by Katy Madison
Her heart began to beat frantically. Had his breathing changed? The silence of the night bore down on her as she realized her own breathing had changed, was faster.
He brought his hand to the back of her head and urged her to rest against his shoulder. She felt awkward and uncertain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were awake.”
“I’ll pretend to be asleep. Don’t stop,” he said.
His voice was low and sleep-burred and it stirred her in a way she couldn’t explain. She wanted to hear his voice more, to explore its effect on her, and she had no idea what she was doing. Was he awake enough to know it was her? Did she care?
A tug on her scalp made her realize her was loosening her braid.
“You have beautiful hair,” he murmured before pressing a kiss to her forehead.
Then he lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss in her palm and another on the inside of her wrist. With his arm around her back he pulled her tighter against his side. “Mary, are you going to pass out on me?”
“No. Of course not.” She wasn’t wearing her corset.
“Good. Because I don’t think I can pretend to be asleep.”
He tilted her chin up and kissed her. His fingers stroked along her neck, and she closed her eyes and held on. His bare skin under her fingers enthralled her, and she explored the delineation of the hard muscles of his back. His body was so different from hers, strong and firm where she was soft and pliable.
He kissed her throat and stroked her back. She savored the feel of him, his weight pressing her into the mattress. His kisses made her blood grow thick, and her bones turned liquid. She waited for him to touch her breasts, yet he seemed maddening interested in avoiding what she wanted. She arched up against him wanting...wanting...more.
She whimpered.
“Are you scared?” he whispered against her throat.
She threaded her fingers in his hair. To be honest, fear was part of the emotional concoction coursing through her mind, but so was the hope that this wouldn’t end. Holding his head she found his mouth in the darkness. “A little,” she whispered against his lips. “But I trust you.”
He nudged her legs apart with his knee and settled his lower body against hers, supplying a pressure that was intriguing and subtly rhythmic as if they were about to engage in some primitive dance.
As she stroked him, exploring the indentation of his spine, she felt a sheen of perspiration coating his back. She pressed her lips to his shoulder tasting salty skin. And he caressed her in places that hungered for his touch.
His kisses deepened, and she could no longer think, just feel a building thirst that only he could quench. She sensed the same urgency burning in him, heating his skin, roughening his breath and in his low moans. “Mary, I have to light the lamp. I have to see you.”
A drop of doubt clouded her roaring senses, but he wasn’t waiting for her permission. He’d leaned to the side and lit the lamp on the table beside the bed. He trimmed back the wick until only a soft glow lit the room. Then she realized that he wouldn’t want the light if he wanted to pretend she was another woman.
When he turned back to her, his deep blue eyes were dark and heavy-lidded. In no time at all he shoved off his drawers and unbuttoned her nightgown. As he peeled back the material he scattered kisses over her exposed skin. She clenched her eyes shut as the last of her clothing was stripped away.
He stroked her hair and spoke softly to her in a mix of encouragement, commands and compliments. Sweet nothings, she supposed. Then he was touching her in that most private of places, urging her legs apart. His fingers found a rhythm that made her feel as if she was coming apart. Pressure built and she clawed at him until she shattered.
She whimpered and he stroked her and held her and urged her to open her eyes. When she did he pressed forward with a new nudging force at her very center. Then with a tearing thrust he was inside her, part of her, and it felt as if she had been waiting her whole life for this joining to happen.
She held him tight as their hearts beat together. In this moment united with him, she felt love and boundless hope in her heart. And she had been so close to walking away from the marriage, from him and this wonder she had no idea existed before this night.
Sterling couldn’t believe it when Mary touched and kissed his chest, but he ran with it. He could do no less. His beautiful wife’s response to him was everything he could have asked for, everything he dreamed about, and he never wanted this moment to end.
His heart pounded, and he wrapped his hands in her long dark hair. For the first time in his life he felt as if he were home in her arms. She held him tightly as he found heaven.
He brushed a kiss on her nose and cradled her close. He rolled to his back taking her with him and pulled the sheet over her lush body. He didn’t want to crush her, he didn’t want her to grow cold, he didn’t want to ever let her go. Yet, as he leaned up to put out the lamp, he saw what he had missed before in his haste to make love to his wife.
He rolled her off of him and swung his feet to the floor.
Her trunks and bandboxes sat beside the door. The lid of one full trunk stood open. He glanced at the dressing table and most of her toiletries and her box of hair ribbons and jewelry not on the surface.
