The ploy was both obvious and futile. “In that case, we’ll both skip supper and go straight to bed,” Jordan countered patiently, but implacably.
“I assumed you would at least grant me a night’s rest after our journey!”
“No welshing on your bet, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me that, my lord,” she warned.
“Jordan,” he corrected.
“Here they come,” Gibbons chortled to Smarth, peering excitedly around the shoulder of the gamekeeper who was blocking their view. “I can’t wait to see Miss Alexandra’s face, now the master is back,” he said, echoing the thoughts of most of Hawthorne’s staff, who were aware of her heartwrenching devotion to Jordan when she believed him dead.
“She’ll be happy as a songbird,” agreed Mrs. Brimley, the housekeeper, craning her neck.
“She’ll be glowin’ with happiness, shinin’ like a—” Gibbons broke off, stunned, as Alexandra swept past them with an expression on her face that could best be described as thoroughly irate. “Well, I’ll be . . .” he breathed, turning his bewildered face first to Smarth and then to Mrs. Brimley.
* * *
Alexandra ate in uneasy silence across the candlelit table from Jordan. “The wine doesn’t suit you?” he asked.
Alexandra startled at the sound of his deep voice and her spoon clattered against the fragile Sèvres china bowl. “I—I don’t care for port, your grace.”
“Jordan,” he reminded her.
Alexandra swallowed, unable to force his name past her lips. She glanced at the plump red strawberries in her bowl and set her spoon down, her stomach churning with tension over what she knew would be happening to her an hour from now.
“You’ve scarcely eaten a bite,” Jordan observed, his deep voice husky.
Suffocated by what she regarded as his deliberate, unprecedented efforts to charm and disarm her, Alexandra shook her head. “I’m not very hungry.”
“In that case,” he said, laying his napkin aside, “shall we retire, my dear?” A footman stepped forward to pull his chair back, and Alexandra snatched up her fork. “I believe I could eat some of the pheasant,” she said hastily.
Jordan politely placed his napkin back in his lap, but she could have sworn his eyes gleamed with laughter.
Stalling for time, Alexandra made a positive production of dissecting the succulent slice of pheasant she was given into precise, bite-sized rectangles and of chewing each small rectangle until it was nearly liquefied. When the last geometric shape disappeared from her plate and she put down her fork, Jordan quirked a questioning brow at her, asking if she was finished.
Alexandra’s panicked gaze flew to the nearest footman. “I—I would enjoy some of cook’s delicious asparagus now,” she desperately announced, and this time there was no denying the smile that quirked Jordan’s lips. She followed the asparagus with a small helping of peas in cream sauce, pork stuffed with apples, lobster in a pastry shell, and then blueberries.
When she asked for the blueberries, Jordan didn’t bother trying to hide his amusement. Lounging back in his chair, he watched her valiant struggle to swallow every last blueberry, a smile playing about his sensual mouth.
Carefully avoiding his eyes, Alexandra managed to finish the blueberries, but when she was done, her stomach was churning in protest against so much food.
“Something more to fortify you, my sweet?” Jordan suggested helpfully. “Some chocolate cake?”
The mention of dessert made her shudder and she hastily shook her head.
“Beef in wine sauce?”
Alexandra swallowed and whispered, “No, thank you.”
“A litter, perhaps?” he offered, grinning wickedly, “to carry you upstairs?”
Before she could answer, he purposefully laid his napkin aside and rose, coming around the table to help her up. “If you continue to eat like that,” he remarked teasingly as they walked up the long, curving staircase, “you’ll soon be too fat to climb these stairs. I shall have to install a winch and cargo net to lift you up and over the balcony.”
Under different circumstances, Alexandra would have laughed at his joke, but tonight tension and acute selfconsciousness had strangled her sense of humor. She realized he was trying to put her at ease but she could hardly be grateful when it was his fault she was so uneasy in the first place. Moreover, she couldn’t understand how he could be so unembarrassed about what they were about to do. Then she recollected his reputation as a womanizer and realized that he could hardly be embarrassed or uneasy about something he’d done hundreds of times with dozens of women!
