Tempting Fate (29 page)

“You,” he snapped, whirling around and jabbing an ac-cussing finger at her. “
You’ve
gotten into me.”

Later, she would think that a very lovely sentiment. At present, however, she just found it baffling. “What on earth are you talking about?”

He raised his finger up an inch, much in the manner of someone about to deliver a vehement lecture. Willing to indulge him—a little—if it meant getting some answers, she waited. And waited…

“Whit?”

He dropped his finger. “I was going to yell at you.”

“Yes, I could tell. Care to tell me why?”

He hesitate before answering, his brow furrowed in thought. “I can’t stand the idea of something happening to you,” he finally admitted softly.

She didn’t need time to appreciate that particular sentiment. She could have used a bit of it to come up with an appropriate response, however, because all she could think to say was, “Oh.”

“The very thought of it, of you coming to harm, had me standing outside your door for the last ten minutes, arguing with myself like some sort of lunatic—”

“You’ve been fuming outside my door for the last ten minutes?” She found herself grinning, rather pleased with the image. “Really?”

His lips twitched and the lines across his brow disappeared. “Yes, really. And I—”

“Were you pacing?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Were you pacing?” she repeated. “Or were you standing still, clenching your jaw at the door?”

He ran his tongue across his teeth. “I can’t imagine why it would matter.”

“It doesn’t, particularly,” she replied with a shrug. “Except that I’d like to have a clear picture of it in my mind, to use later when you’re laughing over my hand in the jar.”

He laughed softly now, as she had hoped he would. “I wasn’t pacing. I was standing quite still, thinking I should storm in here and shout at you.”

“But you didn’t,” she pointed out. “Didn’t shout, anyway.”

“No,” he agreed and crossed the room to stand in front of her. “How could I? I’m angry with your uncle, not you. And you were just standing there, looking so quiet and patient, and—”

“Confused,” she added for him.

“Lovely,” he corrected and reached up to cup her face. “How is it I never before noticed how lovely you are?”

She opened her mouth…closed it again. “You say these things at random intervals just to unnerve me, don’t you?”

“It is fun to watch you flounder,” he admitted. “But I say them at random simply because they occur to me that way.”

He caught a lock of her hair and rubbed it between his fingers. “Soft. I thought of it on our walk around the lake, the way the darker strands blend into the softer browns.”

She licked her lips nervously. “Like a chestnut.”

“The color’s the same.” He reached up to gently trace the arch of one eyebrow with his thumb. “I thought of your eyes, dark and rich—”

“Chocolate.”

“Chocolate,” he agreed. “—while I was undressing in my room, the night we agreed to a truce.”

Her brain snagged on one comment. “While you were undressing?”

“Yes. I think of you at the damndest times…your skin, your lips, and the beauty mark just above them.” His hand moved to cup the back of her neck. “This tender spot just below your ear.”

“You do?”

“Mm-hm.” He pulled her closer, and closer still, until he spoke against her lips and she felt the heat of it down to her toes. “And I think of this, nearly every waking moment of the day.”

He kissed her then. Not with the softness he’d shown in the past and not with the wildness she’d experienced the night of the ball, but with a fierce determination that frightened and excited her.

His mouth moved strongly over hers, demanding she give, and yield, and take. Until she could do nothing but obey. His hands moved to stroke possessively—down her arms, up her back and down again. She felt the warmth in the wake of every touch.

He caught her around under the knees and hauled her into his arms. The sudden move made her gasp, as did the the feel of his arousal pressing against her hip when he settled on the edge of the bed with her in his lap. He nipped at her ear and snuck a hand under her skirt to stroke her calf.

“Whit, I—”

“Shh.” He pressed his lips to the side of her neck just below
her ear. He’d been right, she thought with a ragged breath, it was tender there.

He moved down toward her shoulder, pressing kisses along the way. Aroused, and uncertain what to do with that feeling, she struggled against him. “Whit—”

“Shh. Let me, Mirabelle,” he whispered, and she felt a shudder tear through her at the sensation of his hot breath against her skin. “Just for a moment. I’ll stop when you ask. I promise.”

