by Julia Kelly
She gasped and her body contracted.
He held his breath for a moment, regaining control of himself. “Jane? Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m sure,” she murmured. “Please don’t stop.”
He slid in a little bit more, stopping to give her body time to adjust before pushing again. When his cock was buried in her to the hilt, his whole body shaking with desire and restraint, he gritted out, “Tell me what you want.”
“Everything,” she said, wrapping her legs around him and settling him a little deeper inside her. “Show me everything, Nicholas.”
He gave a little laugh, relieved that she was as greedy as he was. “One thing at a time.”
He moved slowly at first—long strokes that pulled out of her and then slid back in as the friction built between them. She was still for the first couple, and then her body began to move. Whatever instinct drove her forward was also driving him wild. She hooked her ankles around his back, angling her hips a little higher so that he thrust deeper each time. It was heavenly, eye-rollingly good, and as he sped up their cadence, it only got better.
The way she tilted her hips and the manner in which she slammed her body into him gave him an idea. He pushed himself up on his arms so that he towered over her at a sharper angle and thrust. A cry ripped from her throat, and her head cast back against the quilt they lay on.
“Do that again,” she ordered, her words half drunk with lust.
“Demanding minx.” He laughed, but he followed her instructions.
Her eyes screwed shut and he drove into her again and again, the pressure of his own orgasm building low behind his spine as he struggled to hold back. He tried to clear his mind as he pushed into her, but all he could think of was the beautiful woman writhing beneath him. He’d been a fool to ever believe that he’d be able to forget this. Forget her.
Just as he was on the edge of losing control, Jane’s back arched and she cried out. Her muscles squeezed around his cock as she came in waves. Moving with short and shallow strokes, he came fast behind her, driving into her to push them both to the very limit. At the last moment he had the good sense to draw out and spill his seed on the sheets next to him. He wouldn’t be the man to saddle her with a child unless she wanted one, and that was certainly not something to be decided while lying naked in a barn in the middle of who knew where.
He collapsed, careful to take the bulk of his weight on his elbows and spare Jane. She was breathing just as heavily as he was, and the sound of their breath mingled with the rain on the barn’s roof.
As the pleasure ebbed from him, reality took hold. He knew there were things he should say to her. If he was the gentleman he professed to be, he should be on his knees right now asking her to marry him, but the thought that she might say no held him back. He didn’t think he could stand that. Finding her had been the one good thing to happen to him in the last few years, and he wasn’t ready to put that up to risk. Besides, what did he have to offer her? He was a land-poor, cash-poor, horse-moderately-well-off baron who had two sisters to house, feed, and marry off for their own sakes as much as his own. He’d be taking her from a situation where she earned her own money and lived in the no doubt luxurious world of the Earl of Rawson. No one could tell him that wasn’t a better life for her. He wouldn’t force her to make that choice.
His mind was beginning to pitch about like a ship tossed at sea when she wrapped her arms around him and whispered, “Thank you.”
His heart clenched as he rolled off of her and settled her into the crook of his body. His arm draped protectively over her waist as she snuggled closer to him. He drew up the quilt he’d thrown off when she first kissed him over them, and told himself that he’d work all of this out tomorrow.
Chapter Nine
Jane woke up the next morning, wrapped in Nicholas’s arms and floating on a cloud as soft as candy floss. She stretched her legs and nestled closer to the warmth of his body. His breath stirred her hair, and she could feel the thrum of his pulse where his wrist draped over her waist. It was an entirely new sensation—one she wouldn’t have traded for the world.
It was also an entirely temporary one, the stern, practical side of her brain reminded her. Nicholas was a lot of things: a baron, a gentleman, the caring brother of two sisters who were desperately in need of good marriage prospects. The fantasy of waking up in each other’s arms was too delicate to sustain in the face of all that. Reality was bound to smash it to bits.
But Jane couldn’t help secretly hoping that moment would never come. She’d longed for excitement for years, dreaming of a day when something would happen to her. And yet she’d done one better. She’d made her own adventure, choosing to be bold and brave when she’d kissed him. She’d reached out for the thing she wanted and gotten it. It was almost enough to make her believe that maybe there was a chance that the lightning bolt of luck would strike once again.
She shifted against him again, pressing her backside into his hips and wondering if maybe she could tempt him agai—
In a flash of flesh and sheets she was pinned, a very awake Nicholas grinning at her as he pressed her hands to their makeshift bed. His blond hair spilled over his forehead, making him look the rogue, and his stormy eyes sparkled with delight.
“You’re awake,” he said.
“I am.”
“Good. I’ve been waiting to do this.” And he leaned down to kiss her.
His lips worked her into a dreamy state—her body aroused but her mind muddled with the delectable haze she was quickly learning a truly great kiss could stir in a woman. When he finally pulled away, she blinked slowly, coming back down to earth.
“It’s just light enough that I can see you properly now,” he said, dropping a kiss to the underside of her chin. She shivered with delight, wondering if her body would ever stop reacting this way to him.