An hour later, Jordan opened the connecting door between their suites of rooms and walked into hers, then stopped short, staring in angry disbelief at the bed. The curtains were pulled back and the pale blue satin coverlet was turned back invitingly, displaying cream silk sheets, but Alexandra was not between them.
He swung around, fully prepared to have every nook and cranny of Hawthorne searched tonight, and then he saw her—standing at the opposite side of the immense room, staring out the mullioned windows into the darkness, her arms wrapped around her as if she were cold. Or afraid. Relief replaced his anger as he approached her, his footsteps muffled by the thick Aubusson carpet, his eyes roving appreciatively over the enticing vision she created. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders in molten waves, and her skin above the low bodice of her white satin gown gleamed in the candlelight.
She swung around when he came up behind her and she saw his reflection in the window glass. Jordan stretched his hand out, gently running it down her shining hair, and anger flashed in her eyes but she did not pull away. Her hair felt like satin in his hand. “So,” he said, voicing his thoughts aloud and smiling into her angry eyes, “my little sparrow turned into a beautiful swan.”
“Empty compliments from—”
“With teeth,” Jordan amended, grinning.
Before she could react, he leaned down and swept her up into his arms.
“Where are you taking me?” she demanded as he strode past her bed.
“To my bed,” he whispered, nuzzling her neck. “It’s bigger.” A bank of candles burned on the mantel at the far end of the room, casting a mellow glow into the shadows. Jordan stepped up onto the huge dais that supported his bed and slowly lowered Alexandra to the floor, enjoying the exquisite sensation of her legs sliding down his. But when he lifted his head and looked into her eyes, something in those huge blue orbs—or perhaps it was the rapid shallow breaths she was taking—finally made him realize that Alexandra was not angry. She was frightened.
“Alexandra?” he asked gently, feeling her tremble when he ran his hands up her arms beneath the satin-and-lace sleeves of her dressing gown. “You’re trembling. Are you afraid?”
Unable to force a word out, Alexandra gazed up at the tall, daunting, virile man who was about to do all manner of intimate things to her naked body. She nodded.
With a tender smile, Jordan gently smoothed her hair back off her pale cheek. “It won’t hurt you this time, I promise.”
“It isn’t that!” Alexandra burst out as his hands slid down to the ribbon at her breasts. She clamped her hands over his fingers, her voice strained and rushed as she tried to plead for time. “You don’t understand! I don’t even know you.”
“You ‘know’ me in the most biblical sense of the word, my sweet,” Jordan teased huskily.
“But—but it’s been so long . . .”
Lifting his head, Jordan looked searchingly into her eyes. “Has it?” he asked softly, while an amazing tide of relief swept through him. Based on the accounts of her behavior during the last three months and on his own knowledge of the relaxed morals of the married women in his set, he had been afraid to let himself hope she had known no other men and adamantly unwilling to face the fact that she might well have done so. But there was no mistaking the embarrassed innocence in her eyes as she nodded, and his heart warmed with the certainty that his intoxicatingly lovely wife wa
s still entirely and exclusively his.
“It’s been much too long for both of us,” he whispered, tenderly kissing her ear.
“Please, stop!” she burst out, and Jordan lifted his head at the sound of genuine panic in her voice. “I—I’m afraid,” she admitted, and he knew instinctively how much that admission had cost the courageous girl who’d pitted her will against his for the last three days.
Too wise to laugh at her fears, he tried to make her laugh at them. “I’m a little afraid too,” he admitted with a tender smile at her upturned face.
“You—you are? Why?”
His voice was light, reassuring as he untied the ribbon at her bodice, exposing the satin globes of her breasts. “As you said, it’s been a very long time.” Dragging his gaze from them, he smiled into her eyes and slid her dressing gown off her shoulders. “Suppose I’ve forgotten exactly how it’s done,” he said with mock horror. “Once we’re in bed, it’s too late to ask someone how to go on, isn’t it? I mean, I could summon your friend Penrose and ask him for advice, but I’d have to shout the problem at him in order to be heard, which would then wake all the servants and bring them running in here to see what the furor was about . . .”
