Instead of handing her a dry towel, Blake abruptly wrapped the cloth around her and hauled her, dripping, out of the tub.
Jocelyn bit back a shriek.
He turned her around until only the thin towel was between her breasts and his bare chest. Effortlessly, he held her off the floor so she couldn’t even touch her toes to the ground. She squirmed, but learned the danger of that quickly enough. Blake’s muscled arms tightened, and she simply wanted to curl up in his embrace, rest her head on his powerful shoulder, and submit.
“Let me clarify,” he growled in her ear, since she wouldn’t look up at him. “You won’t go to bed with me because I won’t let you take care of me?”
That didn’t sound right. She shook her wet hair. “You don’t need me, but Richard and my mother do. And a baby would. What happens if you die and I lose the house and have a baby to raise with no roof over my head? I cannot do it. I just cannot.”
“I am not going to die,” he said most emphatically. “Look at me,” he added. When she still did not, he ran a hand downward, cupping her nearly bare buttock.
Jocelyn gasped at the river of heat flowing through her midsection with that intimate touch. She turned a glare upward to his scowl. “Put me down!”
“No. Not until we have this out. We are married. I am not a monk.”
She offered him a sweet smile and fluttering eyelashes. “Perhaps I wish to be a nun.”
“Stop that!” he roared.
She blinked and stared. “Stop what?”
“Pacifying me with simpers. Now that I know you have a brain in your head, it won’t work.” He let her feet touch the ground so he could begin rubbing the towel over her rapidly cooling skin. “Simper at idiots, if you will, but if we’re to live together, we have to talk.”
She gasped again as his big hands rubbed the linen over her breasts, then downward, to places where no man should stray. “Stop that.” She grabbed the towel and tugged, but he wouldn’t release the cloth that was the only thing halfway covering her.
And he wasn’t exactly decent, either. She tried not to stare at aroused male nipples or the way his muscles rippled across his chest when he tugged the towel—and her—toward him.
She gazed in fascination at the line of darker skin above his half-unbuttoned trousers, where the stripe of hair disappeared downward. Then jerked her attention back to the stubborn set of his jaw. “What is there to talk about? I tell you no, and you say I can’t. That rather limits conversation. Simpering is far easier than arguing with mule-headed men who won’t listen.”
“I’m listening. You’re not.” He picked her up again and dropped her onto the bed.
The bed with roses on the pillow—both peace offering and seduction. Jocelyn thought her heart really would break as she rolled up in the coverlet. Concealment didn’t help as much as she hoped. She still had to look at his nakedness and feel the desire nagging at her to give up, give in, and learn more of those mysteries to which he’d introduced her.
“What else can you say that will make any difference?” she cried in both anger and desperation.
“Good. Now you’re being honest. Scream at me if you will. Hit me, if you must. I can take it.” He sat down on the bed and began removing his shoes.
She hit him. She smacked him hard on his broad brown back. He didn’t even flinch. Nor did he protest or hit her back. He merely dropped a shoe and glared over his shoulder.
“I don’t know how to make you trust me,” he said. “I have told you there are ways of reducing the chances of babies, but if you won’t believe me, then what else can I do?”
She wanted to fling her arms around his neck and say, Yes, yes, I believe you! Make love to me. I want babies, beautiful babies.
Instead, she wept. And smacked him again, just because it felt good to express frustration over what she felt and couldn’t say.
His other shoe hit the floor. She eased to the far side of the bed. He grabbed her arm and turned to face her, but he wasn’t scowling.
“Give me tonight. Give me our wedding night. The odds of creating a child in one night are very slim. Take a chance, Jocelyn.”
29
“I’m tired of taking chances!” Jocelyn shouted, jerking her arm from his grasp. “I’m the one who must deal with babies, not you. Why can I not have security for a change? Certainty. Just a minute to breathe without wondering whether I’ll be thrown from my home tomorrow? Do you have any idea how many times I’ve found our trunks sitting on the doorstep and the unwelcome sign hung on the door? Four!” she shouted. “Four times I’ve been thrown from my home. In six years!”
“Very good.” Her overbearing, impossible, much-too-handsome husband swung around and captured her wrists, pushing her back to the rose-petaled pillow. “Now you’re being honest.”
She fought futilely against his greater strength, more out of frustration and fury than any fear that he might force her to do what she didn’t want.
She’d married an honorable gentleman. She wanted to weep, torn between her desire to love and adore him and her need to be safe.
“You could die tomorrow!” she shouted.
“So could you,” he pointed out with infuriating logic. “We all must die someday. Is that any reason to stop living now?”
“Quit being so blasted reasonable.” She hurled herself upward, attempting to unbalance him and push him over.
He merely caught her arms and rolled onto his back, carrying her with him so she stared down at his stubbornly set jaw. Blake might be honorable, but he was the most obstinate man alive. Surrender wasn’t in his nature. And she couldn’t pound the stuffing out of him while wearing nothing.
“One night,” he insisted, “and I will do nothing that causes babies.”
She glared down at him. “How is that possible?”
“I’ve already shown you one way. Trust me.”
