”
“Before I took the matter in hand?” he finished with a wry smile.
“Yes. That.”
“To answer your question, tonight I needed it cold. If not, I would have wallowed in the luxury of this too completely. Cold sharpens the senses. Heat dulls them.”
“Oh.” Her eyes fell on his body—her husband’s body—naked, spread out before her. He was hard; his body was so clearly willing to oblige her in this particular point of their marriage. She had a thousand questions. Does that feel good? Does the cold help with your release?
Could we build a fire now?
What she settled on was, “Can you do that to me?”
He shook his head. “Pardon?”
She stepped forward into the lamplight. “You’re my husband.” Her gaze fell again to that thick, rigid rod between his legs. Maybe he hadn’t wanted her. Maybe he’d just wanted the privacy of…of the thing. He reached for a silk banyan that lay across the bed linens.
“Oh, no,” she said quietly. “Please don’t cover yourself.”
He looked up at her, his hand clenching on the cloth. “Kate, I have no right to make demands of you.”
“Why not? You’re my husband. Men who don’t exercise their marital rights become irrational.”
He frowned at that.
“Or feverish, or they have headaches or some such. I never did find out. But I have some idea how these things work.”
“You do, do you?” His lips twitched.
“I am only thinking of your health,” she said piously. But her gaze strayed again to impious territory, and she bit back a sigh.
“Why? I left you. I have not been as good to you as you deserve. I—”
“You,” Kate said quietly, “are an idiot. If you have need of me, do you suppose I would flinch away? Do you think me so weak that you cannot lean on me on occasion? Don’t you understand—you aren’t the only one who can make demands. I’m your wife, and I wish to God you would treat me like one. In every way.”
“As you may recall, I can be a terrible beast.” He didn’t move. “And you still don’t trust me.”
Kate crossed over to him and sat down on the bed. The cotton batting of his mattress gave way under her weight. It sagged; as a consequence, his body canted toward her. Ned didn’t pull away. But he didn’t move closer, either. Instead, he looked at her, his eyes dark and dilated. “I’m freezing.”
He didn’t pull her close, as she’d hoped. Instead, he watched her warily. “I don’t like to lose control.”
Kate inched her fingers across the coverlet toward his now free hand. His knuckles were heated, even though he’d been sitting in the cold. “Ned,” she whispered, “let me inside your control.”
A shiver passed through him, from his shoulders on down. The transparent silk that covered her offered scant protection from the chilled air. She fumbled with the knot of ribbons in front. It was awkward to try to remove the garment one-handed, but it felt right to keep her fingers pressed on top of his. The material slid past her shoulders.
His eyes fell to see what she had bared. Beneath the nightgown, her breasts were peaked, the nipples poking into the fabric, her skin pebbled.
“Don’t pretend you don’t desire me,” she said. “And I won’t pretend, either. Let me inside. You’re not the only one who will descend into irrationality if we continue on this path of abstinence.”
His member twitched in what appeared to be happy agreement. But he stared at her for a long while before speaking. “I thought you’d take lovers,” he finally said. His voice was low and hoarse. “I assumed you would, when I left.”
After all that had happened, after all that had passed between them this past week, she hadn’t thought that he could still hurt her. But it stung. His words stung so badly—his casual assumption that she would give herself to another, and the even more casual assumption that he would have simply accepted that outcome instead of fighting to keep her his—that she almost turned away. But she’d asked him to let her inside.
He’d left her. She wasn’t going to like everything he had to say. And as much as the possibility frightened her, if she never risked hurt again, she’d never have happiness, either.
Kate pulled his hand close. “It’s not about my honor. It’s… Well, I thought about infidelity at first. It would have been easy enough. I wanted to make you really and truly sorry for abandoning me. I imagined that Lady Blakely would send you word, and you’d come rushing back to me, all hotheaded anger.”
“Ah,” he said slowly. “When you imagined me rushing back, did I challenge your lover to a duel?”
“On bad days,” she said with some asperity, “you lost.” But she drew a circle on the back of his hand with her thumb.
That little scene was so much supposition—a fanciful drama, to contain the shape of her own tortured desires. Because what she’d really imagined was that her husband had cared about her, enough to come rushing to her side. “I did think about what I would do if I returned to find you’d taken a lover.”
“And did you think about challenging my hypothetical lover to a duel?”
“No.” He raised his eyes from their joined hands to look her in the face. “In my imagination, I was given the chance I squandered when first we married. This time, I would court you. I would seduce you. I would show patience and care and I would convince you that this time, you would choose me—not have me foisted upon you by some happenstance of fate. I wanted to earn your regard, not have it handed to me by default.”
“Well. You’re seducing me now.”
He ran his thumb along her wrist. Such a tiny point of contact, to send such a jolt through her. “No, blast it. You’re seducing me, which I have to say is rather unfair of you. I want to prove that you can rely on me, that I’m not some foolish man driven only by irrational lust. I want—I need you to know I’m not Harcroft, to be swept up in a surfeit of emotion.”
