by Lisa Kleypas
“I’m fine,” she said defensively, wrapping her trembling arms around her waist. She was unbearably aware of the fact that he was still fully clothed while she was dressed only in her pantalets and the wrinkled camisole that had been crushed underneath the corset all day. “I didn’t know you’d be up here so soon. I haven’t had time to . . . get ready.”
“I didn’t know how much time you’d need.”
“Well,” she said uncomfortably, “why don’t you leave and come back in a few minutes, and by then I’ll have found my nightgown and—”
“Why don’t I stay?” he suggested softly, already shrugging out of his coat. She watched hypnotized as he took off his shoes. “It might be easier if we didn’t make such an event out of this.”
“I can hardly be . . . casual . . . about it—”
“There’s no need to be so jumpy. Remember, I’ve seen you wearing a lot less than that.”
Turning away, Lucy avoided the sight of him as he continued to undress. Her hands went to the straps of her camisole, but then she froze—no, she couldn’t take it off in front of him. Did he expect her to strip naked right now, with him watching? Or worse, was he stripping naked right now? And if he was, where would she look, what would she say? This was a hundred times worse than she had imagined it would be. Oh why, why hadn’t someone told her what she was supposed to do? Surely there had to be a proper way to do things, yet no one had warned her of the terrible awkwardness of this moment. Mute, frozen, and shivering, she stood there while her mind raced for some plan of action. Ah—she hadn’t taken the pins out of her hair. That would give her something to do for a minute or two. Fumbling with the pins that fastened the coil of hair at the top of her head, she heard two or three of them drop to the floor at the same time that she heard Heath’s bare feet approaching her.
“Here. Let me.”
His fingers, sliding possessively through the long chestnut locks, brushed over her silky hair and removed the pins leisurely. Reluctantly Lucy turned to face him. He was still wearing his trousers, thank God, but without a shirt he seemed so much larger, so much more intimidating than she had expected. She had never seen so much bare skin at once, and all of it tanned that swarthy shade of brown, marked in many places with scars. The tapered line of his waist gradually broadened upwards into a powerful chest and shoulders. One corner of his mouth lifted in the beginnings of a half-smile as he looked down at her.
Without the heeled slippers she was fond of, Lucy only came up to his shoulder. She hated feeling so dwarfed by him, hated having to tilt her head so far back when she tried to meet his eyes. She wished that he was closer to Daniel’s height. Oh, big men and small women weren’t meant to be together! If Heath took her in his arms right now and held her like Daniel might have, her nose would be flattened in the middle of his chest. His large hands settled on her shoulders; his thumbs stroked the line of her collarbone. Lucy fixed her eyes on the base of his throat as she forced herself to stay still, but his nearness was stifling. She wanted to fling off his hands and jerk away from him, run away. Her tension gathered in a big, choking knot, which became more and more unendurable. As his hands moved down to her waist, she pulled away from him with a gasp, spinning around and hiding her face in her hands. Her whole body was tensed in shrinking anticipation of his touch.
“I can’t,” she said wretchedly. “I can’t stand this. Not now—please, I need a few days, a week or two, to get used to everything—just leave me alone! I don’t want you to touch me. I shouldn’t have married you. I don’t even know you. I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t think . . .” She stopped in midsentence, gasping with the effort it took to control herself.
When Heath broke the silence, his voice was very low and quiet. “We both have a lot to learn. Come here.”
Step by step she went back to him, her eyes glued to the floor. Automatically she flinched as he reached out for her. His arms closed around her and he pulled her right against his body, which was astonishingly warm against the iciness of hers. Lucy thought that she would never be able to stop shaking. As he felt her rigid unwillingness, he murmured to her quietly, as if he were soothing a skittish animal. “Easy, easy . . . it’s all right, my sweet girl . . . there’s nothing to be afraid of.” He did nothing more than hold her, and gradually she relaxed against him as his warmth seeped through her skin, flowed through her in a slow current. She put her palms on his hard, bare chest and pressed her cheek against it so that the steady rhythm of his heartbeat was against her face. She felt his lips brush against her hair. It felt good to be enveloped and swallowed up in his arms, to rest her weight against him and know that he had the strength to support her easily. “I know how difficult it’s been for you,” he whispered, stroking her back underneath the long fall of chestnut hair. “But the worst is over.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said in a muffled voice. “Maybe for you, but not for me.”
