After the Abduction (26 page)

“And if what you say destroys my…feelings for you?”

“It won’t, I swear it.” He set down the pistol case just
inside the door, then caught her hands and lifted them to his lips, kissing them with such gentleness it made her throat ache. “But if it does, you’ll still be free to do as you please, to marry where you will.”

“How? I’ll be ruined!”

“Yes. And I’ll be ruined—my brother will be ruined—if what I tell you sends you crying to Knighton or the authorities. So we both risk something, you as much as I.” He lowered his voice to a husky thrum. “If, however, what I say doesn’t send you fleeing me in horror, then we can marry and no one will be the wiser about what we’ve done.” He smiled. “Though we may require a hastier wedding than usual.”

How crafty he was. Surely he could guess how those words, hinting of a future for them with children and happiness and a real marriage, would affect her. Suddenly, she could envision them together, surrounded by their own little ones by day, wrapped in each other’s arms by night. The image seduced her more than any estate or title.

Goodness gracious, she couldn’t believe she was actually considering his insane bargain. “When?” she asked shakily.

Naked hunger flared in his eyes. “Whenever you want. Now. Here.” He jerked his head to indicate the open door. “This cottage has a bed, you know.”

She swallowed convulsively. Feeling awkward, she quipped, “Yes, but does it have a pedestal?”

He sucked in a breath. “It has whatever you want, sweeting.” He caught her up in his arms and carried her inside. All she could do was hold on and pray she hadn’t gone completely mad. Then he kissed her with such flagrant need that she was utterly lost. His body still held heat from the forge, and his embrace was like slipping into a warm pool of wickedness. Such delicious wickedness.

He tore his lips from hers as he reached the stairs. She only had time to glimpse the cozy surroundings before he
was carrying her up and up, no doubt to the bedchamber above. Her heart pounding with an excitement she couldn’t squelch, she pressed her flaming cheeks to his chest. He smelled of fire and iron—strong, powerful smells that made her breath catch in her throat.

“Does anyone know where you are?” he asked in a rumbling voice. “How did you know to look for me out here?”

“Rosalind told me.”

Alarm swept his face. “How much does she know about us?”

“Not much. I’m not so foolish as to tell my sister I’ve been seeing you in private. But she has guessed that there’s something between us.”

“Has she?” Scant moments later, he’d kicked open the door to a small room dominated by a rumpled bed that would scarcely hold one person, much less two. Setting her down beside it, he turned her around and began unbuttoning her gown, impatiently, urgently. “Is there any chance that she and Knighton will troop out here to interrupt us?”

“They’ve gone to town for several hours.” She unpinned her hat and set it aside.

“Thank God,” he said hoarsely. He made her face him, heat flaring in his gaze as he dragged her gown off, leaving her in her filmy chemise. “I’ll need every bit of that time to make love to you as you deserve.” He skimmed her arms and hips and waist with his hands, a blind man feeling his way along uncharted territory. “Ah, sweeting, you don’t know how long I’ve waited for this.”

“Two years?” she teased, unable to resist.

A frown creased his brow. Turning away abruptly, he strode to the fireplace and bent to stoke up the nearly dead fire. “Your questions will be answered, Miss Inquisitive, but not just now. Later. After we’ve sealed our bargain.”

Not just now. Later.
That rankled. It echoed too closely
the way he’d treated her during the kidnapping—with the indulgence of a man in complete control.

“Everything is always as you want, isn’t it?” She unpinned her hair, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “You snap your fingers, and we all come to attention. You must always hold the reins, always be the one to say when and where things are done.”

He stalked back toward her, his eyes glittering dangerously. “What do you mean?”

“Charnwood. The kidnapping. Telling me the truth.” She shook her hair out. “
Everything.
Everything follows your timetable. You dictate your terms, and we all must accept them. You won’t tell me the truth without making love to me, so here I am.”

As if in a trance, he reached up to stroke the blond strands where they fell over her shoulders. “I didn’t ask you to seek me out. Not when you first came to Charnwood and not today. You began this discussion—not I. You could have stayed far away from me. Even now, you could go back to London and refuse my offer. I would never force you.”