“You look all too pleased with yourself,” she said as she traced her hands up the plane of his back.
“Is that right?”
She nodded. “Smug, almost. I’m not entirely sure it suits you,” she said, although she knew full well just how handsome he’d be no matter what expression he wore. There was a magnetism about him that seemed to have grown the more time she spent with him, and it only made him glow brighter before her.
He pressed the growing hardness of his cock against the softness of her stomach. “Are you telling me that I don’t have something to feel smug about?”
She couldn’t help her grin. “Why don’t I be the judge of that?”
She was about to reach down under the quilt to take him in her hand when a horse neighed and stamped in its stall.
“Damn.” Nicholas dropped his head to her collarbone. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but we should probably—”
Her fingertips brushed the head of his cock and he hissed out a breath. “Are you sure?”
He opened his mouth to answer, but the door to the barn banged open.
“Breakfast is on the table!” called Mr. Pritcher.
Jane closed her eyes and let her head fall back on the pallet with a little sound of frustration.
Nicholas smoothed her hair off her forehead, his expression nothing short of regretful. “We could pretend we haven’t heard him,” he said softly.
“No,” she said with a sigh. “If we stay here we’ll never get back on the road again. Who knows how much progress Lady Margaret’s made thanks to my run-in with the Harlewoods.”
“Our run-in,” he reminded her before dropping a sweet kiss to her lips. “Breakfast it is, then.”
The cold chilled Jane as Nicholas threw back the quilt and then reached a hand down to help her out of bed. The air in the barn had cooled overnight, and without the natural, steady heat of Nicholas pressed up against her back, her skin pricked with goose bumps.
Jane donned her chemise and corset in the
time it took Nicholas to locate and put on his drawers. She scurried over to what had been her bed to retrieve the rest of her underthings from behind three stacked bales of hay. With all of her ties and eye hooks secured, it was back over to the side of the barn she’d slept on.
She was just shaking any stray pieces of hay out of her dress when she realized Nicholas had stopped moving. Instead, he sat on the pallet watching her, now dressed in his trousers but no shirt.
She held the dress up to her breasts, covering herself in her sudden bout of self-consciousness. She’d never really thought of what it would be like to have a man watch her dress. It’d seemed like too remote a possibility to even fantasize about, but now it seemed almost too intimate. Nicholas’s hands had roamed over her last night and his tongue had tasted parts of her she’d never even dared to imagine someone else would see, and yet this little, unconscious moment of false domesticity was what threw her off her equilibrium.
“What is it?” she forced herself to ask through her own awkwardness.
Instead of answering, he rose and took the dress from her. Carefully, he raised it. Understanding that he wanted to help her, she lifted her arms and let him guide the garment over her head.
Nicholas kissed the base of her spine where the dress gaped open. Her lips parted. He kissed between her shoulder blades. Her breath quickened. He kissed the back of her neck right where her spine ridged.
Her head fell forward as his hands found the little row of buttons that ran down the back of her dress.
“You know, I’ve spent the last few days wondering how any woman manages to get these closed without the help of a lady’s maid,” he said.
She looked over her shoulder as his fingers tried to manipulate the little fabric-covered buttons.
“Every woman has her secrets,” she said.
“Damn, it slipped again,” he muttered. “Will that secret help me at all?”
“I’m afraid not. I have a little buttonhook I use to get the hooks closed.”
“The sort you use on boots?” he asked.
“With a longer handle, but essentially, yes.”
“Ah, there it goes,” he said as he moved on to the next closure. “Well, I’m always happy to lend a helping hand, even if I’m not particularly good at it.”
Except he wouldn’t always be there, would he? Once this madcap dash across the countryside was over, he’d still be a baron with two sisters who must be married and she’d still be a governess—although whether or not she’d still have a position at the end of all this was highly debatable. She didn’t know what was more depressing, the thought of going back to her old life or the idea that it might not be waiting for her when she returned.
This was neither the time nor the place, she reminded herself.
“Why do I feel as though your motives aren’t entirely altruistic in helping me dress?” she asked, forcing a laugh into her voice.
He leaned down so close to her ear she could feel his breath. “Because the sooner we get on the road, the sooner we get to the next inn.”
“And what happens at the next inn?” she asked.
He slipped his arms around her waist and hugged her. “The battlements come down in a room with a proper bed.”
“Well, then,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at him coquettishly, “I should probably find my boots.”
They raced through the rest of their preparations and, if truth be told, breakfast too. Twice Mr. Pritcher chuckled when he spotted Jane stealing glances at Nicholas, but she hardly cared enough to blush. The Pritchers already thought that the pair of them were a married couple. What did it matter if she helped the charade along a little?
They were on the road by eight, a fact confirmed when Nicholas snapped open his pocket watch. It would’ve been scandalously early in London—Jane wasn’t entirely sure that either Lady Margaret or her mother had seen the early side of the day in the last five years—but in the morning air it seemed fitting. The rain had given way to brilliant sunshine that shone down on the emerald- and wheat-colored countryside. Everything smelled fresh and new.
