The Devilish Montague (32 page)

He was a lucky, lucky man.

She covered her bosom with her arm and kept her back to him but did not demand that he leave. After all, he’d seen most of her in bits and pieces. Just not whole, like this, like Venus rising from the sea. Blake swallowed hard.

“My hair?” she inquired cautiously.

He would trade his right hand to touch that glorious mane of silvery gold, but she already owned too much of him, so he kept that sentiment to himself. Kneeling beside the tub, he gently sought and removed each pin, digging his fingers through thick silk and trying not to groan too loud with pleasure.

“Perhaps you should take off your waistcoat and shirt so they won’t get wet?” she suggested once her hair tumbled to cover her back and shoulders.

In a surge of delight that his wife wasn’t shy—and that she didn’t object to where he hoped this was going—Blake threw his old leather waistcoat across the room, then unwrapped his neckcloth.

She peeked daringly over her shoulder to watch. Pretending not to notice, he peeled his linen from the band of his trousers and slowly drew the shirt upward, revealing his bare chest one rib at a time, stretching his arms over his head so she could see all of him.

He feared his trouser buttons would pop when she gasped and hurriedly returned to splashing in the water. Inordinately pleased that she seemed to appreciate what she’d seen, he let his shirt join her gown on the floor and reached for the pitcher beside the tub. “Duck and let me pour this over your hair.”

She obeyed, probably for the first and last time, Blake thought with a mental smile as he soaked handfuls of flaxen tresses.

“Are you staying warm?” he asked, taking the scented soap she handed him.

“Yes, very,” she said in a husky voice.

He wasn’t a man who smiled often, but he thought he might crack his face with the grin spreading across it. He had her hot and naked. One step at a time. . . .

“Will you bathe when I am done?” she asked as he pressed suds through her hair.

And terrify her with his great throbbing rod? He didn’t think so. “Another time.”

She pondered that, or kept her mouth shut so soapy water didn’t drown her. Blake applied all his vast concentration to removing every bit of soap from her hair. And still his gaze drifted over her shoulder, to the wet globes of her breasts. Suds ran down the curves, lingering at aroused nipples, and he didn’t know how much longer he could withstand temptation.

When she bent her knee and propped her foot on the tub’s edge so she might run a soapy cloth over her leg, Blake learned the limits of his restraint.

 

Rubbing the cloth over her knee, Jocelyn didn’t think she’d teased her husband on purpose. She was many things, but a wanton was not one of them. It was just . . . Blake was behaving with such composure that she needed to know if their passionate wedding afternoon had been a fluke or if he truly desired her.

She didn’t have a great deal of experience with desire. She simply knew she was naked, and he wasn’t touching her. And she wanted him to. Very, very much, she wanted his hands on her skin. Her body seemed to require it, even though she suspected she shouldn’t encourage him or herself. She leaned over farther to scrub her toes.

She was a simple woman with simple hungers. Perhaps just this once . . .

No
. For many reasons, that was a very bad idea.

At his hungry growl, she hastily returned her foot to the water.

“The towel, please,” she said stiffly, having no idea how she would smile her way out of this predicament.

She was about to oppose a very angry man. One justified in his anger. She felt guilty that she had not opposed him from the start. He’d offered her this lovely bath and been all that was kind and said wonderful things—for Blake, anyway. And because he said them, she knew he meant what he said. It wasn’t polite flattery.

She had wanted to please him. But she couldn’t.

What she was about to do was unconscionable. And she had to do it, for her family’s sake as well as her own.

Instead of handing her a towel, he began drying her hair with it. Jocelyn wanted to weep at his attentive care. Blake had the ability to apply his entire concentration to what he was doing. It would be so wonderful to give herself up to his ministrations. . . .

“Please, Blake,” she murmured helplessly. “I cannot do this. I simply cannot.”

His comforting strokes froze, then resumed, a little more cautiously. “Do what, precisely?” he asked without inflection.