It could only mean one thing. His chest hurt. If a sledge hammer had been slammed into his chest, it couldn’t have hurt worse. “You are abandoning me?”
Chapter 7
That Sterling classified her defection as abandonment made Mary still deep inside. She caught a glimpse of uncertainty in him. Odd, he always seemed secure, sure of himself.
She pushed herself up to a sitting position, against the headboard. Sterling sat on the edge of the bed, leaning forward. He looked defeated.
“I thought you might want a divorce,” she said. “I packed to move back to my father’s house.”
“After what you witnessed, I shouldn’t be surprised.” He rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I won’t stop you.”
The words shocked her. Was this how little she meant to him? How little did he value the pure bliss they’d just shared?
“I don’t understand.” The words choked her.
He shrugged. “If you want a divorce, I won’t stand in your way.”
He reached for his drawers and pulled them on. Then he stood up.
Mary grabbed the waistband and pulled him back on the bed. She was almost shocked at her aggressiveness. She wouldn’t let him make nothing of what had passed between them. She might have been innocent, but that earth-shattering experience reached into her and touched her soul. That wouldn’t have happened unless...unless there was more to it than lust and physical gratification. Unless there was love. “I don’t think a divorce would be appropriate now.”
He didn’t look at her. “We’ll wait a month or two and make sure there are no consequences.”
Consequences? Was that how he described a baby? “I want consequences. I thought you wanted consequences.”
“Mary, let go.”
“No.” Had she erred in not displaying the depth of her feeling for him? She had been so afraid he didn’t really want her.
Heavens, her strength was taking care of people because she loved them, but she had held back with him for fear he didn’t want or need her.
She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. The press of her bare breasts against his back deluged her with residual echoes of the pleasure she had just shared. “I thought you didn’t want to be married to me, because you hadn’t touched me or kissed me since our wedding night.”
“You passed out.”
“My corset was too tight.”
“I know I scared you. It was all too much for you to take in. I wanted to give you time to get used to me.”
Had he been afraid of scaring her with his passion? How could he have thought that when he was so tender and gentle? If she had known all she had to do was convey her willingness to make love, she would have made a move much sooner.<
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Suddenly she understood. Just as her own doubts had almost led her to make the worst mistake of her life, he had his own demons. After what had happened to him in the orphanage, could he accept love as his due? Existing in an environment where no one wanted him, no one valued him, no one took care of him, and he had been left, most likely abandoned by his mother, all this must have left him hopeless and distrustful of love. She should have known better.
“I want to talk,” she said.
“What is the point?”
“The point is you don’t understand me and I’m not sure I understand you.” But he needed to know she believed in him, she trusted him, and she loved him. “Tell me about the orphanage.”
“Mary, I put that behind me.”
“I know that place is a hell hole. I know that you did whatever you needed to do to survive. I know that in spite of what Mrs. Crump says there is more to the story of the man you nearly killed.”
He winced. “Mary.”
“Tell me what happened.” She knew she was taking a chance. There might not be an honorable explanation, but she believed there was. A person didn’t become honorable overnight. The seeds of goodness had to be there before the transformation. “You don’t let me care for you. I want to understand who you are and why you are.”
“I beat a man who hurt a girl I knew. Only by the grace of God did he survive. I didn’t mean him to. Satisfied?”
“Yes, I knew there would be a good, honorable explanation.”
Sterling snorted. “There is no honor in attempting to murder a man.”
“You were protecting a female. That is honorable.”
“Yeah. She repaid me by finding a protector the next day.”
Mary heard the part he didn’t say. He’d been abandoned again. “Did you love her very much?”
“No, but I thought I did. I was too young to know what love is.”
Did he know now? Did he recognize it? Or had his early life so deprived him that he didn’t see love when it was right in front of him. “Then you do realize, I love you.”
“Mary, you don’t have to say that.”
“I know, I don’t, but I have this enormous honest streak. I thought you were in love with my sister. I thought I more or less tricked you into marrying me. I couldn’t bear the idea of being married to a man I loved when he looked at me and saw a mistake.”
He finally turned to face her. His forehead was furled in concern. “I was fond of Suzanna, but the glimmers of traits I saw in her, paled into nothing but poor imitations of your strengths. I knew I wanted you as my wife, almost the first minute I saw you. But I was engaged to her, and she had done nothing to violate our agreement.”
