A Most Scandalous Proposal (28 page)

B
ENEDICT LAY
in the feeble light of dawn, listening to Julia’s breathing. All night long, he’d tried to match his respiration to her even cadence, but her presence in his bed warded off sleep. How could he possibly drift off when all he’d ever wanted was within reach?

Her back to him, she slumbered on, her hair spread across the pillow. Careful not to wake her, he lifted a honey-colored tendril and wound it around his finger.

She let out a sigh and nestled the length of her body against his. Her rounded rump brushed his groin, and he stifled a groan as he stirred to life. Soon. Soon, she would awaken and the seduction would begin.

Warmth radiated from her lithe figure. It flowed through the barrier of her fine lawn shift and permeated his being. Unable to stop himself, he smoothed a palm down the length of her bare arm. The answering quiver that passed over her flesh reminded him of a skittish colt.

He would have to approach her as such, if he wanted to make her his in truth. His Julia deserved better than a rushed coupling that might well leave her in loathing of the act every night hereafter.

Leaning forward, he fitted his arm around her waist. His hand spread across her belly, his fingers brushing the lower curves of her breasts. His. All his.

A sigh escaped her lips.
Yes
. Her mind still wandered the no-man’s-land between sleep and waking, while her body reacted instinctively to his touch.

He brushed his lips across her bare shoulder, inhaling her clean scent of jasmine mingled with lavender from the bed linens while he took his first taste of her skin. Tension stiffened her body. He held his breath. There. She was awake now, awake and aware of where she was and in whose bed she lay.

Just as well. He wanted her awake and aware when he took her. He wanted to watch the golden flecks in her eyes darken with desire. He wanted to hold her gaze as, at last, he joined their bodies. He wanted to hear his name fall from her lips as he brought her to completion.

She tried to turn in his embrace. “Benedict?”

“Hush, Julia,” he whispered just below her ear. She trembled, and his fingers dug into the soft curve of her belly. “Don’t move yet.”

“What—”

“Hush. It’s early. We’ve the entire day before us to spend as we like. Should you be agreeable, we do not have to rise for hours yet.” Or she didn’t, at least.

Her shoulders lifted as she inhaled, the air hissing between her teeth. “Hours?”

He smiled into the silken drape of her hair. “Hours and hours.”

“What shall we do with all those hours?”

Laughter rumbled up from his chest. Her innocence amused him as much as it enflamed. “Perhaps …” He raised his hand and combed his fingers through her tresses. “Perhaps we’ll spend part of them recalling our childhood.”

Lord only knew he needed some form of distraction to take his mind off the lust that raged through his veins and set his blood aflame.

“Our childhood?”

“Why not?” He pushed her hair off her neck and ran a fingertip along her nape. “We are in Kent, if not in the homes we knew as children. What better place to think back on more innocent days?”

“Innocent? You were never innocent.”

His finger drifted farther, tracing the indent of her spine. “I was more innocent than I am now. Come. Tell me your most cherished childhood memory.”

Her legs twitched, a discreet pressing together of her thighs, and he smiled at her responsiveness. For him and him alone. No other man would ever learn that Julia St. Claire possessed a hidden well of passion, infinitely deep, just waiting for him to unleash the flood.

“My most cherished memory. That will require some thought.”

He pressed his lips to the angle where her shoulder met her neck.

“I cannot think if you do that.” The words floated from her lips, low and throaty.

“Really?” He tightened his embrace. “Then I shall have to do this instead.”

He bent his head to the spot and nibbled this time, seeking out her pulse and feeling it accelerate beneath the hot stroke of his tongue. Her breath expelled on an airy rush, while her neck arched. She angled her head until she gazed at him from over her shoulder, her eyes half-lidded and angled sideways. Catlike. A rosy glow infused her cheeks, and her lips parted, full and inviting.

An offering he gladly accepted.

Tipping her chin toward him, he leaned in for a taste. She opened to him immediately, her tongue rising to greet his. Her weight shifted in an attempt to turn into his kiss. He tamped down a surge of need.

Not yet.