It was the first criticism she’d ever heard him utter of his friend. She wasn’t sure how to respond. But if there was a surer way to bring this conversation to a halt than to discuss Harcroft, Kate didn’t know it. She looked up at him in cool regard. “Are you saying it’s irrational to want me? Is this going to run along the lines of the reasons why you refuse to light a fire?”
He walked his fingers up her wrist, up the curve of her arm to the crook of her elbow. And now he leaned in until his face was inches from her.
“Hardly.” His voice was dark; his breath came hot against her lips. “I’m fairly certain I don’t deserve you.” She could actually see the mist his breath made in the cold.
“Naturally.” Her voice seemed calm, but her heart was racing. “Luckily for you, I’ve decided to take you as my lover anyway.”
He peered into her eyes. “You seem to have forgotten my many flaws. That’s not like you. Are you sure you’re my wife?”
His naked chest brushed her breasts as he leaned toward her. She could feel the heady weight of him poised above her. His flesh, so warm, was in sharp contrast with the cold air. Her own skin quivered in anticipation. He brought his hand up to touch the side of her cheek, and he brushed her jawline. A shiver went through her, a sweet portent of pleasures to come.
She could taste his kiss before he touched her lips—a mingling riot of mint and sherry. His other hand came to her shoulder and he guided her down, down until her spine met the mattress. For an instant, he looked into her eyes. He held himself above her, the muscles in his arms corded to support his weight. And then he lowered his whole body atop her, from the hard planes of his chest to the weight of his thighs. She could feel his erection pressing into her belly. His mouth found hers, and her mind emptied
of everything except desire.
She wanted his kiss, and his mouth opened to hers. His lips were warm against hers; they moved slowly, yet firmly. His hand slid down her side; she could feel his touch through the thin fabric of her half-discarded nightgown, trailing down her ribs. There was nothing between them but a scant layer of silk, and even that seemed too much.
No wonder he’d not started a fire. He was a blast-furnace himself, his body searing hers.
He pulled back for breath. “Feeling feverish?”
Her blood was pounding in her head; her own breath came only in short pants. And she was hot all over, from the palms of her hands to the core of her body. She nodded shortly.
“Do you have a headache?” His tone was solicitous. “Or any pain? Or do you find that you are thinking irrationally? Women who don’t find release often do, you know. I’m only thinking of your health.”
She stared up at him, her mind completely blank for a bare instant. Then she remembered what she’d told him when she came in—her worries about the symptoms of male abstinence. She smacked his shoulder with her fist. “Are you mocking me, at a time like this?”
“Are you laughing?”
She was; her breath froze around him.
“Then it worked,” he said. “You definitely are irrational. That’s what I was waiting for.”
His hand crept up to encircle the swell of her breast. Hot and cold warred against her skin, the frigid temperature of the room contrasting with the heat of his fingers. Her nipples tingled in anticipation.
“It would be wrong for me to take advantage of you in such a state,” he intoned piously.
“It would be more wrong if you didn’t.”
He drew a figure eight atop her breast; his thumb feathered briefly over her aching nipple.
“Ned,” Kate said, “stop playing and do it.”
He was still looking her in the eye. He smiled again and raised one eyebrow. “If you insist.”
And then he leaned down and closed his mouth around her nipple. She had a moment to feel the warmth of his breath. It enfolded her, like that instant of silence between the stab of lightning and the rumble of thunder. Not the particular it she had meant but, oh, she wouldn’t stop him, and the cry she let out was the farthest thing from a protest. The heat of his tongue around her nipple overtook her. She felt the sweetness of the connection clear from the bottoms of her feet to the palms of her hands, a powerful tingling net cast about her. Her thighs parted; she pressed up against him in unspoken longing, in years-old desire. This was supposed to be practical. But there was nothing practical about her want, about the deep well of longing that overtook her.
And still he held back from her. When she arched her back, one of his hands slipped behind her; when she pushed up at him, his tongue inscribed a circle, a wet, heated kiss, about her breast. He lifted his head to nuzzle her ear, and cool air washed over her.
“You’re going to undo me,” he growled against her neck.
“Hurry up and be undone.”
His fingers pressed into her back. “Do you know what I was doing when you walked in?”
Even the thought of it left her awash in further longing. She still had no verbs to describe that action. Only the one pitiful word, a mere noun: onanism. And that word described a sin, not the near sanctity of her husband’s body.
“The only words I know are proper and stilted.” Not hot and needful. Not a match for what she felt.
His mouth covered hers again. There was a rough urgency to his kiss, as if she would fade away if he let her go. But she was positively alive with light. She felt her blood pulsing through her, in time with the rhythm of his caress. She angled her head back and he kissed his way down her chin, her collarbone.
“There are only improper ones,” he said.
“Don’t treat me like a flimsy thing. Don’t pawn me with kind assurances and excuses of propriety.”
He didn’t. Instead, he pulled away from her an inch and looked into her eyes. When he realized she was serious, he sighed. “I was, as the schoolboys say, frigging myself senseless.”
A wave of longing passed through her. Yes. She wanted to know that. She didn’t want to be shielded from her own desire with ignorance. She wanted to be able to describe her thoughts, her wants. Her husband.
