Mr. Jesse Whitney’s bedchamber. She had no business being there, but an overwhelming thrill skittered through her all the same. She cast frantic looks about her again before summoning the nerve to deliver a tentative rap on his door.
No answer.
She tried again. Still nothing could be heard on the other side. Her conscience warred with her heart before her heart won and she tried the knob. The door opened with a barely audible squeak.
“Who the hell’s there?”
The otherworldly growl was almost unrecognizable as Mr. Whitney’s. But there was his telltale drawl. She knew a moment of fear as she peered into the poorly lit chamber.
“It’s Bella. May I enter?” She hovered at the threshold, praying no one would appear and catch her about to commit the unthinkable sin for an unwed lady.
“Bella?”
Her eyes adjusted to the darkness. He had lit a lone gas lamp on low. And dear heavens, he’d removed his jacket, waistcoat and shirt. He was bare-chested and magnificent, wearing only his trousers, leaning against the large oak bed. There was an intensity in his voice she’d never heard before.
“Are you unwell?” She took care to keep her voice no louder than a whisper.
“For the love of Christ, go back to your chamber, Lady Bella.”
“No.” Hoping she’d made the right choice, she stepped into his chamber and closed the door at her back.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he warned, stalking toward her even though he had told her to leave.
She instinctively took a step in retreat. “I thought perhaps you needed a friend.”
Bella couldn’t help but notice how broad and muscular his chest was, dappled with whorls of blond hair. His stomach was taut as a drum. Her mouth went dry. He’d been stripped of his gentleman’s airs. He seemed savage, filled with raw emotion. An answering heat burst into flame inside her. She rather liked the stranger in his place who looked at her as if he wanted to devour her.
A feral grin curved his lips. “It isn’t a friend I’m in need of, Bella.”
She knew she should not ask, but she had never been very good at doing as she ought. “What is it you need?”
He stopped inches from her. “You have by the time I count to fifteen to get out.” Even as he spoke the words, he reached out to caress her waist with a possessiveness he’d never before shown.
Without her corset’s rigid barrier, she could feel his large hands splaying over her, the power and heat so barely contained. Bella took a deep breath and cupped his face. “I won’t leave you,” she vowed.
“One,” he muttered, already working at the double line of buttons on her bodice. “Two.”
Her body was on fire with longing. She wanted very much to kiss him, to comfort him. To make him whole. “Jesse,” she whispered, emboldened enough by the intimacy of the setting to use his given name. “You needn’t exercise your knowledge of arithmetic on my behalf.”
“Fifteen,” he skipped ahead.
“I think you may have forgotten numbers three through fourteen,” she offered needlessly.
“You don’t know how much danger you’re in right now,” he warned.
“I don’t care,” she countered.
“You don’t know me.” He tore a whole series of buttons from their moorings. “You haven’t the slightest clue as to the madness rotting my brain.”
“I don’t believe it’s madness.” Bella searched his gaze, seeing the stark pain, the anguish lurking in his eyes. “I believe you’ve been scarred by what you’ve seen.”
“Goddamn it. You have no idea.” He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against hers. “Forgive me. I have no right to touch you with such familiarity. I’m an animal.”
His profanity took her aback but failed to deter her. “I knew when I saw your face in the drawing room. I knew instantly that something had come loose inside you.”
“I don’t understand why.” He buried his face in her neck, inhaling deeply as if he wanted to drink in her scent. “It’s been fifteen years for God’s sake. All it requires is one pompous prick in a drawing room mentioning guns, and I’m back to the beginning.”
A shudder racked his strong body. She slid an arm around his lean waist, yearning to comfort him any way she could. Her heart hurt for him. With her free hand, she stroked the silken strands of his golden hair. “You mustn’t punish yourself.”
He pulled back to stare down at her, his expression severe. “Thank Christ you didn’t come to me sooner. I was out of my head. I could have done you harm.”
She was certain he needed to unleash the torment within him and that he unjustly punished himself. “I don’t believe for one instant that you would have ever harmed me, Jesse. I do know you despite what you may think. You’ve revealed much of yourself to me, perhaps without even being aware.”
“I pray to God you’re right.” He dropped his head again, resting it this time upon her breast. “I would never want to hurt you. It’s merely that I don’t trust myself when the storm comes upon me.”
Bella rubbed his back in soothing motions. “I told you before that you cannot forever be a man alone, and I meant that.”
“You are so sweet and innocent.” Jesse—for he would always have to be Jesse to her from this point on—pressed a kiss to her neck. It was reverent. It was passionate.
It was the feather that pushed her off a cliff.
Bella was his forever. She knew it then with absolute certainty. “Not so sweet and innocent,” she murmured, her hands going to the fastening of his trousers.
It was bold indeed. Sinful definitely. But she wanted to see him naked. She was tired of being a quiet, bookish miss. She wanted to know the passion she’d only read about. She wanted to touch Jesse, to make love with him in every sense. She wanted him to take her.
He kissed a trail of fire up her neck to her mouth, lingering before trying to dissuade her once more. “One day you will find a man deserving of you. But I’m not that man.”
“That is for me to decide,” she told him, taking his lips for another kiss.
