He wished he were not wearing gloves.
He wished they were not standing in the midst of the road.
But he was greedy, and he had been too long without her, and he would take her any way he could have her. She tasted sweet, so sweet. He could kiss her like this forever. Kiss her in the warmth of the dying sun. Kiss her with the air humid and perfumed all around them. Kiss her until his mouth ached, until her lips were swollen and red with the force of his claiming.
He deepened the kiss, his hand sliding up her spine, to the skin at her nape. His fingers plunged into her hair. He wondered if it was as silken and smooth as he remembered. Through his thin gloves, it was warm from her heat, from the day. He cupped her skull, angling her head the way he wanted, so he could kiss her harder. Deeper. So he could kiss her the way he wanted to fuck her: erasing all the memories of anyone else who had ever known her lips, her body.
Jealousy hit him, sharp as a blade, sinking into him.
His fingers tightened in her hair, and he sank his teeth into the fullness of her lower lip, punishing her in this small way. But she did not seem to mind the sting. Instead, she made a low purr in her throat, and then her hands were in his hair too. She was grabbing fistfuls, tugging.
The pleasure was on the verge of pain.
And he was fine with that. They had always been explosive together. Now, there was anger and enmity to accompany the passion. They were older, not wiser. They were embittered, embattled.
With the hand nestled on the small of her back, he dragged her closer to him, until his rigid cock was pressing into the softness of her belly. He wanted her to feel how much he wanted her. To recall all those wild nights they had shared. And the days, too. The mornings.
He had taken her in nearly every chamber of their London townhouse. It had not been enough. Never enough. On the long lonely nights without her, he had thought of those frenzied moments, those heated assignations. They had sustained him.
But now, he had her. He had her mouth. Her taste. Her tongue.
He needed more. Her skin, her body, her surrender.
He would settle for her skin. He tore his lips from hers and kissed her jaw, her ear.
“You are mine,” he whispered. He kissed down her throat, finding the tender cord that had always elicited a reaction in her and nipping. “Mine.”
“No,” she told him. “Never.”
But she made no move to extricate herself from his hold. Instead, she tipped back her head. Her hat fell to the gravel at their feet. He inhaled sharply, the scent of her here: lovely, floral woman and Nell. Beloved. He was going to mark her here. Lay his claim upon her.
He was going to leave behind evidence for bloody Tom of whose wife she was. Whose wife she would remain. His. Mayhap the instinct was a barbaric one, but from the moment it arose, he could not shake it. He opened his mouth on her throat, sucking her creamy skin. Sucking until he was certain her skin bruised.
She was salty and delicious.
She moaned, pressing closer to him.
His cock approved, nestled against her so firmly that all he would need was a bit of friction to spend in his trousers. He released her skin, pulling away enough to see his mark upon her. Satisfaction rushed through him.
He took her lips again, roughly, harshly. He could not help it. There was no finesse in him when it came to her. There was no caution, no tenderness. There was only stark, ravaging want. Relentless need.
And that was when he felt it. Wetness.
Rain? There had not been a cloud in the sky, he swore it.
Not rain. Salty, like her skin had been. On their lips.
He raised his head. Nell’s eyes were wide, so blue they were almost violet, laden with tears. Trails tracked down her cheeks. Glistened on her kiss-ravaged mouth. Impossible. His feisty, indefatigable warrior was crying.
He swallowed against a rush of his own emotion, a ball of it coming up his throat. “Why?”
At last, she pushed at his chest, stumbling away from him. She swiped at her cheeks with the back of her hand, her lower lip trembling. “You had no right.”
“To kiss my wife?” He moved toward her, fury mounting, along with unchecked desire for her. “To remind you of the way it was between us? What had I no right to do, Nell? Say it. To make you want me again?”
She shook her head. “You had no right to touch me. To make yourself so familiar with me. I do not want you.”
“Lies.” He was angry with himself for losing control. But angrier with her for continuing to be so stubborn. For denying what they’d had once—and what they had now. “You do want me, damn you. I felt it in your kiss, in the way you responded to me. I have not forgotten what we are like together, Nell. And nor have you, no matter how hard you are fighting me.”
She shook her head. “Leave me alone. I refuse to wait here with you. I am walking back to Needham Hall. Alone!”
Like hell she was.
But she had already spun on her heel and was striding away from him. Grimly, he bent and retrieved her hat. The sun was still high enough in the sky that her fair skin would burn if she did not have a brim to shade her face.
Then he stalked after her.
Chapter Five
Walking back to Needham Hall had been a mistake.
Nell admitted it the next morning when she got out of her bed and the stinging heels of her blistered feet sent such pain radiating through her that she cried out and sank to her knees. Her handsome boots had not been made for the mile walk back to the hall. Refusing to accept her hat from Needham had been another error in judgment, she acknowledged grimly to herself as she pressed a hand to her heated forehead.
Her skin was burned. Her feet were bloodied and raw.
A sob welled up in her throat. More tears she had no wish to cry.