“The last thing I intend to do is frighten or hurt you—”
“Then give me some time,” she begged. “A week, maybe a month, just so I can—”
“Do you think it’ll get any easier if we wait a month?” he asked gently. “You’ll dread it more each day.”
Illogically she clung to him in her confusion. Heath waited until it was clear that she was not going to reply. His arms loosened, his hands went to the hem of her camisole, and giving her no chance to resist, he pulled it over her head in one decisive motion.
“The lamp—,” she started, excruciatingly aware of the golden light that bathed her bare breasts.
“I want to see you,” he said, his blue-green eyes suddenly flaring with heat. “And I want you to see me.” He braced one knee on the bed and pulled her across the mattress, his fingers splaying over her midriff as lightly as a ray of sunshine. His lips touched hers—just the briefest caress—settled more firmly, and coaxed her mouth to open to his. The taste of him filled her senses. She felt the slow, sensual stroke of his tongue against hers, and she wound her arms around his neck, finding a welcome escape in the pure physical sensation. His fingers caught in the waist of her pantalets, urgently pulling them down over her hips and legs.
Her mind was pleasantly clouded, focusing only on his mouth and his hands. He kissed her patiently, without urgency, and it seemed that the more eager she became to deepen the contact, the lazier he got, making her work, making her seek his elusive kisses until she thrilled with frustration and tangled her fingers in his hair to hold his head still. Chuckling softly, Heath rewarded her efforts with a long, thorough kiss, his tongue plunging deep in her mouth. Somewhere in the back of Lucy’s mind was the surprised realization that not only did she want him to go on kissing her but she was hungry for the touch of his hands. Those things he had done before—she wanted them again. She wanted him again.
Drawing away reluctantly, Heath left her in order to shed the rest of his clothes. Flushing, Lucy started to pull at the light quilt at the foot of the bed, wanting instinctively to cover her nakedness. She heard his trousers drop to the floor, and she closed her eyes tightly as he joined her on the bed. His voice was very near her ear.
“Lucy . . . look at me. Aren’t you the least bit curious?”
Her long lashes fluttered open as she met his eyes, which were glinting with wicked amusement. “Not really, no.”
He grinned suddenly. “You are,” he insisted. “You’re just too muleheaded to admit it.”
“Muleheaded? I’m—”
“Don’t glare at me like that, honey . . . it cools a man off quicker than ice water.”
“Good!” she said, trying to twist away from him, annoyed at the way he had dispelled the mood of soft dreaminess. “And stop smiling at me like that—there’s nothing funny about this at all!”
“Be still.” He pinned her down and dropped a kiss on her nose, forcing his smile away even though his eyes were still twinkling. “You don’t like to laugh at yourself,” he observed more quietly. “You should learn to.”
“Why?” she demanded in a muffled voice. “You laugh at me enough for the both of us.”
He kissed each corner of her mouth, then nibbled on the lobes of her ears and the hollows behind them, whispering to her so softly that she only caught bits and pieces of what he was saying. He whispered that she was beautiful and that he wanted her, and he was so flattering and seductive that Lucy’s temper was mollified in no time at all, and she curled up to him, mesmerized by his gentleness. He cupped her breast in a light stroking motion, and his fingertips began to toy with the hardening peak. Pleasure seemed to stream from his hands through her entire body, pleasure so heady and rippling that she was floating in it. “So very shy,” Heath murmured at the side of her neck. “You have such beautiful hands . . . I want to feel them on me.”
“Where?” she breathed, touching his shoulders hesitantly.
“Everywhere.”
