Gussy glanced at the small, sloppy room. “I always liked it,” she admitted. “But once when I brought it up, Grandmother pointed out that. I have a lot more space at the big house.”
“And you’re always in sight, right there under her thumb.”
“Yes, that, too,” Gussy murmured, her lashes sweeping her cheeks. She passed a bowl of salad and steered the conversation to gardens, politics and movies in a hostessy way, keeping the talk light and nonconfrontational. By the time they finished a dessert of fresh strawberries, she’d even gotten him to admit that he’d enjoyed Sense and Sensibility.
“I cried buckets during the scene where Emma Thompson’s character couldn’t hold back her own tears,” she said, returning from freshening up to join him on the love seat. “It was so cathartic.”
“You know, I was thinking earlier that you remind me a little bit of both the Dashwood sisters. Mostly you’re buttoned-up like the older sister—what’s her name—Elinor, but then there are times I see Marianne’s sensibility in you…”
“Oh, no,” Gussy insisted. “I might have given you that impression, but, really, I’m strictly an Elinor. I’m as plain as pudding and as sensible as—”
“Wanna bet?”
She was suspicious. “Bet?”
He stretched his arms across the nappy velvet backrest of the love seat. “I’ll bet that. I can make you physically respond when I kiss you. You’re all nerves and emotions, you won’t be able to help yourself.”
“Hmm.” She narrowed her eyes. “What are the stakes?”
He leaned a little closer. “How about…another kiss? And if you still can’t control your reaction, another one.”
She couldn’t contain her amusement. “I think you’re setting me up.”
“Hey, if you can’t do it…” He shrugged.
She sat stiffly upright beside him, her hands folded in her lap, knees and ankles together, eyes downcast, to all intents seriously mulling over the proposal. Only her lips gave her away; they were already pouting in anticipation.
“I’ll up the challenge,” he offered. “I have to make you respond both physically and audibly.”
“Ah.” She allowed herself a small smile. “All right, then. But remember, you have only one kiss of, say, no more than five seconds in length to produce your results.”
“Ten seconds,” he bargained.
“Seven,” she compromised. “Do you have a stopwatch?”
Jed grinned. “We’ll have to wing it.”
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, preparing herself to withstand his best attempts. When he inched closer, she held out her palm. “Wait a minute. What do I get if I win?”
“I don’t think we have to worry about that possibility.”
“Humph.” She glanced around the cozy room. “How about the carriage house?”
“With me in it?” he asked innocently, removing her glasses and dropping them beside his pair on the coffee table.
“Ha! You wish!” Blinking, she tightened her fists and her lips, Elinor Dashwood to the core. “Okay. I’m ready. Go for it.”
Jed held up his hand before her face and slowly turned down all but the index finger. Gussy’s eyes almost crossed, staring at it. “What are you doing?”
He brushed his fingertip across her whitened knuckles. She clenched even tighter. “Seven seconds,” she reminded him.
“That’s for the kiss. You didn’t set a time limit on the preliminaries.”
“What preliminaries? You didn’t mention—”
“You didn’t mention them. Quite a loophole, I’d say.”
Her eyes widened; she almost laughed. “You cheat, but okay. Just try and break me.”
He put his mouth to her ear and whispered, “I don’t want to break you.” He blew softly at the threads and wisps of hair her ponytail hadn’t contained. “I only want to make love to you.”
Surprise nearly made her gasp. She managed to swallow instead, her chin trembling. “Careful,” Jed said. “That was almost audible and I haven’t even kissed you yet.”
Gussy licked her lips, which gave him an idea. He wet the point of his finger before again lightly stroking her knuckles. With his nail grazing her skin, his fingertip barely skimming the down of her forearms, he traced slow, curving lines across her skin, then bent and let his breath puff warmly against the goose bumps he’d raised. She made a valiant effort to sit tight, but her body was softening, relaxing into a slump.
Jed went back to her knuckles and did it again, his fingertip soothing and sensual, his mouth almost touching her skin but not quite, until Gussy gave the softest of sighs and opened her hands, her fingers uncurling, her palms pink and moist. It may have been enough of a reaction for a win even without the kiss, but he wasn’t ready to give up the game.
He put his face next to hers. “Now I’m going to kiss you.” His voice was soft, husky; he let its resonance tease the delicate, sensitive shell of her ear. “I’m going to kiss you, Miss Augustina.”
Her eyes had been wide open and staring, but now she closed them, possibly in defense, perhaps in surrender. Jed touched his fingertips to her lids and the tracery of veins beneath the thin, translucent skin. He felt the pulse of her blood, the surge of his own.
Gussy’s face lifted, reaching toward his palm. He curved his hand around the smooth peachiness of her cheek, turning her face to his. “I’m going to kiss you,” he said again, making her eyes flash open in alarm, then close indolently as he did kiss her, soft and slow, her lips going pliant and her mouth tasting like mint toothpaste for a moment before the slick heat rose unbearably and she tasted like Gussy, sweet Gussy, all fire and response and damn, his seven seconds were up!
He made himself stop kissing her, but he didn’t stop touching her, his arms wrapped tight around her body so he felt the struggle she was making, her spine and shoulders stiffening, trying mightily to hold back the moan that lifted from her throat and pushed at lips too weak from kissing to hold it back. It was a deep, full moan, burred with pleasure and sex. Jed’s hair prickled at the sound.
Gussy pressed two fingers to her lips. “Gosh. You win.”
“Gosh,” Jed said with a burst of laughter, and he kissed her again.