“I know that. But leaving without knowing the truth is no choice for me.” When uncertainty clouded his face, she added quickly, “Don’t misunderstand me—I want this bargain. Not only because I want the truth, but—”

She swallowed, a little embarrassed. Yet she’d said she wanted honesty between them. “But also because I want to share your bed. Even if that makes me the most wicked creature in England. I don’t even care what you tell me afterward—that’s how badly I want it.” She managed a wan smile. “I suppose I thought to get the token resistance out of the way. Because we both know once you start kissing me I turn into a puddle of mush.”

“Do you?” he said huskily and stepped closer.

The clear satisfaction on his face peeved her a little. “Of course. It’s exceedingly annoying. I hate how you win
every time, how you always gain the upper hand, with the kidnapping and your chess pieces and trapping me on that pedestal. And I hate that you know it.”

Indecision flickered in his features as he glanced away and dragged his fingers through his hair. “I didn’t realize how it affected you.”

“Don’t let it bother you,” she said dryly. “Soon, it won’t even bother me.”

“But I don’t want you to feel that way with me. I don’t want you to feel forced.”

“I don’t feel forced, not exactly.”

“What if I…let you hold the reins for this?”

“Meaning what?”

“Why don’t you take charge of our lovemaking? At least until you feel comfortable.”

What an odd suggestion. So why did it send a strange thrill coursing through her veins? “I wouldn’t know how to begin. I’ve never been with any man but you.”

His eyes gleamed down at her with intense satisfaction. “I know.”

“And you have so much experience—”

“So I’m not an inept dullard, after all?”

She sniffed. “You aren’t inept at anything, as you know very well, you devil.”

That earned her a broad smile. “All the same, you might feel more comfortable if you set the pace, have some control.” He held up his hands, palms out, in a gesture of complete surrender. “I’m at your mercy, madam. What do you want from me?”

For a moment, she was at a complete loss. It was ridiculous really, and a bit embarrassing, to think she could tell him how to proceed. Yet their afternoon in the conservatory had taught her a little of what men and women did together. And what felt good and what she liked. Combined with what her sisters had told her, perhaps she could blunder through some of it.

Besides, at this moment she knew precisely what she wanted. “Kiss me.” When he grinned and started toward her, she said, “No, wait. Take off your shirt first.”

He halted, bemused. “Whatever madam wants.”

He unfastened his cuffs, and her mouth went dry. She really was going to do this.

Yet it felt strange to just stand here and watch him undress. Glancing nervously about her, she noticed the disordered sheets on the bed. “Have you been sleeping here?”

“Last night, that’s all.”

“But I went to your bedchamber one night—” She stopped, realizing how that sounded.

He paused to shoot her a burning glance. “Did you?”

With a defiant little toss of her head, she muttered, “Yes, and you weren’t there.”

“You must have come too early. I haven’t been sleeping much lately.” As he dragged his shirt over his head, his voice grew muffled. “I labor in the forge to the point of exhaustion, then fall into bed in the wee hours and rise at dawn.”

“Why?”

Tossing the shirt aside, he stepped close to fold her in his arms. “You have to ask?”

The stark need in his face spoke volumes. “No,” she whispered. “I haven’t slept much myself this week.”

With a pleased smile, he bent his head to kiss her, but she pressed her finger to his lips. “Not yet. I want to look at you first.” The faintest irritation flickered in his eyes, filling her with a mischievous delight. “You don’t like giving up control, do you?”

“I didn’t expect you to take to it so well, you teasing minx,” he grumbled.

Easing back from him, she ran her hands down his chest as she’d wanted to do earlier in the forge. It was as eloquently crafted as any of his pistols, and far more dangerous to her peace of mind. She rubbed her thumbs over
his flat male nipples, and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing madly.

Her heart leaped at that sign of his vulnerability to her touch. She could get used to holding the reins. Knowing his reluctance to relinquish anything, she’d best take full advantage of this opportunity, since she might never have it again.

She let her hands roam his ribs, his trim belly, even his shadowed navel. “You have a magnificent body, you know,” she told him.

“So speaks the woman with the wealth of experience,” he choked out.