He wouldn’t plead, but there was an urgent passion behind his words that she seldom heard from this self-possessed man. She longed with all her heart and soul to respond to it. He needed her. Flighty, useless, silly her. It seemed impossible. Improbable. And he was admitting it! Almost.
What he had already shown her had been so glorious . . . she was terrified of knowing more. Of trusting.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you?” he asked when she said nothing.
She shook her head vigorously. “Not of you. I married you because you’re a man of honor.” But she wasn’t ready to back down. “That doesn’t mean you’re any more useful than any other male on the planet.”
He chuckled deep in his throat, an erotic sound that sent ripples up and down her skin. Before she could resist, he rolled her back to the bed, and his powerful torso pinned her to the mattress. And still, she wasn’t afraid. Just wary. Only a thin sheet and his trousers separated them.
“I can be immensely useful, if only you will give me a chance,” he informed her. “Don’t be like those mummified corpses at Whitehall, refusing to accept new ideas. Somewhere beneath all the pretty hair you conceal a very smart mind. Open it up for me.”
“I do?” she asked in wonder, hiding the inane urge to touch her hair as if she could detect what he saw. He’d said something similar earlier, but she had dismissed it as flattery. But Blake didn’t flatter. She studied his face to see if he was laughing at her and saw only desire in his eyes. “You think I’m smart?” she whispered.
“You’re smart enough to catch me,” he returned, although he grinned as he said it. When she tried to punch him again, he pinned her wrists to the pillow. “Neither your brother nor your mother are witless, just eccentric in their knowledge. You’re no different. You’ve simply chosen to specialize in people, as I do puzzles. That does not make you stupid.”
“I know I’m not stupid,” she said irritably, wiggling beneath his greater weight, unable to think straight while all her senses were filled with raw male power. “But I’m not schoolbook smart.”
“Do you want to be?” He leaned ov
er and kissed her cheek, then nibbled her ear.
Jocelyn closed her eyes against the strength of desire flowing through her. “I can’t think like this,” she protested.
“Thinking isn’t required. Feeling is. What you need to learn isn’t in schoolbooks.” Keeping her pinned, he continued kissing and nibbling down her throat.
What he was doing to her certainly wasn’t in schoolbooks or she would have studied her lessons more willingly. Jocelyn fought the urge to arch closer. Her husband’s handsome—bare—chest was temptingly out of her reach, but his hips pressed hers into the downy mattress. She ached where they met. “I hate it when men know more than me,” she muttered, foolishly, since he knew so much more that it frightened her. And made her feel safe at the same time.
“I have a notion that you’ll learn this lesson so fast that I’ll come to regret it later.” Finally, he pressed his mouth to hers.
As always, she was lost once Blake began kissing her. His kisses turned her inside out and reduced her to mindless rubble. She knew she should be strong and resist, but she wasn’t strong and she didn’t want to resist. She wanted her husband with a desire so deep she couldn’t deny it.
She wanted the freedom to be herself, to claim what she wanted, and Blake was giving her that chance. When he finally released her wrists, she wrapped her arms around his neck, arched upward, and flung herself fully into the thrill of kissing.
He groaned and propped himself on an elbow to circle one breast with a big hand. His thumb playing against her nipples caused her to writhe against the confinement of the linen separating them. She parted her legs and curved her hips upward, desperately wanting what he’d given on their wedding day.
Blake lifted his solid weight enough to peel off the sheet and apply his kisses to her bare breasts. Jocelyn fought a scream of desire and grabbed his muscled arms while he turned her into molten jelly. His thumb pressed into her belly, until he slid his hand over her hip, then lower, digging his strong fingers into her buttocks until she rose helplessly upward to offer him the access he sought.
“For now, let us repeat lesson one,” he murmured, carrying his kisses downward, lifting her legs to rest on his shoulders.
Cool air flowed over heated moisture, and she jerked involuntarily, but he held her safe.
He was kneeling between her bare legs.
He bent his head, and his mouth covered the place between her thighs.
Jocelyn bit back a shriek as his tongue lapped at oversensitive tissues. She couldn’t think, so she had to trust him. And because she trusted her educated, experienced husband, she took what she wanted for a change, and surrendered to the feelings to which he had introduced her. She stuffed a corner of her pillow in her mouth to quiet her cries as the pressure built inside her until she thought she’d surely burst.
Just when she thought she must grab his hair and scream from sensations she could not control, Blake inserted his fingers, and she came apart, crying and quaking and reaching to pull him back, to hold her, while her whole world erupted in joy.
He obliged, taking her in his arms and kissing her tears and her cheeks, and, before long, she was kissing him back, kissing him so thoroughly that the giddy pressure was building all over again.
“Now,” he whispered, “you do the same for me.”
With pleasure, Blake let his daring wife take charge and explore at her own pace. He had the willpower to fight his animal urge to possess and plunder, aided by his primitive instinct to protect what was his. And Jocelyn was his, he knew with pride and no small degree of wonder.
Rationally, he knew he did not own her, but instincts weren’t rational. He’d never owned more than his horse and his books, but in some fashion, he owned his wife. And she owned him. With her glorious, flaxen hair brushing his chest as she pressed exploratory kisses down his throat, he figured he could adapt to being possessed by this wanton, gorgeous creature.
