“You can have me, Joshua, now that you know I am not the chaste innocent you assumed. So assuage your desire for me, and see how you feel once that’s done. It’s the only way I will take seriously any proposal of marriage from you.”
“I don’t want you sacrificing yourself in some bizarre attempt to prove me a scoundrel, Gwyn. Just because Malet abandoned you after bedding you doesn’t mean I would. Not to mention—”
He caught himself before he could point out that she might find herself enceinte as a result. As long as she wanted to marry him, her finding herself with child would work in his favor by convincing her to do what she already wanted. And the thought of her, heavy with his child, made him even more eager to have her in his bed.
She was staring at him. “Not to mention what?”
“Never mind. Of course, if you happen to desire me—”
“Did you think I was pretending to desire you last night? Because surely you could tell I was not.”
He groaned. She had a point. And if she desired him, that was an entirely different matter. “You are no harlot,” he rasped. “But you’re definitely a seductress, a siren, an irresistible and enchanting—”
She kissed him. So sweetly. So erotically.
Damn it all to hell. He wanted her, and she wanted him. And if, in the process of taking her to bed, he proved to her he truly did wish to marry her, that would be all the better.
Chapter Eighteen
When he drew back to tug her mobcap off her head, Gwyn began to untie his cravat. She knew Joshua meant well. He truly thought he didn’t care about what she’d done with Lionel. But he did, of course.
She didn’t wish for Joshua to commit to some fruitlessly noble act that might result in an unhappy marriage when he merely wanted her in his bed. Besides, she wanted him in her bed, too. By following her desires and his, she’d assuage his burning need once and for all, while also having a chance to . . . to find out what swiving was like with the only man she’d cared for in the past ten years.
So she drew off his cravat and gave herself up to his next highly enticing kiss. He’d already taught her that he was very good at kisses. Particularly the sort that went beyond her ken—like the ones he’d lavished on her inner thighs and privates last night.
Just the thought of those kisses made her pulse do a mad dance.
As if he could read her mind—he seemed to do that a lot—he dragged his mouth from hers to murmur, “You said there was a bed in this room.”
Her blood caught fire. “There is.” Taking him by the hand, she drew him to the four-poster bed with its curtains drawn.
She pulled open the curtains, relieved that the bed had linens on it. She didn’t fancy having her first—possibly her only—time with Joshua take place on a bare mattress.
Then she felt Joshua unfastening her gown. Why, Lionel hadn’t even bothered to undress her—he’d just thrown up her skirts and gone right to it.
But Joshua . . . well! He neither hurried things himself nor rushed her along. And his slow motions gave her body time to prepare, time to hunger for him. Not that she needed it. She was already more than eager to have him.
He spread open the back of her gown and undid the ties of her stays to loosen them. Then he kissed along the nape of her neck.
Good Lord. The faint scrape of his evening beard against her skin was so delicious. Who could have known that a mere kiss there would make her wish to tear off her clothes and throw herself into his arms?
“Are you sure your mother won’t come looking for you?” he asked.
“I told her I didn’t feel well.” When he nipped her earlobe, she gasped. “That . . . that I was going to lie down . . . so I would feel better in time to . . . go to the opera tonight. And I told . . . my maid not to . . . bother me.”
“Will she listen?” he asked in a ragged murmur. “Or will I have to spirit you off?”
“What an intriguing . . . idea . . .”
The man knew just what to say to make her melt. And ache. Everywhere. Who would have thought it of the gruff major?
Then he slipped his hands inside her gown and around to the front so he could tug her stays down to free her breasts for his fondling. She got decidedly warm down below, even though he was caressing her through her shift. And when he thumbed her nipples erect? The thrill of it had her sighing aloud.
“I honestly don’t understand why some gentleman hasn’t snapped you up before now,” he whispered in her ear. “Don’t think I didn’t see that pile of visiting cards when we came in this afternoon. I’m not surprised. You looked like a goddess last night.” His voice hardened. “I daresay by the end of the week, half the eligible bachelors in London will be offering for you.”
She caught her breath, unsure whether to exult in his being jealous or to wonder at the way he put it, as if he half-expected her to take one of those offers. She waited for him to mention her inheritance, as he had that day at Cambridge, as if it were all she had in her favor. If he did, she would walk right out of the room.
“I hated every fellow who danced with you when I could not,” he said, “who got to talk to you and smell your lovely scent.” He nuzzled her hair. “You smell like lemons and honey, like a fresh summer rain, and your silky skin makes me want to rub you all over myself.” He paused. “That sounds odd, doesn’t it? I’m not very poetic, I’m afraid.”
Perhaps not, but sometimes he could be downright sweet. Though she didn’t think she’d better say that. Men didn’t like to be considered “sweet.”
The most important thing was that he desired her, not her money. “Oh, I’ve heard you be poetic a time or two. Though it’s not poetry I want from you just now.” She covered one of his hands and urged it down to the place between her thighs that yearned and burned for him. “I want this—you touching me in the most intimate ways. You inside me.”
He moaned. “God save me, dearling, don’t say things like that or I may finish before I’ve begun. I’m damned well about to perish just from holding you like this.” He pressed his stiffening flesh against her bottom. “Can you feel what you do to me? I’m desperate to be inside you already.”