But the biggest blunder of all yesterday? That had been not just allowing Needham to kiss her, but kissing him back. And wanting him, too. She had betrayed herself, her pride, and Tom as well.
The door adjoining her chamber to Needham’s flew open, and he strode over the threshold, clad in nothing more than a dressing robe. It was fashioned of navy silk, and it had an embroidered dragon upon it. Likely something he had purchased in his travels. The thought sent a strange, unwanted surge of resentment through her.
But she did not have long to dwell upon it, for he was rushing forward, the loose garment flapping around his well-formed calves. Even his feet were bare. She swore she caught a glimpse of knee, and above it, strong, masculine thigh.
“Nell? What the devil is the matter? I heard a commotion. What are you doing on the floor?” he asked as he stalked forward.
He moved unencumbered. Though he had followed her all the way back to Needham Hall, holding her hat in his hands as if it were a wounded bird he sought to protect, asking her to wear it every quarter hour, he did not seemingly suffer any adverse effects of yesterday’s ruinous trip. They never had made it to Tom. By the time they had reached the hall, she had been desperately exhausted, her stomach begging her to stop and eat her dinner at last.
She had taken a tray in her chamber and promptly gone to sleep.
And she could have sworn she had locked the door between their chambers. Perhaps she had been so weary she had overlooked taking the precaution against her husband’s trespass.
“I am perfectly fine,” she lied. “My feet ache a bit this morning, and I lost my balance.”
He knelt at her side, his face pinched with worry. “My God, Nell, your feet are raw.”
He touched her ankle, and she jolted at the contact. She wore nothing more than a flimsy night rail, hiked to her knees, and he scarcely had on more himself.
“My feet are none of your concern,” she snapped. “What are you doing in my chamber? Get out.”
Being Needham, he ignored her, gently taking up her right foot in his hands. “Good God, woman. You need to tend to these before infection sets in.”
“I shall do it forthwith.” She reached for his
wrist, intending to pull his touch away from her.
That was a mistake as well. Because beneath the flowing sleeve of his dressing gown, his skin was hot. Touching him sent a shock through her. The crisp feeling of the dark hair on his arm set her on edge. For a wild, unconscionable moment, she thought about taking his big hand in hers and pressing it to her breast.
Her nipples went hard, poking through the fabric of her night rail. She hoped he would not notice. Or if he did that he would assume she was merely chilled. How mortifying, to be attracted to him so desperately, after all this time and everything he had done.
“I will tend you,” he countered calmly, pulling himself from her grasp.
Before she could protest, he stood, then bent and scooped her into his arms as if she weighed scarcely anything. “Needham!”
“You may call me Jack,” he corrected, his jaw hard as he strode with her across her chamber to the stuffed chair she kept by the hearth.
Calling him Jack was too familiar.
And she could not afford to be familiar with him. Because already, she had allowed him to cross far too many boundaries. Already, she had proven herself foolishly weak where this man was concerned.
“Put me down, Needham,” she demanded instead.
He did, obeying her for a change as he lowered her gently to the chair. As if she were fashioned of porcelain instead of flesh and bone. He hovered over her then, their faces nose to nose.
He was starkly beautiful, even more so by the morning light. His dark hair was ruffled. He was bereft of all the effortless elegance which ordinarily accompanied him. When he looked like this, she could not help remembering what it had been like to wake up in his bed with him. To roll against him and take his cock in her hand, to stroke and kiss him into wakeful readiness.
“I am going to fetch a basin, some water, and some soap and salve,” he told her, chasing the memory with the coolness of his words. “Do not dare to move whilst I am gone.”
“You cannot order me about.” She frowned at him, aggrieved by him—his presence in her chamber, his stubborn insistence upon forever being at her side, the way he touched her.
The way he had kissed her yesterday.
“I can, but I am fully aware that does not mean you will listen.” His gaze ran over her face, and he gave her a frown of his own. “Your skin burned in the sun yesterday.”
How good of him to notice.
“It did not.” She did not even know why she denied it. The proof was in her painful, pink forehead. She probably resembled a beet.
“You ought to have listened to me and accepted your hat back.” His lips pursed. He exuded disapproval yet again.
She thought, quite absurdly, about the way his beard had felt, scraping over her yesterday. She had not expected it to be so very…pleasant. She had not thought she would like it so much.
“Go away and do not come back,” she told him, expelling all such thoughts from her mind. “I will ring for my lady’s maid, and she will fetch me anything I require.”
Still, he did not rise. He remained where he was, near enough to kiss.
Stupid thought.
Stupid longing.
Stupid heart.
“Let me, Nell,” he said, intently.
And she could not help but to feel that he was asking her for a greater concession than merely asking her to allow him to tend to her badly blistered feet.
“Why do you care if I injured myself?” she demanded, seizing upon her defensiveness rather than lingering upon the mad yearnings coursing through her. “I should think you would be crowing over the fact that you were right, and had I listened to you, I would have neither blistered feet nor a sunburnt face.”
Kissing him had done something to her, clearly.
Addled her wits.