As they rode on, Jane quietly tended to the spark of a new hope secreted deep in her chest. Any formality between them had fallen away, and as they rode, they spoke with the ease of people who’ve known each other for decades. He teased her as she corrected his recitation of poems his teachers at Rugby had made him memorize, and once he leapt down from his horse to pick a bunch of crocuses to brighten her modest dress. She wore the little posy as a boutonniere, letting him pin it to her bodice and steal a few more kisses out in the open fields.
Mostly, though, they talked about everything. They rode into the first village that day on a wave of laughter as Nicholas told her the story of the time he’d dared his sisters to box him.
“Effie would have none of it, of course,” he said with a chuckle. “She didn’t see the point in playing such childish games.”
“And what of Helen?” she asked as they brought their horses to a halt.
“Well, Helen’s quite a bit different,” he said, jumping down, tying up his mount, and then circling around to help her.
“She hit you square in the eye, didn’t she?” asked Jane with a laugh.
He helped her down. “How did you know?”
“Call it a hazard of the trade,” she said.
“I suppose that makes sense,” he said thoughtfully, “except you’re only partially right. Helen hit me once in the eye, and as soon as I stopped clutching it long enough to look up, she got me square in the other one before hitting me in the nose for good measure. I was black and blue for weeks, and my mother was furious.”
“What of your father?” she asked.
“He laughed and told me that if I could let my sister whip me, I deserved every painful second of it. I sat with a steak planted on my face for hours that day,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “It put me off beef for a while.”
“I hate to play the devil’s advocate, but do you think perhaps you might’ve done something to deserve your little sister’s wrath?” She held her hand up as he began to protest. “Remember how many little brothers and sisters I’ve seen argue over the years, with all of Lady Margaret’s friends and cousins coming and going.”
He grinned. “I might have put a frog on her chair in the schoolroom that day.”
“Nicholas,” she chided.
“I can promise you she deserved it. Besides, it’s an older brother’s responsibility to torture his sisters, and I wouldn’t have shirked it for the world.”
“You know, I’ve often wondered what it would be like to grow up with brothers and sisters,” she said as he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and they began to make their way toward the inn’s door. This one was called the Wallowing Pig, but she hardly noticed. It was just another in a blur of inns she’d seen on this unexpected journey.
“You had cousins, didn’t you?” he asked.
She pulled a face. “It’s not the same thing, at least these ones weren’t. The boys were all as thick as thieves and I was an interloper, although occasionally I would be conscripted into the large-scale battles my cousins used to enact in the front yard. Going to school where there were other little girls who wanted to play with me was almost a relief.”
He covered her hand with his as they crossed the threshold. “It sounds like you did well for yourself no matter the lack of siblings.”
“You know,” she said, cocking her head to one side, “I think you might be right.”
“We’ll check with the innkeeper and then perhaps have luncheon,” he said.
“It’s rather soon after breakfast, don’t you think?”
He slid an arm around her waist and pulled her to him. “And if I suggested a private room?”
A smile slid over her lips and she was just about to reply when a gasp filled the en
tryway.
“Miss Ephram!”
Jane’s head snapped up at the woman’s voice. Just inside the inn on the landing half a flight up from the ground floor stood Lady Margaret.
Chapter Ten
One day when Jane was very young, her cousin Robert had forced her to play the Battle of Waterloo. He’d insisted on being the Duke of Wellington, enlisting his brothers as his various lieutenants and leaving her to fill Napoleon’s diminutive shoes. She had just been about to launch her cavalry attack when Robert had drawn back his balled-up fist and punched her square in the stomach. She’d buckled over, gasping for air, eyes watering as she wondered why he was standing over her, victorious. All she’d wanted to do was curl into a ball to protect herself from a further onslaught of punches.
Now, more than twenty years later with Lady Margaret staring down at her in shock, she had exactly the same feeling, only this time it warred with the powerful urge to turn on her heel and run.
She couldn’t show weakness. Any sign that she might be ashamed of being in Nicholas’s arms would only fuel whatever cunning plan was ticking over in Lady Margaret’s mind. It was the time to show just how bold she could be.
Jane looked the young woman straight in the eye and said, “Lady Margaret, I’ve been searching for you for some time now.”
She watched Lady Margaret’s eyes flick over to Nicholas, taking him in with one long, sweeping look from the top of his hat to the toe of his boot.
“I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone,” said the young lady as she slowly descended the stairs.
“How could I not when I woke up and you were no longer in your bed?” Jane asked.
“It seems to me you’ve found a rather more exciting traveling companion.” Lady Margaret came to stop right in front of Nicholas. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”
“Believe me when I say that you’re by far the most exciting traveling companion a governess could want.”
Lady Margaret laughed. “Miss Ephram, your tongue has an edge to it. I didn’t think I’d ever see the day. Did this gentleman help you hone it?”