Reluctantly, he eased back. With a final, gentle nip at her lower lip, he pulled away.

After a moment, her eyes drifted open, questions mirrored in their depths. Yes. The first pinch of desire held her in its grip. Now to let it simmer for a while until she was mad for the next jolt.

He settled her back to his chest once more. Her rounded backside cradled his erection. A small flinch accompanied the contact, but then she settled in. He inhaled the clean scent of her hair mingled with the merest tang of her arousal.

Dear God, she was already wet for him. He nearly groaned aloud at the thought. Though he dearly wanted to slip his fingers beneath her chemise and test that theory, he forced himself to lie still and listen to her breathing.

The longer he drew this out, the longer he withheld the ultimate pleasure for them both, the greater the reward in the end.

He steeled himself to patience. “How about now?”

“What?”

“Can you think now?”

“What was the question again?”

He smiled into her hair. “I want to hear your fondest childhood memory.”

“Will you tell me yours?”

“Yes, if you tell me yours first.”

For another moment, silence reigned, giving Benedict ample time to consider other means of distraction. Delicious means. Before this day was out, he meant to discover every last spot on her body that elicited a response.

“Do you remember that hollow tree?” she said at last.

“Yes.”

He did, clearly. A giant oak stood near the borders of Clareton House just over the boundary of the family’s
seat. Its enormous trunk encompassed a space in the center, and a crack large enough to admit a child on hands and knees split its base.

Although Julia had made the initial discovery, he’d always thought of the tree as Sophia’s realm. It was her faerie castle. The dried leaves on the hollow’s floor stood in place of rushes, the peeling inner bark tapestries to her child’s imagination.

The moment their governess learned the source of their tattered hems and stained skirts, the St. Claire girls were forbidden from playing there. Naturally, whenever they could escape her vigilance, they made directly for that tree.

“I thought you hated pretending to be a princess locked in a tower waiting for a prince to come riding to your rescue,” he said.

She nodded. “I only played at that because Sophia was older, and she insisted. The days I managed to slip off by myself, she could not tell me what to imagine.”

“What did you imagine, then, when you were alone?”

She turned her face into the pillow, so that her next words were muffled. “You’ll laugh.”

He smoothed a palm along her arm. “I give you my word I won’t.”

Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the ceiling. “I wanted to fly. I wanted to feel the wind on my face and in my hair. I wanted to soar and be part of the sky.”

He propped his head on his hand and looked down on her. The blankets had slipped to her waist. The fine lawn of her chemise was sheer enough to reveal the dusky shadows of her nipples. His throat went dry at the thought of taking one in his mouth, his tongue moistening the fabric to transparency, his lips teasing the peak into a taut bud.

Her eyes slipped to capture his. “Do you remember that day?”

“In the hollow tree? There were so many.”

“Not in it, precisely. Up it.”

A sudden memory snapped into focus. An eleven-year-old Julia, her pale muslin gown stained beyond repair, inched her way out onto a high branch, and then, carefully, pushed herself upright, her arms flailing for balance.

“You came galloping up on that awful beast of yours.”

“I beg to differ. In all my life, I’ve never ridden anything that could be classified as an awful beast.”

She folded her arms, pressing her breasts into two tempting mounds that swelled above the edge of her chemise. “You did when you were fourteen.”

“Bucephalus?”

Julia shuddered. “That was its name. It was so poorly behaved.”

“He was a handful,” Benedict allowed. Too much of a handful for a fourteen-year-old youth, in his father’s opinion. Naturally, Benedict had taken his father up on the challenge whenever he could sneak away from his tutor.

“More than a handful. That thing reared the moment you shouted at me to come down. He went up and up until I was certain he’d fall over backward on you.”

“But you were the one who fell.”

“I was so frightened, I could not help myself.”

He recalled heart-pounding fear of his own at the sight of her crumpled form in the path, so close to Bucephalus’s deadly hooves. How easily he might have trampled her. “How is this your most cherished memory? You turned your ankle.”

“That isn’t it. It was what happened next.” Was that an actual blush staining her cheeks?