“Then what’s stopping you?” she rasped.
“My determination to make you as mad for me as I am for you. To make you understand how badly I wish to marry you.”
When he rubbed her between her legs, she gasped. “Marriage . . . and desire are two different things.” Or a woman should keep them separate anyway. Otherwise, she could end up in serious trouble.
“How would you know? You haven’t married. Yet.” Joshua moved his other hand from her breast, but only so he could tug gently on her coiffure to dislodge her hairpins.
As he spread her long, unruly locks down her back, his voice roughened. “Your hair’s like liquid fire. You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting to run my fingers through it.”
“Then you should have tried sooner,” she teased, almost giddy with the confirmation that it wasn’t her fortune he was after.
“I doubt your family would have approved.” He stroked her hair so tenderly that a lump formed in her throat. “Probably still wouldn’t.”
She turned to face him. “So we won’t tell them.”
“At least not until you accept my offer of marriage.”
“Exactly,” she lied, his earlier words still stuck in her head: Just because Malet abandoned you after bedding you doesn’t mean I would.
There he went, being noble. She didn’t want him doing that. Besides, his proposal probably wouldn’t be forthcoming once she told him the rest of her secrets, but there was no point in bringing up any of that right now. Because before she did, she meant to have him in her bed.
She pulled at his coat, trying fruitlessly to get it off, until he took over and shrugged out of it. Running her hands down his sleeves, she marveled at the muscles she could feel bunching beneath her fingers. “This is what I’ve been wanting to do: touch you, caress you, know every part of you.”
> “Hell, Gwyn, you have a way of seducing a man with words.” He pulled on the sleeves of her gown until he had the whole thing pooling on the floor.
“Is that what I’m doing? Seducing you?” She sucked in a sharp breath when he untied her shift, then brought both that and her stays down in one quick motion, leaving her in only her stockings and shoes. “Because it surely seems as if you’re seducing me.”
“I’m flattered you noticed.” He stepped back to look her over, and the already noticeable bulge in his trousers grew. “You are so damned beautiful. And funny and clever and kind. Malet must have been out of his mind to take mere money instead of you.”
The words shattered once and for all the hard kernel of betrayal that had lain inside her for years, that she’d barely even realized was there until Joshua took a hammer to it.
And now he seemed determined to replace it with a heat that soaked into her everywhere. He came close to cup her between her legs, making her shiver deliciously, and his voice grew ragged. “I love the feel of your damp curls and your soft, warm mons. It makes me half mad for you.”
Her breath had begun to quicken, as had his. Frantic to see him as naked as she, she unbuttoned his waistcoat and the few buttons of his shirt, and then tore both off, leaving his chest bared for her eager gaze.
Just as she’d imagined, it was magnificent. Though scars appeared here and there that looked as if they might have come from swordplay, they didn’t detract from his well-wrought muscles. Dark curls dotted his upper chest, then trickled down the center to his belly until they petered out at his navel.
She spread her hands over that glorious expanse of male flesh and gave him a coquettish look. “My, my, Major Wolfe, what fine muscles you have.”
“The better to hold you with,” he rasped.
But when she reached for his trouser buttons, he stayed her hand. “Don’t,” he said firmly. “I have a great many uglier scars than the ones on my chest.”
“Do I strike you as a woman who would grow faint to see them?”
“You wouldn’t be the first.” When she frowned, he hobbled to the bed and sat down heavily on it so he could take off his boots. “As I told you, I haven’t been chaste all these years. Although the only time I tried to lie with a woman after I was wounded, she was . . . shocked enough by my scars to beg me to . . . er . . . leave.”
Gwyn was outraged on his behalf. “Who was this woman?”
He thrust his bad leg out in front of him. “A merry widow in Leicester.”
“Well, that is ridiculous! Clearly, she had never been privy to your . . . skills at lovemaking, or she wouldn’t have been so squeamish.”
He smiled faintly. “Don’t say that. You still haven’t seen my scars.”
She kicked off her shoes, but when she started to untie her garters, he said, “Leave them on. The sight of you in your stockings drives me out of my mind.”
“The thought of driving you out of your mind drives me out of mine,” she said with a laugh. She walked up to where he still sat on the bed, and he caught her to him so he could suck her breasts, which he did with great enthusiasm. Without leaving the bed, he unbuttoned his trousers and drawers, then shoved them down just enough to expose his thrusting member. But before she could even get a good look at it, he pulled her onto his lap.
“What are you doing?” she asked. “I want to see your—”
“Later,” he clipped out.
“But surely my sitting here makes your leg ache.”
“Do I look as if I’m in pain?” he rasped, and began caressing her breasts with great skill.
So she gave in. If he didn’t want her to see his damaged leg, she would acquiesce. She didn’t want him flinching at every touch or reading too much into her curiosity. She wanted him making love to her the way she knew instinctively he could.
“Straddle me,” he ordered her, his face lit with anticipation. “Please.”
The idea caught her in its snare, thrilling the part of her that must surely be a harlot, no matter what he said. She wasn’t entirely certain how straddling him would work, but Lord help her, she wanted to find out.