He groaned against her mouth, plunging his tongue inside to claim. His hands were all over her, caressing, demanding. Her senses careened out of control, runaway-carriage style. Nothing in her life could have prepared her for the onslaught of passion roiling through her. And she wanted more.
Jesse tore his lips from hers. “I cannot ruin you.”
“I dislike that word immensely,” she groused. “Ruin. I’m not a piece of fruit, by God.” Blast society’s honor. How was it proper that a man should be allowed, like her brother, to do as he pleased when a woman must not follow her heart? The unfairness of the situation hit her.
“You’re an innocent. I won’t spoil that.”
His tone was suddenly quite determined. Bella decided some persuasion was in order. She started on the remaining buttons of her bodice. “I want to know you, Jesse.”
His expression darkened and she swore she detected blatant hunger shining in his eyes. “You don’t have an inkling as to what you’re saying,” he still denied.
“Nonsense. I’m fully possessed of my faculties.” She finished with her bodice and pulled her arms from the sleeves. Bella had always been a no-nonsense sort. And if the dowager had taught her anything, it was to always be in firm possession of the reins. “Help me to pull this over my head, if you please.”
ella was taking off her dress. In his chamber. Oh hell. How was he ever going to keep from doing to her what he so desperately wanted? All he could think of was sinking his cock deep inside her sweet, wet warmth until he forgot everything and everyone but the feeling of her tight little sheath sending him into heaven. But he couldn’t do that, for God’s sake. She was a virgin, a lady, the sister of his best friend. Untouchable.
Damn it.
His emotions were up and down like a whore’s drawers on a miner’s payday. He wanted to take what she offered and yet he didn’t think she knew the ramifications of what she
offered. He could marry her, yes, but he wasn’t convinced Thornton would ever allow it. He wasn’t Bella’s social equal. That he’d amassed a real estate fortune mattered naught to these blue bloods in the end, Jesse had no doubt. They married for dynastic reasons. Not for love. Not for want. Not for any reason other than a title and a fortune.
He had a fortune but he’d never have a title. He had to stop her.
“Sweetheart, you can’t do this.” He tried to halt her in the process of shucking off her dress.
“Of course I can. You’re the least cooperative despoiler of innocents I’ve ever met,” Bella complained.
He would have laughed had his nerves not been so tautly drawn. “I can’t take you. You must return to your chamber.”
Bella disappeared inside the voluminous folds of her dress. When she emerged, she tossed the dress to the floor behind her. She didn’t wear a corset, only a thin chemise. He could see her pink nipples prodding the fine linen. He was already painfully hard.
“I believe we’re beyond the point of polite society.” With this pronouncement, she pulled her chemise up over her head as well. It landed with a barely audible swish of expensive fabric upon her already discarded gown.
She was naked and glorious.
He couldn’t take his gaze from the sweet, lush curves of her body. She was every inch woman. Lust arrowed directly to his loins. He’d never wanted another woman more than he wanted Lady Bella de Vere in that moment, of that much he was certain. Her breasts were high, round and full, topped with pale-pink nipples that begged to be kissed and sucked. Her waist was narrow but luscious, her hips sweetly curved. Her limbs were as delicately formed as the rest of her.
“Bella,” he managed to choke past the desire that threatened to render him incoherent. “Please, you must leave.”
“I won’t,” she said simply.
She was like a siren now, clearly reveling in a power she’d never before realized. He was helpless. In the space of a mere few hours, he’d gone from the hells of war to the hells of unquenched desire. He didn’t know what to do.
“Listen to me,” he tried again. “You are lovely. I want nothing more than to take you to bed right now.”
“Then take me,” she challenged.
“And what then, Bella? I could get you with child.” He was trying desperately to dissuade her. Because Lord knew he was old enough, wise enough, to know better. He’d been through more than enough. Her innocent young mind could never comprehend the horrors he’d seen, the depths to which seemingly good people could sink.
“I’ve never been afraid of taking chances.” Her hands lingered at his waist, on the fastening of his trousers.
She wasn’t wily enough to touch his arousal directly, and thank God she didn’t because he’d be utterly lost if she did. He took her hands in his. “Taking chances can result in great penury at times,” he cautioned her, knowing all too well the truth of the words he spoke.
“I love you, Jesse Whitney,” she shocked the hell out of him by revealing. “I don’t know what more I can tell you. What more could you need to know, really?”
Love.
He hadn’t thought of love ever since he’d believed he’d last had it more than fifteen years ago. But the love he’d believed in had been false, and he was scared as hell to ever trust such a fleeting emotion again. The damage Lavinia’s duplicity had wrought upon him had been true indeed. Lavinia had claimed love. She had left him for the first man who darkened her door thereafter, leaving him with a bullet wound to his back.
He didn’t believe Bella. He couldn’t believe her. Love was a child’s fancy, nothing more. There he was, in the seductive low light of his personal chamber with an unbearably beautiful woman before him in a state of acute undress, and all he could do was stare.
“What more could you need to know from me, Jesse?” Bella asked again. “I love you.”