He had been trapped by honor into a proposal he didn’t want to carry through with. Mary released her doubts to the winds. All her misconceptions didn’t matter anymore. They could make this marriage work. His very tender love-making spoke volumes. He did care about her. He did want her, just as she wanted him.
“I felt hopeless as if I could never have what I wanted. I have been holding my feelings for you inside so long I thought it would crush me,” she said. She had been trapped too, by the idea that she could never have a future of her dreams. Too much had happened that made her think it wasn’t possible.
“I thought I just wanted to be part of a family like yours. I thought that was the most I could hope for was to be part of a family that held together no matter what. Oh God, Mary, I love you. Please stay, I’ll do anything.”
“Then you must let me love you.”
He touched his forehead to hers. “How could you, when you’ve seen where I came from.”
“How could I not, when I know what a kind, gentle, and honorable man you are? The adversities you must have overcome only strike admiration in me.”
“You are deluded,” he whispered.
“Deliriously. Even if you are a thief.”
He froze. She pulled him down on top of her and pressed her lips to his. She couldn’t let him suffer too long. “You stole my heart.”
He grinned, his deep dimples charming her and warming her. “I used to beg for bowls of bread and milk. Then I would steal the spoons. I got real good at filching sterling silver. That’s how I got my name. I was incorrigible.”
“You were terribly bad. There should be terrible consequences,” she said in mock seriousness. Then she kissed him. “Could we make some little consequences now?” She reached between them and untied the string on his drawers.
He pushed her hand away and drew the sheet up over her. He smoothed the satin border with silver leaves across her shoulders. “Not now, you’ll be sore. You made these sheets, didn’t you?”
She nodded with a rueful smile.
“Always taking care of everyone.” He shook his head.
“Yes, and you will have to understand that I must take care of those children at the orphanage.”
“I know,” he said with such pained resignation she grinned.
While cradling his face in her hand she said, “But I’ll always take care of you, if you’ll let me.” Then she stretched her arms over her head and inched the sheet down with her toes. “But I confess, I really like it when you take care of me.”
With the darkening in his lowered eyes, she knew it wouldn’t take too much more persuasion to get him to stop worrying about making her sore. Then he pulled the satin border over her breasts in a way that she had never anticipated in all those months of making painful perfect stitches.
While watching his blue eyes darken, she wriggled her toes, inching the sheet back down. With the wisdom borne of Eve, she knew that this was one area in which he would accept her love. And in time he would come to understand he was safe with her. She would never abandon him. Their toughest battle might be getting him to believe that love was possible for him.
But she believed once again, with love, all things were possible.
This novella is a companion story to The Wedding Runaway, book 3 of The Dueling Pistols Series. If you haven’t read the The Dueling Pistols Series, you might want to start here with the first book:
THE WEDDING DUEL
A charming Regency-era tale of a duel, a dilemma, and undeniable desire...
It was meant to be a duel like any other—defend a lady's reputation, teach a scamp a lesson in honor, and win the day. But from the first moment Keene Davies raises the cursed pistol things go awry. The shot goes astray, he wounds his best friend, and his displeased father threatens to disinherit him—unless he marries a scandalous little hoyden named Sophie.
Unbeknownst to Keene, Sophie Farthing has grown into a lovely young woman, albeit one still inclined to fall into scrapes. Her high spirits and tendency to ride hell bent for leather lead her into more than one disaster, but she's bound to make the most of this unexpected marriage to Keene. She's determined to teach her husband that honor begins with the heart, not the handle of a pistol, and that passion should go hand in glove with love...
Books by Katy Madison
Regency Historical Romance
The Dueling Pistols Series
The Wedding Duel
The Wedding Redux
The Wedding Runaway
Secret Valentine (novella)
Stealing Sterling (novella)
Compromised by Christmas
Gothic Historical Romances
Tainted by Temptation Avon Books
(2012 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense Winner historical division)
All About Seduction Avon Books
Awakening His Duchess
The Curse of the Coleraines Series
The Inspector’s Scandalous Bargain
Lord Coleraine’s Scandalous Offer
(Winner of the 2014 Maggie Award for Excellence, Published Historical)
Lady Moria’s Scandalous Affair tba
The Doctor’s Scandalous Assistant tba
& more tba
Romantic Suspense as K.T. Madison
&nb
sp; Presumed Guilty until proven innocent
Humorous Contemporary
An Inconvenient Wife
Free Fall tba
American Set Historicals
Bride by Mail Harlequin Historicals
Promised by Post Harlequin Historicals
Want Ad Wife Harlequin Historicals