He held her by the waist and guided her into position until she was kneeling on the bed on either side of his hips, with her bottom resting on his upper thighs. Then it dawned on her what he was aiming for.
Heavens. She’d never imagined such a thing until this moment.
“Come down on me,” he ordered, in that low rumble of a voice that seduced her every time, “I need to be inside you.”
She hesitated. “You’re sure I won’t hurt you?”
“If you don’t stop asking about whether you’re hurting me, I swear—” He broke off when he saw her flinch. “My bad leg is stretched out—you’re not putting any weight on the part that might hurt. And honestly, you’ll hurt me more if you don’t take me inside you.”
So she did. And the feeling of it was exquisite. He filled her up so completely that she thought she might melt all over him. “Oh, Joshua . . .” She wriggled a bit, seeking to fit herself better on him.
He groaned. “God save me. You’re so tight and warm . . . I may not survive this.”
“I am hurting you!” she cried.
“Absolutely not,” he growled, and held her still when she tried to rise off him. “But if you can move up like that and then down . . . Yes, that’s it, dearling. Move . . . exactly like that. For God’s sake, do it . . . again . . . before I lose my mind.”
“Ohhh . . . right . . .” She was such a fool. It might have been years since she’d been bedded, but she did remember the moving part.
And as she started to slide up and down on him, he closed his eyes in an expression of unadulterated pleasure. “Yes, ride me,” he said hoarsely. “Like that, yes. You have no idea how long I’ve . . . imagined having you atop me like this.”
She flashed him a tremulous smile. “You certainly hid it well enough.”
“I’m not . . . hiding it now, am I? God, it feels . . . good.”
“Probably . . . as good as it . . . feels for me,” she said.
It was the truth. There was none of the embarrassment or discomfort or awkwardness she’d experienced before—just a wild energy driving her on until she really was riding him, clasping his shoulders and undulating on him in search of the same carnal explosion she’d felt last night.
He must be searching for it, too, judging from his low moans and the way he clutched her waist to urge her on. And now she felt the slow build of sensation again, like last night, only this time she could control it, could hold on to it . . . a little longer . . . long enough for it to head higher . . . hotter . . . harder into . . . into . . .
Heaven.
“Yes!” He thrust deep and spilled himself inside her. “Yes, dearling, yes!”
Definitely yes. As her body quaked around him, she held on to him for dear life, relishing the ecstasy, trying to eke out every last drop.
She collapsed on top of him, and he kissed her neck, her hair, her ears, whatever he could reach.
Lord help her. This was better than anything she’d known. And now that she’d experienced it with him, she didn’t want to give it up. She didn’t want to give him up. Perhaps he would agree to be her lover.
No, somehow she doubted that. But if she told him everything and he then refused to marry her . . .
She didn’t know how she would bear it.
Chapter Nineteen
It had been five years or more since he’d shared a woman’s bed, but he was fairly certain nothing before that had compared to this. To having Gwyn in his arms, on his lap. To being inside her. Oddly enough, the waning of his erection made him only more eager to have her again.
He would never have guessed she wasn’t an innocent. She’d been so tight and, sometimes, so incredibly naïve. Then again, she practically was a virgin, having shared Malet’s bed only once.
She squirmed a bit, and his cock slipped from her.
“Are you all right?”
he murmured.
What he really wanted to ask was how he compared to Malet in bed, but even if she was truthful about it, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. After all, he had practically run roughshod over her in his eagerness to make her his.
But she gave a contented sigh. “I honestly don’t know. It was . . . amazing.”
Thank God. “For me, too. Then again, unlike you, I knew it would be.”
She kissed his temple. “Are you that sure of me?” she asked coyly.
“Hardly.”
But he wanted to be, which meant proposing marriage. It was the only way to prove that bedding her didn’t change what he wanted.
Still, now that the time had come to make an offer, an odd panic filled him. What if she turned him down? She’d been reluctant to consider marriage earlier. She’d said it was because he deserved a different kind of wife, but what if that wasn’t the real reason?
Perhaps he should just pray that he had put a babe in her belly. That would solve everything. She would have to marry him then. She wouldn’t dare not.
He dragged in a heavy breath. That was not the way to a woman’s heart, he was fairly certain.
He nuzzled her neck, and she sighed. “I daresay I could sit here on top of you for . . . days.”
“That would become uncomfortable very fast, I would imagine,” he said dryly.
“Oh, dear, your leg!” she cried and slid off his lap.
“My leg is fine, Gwyn,” he snapped.
He was starting to get irritated by her insistence on thinking of him as one step from being an invalid, a man who was only half a man, an object of pity. A man who didn’t deserve her. Perhaps that was why she had refused to accept the idea of his marrying her. Perhaps it wasn’t her shame over her past, after all.
God save him, what if she didn’t want him for anything but this?
Rising from the bed, he buttoned up his drawers before she could glimpse the worst of his disfigurement.
“Wait, I wanted to see—”
“What? The scars that make me unsuitable for marriage to a duke’s daughter? So you can pity the poor cripple?”
The Bachelor Page 18