Despite her misery, Alexandra couldn’t suppress the giggle that rose in her chest, and she scarcely noticed as Jordan’s fingers sent her dressing gown sliding down her body, landing in a pool of satin at her feet. “That’s better,” he said huskily, deliberately keeping his eyes on hers and not her gleaming, naked body as he drew her into his arms. “I like it when you laugh, do you know that?” he continued, trying to ease her shyness as he untied his maroon brocade robe. “Your eyes glow when you smile,” he said, and tenderly but inexorably eased her back onto the bed, following her down.
Alexandra looked up into his mesmerizing grey eyes as he leaned up on an elbow, his free hand sliding gently up her midriff, then encompassing her breast while he slowly bent his head and took her mouth in an endless, drugging kiss that made her senses reel.
He kissed her again and again and again, his hands shifting, tormenting, seducing until Alexandra lost all control. Moaning helplessly, she turned into him and kissed him back with all the suppressed longing of the last year. Her parted lips crushed his, her tongue darting into his mouth, her fingers tangling in the crisp, thick hair at his nape as she held his mouth to hers. And in her surrender she gained the victory, for this time it was Jordan who groaned and lost himself in the kiss.
Wrapping his arms around her, he rolled onto his back, taking her with him, his hands eloquent of his urgency as they raced over her satiny skin, his legs tangling with hers, his body slowly thrusting against her hips, telling her what he wanted.
Somewhere in the fiery tumult of his mind, Jordan warned himself to slow down, but his body, starved for more than a year for her, would not listen to the commands of his will—particularly not when Alexandra was kissing his ear as he had kissed hers, sliding her tongue along the sensitive lobe . . . Shuddering with a need that refused to be denied any longer, Jordan rolled her onto her back, his hand sliding down between her thighs to the warm wetness that assured him she was ready for him.
“I’m sorry, love,” he whispered hoarsely, cupping her bottom in his hands and lifting her hips to receive him. “I . . . can’t . . . wait.” His breath caught as he eased himself slowly into her incredibly welcoming warmth, careful lest he hurt her, then he stopped in agonized surprise when she suddenly turned her face away from him and two bright tears slid from beneath her long, curly lashes.
“Alexandra?” he whispered, his arms and shoulders taut with the effort he was exerting to control the pounding need of his body to be fully sheathed within her. Bracing himself on one forearm, he took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and firmly turned her face on the pillow. “Open your eyes and look at me,” he commanded quietly.
Her tear-drenched lashes fluttered, and he stared into aqua eyes swimming with tears.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked in disbelief.
Alexandra swallowed and shook her head, fighting down the wanton urge to plead with him to take her, to beg him to love her with his heart and his body, as she had been longing to do almost from the moment he stretched out beside her and took her in his arms. And that was why she was crying. In a few short minutes, his lovemaking had broken down every barrier she had erected against him, battered down her defenses and left her as weak and eager for him as she’d been as a naive girl.
“Darling, what is it?” he asked, leaning down and kissing the tear from her cheek. “Don’t you want me?”
It was the humble, boyish innocence of the question, combined with the tender endearment, that was her undoing. “Yes,” she whispered, gazing up into his eyes, seeing the passion he was fighting to restrain.
“Then why the tears?” he whispered.
“Because,” she admitted in a fierce, suffocated little voice, “I don’t want to want you.”
A sound that was part groan, part laughter escaped him as he shoved his fingers into her luxuriant hair, imprisoning her face between his hands at the same moment he thrust himself full-length into her, plunging deep. Her hips arched spasmodically beneath him and Jordan lost all control. “I want you,” he groaned hoarsely, withdrawing and then plunging again, deeper and deeper with each stroke, his heart swelling with joy as he felt his wife wrap her arms around his shoulders and surrender completely to his stormy desire: “I want you so much,” he gasped, “that I can’t wait—”
Her nails dug into the bunched muscles at his back and her hips lifted and Jordan climaxed within her with a force that tore her name from his chest in an agonized gasp.