“Anything!” she said in exasperation at her inability to express herself. She smacked the water, splashing droplets onto the rug. “It doesn’t matter what I
want.
It’s just that I
cannot.
”

“You’re afraid I’ll hurt you?” he asked in that professorial tone he adopted when addressing a problem. “Has someone else hurt you?”

That last sounded a little more explosive, and Jocelyn waved her hand to dismiss whatever he had in his head. “No, never. Just give me the towel, please. We’ve discussed this. I thought I could, but I simply can’t. I have to think of my family first.
You
may not want me to look after you, but
they
need my care.”

He stopped rubbing her hair, and Jocelyn refused to glance over her shoulder. She had blatantly asked that he strip to his trousers, and now she would have to suffer the consequences if she looked or touched. Her husband was a powerful male animal, and she didn’t have the willpower to resist him. Although if he was scowling at her . . . she might simply die of heartbreak.

Instead of handing her a dry towel, Blake abruptly wrapped the cloth around her and hauled her, dripping, out of the tub.

Jocelyn bit back a shriek.

He turned her around until only the thin towel was between her breasts and his bare chest. Effortlessly, he held her off the floor so she couldn’t even touch her toes to the ground. She squirmed, but learned the danger of that quickly enough. Blake’s muscled arms tightened, and she simply wanted to curl up in his embrace, rest her head on his powerful shoulder, and submit.

“Let me clarify,” he growled in her ear, since she wouldn’t look up at him. “You won’t go to bed with me because I won’t let you take care of me?”

That didn’t sound right. She shook her wet hair. “You don’t
need
me, but Richard and my mother do. And a baby would. What happens if you die and I lose the house and have a baby to raise with no roof over my head? I cannot do it. I just cannot.”

“I am not going to die,” he said most emphatically. “Look at me,” he added. When she still did not, he ran a hand downward, cupping her nearly bare buttock.

Jocelyn gasped at the river of heat flowing through her midsection with that intimate touch. She turned a glare upward to his scowl. “Put me down!”

“No. Not until we have this out. We are married. I am not a monk.”

She offered him a sweet smile and fluttering eyelashes. “Perhaps I wish to be a nun.”

“Stop that!” he roared.

She blinked and stared. “Stop what?”

“Pacifying me with simpers. Now that I know you have a brain in your head, it won’t work.” He let her feet touch the ground so he could begin rubbing the towel over her rapidly cooling skin. “Simper at idiots, if you will, but if we’re to live together, we have to
talk.
”

She gasped again as his big hands rubbed the linen over her breasts, then downward, to places where no man should stray. “Stop that.” She grabbed the towel and tugged, but he wouldn’t release the cloth that was the only thing halfway covering her.

And he wasn’t exactly decent, either. She tried not to stare at aroused male nipples or the way his muscles rippled across his chest when he tugged the towel—and her—toward him.

She gazed in fascination at the line of darker skin above his half-unbuttoned trousers, where the stripe of hair disappeared downward. Then jerked her attention back to the stubborn set of his jaw. “What is there to talk about? I tell you no, and you say I can’t. That rather limits conversation.
Simpering
is far easier than arguing with mule-headed men who won’t listen.”

“I’m listening. You’re not.” He picked her up again and dropped her onto the bed.

The bed with roses on the pillow—both peace offering and seduction. Jocelyn thought her heart really would break as she rolled up in the coverlet. Concealment didn’t help as much as she hoped. She still had to look at
his
nakedness and feel the desire nagging at her to give up, give in, and learn more of those mysteries to which he’d introduced her.

“What else can you say that will make any difference?” she cried in both anger and desperation.

“Good. Now you’re being honest. Scream at me if you will. Hit me, if you must. I can take it.” He sat down on the bed and began removing his shoes.

She hit him. She smacked him hard on his broad brown back. He didn’t even flinch. Nor did he protest or hit her back. He merely dropped a shoe and glared over his shoulder.

“I don’t know how to make you trust me,” he said. “I have told you there are ways of reducing the chances of babies, but if you won’t believe me, then what else can I do?”

She wanted to fling her arms around his neck and say,
Yes, yes, I believe you! Make love to me. I want babies, beautiful babies.

