She couldn’t believe she’d said that, neither could James judging by the shock on his face. Then they were both laughing. Chest still heaving with amusement, James rounded the bed and opened a drawer on his nightstand.
“Ah, bonny lass, will I never uncover all yer layers?”
Since she’d never known laughter had a place in the bedroom, nor had she imagined it could hold such delight, Prim wondered if she’d ever stop learning new things from him but refrained from saying so. Instead, she watched as he withdrew something from a silken bag. A moment later, he was slipping a rubber condom down his thick erection. The sight of him, his hand around that compelling hardness, swept away any lingering humor.
A faint shudder shocked her as she imagined helping him, stroking him as she rolled it down. Would he find it as erotic as she? Prim might be experiencing some bravado tonight but not so much yet.
She did help him finish unlacing her corset, lifting her body so he could pull it from under her. Lifting again as he pulled her camisole over her head.
Another lesson was learned when he stretched his big body out over her. The sensation of flesh against flesh, of steel against softness, of arms surrounding a naked body, was unlike anything else in the world. James rocked against her with a groan of appreciation. The tantalizing friction arousing her anew.
His hand slid between them, circling her weeping flesh. Dipping a finger within, he drew more liquid, sweeping another circle around them, up and over her still throbbing nub. A shaking cry escaped her. His mouth took hers tenderly but Prim could sense his triumph. Around he went again, amplifying the tremor of lust expanding deep inside her.
“If you’re thinking of playing the yea or nay game again,” she murmured gruffly, running her hands down his back, “I’ll just cut to the chase and say aye.”
His shoulders shook silently. “Ah, what a bonny lass ye are.”
His lips returned to hers, forbidding any reply. With a long stroke of his palm down each of her thighs, he urged her to wrap her legs around him. Through the silk of her stockings, the steel of his thighs and hips against her plump thighs was an exhilarating caress. Prim slid the arch of her foot down his calf, glorying in the feel of him. His stiff flesh nudged against her core, seeking entrance.
“Aye?”
“Ay—”
A gasp stole her breath as James drove hard into her, but was drowned out by his profound groan. Filling her, stretching, he thrust to her core. Without giving her a chance to breathe, he retreated and slammed into her once more, lifting her legs higher around his hips. Over and over, he moved against her, each stroke gliding against her quivering flesh satisfying some unknown need within her, making her crave more.
Prim clung to his shoulders, then slid her hands down his back. He growled against her mouth, his tongue plunging deep as he drove into her again.
Impulsively, she squeezed the steely muscles of his buttocks as they flexed, lifting her hips against his downward stroke. His breath hitched, his fingers dug into her hips, and Prim knew the thrill of feminine power. Parting her lips farther, she kissed him back as he kissed her. Tasting him, exalting with every moan she roused from him. Sharing them with him as he brought her to unbelievable heights.
Hooking his arm behind her knee, James fell against her. His weight, which should have crushed her, only excited her more. He tore his lips away from hers, burying his face in the hollow of her neck. Panting harshly against her, he increased his pace. Her neck burned where his teeth raked the tender skin, his swift heartbeat pounding out a rhythm with hers.
Again the tension was building between her thighs. Already, she was convulsing around his rigid length. Each breath expelled with a breathless cry. “Yes, yes, yes.” Each thrust met with burgeoning approval. “Oh, Jamie, yes!”
* * *
James pumped into Prim’s welcoming depths, taken aback by the force of her passion. And by his own. He couldn’t go deep enough. Hard enough. Fast enough. Every part of him cried out with the fierce primal call to pour himself into her. A frenzy of need. Yet, he didn’t want the magnificence of possessing her to end. Couldn’t stand for it to be over.
She shattered beneath him. Her sweet flesh milking him as she convulsed around him. His body begged for him to slacken his lust, to give in now that she’d found paradise.
But the moment was too sweet. He stilled, throbbing painfully within her, as her cries of rapture faded to soft whimpers. She panted against his neck, clinging to him as if he held the world in his hands.
James rather thought he did.
He stroked a hand up the supple length of her and cupped her cheek, smoothed back the tangle of silky brown hair from her brow. Bending his head, he kissed her tenderly, absorbing her bewitching sigh of repletion.
Then he began to move again, gliding slowly into her pulsating depths. He wished he could be within her, skin against skin, but the condom was necessary. While he was willing to persuade her into marriage by any means, he wasn’t willing to force her by circumstance. It had to be her choice, especially when she’d had so few.
But even the rubber barrier couldn’t bar him from relishing the sensation of her softness.
“Jamie?”
He could hear the question but had no answer as to why he hadn’t spent himself during the heights of their lustful passion that he could share with her. How would she respond if he said he didn’t want to lose himself like an animal? That he didn’t want it to be just about the hunger? That he hadn’t wanted it to end?
Gads, she’d think him as much a fool as he thought himself. It was just sex. Bloody good sex. But that was all.
Laughing silently, James wrapped an arm beneath Prim and lifted her against him as he thrust into her again. Nuzzling her lips with tender kisses, he made love to her with his whole body, fondling her breasts, savoring the sensual rub of their bodies as much as the soft flesh caressing him each time he moved within her.