For he remembered, as clearly is if it had been yesterday and not eleven years ago, reining his horse. Scrambling to
the ground. Rushing to her side. Those wide hazel eyes had stood out against her pale skin. They seemed to pierce straight through to his soul. Tears welled, magnifying the green and gold flecks of her irises. The muscles of her throat worked to hold in a sob.

Even then she didn’t want to display the full range of her emotions. Within the next hour, he planned to cure her of that reserve. He wanted to touch her at such a depth that she could no longer hold her passion in check.

“All I did was pluck you off the ground.”

She shook her head. “You made certain I was all right. You checked to see that nothing was broken. You were so gentle.”

The thought of touching her somewhere so forbidden as her ankle had scandalized his fourteen-year-old self—it had scandalized him because she was only eleven, still a little girl. He should never have blushed at the notion, nor at lifting her into his arms and settling her on Bucephalus’s back.

“I put you on that awful beast, as you call him.”

“I know, and that was more frightening than watching him rear.”

Her face had gone white as chalk. He’d been afraid she’d faint, until he felt the bite of her fingers on his wrist. Strong as iron, her grip.

He nudged her. “You never were much for horses. That’ll have to change.”

“You’re not getting me up on one of your beasts.”

“Not even if I’m there to keep you from falling?”

A blush crept from beneath her chemise. He watched it inch higher until it stained her cheeks. “I might allow it then.”

He fitted his palm to her jawline, his fingers grazing the pulse just below her ear. It quickened beneath his touch, as he turned her eyes to meet his. “Is that so?”

“It’d be like that day once more, when you saw me home.”

“You were so scared, you couldn’t even look.” She’d buried her face in his chest the moment he scrambled on behind her.

“You rode so fast.”

“You were hurt. I needed to get you home quickly.”

The muscles in her throat jumped as she swallowed. “When I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine I was flying.”

“Julia.” He let his hand slide along her neck and farther. His fingers skimmed the ridges of her collarbones.

“Yes?” The word burst from her lips on an outrush of air.

“Do you still want to fly?” His hand slipped another inch to rest on the upper curve of her breast.

She pressed her shoulders into the mattress, a subtle inclination toward him, a slight arch of her back. A silent, unconscious plea from her body for more. Oh, yes, she wanted to fly, whether or not she knew it.

She covered his hand with her palm, her fingers curling about his. “It was no more than a childish fancy.”

“There is more than one way to fly.” He leaned in until their lips were a hairsbreadth apart. “Let me show you.”

S
HE
closed the distance between them. Bold of her, yes, but he aroused that feeling. He awakened a sense of fierceness, of recklessness and restlessness entwined. The sort of recklessness that had led her to slip away from both Sophia and Miss Mallory to attempt flight.

Not long afterward, she’d learned to clamp such feelings down, to lock them away in her heart. But sometimes at night when sleep eluded her, she would close her eyes and recall for a few delicious moments what racing home
on the back of that ravening beast of a horse had felt like. Locked within Benedict’s arms, she’d experienced heart-pounding fear, but mingled with it was a joyous rush that made her stomach clench, flip, and, yes, soar.

For that one brief moment in time, she thought she knew what it felt like to fly. And now he promised her another chance. She had only to let go and seize it.

He pressed his mouth to hers, following her lead. His body stretched over her, his solid weight pushing her into the yielding feather tick. Beneath it, the bed ropes groaned.

She disentangled their fingers and set her hand on his bare shoulder. Corded muscles bunched beneath her touch. His tongue thrust deep into her mouth, but just as quickly, he pulled away to rain kisses across her cheeks.

The hot rush of his breath tickled her chin. His lips trailed lower, his tongue seeking out the delicate ridge of her collarbone before pressing onward. Her fingers pushed into the thick waves of his hair, and he dipped his head farther.

His lips teased along the edge of her chemise. Raising his gaze to capture hers, he paused. Goodness. The sight of him in dawn’s glow, looming above her without a stitch of clothing, his black hair falling about his face in wild waves, his eyes darkened to midnight with pure need.

A wild thrill, a rush of terror and fascination entwined, clawed through her midsection.