Instead, she wept. And smacked him again, just because it felt good to express frustration over what she felt and couldn’t say.

His other shoe hit the floor. She eased to the far side of the bed. He grabbed her arm and turned to face her, but he wasn’t scowling.

“Give me tonight. Give me our wedding night. The odds of creating a child in one night are very slim. Take a chance, Jocelyn.”

“I’m tired of taking chances!” Jocelyn shouted, jerking her arm from his grasp. “I’m the one who must deal with babies, not you. Why can I not have security for a change? Certainty. Just a minute to breathe without wondering whether I’ll be thrown from my home tomorrow? Do you have any idea how many times I’ve found our trunks sitting on the doorstep and the unwelcome sign hung on the door?
Four!
” she shouted. “Four times I’ve been thrown from my home. In
six
years!”

“Very good.” Her overbearing, impossible, much-too-handsome husband swung around and captured her wrists, pushing her back to the rose-petaled pillow. “Now you’re being honest.”

She fought futilely against his greater strength, more out of frustration and fury than any fear that he might force her to do what she didn’t want.

She’d married an honorable gentleman.
She wanted to weep, torn between her desire to love and adore him and her need to be safe.

“You could die tomorrow!” she shouted.

“So could you,” he pointed out with infuriating logic. “We all must die someday. Is that any reason to stop living now?”

“Quit being so blasted reasonable.” She hurled herself upward, attempting to unbalance him and push him over.

He merely caught her arms and rolled onto his back, carrying her with him so she stared down at his stubbornly set jaw. Blake might be honorable, but he was the most obstinate man alive. Surrender wasn’t in his nature. And she couldn’t pound the stuffing out of him while wearing nothing.

“One night,” he insisted, “and I will do nothing that causes babies.”

She glared down at him. “How is that possible?”

“I’ve already shown you one way. Trust me.”

He wouldn’t plead, but there was an urgent passion behind his words that she seldom heard from this self-possessed man. She longed with all her heart and soul to respond to it. He needed
her.
Flighty, useless, silly
her.
It seemed impossible. Improbable. And he was admitting it! Almost.

What he had already shown her had been so glorious . . . she was terrified of knowing more. Of trusting.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” he asked when she said nothing.

She shook her head vigorously. “Not of you. I married you because you’re a man of honor.” But she wasn’t ready to back down. “That doesn’t mean you’re any more useful than any other male on the planet.”

He chuckled deep in his throat, an erotic sound that sent ripples up and down her skin. Before she could resist, he rolled her back to the bed, and his powerful torso pinned her to the mattress. And still, she wasn’t afraid. Just wary. Only a thin sheet and his trousers separated them.

“I can be immensely useful, if only you will give me a chance,” he informed her. “Don’t be like those mummified corpses at Whitehall, refusing to accept new ideas. Somewhere beneath all the pretty hair you conceal a very smart mind. Open it up for me.”

“I do?” she asked in wonder, hiding the inane urge to touch her hair as if she could detect what he saw. He’d said something similar earlier, but she had dismissed it as flattery. But Blake didn’t flatter. She studied his face to see if he was laughing at her and saw only desire in his eyes. “You think I’m smart?” she whispered.

“You’re smart enough to catch me,” he returned, although he grinned as he said it. When she tried to punch him again, he pinned her wrists to the pillow. “Neither your brother nor your mother are witless, just eccentric in their knowledge. You’re no different. You’ve simply chosen to specialize in people, as I do puzzles. That does not make you stupid.”

“I know I’m not stupid,” she said irritably, wiggling beneath his greater weight, unable to think straight while all her senses were filled with raw male power. “But I’m not schoolbook smart.”

“Do you want to be?” He leaned over and kissed her cheek, then nibbled her ear.

Jocelyn closed her eyes against the strength of desire flowing through her. “I can’t
think
like this,” she protested.

“Thinking isn’t required. Feeling is. What you need to learn isn’t in schoolbooks.” Keeping her pinned, he continued kissing and nibbling down her throat.