Each breath came with the rhythm of his every languorous thrust, each released with a moan of exhilaration. Within moments, Prim’s low gasps matched his. Her limbs tangled with his as she cradled his head in her arms. “Oh, God...Jamie, yes,” she crooned in his ear, making his blood boil once again.
This time his body demanded release. Her weeping sighs and hot core pushed him to the brink. Her arms stiffened around him, her thighs locked. Her body drawn tight.
“Oh, Jamie,” she sobbed. “It’s so...so...”
She didn’t finish. He wished she could, but he thought he knew what it was. He watched her as she came. Her flushed face, dewy eyes, and full lips. So lovely. Passion peaked so poignantly, aching as if his entire body was being held in its grip, before he was flung from the precipice and tossed into oblivion with a jubilant roar of satisfaction.
Chapter 29
Each time you happen to me all over again.
~ Edith Wharton from The Age of Innocence
She’d never imagined anything like it. James watching her, eyes glinting with triumph and something else as she shattered from the force of his tender lovemaking. She watched him in turn as he exploded with a heartfelt groan.
She’d never forget the look on his face, tormented and ecstatic, before he’d gathered her tightly against his huge body and fallen straight away to sleep.
Prim could not sleep. As drained as her body was from the unexplainable bliss he’d brought her three times, her mind would not rest. She documented every moment, memorizing every detail.
His thickly muscled arms encircled her, though his tight hold slackened as he fell deeper into sleep. Prim wrapped her hands around his bicep, marveling at the circumference. She was an average woman, neither petite nor tall, but the width and breadth of his chest more than doubled hers. His thighs were almost as big around as her waist, yet he held her with such tenderness and care.
Her world, which so often felt tilted on its axis since Fletcher’s death, seemed righted. Secure. What would it be like to be held thus every night? To ha
ve this all the time?
Prim shook her head, driving away the thought. Was she so typically female that intimacy drove her to neediness?
That she didn’t need a man in any fashion would have to become her new mantra if she were to combat her fascination with Jamie. It was either that or dissolve their bargain to avoid further attachment. It would not do to fall in love with him.
Even if she’d already dipped a toe into that particular pool.
Prim wasn’t fool enough to think she would be here, naked in his arms, if she hadn’t fallen for him at least a little already. Though how she wasn’t supposed to adore a man who showed her such encouragement and confidence, Prim wasn’t quite certain.
She would miss him when it was all over. Her heart would weep, but it wouldn’t break, she assured herself. How could it when she had no expectations from him at all?
Prim ran her hands over Jamie’s arms and shoulders and pressed a kiss against his chest before scooting out from beneath him. She was too restless to lie there, her mind too unsettled. A thick velvet robe lay across the foot of the bed, and she slipped it on, smiling slightly as the arms dangled far over her hands and the hem dragged the floor. Crossing it over her bare breasts, she buried her nose in the collar, inhaling his masculine scent.
As she tied it, Prim walked around his bedchamber. Tastefully decorated in reds and blues with wood paneling, it was a lovely space but, she imagined, more to Mrs. Preston’s taste than Jamie’s.
It wasn’t his. It wasn’t him.
There were few personal possessions lying about. A couple of books stacked next to a chair before the fireplace that might have easily come from the Preston library. On the table next to it, sat another book with a bookmark past the halfway point.
In his dressing room, she saw a jacket flung over the open drawer of a dresser. On top of it, a wooden box sat open with a few sets of cuff links lying about, several stickpins scattered around it. On the washstand, a brush and shaving kit sat. Other than his clothes, that was it.
Was it any wonder he so often conveyed such loneliness when he didn’t even have a true home?
Idly, Prim wandered back to his chamber. James had flopped over onto his stomach and was snoring softly, a deep resounding rumble that brought a smile to her lips. His bare back and backside bronzed by the soft light. Moving to the chair, thinking to sit there and sort through his books and see what reading materials interested him, Prim’s toe caught on a book half under the front of the chair.
Curious, she pulled it out. Then moved closer to the fire for a better look. It was a photo album, the silk cover shiny at the edges and frayed at the corners. It was well worn. Prim turned the cover, browsing through the photos. The first, old and faded, was of a young couple with three young boys surrounding them and a baby in the woman’s arms. The next had the same couple with eight boys. The next, ten.
There were no large family portraits after that, but there were several more photographs filling the book. James as a younger man in a Cambridge sweater. Again in a suit. A picture of a lovely young woman who looked enough like James for her to guess it was the sister he’d mentioned. The headstrong one all his brothers still insisted on coddling.
Pictures of young couples filled the other pages. Some in wedding clothes and others with small children in them as well. She recognized one with Evelyn Preston, though she hadn’t seen her for some years. In the picture, she was next to a man who bore a startling resemblance to James.
Page after page, Prim studied the pictures, seeing women who were all lovely, feminine. None of them were as frumpy as she’d imagined, given James’s description of them as headstrong, intelligent women.
Was that what she’d imagined herself doing? Convincing everyone how capable she was by dressing as dourly or primly as possible? To make a point?
If James were right about them, being feminine took nothing away from them.