Stop? Why the devil would she want him to stop? She’d only wanted to say something nice, something sweet and poetic as he had. She only wanted to get closer, damn it.

Frustrated, she reached up to tangle her hands in his hair and brought his roving mouth back to hers. She kissed him with all the determination and possessiveness he’d shown that night, all the desperation they’d felt in the carriage, and all the restless desire she felt now.

She kissed him with all her heart and the deepest wish that he could see inside it.

A growl worked in his throat. And the next thing she knew, she was lying down, his weight pressing her firmly into the mattress.

“I’ll stop,” he whispered again, even as his hands worked under her to undo the buttons of her gown. “I’ll stop if you want me to.”

She tugged his coat down his shoulders in response.

They pulled and yanked, tearing at clothes in a frenzied rush to find the skin underneath. He caught her hand as she reached for his buttons of his breeches.

“Not yet, Mirabelle. Not yet.”

She gaped at her hand in his. Had she really just tried to do that? Was she supposed to do that? She swallowed hard and met his eyes. “I don’t know what to do.”

“I do,” he whispered gently. “Let me show you.”

She dipped her head in a nod, then closed her eyes on a
sigh as he bent his head to press kisses along her collarbone, careful to be gentle where the skin was still tender from her fall. “No thinking, Mirabelle. Just feel.”

“Yes.” She sighed again. “Oh, yes.”

That sound, that incredible sound of a woman yielding, nearly drove Whit over the edge. He struggled in his need to be gentle, and in his need to ravish. He’d never wanted like this. Not even when he’d been a green boy, panting after everything in skirts, had he ached so painfully for a woman. If she’d touched him, if he’d let her fingers continue on their quest to free him, he wouldn’t have lasted.

He lifted his head to watch her for a moment while his hand brushed down to mold a breast. He’d managed to pull her dress off—all the while thinking that when they were married, he was going to order her an entire wardrobe of gowns with oversized button holes—and now he reveled in the soft skin her thin chemise left exposed.

He brushed a thumb across a nipple and watched as it peaked through the material. Her answering moan shot a shiver of lust through his system. His fingers glided along the neck of the chemise, gently pulling it back to expose her.

“It’s…it’s not the blue chemise,” she whispered with a hint of apology.

“It’s perfect,” he heard himself tell her in a voice gone hoarse. “You’re perfect.”

If she responded, he didn’t hear her. With his own blood roaring in his head, he gathered the material at the hem and bunched it up to pull it over her head before laying her back down again.

“Beautiful.”

He took his time with her, torturing them both by tasting, sampling, teasing. He explored every inch of her form and delighted in its curves and dips, the subtle flare of her hips, the flat expanse of her stomach.

She moaned and twisted beneath him, and when she gave
a soft cry and raked her nails down his back as he brushed at the heat between her legs, he gave in to the desire to take.

To distract her, and please himself, he kissed her hard and deep as he stripped off his breeches and tossed them aside.

“Put your legs around me, imp.”

She complied blindly, and this time it was he who gasped as he slipped into her wet entrance that first inch. He stayed there, caught between bliss and agony. His arms shook as he fought back the painful urge to just finish the job in one glorious push.

He could be gentle. He
would
be gentle.

He kissed her softly as he eased inside, seducing her body into accepting his. He waited for her to cry out, to tell him to stop.

But she only wrapped herself more tightly around him and kissed him back.

Until he came to the barrier that marked her as an innocent. He almost offered to stop. Almost. He was only a man, for pity’s sake.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he whispered instead. And with a strong surge of his hips, pushed through to bury himself completely inside.

She unwrapped herself in a thrice. “Oh, ouch!”

He dropped his forehead to hers. “I’m sorry, imp. Give it a minute. Just a minute.”

A minute turned into two, and then three as he courted her again with long kisses and soft caresses. He whispered in her ear, sweet nonsense that made her smile and sigh, wicked nonsense that made her blush and squirm.