“I don’t know how—”
“Do anything you want,” he coaxed, keeping rein on his urgent passion with stupendous effort. Gamely she ventured down his chest and around his back; her fingers learned the symmetry of his muscles, as solid as bolted steel, and the long curve and the sensitive hollows of his spine. She stopped when she reached his lean hips, coloring in a mixture of apprehension and uncertainty. Murmuring encouragement, Heath took her hand in his, fitting the back of her hand into his palm.
“Heath—”
“Don’t pull away from me.”
“I can’t—”
“No barriers between us,” he said. “Not in this room, not now. No walls . . . nothing forbidden . . . nothing to fear, nothing to hide . . . nothing to lose.”
The sound of her own heartbeat was in her ears like the thunder of waves against the shore. Trembling, she let him guide her hand downward. First the brush of thick hair against her fingertips, then the incredible heat and hardness of him against her palm. Heath caught his breath, held it and then released a taut sigh. Her slender fingers traveled over the length of him, exploring delicately, pausing as she sensed the leaping fire and tumult she was causing in him, resuming more slowly as her awkward shyness was replaced by curiosity. She was vaguely amazed at the discovery that she didn’t mind touching him in this way. It was unfamiliar and intimate but strangely exciting. She caressed him more boldly.
“Am I doing it right?” she asked, her breath warm on his neck, and he shivered.
“God, yes.” He gave a laugh that was little more than a catch in his throat. “You’re disproving all those stories I’ve heard about Yankee women.” He caught her wrist and pulled her seeking fingers away from the source of his blistering desire. “Just a minute,” he said breathlessly, rolling on his back as his hand retained possession of hers.
“What’s wrong?”
Heath lifted her hand to his lips, kissing each knuckle. “Nothing. But if you keep doing that, tonight’s going to be over much sooner than I had planned.”
She raised herself on one elbow and looked down at him. Her reserve began to unravel rapidly as she felt the warmth of his stare go through her. The tenderness of his touch soothed her fraught emotions like a balm. “What do you mean?”
“Around you I have no control. None whatsoever.”
“That . . . that’s good, isn’t it?” she whispered.
“Oh, don’t smile like that,” he groaned. “You’re making it worse.”
In an unexpected move he took hold of her and rolled over like a stretching cat. His legs settled between hers as he braced his forearms on either side of her. Lucy gasped at the feel of his masculinity wedged so intimately against her. She could feel the heaviness and driving power of him, only barely restrained and trammeled. Uneasily she tried to wriggle away from him, but was pinned so securely by his weight that she resorted to shrinking deeper into the mattress.
“None of that . . .” His arms slid beneath her back, forcing her to arch so that her breasts were thrust upward, her body vulnerable to his pleasure. He nuzzled the warm underside of her breast, his lips moving upwards until her nipples tightened in eager anticipation. His tongue touched the contracted flesh, circled the pinkening aureole with a stunning awareness of its sensitivity, danced lightly upon the tingling peak until Lucy was shivering. Desire, searing, shattering, irresistible, swept from her head to her toes, and left her helpless with need.
Unconsciously she stroked his hair in a silent entreaty not to stop. The tip of her middle finger found the scar on his temple and traced along it tenderly, but then she accidentally brushed her palm against her breast and felt it round and warm, pulsing with life. She jerked her hand away as if burned. Heath lifted his head and stared at her with glowing turquoise eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked huskily. “I don’t mind if you touch yourself.”
She went crimson with embarrassment, her desire fading quickly. “I didn’t meant to. It was an accident . . . oh, don’t look at me like that!”
He started to smile. “There’s nothing wrong with what you just did,” he insisted, taking her hand, his fingers tightening as she tried to pull it away.
“ Oh, please stop talking about it!”
“Not yet. I want to show you something first.”
“What?” she asked, and he couldn’t help grinning at the apprehension in her voice.
Heath drew her hand to her breast, cupping underneath it and lifting its weight upwards. Flushing red with embarrassment, Lucy tried to tug her hand free, but he would not let her. Bending his head, he used his teeth gently on her nipple.