Plus they all looked happy. Loved. Just as he’d told her.
And James carried this book with him, when there were so few personal possessions around him. By the condition of the album, he opened it often. He loved them all, obviously missed them.
Why would he be so reticent in talking about them?
Prim jumped as strong arms encircled her waist, pulling her back against a hard, warm chest.
“Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked huskily, nuzzling her neck. Goose bumps raced down her arms as his whiskered jaw grazed the sensitive skin.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she confessed, stroking his arm with her free hand. A wave of contentment washed over her as he hugged her close.
He chuckled, low and gruff. “I must have not done my duty too well then.”
Leaning back, Prim smiled up at him. His dark hair was shaggy and tousled, his rugged jaw covered with the prickly growth of his beard. “You did. All too well.”
James grinned down at her before his gaze shifted to the book she still held in her hand. “Where did you find that?”
“It was under the chair, as I’m sure you know,” she told him. “I stubbed my toe on it.”
“Hmm.” James took it and tossed it onto the chair as if it meant nothing. “Come back to bed.”
Prim resisted, holding firm when he tugged at her hand. “Won’t you tell me about them?”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“You realize you’re becoming a tad tiresome,” she shocked herself by saying.
James looked surprised as well, his sleepy eyes widening before they narrowed. A frown furrowed his brow.
“Am I?”
“You are.” She nodded, crossing her arms over her chest.
His gaze shifted downward, amusement lifting the corner of his mouth. “Ye ken how adorable ye look in my robe? Yer hands up the sleeves like a wee bairn in her papa’s shirt? Except yer no wee bairn and I’m no’ yer papa.”
For all that look caused heat to pool between her legs, Prim held firm, tapping her toe. “You’ll not distract me, Jamie. Stop brooding and talk to me.”
“Why must you pester me on this?”
“Because I care about you.”
His nostrils flared at the admission, his eyes on fire. Good Lord, with such a large family, was a confession of caring so rare? Or was that it’d come from her? What nonsense.
“For all that you’re trying to see to my happiness, I want to do the same for you,” she told him. “You’re wallowing in some misery I don’t understand.”
* * *
James turned away, raking his fingers into his hair. There’d be no escaping Prim, though. He’d never known a woman so tenacious, or insightful. Even Maggie. She’d sensed in him what no one had for decades, and dared to call him to the carpet for it.
“Perhaps I don’t speak of it because I don’t understand it either.”
As if sensing his struggle, Prim retrieved his family photo album from the chair and flipped it open. “Obviously you love them.”
James nodded. “I do.”
“They must love you as well.”
A slow burn surrounded his heart, the ache radiating outward. It had become so familiar to him, James thought it was almost part of him. Sifting through his discarded clothes, he found his trousers and tugged them on before returning to the fireplace. A decanter of Scotch sat on the mantle. He took one of the glasses next to it and filled it, shooting it down before refilling it. He hoisted the bottle in Prim’s direction. A silent question she denied with a shake of her head.
“Jamie?”
“I suppose they do,” he finally replied, taking another swallow and resisting the urge to down the whole bloody thing. “That’s what family does, right?”
She cocked her head, the familiar gesture warming him with unexpected amusement. So solemn, so serious. So endearing.
“You sound like you don’t believe it. Why?”
James shrugged. “I’ve ten siblings. I’m right near the center of the motley crew.”
“Yes, you’ve said that befo
re.”
Pacing to the end of his bed, he dropped down facing her. After a moment, Prim perched on the arm of his chair, still looking expectant.
“Bring me that book.”
Retrieving the book, she brought it to him and James tugged her down beside him. He flipped it open to the first page.
“Francis, Vincent...or Vin, as we call him, and Richard”—he pointed out the three older boys there—“were born in successive years. They were always close.” He flipped farther back in the book to a group of five young men with their arms flung over each other’s shoulders. “This is them and their friends, Jack Merrill, who is now Earl of Haddington and Kitty’s husband, and Jace MacKenzie. There was the five of them together as long as I can remember. Then I came along a couple years later.”
He went back to the front of the book and turned the pages to the largest family portrait, pointing to the lad off to the side of the group. “That’s me. I was three when Colin was born.” His finger skimmed the photo. “Sean was born just ten months after him. They were too young for me to bother with.
“By the time they were old enough to be interesting, they’d formed an exclusive friendship with one another that was only rivaled by that of the twins.”
He pointed to a pair of identical boys glued to one another’s side. They’d always been like that. Inseparable. “The twins, Ian and Tam. Then Connor, Dorian...,” James indicated the baby in his arms and the toddler on his father’s lap, “Fiona followed them. One year after the next. Mother died shortly after that. She’d always wanted a girl.”
“I’m so sorry,” Prim’s sorrowful whisper brushed over his check. She laid her head on his shoulder, hugging his arm. “The death of a parent is hard, especially a mother.”
Of course, she would understand. She was an orphan herself.
“Haven’t you heard enough? I don’t want to bore you.”
“You aren’t.”
“Our father died a few years later.” James cleared his throat. “Francis tried like hell to be a father to all of us, but there were too many of us. The wee ones needed his attention most.”
A Question Worth Asking Page 19