She gave his chest a little shove. “It’s too awful of you to throw my inexperience in my face.”

“Trust me, sweeting, you make up in enthusiasm for what you lack in experience.”

“Somewhere in there is an insult, I think.” She skimmed her hands down to the fall of his breeches. “But I don’t care.”

“I meant no insult at all.” He sucked in a sharp breath as she unfastened two buttons of his breeches. When he spoke again, he sounded as if he were strangling. “I like enthusiasm. I love enthusiasm. I much prefer it to the opposite.”

“Even if decent, respectable young ladies aren’t supposed to—”

“Yes, even if.” He shivered when she slipped loose the other two buttons. “I…I prefer an enthusiastic woman to a respectable woman any day. Decent young ladies can be deuced boring.”

She laughed. “I suppose they can.” Being a respectable young lady had gained her nothing but loneliness. Decency did seem highly overrated at times.

She stared down at his breeches, satisfied to see them bulge every bit as obviously as they had that day in the conservatory. “And do you find me boring?” she teased.

His gaze burned into her. “You know the answer to that.”

“Kiss me,” she whispered.

That was all it took to have his arms around her, his mouth on hers. She met it with all the eagerness of a wanton, and oddly enough felt no remorse. She was about to abandon everything she’d been taught, and she didn’t care.

Because she knew no one else would ever satisfy her.
That
was why she’d never considered any other man from the day she’d met him. It was why she now prayed she could accept his explanations. The thought of life without him had simply become too unbearable to contemplate.

His hand slid up to fondle her breast through her chemise, and for a moment she rose to it, reveled in the deft caress. But when he then slipped his hand beneath the muslin with a husband’s possessiveness, she shoved him away.

He was breathing heavily, his eyes black as the devil’s soul. “Let me touch you,” he whispered. “I want to touch you, sweeting.”

She shook her head wordlessly. She was probably being perverse, since she wanted him to touch her more than anything. But she didn’t want him taking it as he took everything else. For once she wanted to give it to him. “You said I could hold the reins.”

His hands fell into fists at his sides. “Indeed I did. Though I’m starting to regret it.”

With a chuckle, she considered what to do next. Not tell him to touch her, because then she’d be falling in with his wishes. Instead, she flicked her hand to indicate his breeches. “Take those off,” she ordered. “The breeches and your shoes and stockings.”

His eyebrows arched high on his forehead. But he did it, all the while keeping his eyes on her with wary uncertainty. “Aren’t you going to remove your chemise, sweeting?” he asked in the compelling thrum of a voice that usually dissolved her insides.

“Not yet,” she responded, though she blushed. “I get to look my fill first.”

“Then shall I remove my drawers, too? Or is that too much for you?”

The hint of mockery in his smile told her he knew very well that it was. Which was precisely why she would make him do it. “Y-yes, take them off.”

She couldn’t believe she was doing this shocking thing, ordering him to strip down to nothing for her. She couldn’t believe he was letting her.

Apparently, he couldn’t either. With a faint look of surprise, he divested himself of the glove-tight scrap of stockingette and set his “thing” free. He stood motionless while she gaped at it transfixed, fascinated by its nest of dusky hair, its smooth length…its immensity.

What had he called it before? His John Thomas. Leave it to men to name the thing, as if it were a person. And such a respectable name, too, for what looked terribly improper—bold and reckless and belligerently male. Anything that could lie so dormant inside a man’s breeches, yet in an instant become this amazing wonder of flesh, had a dangerously unpredictable nature.

The longer she looked, the more it stiffened, so she prolonged his torment, strolling around him in a circle to survey his physique from every angle. My oh my oh my. So this was how Sebastian looked beneath his breeches—all muscle and taut skin and impossibly hard flesh.

When she returned to the front of him, she marveled again at the astonishing rigidity of his “thing.” “C-can I touch it?” she whispered, remembering what she’d done in the conservatory.

“Oh God, yes!” he growled.

Tentatively she stroked a finger along his heated length. When it jerked beneath her touch, she yanked her finger back, murmuring an apology. But he grabbed her hand and closed it around him, urging her to grip it tightly.