“If I let you be shy about your own body,” he said, pausing to savor her with the tugging warmth of his mouth, “then you’re going to be shy about mine . . . and I don’t want that.” He dragged her resisting hand down her body, down the planes of her stomach and over the curling softness of her hair until she stiffened in shock. Her fingers were pressed between her own legs, against a hot dampness that was quivering slightly. “See how good you feel? That’s why I can’t get enough of you.”
Lucy pulled away from him with a muffled sound, her chest rising and falling rapidly. The back of her hand came to rest on the pillow beside her head, and she shivered as she felt the cool air against the moisture on her fingers.
“How could you?” she whispered, overcome with such a strange mixture of emotions that she could barely think.
“Nothing forbidden,” he reminded her, and as if to prove his point, he lowered his mouth to her fingers, licking them one by one.
“But you’re not . . . supposed to do things like that,” she stammered, her eyes wide.
“How do you know?” he said, his voice soft and teasing. “For all you know, all husbands may do this to their wives.”
No. Innately she knew that Daniel would never have wanted to be this intimate with her, would never have dreamed of making her do something she didn’t want to do. Daniel would have made this a romantic experience, full of dignity and tenderness, not the kind of lusty, pagan ritual her husband seemed bent on performing.
Heath froze, his smile vanishing. Only a fool couldn’t see what she was thinking about—who—she was thinking about—and it wasn’t him. How long, he wondered bleakly, was he going to be faced with the shadow of the man she had wanted for so long? “Little prude,” he said softly. “You’d rather have a cold New Englander in your bed, wouldn’t you, with his fancy manners intact . . . someone who’d lift the hem of your nightgown oh, so respectfully, and ask your permission for every move he made—”
“Don’t talk like that to me.”
“Admit it. You’d give anything if I were Daniel Collier right now. You’d sell your soul to be in bed with him instead of someone who dares to laugh at you and makes you feel instead of letting you lie there like a wax doll—”
“Yes!” she cried, angered by his sarcasm. “I wish you were him! I do!”
His handsome face darkened with a sneer. “You only want him because he doesn’t want a thing to do with you. And do you know why he doesn’t?”
His taunting
was more than she could bear. She tried to jerk away from him, but he held her wrists and pinned them over her head. “Because of you,” she gasped.
He showed no reaction to her words except for the paling of his face and the faint curl to his lower lip. “Ah . . . you finally admit it.” His voice was silky, mocking. “You would prefer to blame me for everything despite what you said to the contrary the other night. How dishonest of you to accept my proposal when you felt that way. ”
“I’ve loved Daniel for years,” she said, trembling with rage. “How dare you think that a few months could change that? You don’t understand loyalty or real love . . . you think everything can be solved in bed—”
“Real love,” he repeated scornfully. “I’ll tell you the truth, Lucy, the truth about why he doesn’t want you now, and it hasn’t got a damned thing to do with me. He finally realized that you were going to be too demanding for a man like him to satisfy. You’re starving for things he could never give you—and yes, that includes several good tumbles in bed. He would never be able to satisfy all of those needs. You wanted too much from him and the only way he could think of to deal with that was to keep putting you in your place. But it became obvious to him that it wasn’t going to work—”
“I was satisfied by him,” Lucy said hoarsely. “None of that is true.”
“The hell it isn’t. Why do you think you turned to me so eagerly whenever he wasn’t there? Because you were so satisfied?”
“Because I felt sorry for you!”
“Pity? Oh. I wasn’t aware that it was pity that motivated you to respond to me that morning after Emerson’s fire.”
“You did it on purpose—you planned to seduce me so that someone would see.”
“I’m surprised you’re not accusing me of setting the fire to lure you there. It certainly is easy to blame everyone else but Lucy, isn’t it? But what if it was your fault too? What if Lucy was encouraging another man to make love to her so that Daniel would find out and become jealous?”
“I wasn’t!” she said, spluttering with fury. “And there was no need to make him jealous! Everything was fine until you came along.”