When he moved onto his side, he wrapped his arms around her, cradling her against him while he waited for his labored breathing to even out. Staring into the candlelit darkness beyond the dais, he felt sanity finally return and with it came two stunning realizations: The first was that he had actually asked his own wife if she wanted him—like a small boy pleading for favors.
Never in his entire life had he asked a woman to want him. For that matter, never had he rushed one into bed so quickly as he’d rushed Alexandra tonight, nor had he ever spent himself so fast either. His pride rebelled at his performance in bed tonight and his general lack of control.
Beneath him, Alexandra stirred and lifted her head, tilting it back on the pillow so that she could see his face in the candlelight, studying his taut jaw as he stared straight ahead, lost in thought. “You’re angry?” she whispered, filled with disbelief and dismay.
Jordan tipped his chin down and smiled without humor. “At myself, not you.”
“Why?” she asked, all lovely innocence and naked woman, her eyes searching his.
“Because I—” He shook his head and clamped his mouth shut. Because I want you too much, he admitted angrily to himself. Because I lost control tonight. Because the simple touch of your hands on me makes me insane with wanting. Because you can make me angrier than anyone alive and because, in the throes of my fury, you can make me laugh. Because where you are concerned. I’m vulnerable. Soft . . .
His father’s voice shouted scathingly in Jordan’s head: “You can’t be soft and be a man, Jordan. . . . A man is hard, tough, invulnerable. . . . A man doesn’t need to trust anyone but himself. . . . We use women for pleasure but we don’t need them. . . . A man doesn’t need anyone.”
Jordan shoved the memories from his head and forcibly reminded himself what a mockery his father’s marriage had been. Still, he wished to God he’d taken Alexandra somewhere else; Hawthorne and the memories that dwelled here made him edgy.
Alexandra’s soft, timid words drew him from his thoughts. “May I go to my own room now? I can see that I’ve somehow displeased you.”
Unexpectedly, his heart wrenched at the thought of her believing that. “On the contrary,” he said, grinning to hide the truth of his words. “You please me too much.”
She looked so skeptical that he chuckled. “I
n bed, you please me,” he clarified teasingly, smiling into her eyes. “Out of it, you infuriate me. I suppose the only solution,” he huskily added as desire surged through him with renewed force, “is to keep you in bed with me.” Bending his head, he took her sweet lips in a deep kiss that soothed his raw emotions. He had made too much of everything associated with their lovemaking tonight, he decided. After all, this was the first time in his life since he turned fourteen that he’d been without a woman for more than a month, let alone an entire year. Naturally, he’d been overeager, overemotional . . .
And this time, when he made love to her, Jordan lingered over her for hours, holding himself back while he guided Alexandra to peak after peak of trembling ecstasy, and then joining her there.
Dawn was already streaking the purple sky with wide pink slices when Jordan made love to her for the last time and finally fell into a deep slumber.
Cautiously lifting his imprisoning arm from around her waist, Alexandra inched forward and slid out from beneath the sheets. Her body, unused to such vigorous lovemaking, felt weak, limp, and deliciously weary as she walked silently around to his side of the bed and picked up her satin dressing gown.
Sliding her arms into the sleeves, she wrapped the gown around her, then hesitated, looking down at her husband. His dark hair was inky against the gleaming whiteness of the pillow, and sleep softened the rugged contours of his tanned face, making him look almost boyish. The sheet had slid down to his hips, exposing to her view the full expanse of his broad, muscled chest and arms. He was tanned there too, she realized with a start. She hadn’t noticed that in the night, but evidently he must have left his shirt off while he was sailing home to England. He was thinner, too, from his imprisonment. Much too thin.
Her gaze moved over him, reveling in the freedom to look at him to her heart’s content. He was splendid, truly splendid, she decided with wistful impartiality. In fact, she had not been entirely naive and foolish a year ago when she had likened him to Michelangelo’s David.
Unaware of the tenderness of the gesture, Alexandra leaned down and carefully drew the sheet up over his shoulder, then she straightened, but she did not leave. She absently rubbed her arms as the memory of when he had said, Don’t you want me? sent a thrill of pure tenderness through her.