When her body relaxed under his again, he shifted his hips cautiously, gauging her reaction as he began to move inside her.

Her reaction was everything he could have hoped for and more. She moved with him, her arms banding around his shoulders as her legs once again banded around his waist.

In the soft light of two flickering candles, they rose together. She striving for something she couldn’t name. He striving to keep himself from grabbing that something before she had the chance.

He listened to her breath quicken, her soft cries grow faster and higher in pitch, and he willed her to reach out and take.

When she did, when she shuddered and bucked in his arms, he let himself go.

A full moon on a cloudless night can create a play of light and shadow that renders even the dreariest view an interesting landscape of black and grey. From his position in the woods at the edge of the side lawn—which was inarguably a very dreary view under most conditions—McAlistair sat and frowned at the scene before him. Pretty it might be, but convenient it was not. Better it be black as pitch so he could move across the ground without being seen.

Ah well, he had hidden in the bright sun of midday before this. Gone unseen and unheard in well-lit ballrooms and crowded bazaars.

He stood, stretched, picked his path, and moved forward to glide among the shadows. He crossed the lawn in long silent strides. His gaze tracked a brief flickering of light on the second floor before returning to the stable.

A man was waiting for him inside. Well, perhaps waiting was a poor choice of words, as it implied a kind of welcome. This man was crouched behind a stall door and taking aim with a gun.

Wasn’t the first time, McAlistair reminded himself. He said nothing, only waited as the crouching man looked him over, then grunted and straightened, tall and sure, before lowering the pistol.

“Come then, have you?”

McAlistair nodded in response.

“Wondered if he might be after sending you. Seems he’s after sending near to everyone.”

He thought of the note left for him at his camp. “Orders,” was all he said. Orders to watch and protect.

“True enough. Though it might have been wise to have sent me some sort of warning. It’s lucky you are I didn’t blow a hole through you.”

He shrugged.

The other man rolled his shoulders. “It’s coming to an end, I suppose. About bleeding time.” He jerked his head at a stall at the end of the aisle. “Not much more to do now than wait. I’ve some pilfered brandy hidden, if you’re wanting it.”

McAlistair considered it. “Wouldn’t mind.”

Twenty-two

M
irabelle lay in a daze beneath Whit. So
that
was what her uncle and his friends spoke of so often and so crudely. She’d known, from their uncensored comments, what happened between a man and a woman behind closed doors, and she’d known, from the way they’d spoken of it, that a man found great pleasure in the act. But she hadn’t known, hadn’t even suspected…

Unable to find the words, she sighed happily.

Whit stirred and levered himself up onto his elbows. “I’m crushing you.”

“No. Well, yes,” she amended and smiled at him. “But I rather like it.”

It wasn’t exactly poetry, but it was the best she could do under the circumstances. He smiled in return, and wrapping his arms around her, rolled them both to their sides. They
stayed that way for a long moment, watching each other in contented silence. She could, she thought as drowsiness set in, look into his blue eyes for the rest of her life.

A hard howl of wind and the answering creak of wood was a swift reminder that it would be best to start the rest of her life when she wasn’t lying next to a naked man in her uncle’s home. Even if it was in her own room.

She shot up to a sitting position and made a grab for her chemise. “We should dress. What if someone heard us? What if someone comes looking? What if…”

She trailed off when she realized he’d neither moved nor responded. She looked over to find him lying still, his gaze settled somewhere below her collarbone.

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you doing?”

“Making a mental note for the future to startle you while you’re naked as often as humanly possible.”

She grabbed his shirt and tossed it at him. “Dress.”

Laughing, he caught the shirt. “None of the guests could have possibly heard us, imp. The closest room is several doors down. And none of the servants would care enough to come looking if they had—which I highly doubt.” He gave her a wicked smile. “You’re quiet in your lovemaking.”

She blushed and struggled into her chemise. “Nonetheless, I’d feel better if we were just…elsewhere. We could go to the stable.”

Whit made himself comfortable again on the bed. “Thank you, but no. I don’t fancy the idea of Christian trying to run me through.”