Jocelyn was not shy. Given permission to do as she wished, she kissed him in places he hadn’t known needed attention, giving far more than he’d ever received, introducing him to a voluptuous sensuality he could get used to quickly. She imitated his earlier caresses, sucking at his nipples until he thought he’d have to roll her over and take what he wanted.
He dug his fingers into the sheets and lost all power of thought the moment she finished unfastening his trousers. Just the anticipation of her warm, soft hands cupped around him had him on the verge of losing control. When she traced a tentative finger down his erection, he had to fight to lie still and not frighten her by spreading her flat against the bed.
No babies, she’d said. He had an expensive condom, but sheep guts weren’t perfect. He’d promised her security. He would give it to her, even if he must die in the process.
When her mouth covered his cock, Blake came very close to dying.
Before he could explode with bliss and joy, he pulled out and spilled his seed across the sheets. Shaken by a lust for his wife so strong that he couldn’t last longer than a schoolboy, he hauled her into his arms and squeezed her to show his appreciation and relief.
It wasn’t nearly enough, but it was a beginning. The firm mounds of her breasts pressing into his side would stimulate him into readiness again in a few minutes. In her bed, he could easily become a rutting bull.
“Thank you,” he whispered into her hair. “Thank you for trusting me. I will try very hard to justify your trust.”
She snuggled against his chest, and he thought he felt her tears wetting his skin.
“I want all the rest,” she cried. “I want the lovemaking and the babies, but I just can’t.”
“I understand,” he said, even though he really didn’t. Blake stroked her hair and settled her more comfortably against his shoulder. “I cannot make promises, so neither should you. It’s all right. We’ll muddle through.”
He wasn’t entirely certain how. He knew better than she that once they started down this path, there was no turning back unless they slept in separate beds. And those wretched instincts of his didn’t want to let her out of his sight, much less out of his bed.
But Blake couldn’t do that. Saving England from the French was more important than making love to his wife.
He needed to solve the damned code before he could move forward.
30
Blake scowled at the note from Nick waiting for him at the breakfast table the next day. Judging from the missive’s contents, Jocelyn was right. Taking a stout stick to her brother would make everyone feel better. He was still scowling when she sailed into the room, dressed for an outing.
She hesitated, then, pushing back her bonnet, she leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Your lessons last night were very . . . memorable,” she whispered. “You should not rise so early.”
He immediately grew hard and lost track of his thoughts, until the paper in his hand crumpled. He waved it under her nose. “Your brother is conspiring with Ogilvie.”
“I told you that yesterday. It is the reason I’m going to Lady Bell’s today.” She removed Nick’s note to peruse it.
Blake tugged her onto his lap, encompassing her slender waist with his arm and kissing the hollow at the base of her throat as she read. He’d had to get up early so as not to tup his eager wife too soon. He needed a plan of action and couldn’t think with all her luscious curves within easy reach.
“Richard and I will spend the day trying to determine why your brother, a duke, and a Frenchman want those wretched parrots,” he said when she returned Nick’s note to the table.
“Money,” she said succinctly. “Money will be at the bottom of it. You are crumpling my gown, sir. You had your chance this morning. It is too late now,” she said pertly.
He kissed her throat until she was kissing him back.
“Africa laid an egg,” Richard announced, entering the room with his idea of mealtime chatter. He strode immediately for the sideboard dishes without regard to what was happening at the table.
“An egg,�
� Blake echoed, choking as Jocelyn laughed and slid from his grasp.
“I’m pretty certain Harold doesn’t want an egg,” she said, pulling up her bonnet. “But if you two will set the snare, Lady Bell and I shall bait the trap, and with any luck, prove to all the world that Viscount Pig is the dimwit in this family.”
Lady Bell had apparently emptied her attics into the parlor before Jocelyn arrived. Enormous French silk gowns from a prior century spilled over the sofa. Powdered wigs left drifts of white flakes across the polished floor. An elaborate bejeweled raja’s costume decorated a wing chair. And Lady Bell was holding up a harem gown of fine, nearly translucent silk embroidered in gold thread.
“What do you think? Am I too old for this?” she asked as Jocelyn entered.
“Certainly not, my lady. Men would be wallowing at your feet should you wear such a creation,” Jocelyn told her. “Only—such a gown lends no air of mystery, and this time of year, you’ll freeze, raising ugly goose flesh. Besides, the pink doesn’t flatter you. You want reds or blacks or blues with your dramatic coloring.”
Jocelyn rummaged among the gowns strewn about until she found a stunning ice blue silk and a black velvet, spreading them both out on the carpet. “Wear the black with a red lined cloak and dripping with diamonds and come as a countess of Transylvania. Is that not where the vampire monsters are reported to live?” She lifted the gorgeous velvet and spread the wide skirt out to sweep about the room.
“The blue has all the lovely lace, though,” her hostess said wistfully. “Can I not just go as myself in a prior era?”
“You weren’t even a gleam in your mother’s eye when this was worn.” Jocelyn set aside the black and lifted the blue. “Wherever did you find this? You could go as Anne Boleyn.”
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