“Are you old enough to understand what love is, darling?” He plainly didn’t think she was. Hell, he didn’t know what he believed at this point save that he couldn’t ruin the delectable woman before him. Not without conscience.
No, not at all, damn it.
“How dare you suggest I’m too young to know my feelings?” Bella was truly insulted, it was apparent.
To him, she seemed a woman completely in control of her thoughts and wishes, and yet he had to wonder. She was so much younger than he. She was so much an innocent. He didn’t want to take advantage of her, to unjustly influence her into something she would later regret. Because if there was anything he knew about all too well, it was the agony that regret could cause in life.
“How do you know you love me?” He was desperate to distract her, to dissuade her in any way he could conceive. He couldn’t help but ask the foremost question plaguing his thoughts.
“I cannot explain it other than to say that if I were to wake up tomorrow morning and never see you again, I would be unbearably heartbroken.” She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Must I prove myself to you before you ‘ruin me’, as you have so aptly phrased it?”
Hell. After what they’d shared the last few days, his world too would be a darker and lonelier place without her. He wanted her desperately, more than he’d even imagined possible. His cock was hard. His body was ready. But the thing that confounded him the most was his rotten old heart. His heart wanted her, cared for her as much as he could manage. She was too good and pure for him. He couldn’t even begin to know how to love her.
But perhaps that was the problem. Of their own volition, his hands went to the fastenings of his trousers. He truly needed release, and he’d satisfied his sense of honor that what he wanted was exactly the same as what the lovely Lady Bella wanted. He knew without asking that she was an innocent. He hadn’t wanted to rush into taking her, hadn’t wanted to pressure her into lovemaking she didn’t want. But it didn’t matter now. She had made it apparent just how she felt about him, just how much she wanted. He was tempted as Adam, and yet his conscience reminded him of who she was yet again. Thornton’s sister. Damn it all.
Jesse stared at her, lost. “No you needn’t prove yourself. For the love of God, Bella, put your dress back on.”
Disappointment warred with hurt. Bella’s heart had never beat at such a mad pace. She wanted him. He wanted her. His kiss said as much. She was nude before a man when she’d never even so much as glanced at her own naked body in a mirror. And he was rejecting her.
Perhaps he did not find her adequately formed. Was she not attractive enough? Were her feet too large? Her breasts too small? Why did he insist upon holding onto his blasted notion of honor? It was all making her quite dizzy.
“Am I all a woman is supposed to be?” she asked, feeling very hesitant.
“Of course you are. You’re perfect, sweetheart.” His gaze once more lowered to her breasts, lingering there like a touch.
“Then why? Why won’t you take me?” Frustration heated to a boil within her.
“Because I’ve lived with enough regrets in my life and I won’t be yours.”
“I could never regret loving you,” she murmured with complete honesty.
He stared at her, clearly at odds with himself. Bella decided right then that the time for vocal persuasion was at an end. She closed the distance between them, linked her arms around his neck, and kissed him. He rewarded her boldness by kissing her back, crushing her against his powerful frame. She was unprepared for the first intimate feeling of her bare nipples brushing his manly chest. It was sinful, decadent, everything wonderful.
He groaned, fusing their mouths with a hunger that branded. Desire flowed through her like warm honey, making her breasts tingle, her stomach flutter. The apex of her thighs bloomed with heat and wetness. When he reached between them to caress her there, she moaned, arching into him, desperate for more of the intoxicating feeling.
Jesse slowly moved them across the room. Bella followed him step for step, never allowing the kiss to break. She knew their destination wa
s the large bed she’d seen upon her initial entrance. She didn’t know what to expect next, only that she desired very much for it to happen. Whatever the mysterious it was.
Bella sincerely hoped she was about to be edified.
He lifted her onto the mattress, depositing her with tender care. When she lay sprawled on the bed, mouth swollen with his kisses, he broke away from her. “I meant what I said about not ruining you,” he told her, his voice as breathless as she felt.
Confusion warred with the sensual curtain that had descended over her senses. “What do you mean?”
“There are ways we can pleasure each other that don’t require me to take your innocence,” he explained, his fingers at work on the fastening of his trousers.
She lost her breath entirely when he whipped the last of his clothing away to reveal his large manhood jutting proudly at attention. She’d never seen the like. She was instantly fascinated. She wanted to touch him.
“Absolutely gorgeous,” he murmured as his gaze roamed over her. His drawl had never been more pronounced.
She was pleased that he liked what he saw after all. Bella felt simultaneously powerful and alive. She took in his beautifully sculpted body as well, finding him to be absolute masculine perfection. Far better than any crusty old Greek marble, anyway. He was tall, muscled, golden.
“You are unbearably lovely, Bella,” he whispered, joining her on the bed. He crouched over her, skimming his fingers up her thigh. Lowering his head, he dropped a kiss on the inside of her knee.
“You’re unbearably handsome,” she returned, watching his thick blond mane getting nearer to her most secret spot.
Oh dear heavens, what was he doing to her? She reached down to caress his broad shoulders, to toy with his soft hair. He glanced up at her, his gaze molten. “Will you open for me, darling?”
Rebel Love (Heart's Temptation Book 2) Page 6