As if he sensed that tumultuous passion, he touched his nose to hers. “But it’s not the words that matter. What I was doing when you walked in—I want to watch you do it to yourself.”
“What?” The suggestion was more fraught with peril than merely succumbing to his touch. Admit to him the depth of her longing? Be something other than a passive recipient?
He pulled away from her, rolling onto his side next to her. He gulped in breath and met her eyes. “I want you to do it to yourself.” His hand engulfed hers. He was warm around her. His other hand slid up her leg. She could feel the night air, cold against her thigh. Her skin leapt under his touch. Surely his pulse beat in time with hers. Surely he could feel that harsh thump in his wrist echoing deep inside her.
His right hand joined with hers. He brought their linked fingers down. “Here,” he said. “Touch yourself here.” And he placed their hands between her legs. She met his gaze. His pupils dilated. She was touching her own slippery wetness. No—better yet—they were touching it. Intimately. Slowly, he moved, slipping between the folds of her skin. His fingers explored her, sliding down her flesh, rubbing her in her most forbidden place.
It was so deliciously right—and yet even then, she could feel that his touch was…not wrong, but incorrect. He should have touched her there, not there; he was off a hairbreadth there, misplaced his fingers ever so slightly there. Her hand met his, touching. And then she was teaching him, showing him that she needed pressure there, that she wanted the rhythm like that, that he trace a pattern that she had never before felt, but that she knew with a sure, stubborn instinct.
There.
He slipped one digit inside her. She couldn’t have said where his skin left off and hers began. There was nothing but that slide, that pressure, nothing but sheer unadulterated white-hot need.
There, again. He bent his head to kiss her breast, and a sweetness consumed her. She could still feel the cold air against her skin, but he was right—it did sharpen the senses. The temperature heightened the pleasure, made the heat building inside her all the more painful. Her release built with savage intensity. Every inch of her skin caught fire. She gasped as ecstasy passed through her, raging in its brilliance. When it had gone, she lay back, reaching for breath. Her lungs drew in only cold air.
Slowly he pulled his hands away from her. Her breath returned, and with his withdrawal she felt doubly chilled.
“There,” he said. “That’s what I was doing when you came in.” There was a hint of ragged satisfaction in his voice.
Her breath returned to her slowly. “Oh, my. And I interrupted.”
“Even if you hadn’t come through my door, you’d have interrupted in spirit. I was thinking about you.” He smiled at her. “I want you to trust me. Not just with your body, but with everything else.” He brushed her hair from her face. “You see, when I take you, I want to have all of you. Not just one portion.”
“I don’t understand what you mean. You could have me now.”
He smiled wryly. “I’ll be thinking about doing it—every damned stroke. If I can do this…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
Rationality was returning to her with each breath. She’d come to give her husband release. Instead, he’d led her to her own. He was still erect, and by the uncomfortable way he shifted next to her, she hadn’t helped matters at all.
And yet…
“Ned.”
He must have heard the hint of longing she imbued in that syllable, because he smiled at her. “Don’t. I was just congratulating myself for not swiving you like the rutting beast that I long to be.”
Kate’s pulse pounded in her throat. Her skin tingled. Her throat ached. She coul
d hear the roughness of the beast he claimed to be in his words, in the husky rasp in his voice when he’d looked in her eyes and said those words. Every. Damned. Stroke.
“You’re not going to, then. You’re not going to—swive me.”
“No. Not tonight. Apparently.” He looked heavenward. “Damn it.”
“Are you going to…to take up where you left off?”
She’d come here tonight thinking only of her own vulnerability. She’d never imagined she would discover his. But it was there, in the touch of his hands on hers. In the slight tremble of his arm.
“Yes.” His quiet exhalation sounded like a surrender.
“May I stay and watch?” she finally asked.
His eyes widened. “It’s not that interesting.”
“Well. Then. I’ll try to contain my boredom.”
He met her eyes and nodded once, jerkily. He did not look away from her; instead, he slowly reached out and touched himself again. His hand slid up his member, then down, a curiously staccato movement that sent an unexplainable thrill down her spine.
He made her feel vulnerable in ways that she could not avoid.
The room was silent, except for the slap of his palm against his member; every last stroke seemed a palpable thrill, as if it were she who he touched, instead of his own eager flesh, as if it were her hands that encompassed him, her body that enveloped his waiting erection. She was cold and warm all at once, alone and yet joined with him. She wanted his eagerness, his vivacity, the hard press of his manhood inside of her.
She couldn’t excise him from her life. She couldn’t even set him to one side.
If she’d been vulnerable before this evening, she was achingly exposed now.
These sensations in her veins—they were nothing new. She’d always bottled them up, tamping them down into the farthest recesses of her soul as if they belonged to some wild and dangerous creature. Today, though, she thought of Ned’s hand on his member, that heated slide of flesh on flesh.
It was the height of foolishness to imagine her husband’s body crouching over hers. It was complete idiocy to fantasize about his mouth finding hers. And when she imagined that hot, firm erection she’d watched pushing inside her, filling her up, she should have flinched away.