He startled her then by taking a lone, long forefinger, and brushing it gently down the bridge of her nose. “Why would I be pleased you are in pain? What manner of beast do you think me? And I thought you said your skin had not burned.”
She liked the warmth of his touch, the tenderness of the gesture. Too much.
And she hated herself for it.
“Perhaps my skin did burn, just a bit,” she acknowledged, also despising the throatiness of her voice.
“You have freckles,” he said, “just as you did the time we had the picnic luncheon overlooking the lake here. Do you recall that day?”
Yes, she did. The memories seared her from the inside out, sending a pounding thrum of desire directly to her core. In spite of the pain of the blisters on her feet, need pulsed to life, creating an ache so fierce within her that she had to press her thighs together in attempt to stave it off.
She did not succeed, however, for the action only heightened the sensation.
His gaze dipped to her lips. “You remember it, do you not? I fed you strawberries. We were watching the ducks.”
“You were watching the ducks,” she corrected before she could think better of her admission. “I was watching the swans.”
“You read poetry to me.” He smiled, a true smile, one that crinkled the corners of his magnificent eyes. “‘She sleeps a charmed sleep: Awake her not.’”
He remembered. “Goblin Market. The poem was Dream Land.”
The volume had been by Christina Rossetti. That summer day had seemed charmed. He had given her strawberries, one bite at a time, and they had kissed, their tongues tangling, berry juice sticky and sweet on their mouths. She had read him poems with his head in her lap, stroking his hair.
She had taken off her hat and abandoned her parasol. And later, their kisses and poetry had not been enough. He had rolled her onto her back and made love to her there on the hill overlooking the manmade Needham Hall lake.
“You do remember,” he said.
How could she not? So many details returned.
She told herself it meant nothing. That the faraway day had meant nothing, too.
If only she believed herself.
“I remember other days as well,” she added, chasing the memory, the thoughts. “The clearest day of all is the one when you betrayed me. But that was not the only time you were unfaithful to me, was it Needham?”
His jaw tensed beneath his beard, his lips firming into a thin, harsh line. “What happened that day was a mistake. It never happened before, and nor did it happen after.”
Again with his protestations he had remained faithful to her for three years.
“I do not believe a word that comes out of your mouth,” she told him.
And oh, what a beautiful, wicked mouth it was. If only she could stop imagining what it had felt like upon hers. What his kiss had been like.
“Do you still feed them?” he asked her suddenly.
Instantly, she knew what he was speaking of.
The ducks. The swans.
Of course she still fed them.
“The birds? No.” The prevarication left her because she wanted to spite him. She did not want him to think he still had the power to know her, even though he did. “I leave them to be tended to by others. I am far too busy for them now.”
He cocked his head. “That is a shame, Nell. I know how much joy they brought you. I hope you did not stop because…”
Apparently thinking better of his words, he allowed them to trail off and stood.
“Because of you?” She raised a brow at him, hoping she made him feel small and foolish, much the way he had so oft made her feel. “Do not be a sapskull, Needham. I have scarcely thought of you at all these last few years. I would certainly not let you keep me from doing anything I wanted, as I am sure you already know if you have followed the gossips as you say you have.”
“Of course.” There was a flash of something in his expression, in his eyes. “Stay here, Nell. I will be back in a moment.”
He did not wait for her response. She watched him go, his robe fluttering around his lean calves, and wondered at the emotion she had glimpsed. Hurt? Surely not. If he had felt anything for
her—if the love he had once professed to feel for her had been true—he would never have had another woman in his bed. Nor would he have left her for three years.
If he had loved her, he would have fought for her. Instead, he had left.
He disappeared through the door connecting their chambers. She stared bemusedly at the space where he had once been.
To Jack’s amazement, Nell was still where he had left her when he returned with the supplies he needed—cloths, basin, water, soap, soothing salve, and a small pot of aloe.
She watched him in silence, her small ankles crossed, her night rail primly lowered so the hem brushed the tops of her feet. It was apparent to him that she had arranged herself to expose as little of her skin as possible. He had already seen, known, tasted, and loved every exquisite inch of her. But her need to hide herself from him was a manifestation of the walls she continually rebuilt each time he applauded himself for tearing them down.
Her high forehead was bright red from the sun she had absorbed the evening before in her determination to thwart him. Fortunately for her, he had a remedy for that as well. Thanks to his travels, he had learned a great deal about seeing to his own ailments and injuries.
Jack brought his collection to her and knelt at her feet on the Axminster, laying out all his accoutrements. “You did not flee,” he observed drily.
She pursed her lips at him. “My feet hurt like the devil.”
Ah, that explained it. She was in too much pain to be defiant.
“You never should have walked in those bloody boots,” he told her, dunking the clean cloth into the bowl of water as he thought of the fashionable yet highly imprudent footwear she had been sporting the day before.
The water was not as warm as he would have preferred, but it would have to do. He lathered the cloth with soap, glancing up at her when she made a hissing sound he recognized all too well.
She was irritated with him.
Her Missing Marquess Page 6