She arched like a cat and opened her mouth, tangling her tongue with his. “If you don’t stop reacting, I can’t stop kissing you,” he warned.
“It’s your voice.” Her legs twined around him. “It’s so low and raspy it gives me goose bumps. Look, I’m shivering.”
He slumped against the cushions, pulling her weight onto his chest. “I took the blade of a hockey stick in the larynx. I can’t help my voice.” His hands had dropped to her bottom, clutching, squeezing, pressing her hard into his lap.
“Poor, battered, beat-up Jed.” Gussy kissed and licked at the bump of his Adam’s apple, her fingers pulling open his collar as her hips slowly rotated against him. Her tongue grazed his collarbone. “I’ll take care of you.”
“Maybe it’s not a cure, but I sure like the medicine.” She pushed up his sleeve and bit his biceps gently, her thumb rubbing appreciatively against the snarling-blackbear tattoo. “Whoa, Gussy,” he said. “Hold on.”
She yanked the barrette from her ponytail, lifting her head and shaking her long hair free so it spilled like maple syrup over her shoulders. “What?”
“I need to know. About the fiancés—”
“I was wrong, Jed. I can’t marry any of them. I am absolutely, positively sure of that.”
He relaxed. “Good.”
“May we please go into the bedroom now?”
“Since you asked so nicely…yes.”
JED’S BODY WAS even better than she’d imagined. It was sleek and strong with muscle, golden-brown in the dim greenish light of the bedroom, lightly furred and very, very aroused. His skin felt here like hot satin, there like brushed velvet, sliding and flexing with muscle, taut with tendon and sinew. Gussy’s heart was in her throat, racing with a pulse as rapid as the beat
of a hummingbird’s wings.
He was staring at her breasts, his eyes vivid with desire. She took her hands off him and slid higher up on the bed, touching herself, shielding herself. Although she was rather pleased with her breasts—they were small enough not to droop but round enough to fill out a bra—she wasn’t accustomed to having a man stare at them. Or caress them, although, oh, my, that felt truly wonderful! Jed’s fingertips skimmed the silken undersides and danced tauntingly across her nipples. His head lowered and his tongue flicked and his mouth took her deep, the suction strong, too strong; she felt his teeth tugging, the prickling pull coursing through her body until she had to open her mouth and cry his name, her voice thick with lust.
His hot mouth branded hers. She murmured in her throat. He parted her thighs with his knee, speaking low into her ear so the delicate shivers shook over her again like powdered sugar through a sieve. “Nothing but feeling and emotion, pure sensibility,” he whispered, his fingers gently delving into the warm heart of her, teasing her, stretching her, stroking in and out, propelling her into a delirium of sensation.
Instinct took over where experience failed. Gussy’s hips writhed against his hand, against his erection, tempting him until he was unable to hold back and came into her with a slow thrust, burying the hard hot length of him deep, deep, sliding out, plunging deeper, then again and again, taking her shocked senses and wringing them inside out until she was begging for it, begging for more, scraping her fingernails across his chest, her head twisting on the pillow as the roaring tide filled her ears. And finally the waves broke, crashing through her in rhythm with the surge of Jed’s body and the spasms of her muscles and the scorching liquid fire of his climax until she was released—astonished, exhausted, replete.
“Gussy, sweetheart, I love you,” Jed whispered into her damp neck as he collapsed beside her.
She rolled against him, floating in the warm wash of pleasure but sinking inexorably to sleep, murmuring his name into the green-gold light that filtered through the pine trees crowding the windows, trying to remember, yes, reminding herself that first thing in the morning she was going to make Jed ask her to marry him because her great-grandfather had ordered her to accept the next proposal she received, and she wanted it to come from Jed, only Jed, no one else but Jed…
9
Intimate Knowledge
GOLDEN SUNLIGHT DRIZZLED through the thick shroud of evergreens, brightening the small bedroom of the carriage house in dribs and drabs. A beautiful morning, Gussy thought, coming in with a breakfast tray. Nothing less would have been appropriate for this, the true first day of the rest of her life.
She looked at Jed, still asleep in bed, his bare brown limbs stretched to all four corners, his modesty—or hers—spared by the tangled length of powder blue sheet draped over his hips. His head was under one of the pillows and his chest rose and fell with the faint sound of his snoring. Gussy smiled. So. Jed snored. More of a raspy snuffle, really, but close enough to give her a cozy sense of intimate knowledge.
Intimate knowledge? Her face warmed as she carefully set the tray on the mattress and knelt beside it. All that she’d learned about Jed throughout their long, lovely night together certainly qualified better as intimate knowledge than snoring!
She lifted the pillow. “Good morning, Jed. I’ve brought you coffee. And breakfast I hate to wake you so early but we really must talk before I leave.”
“Leave?” He grunted and blinked and rubbed his hand across his face. “Why are you leaving?” He reached for her instead of the breakfast tray, tugging until she was sprawled sideways across his chest. “Don’t leave.”
She leaned her cheek against his chest. “I have to report in with Grandmother. She’ll be scandalized if I don’t show up for breakfast.”
Jed bunched the pillow beneath his head. “Might do the old girl some good.” He stroked Gussy’s hair. “And you.”
She pressed her lips to his shoulder. “I’ve already been done some good.” Her tongue moved against his skin; his fingers spread through her hair. “Percy’s not the only one who likes the taste of your skin,” she whispered, smiling shyly, the look in her eyes caressing his rugged face.
“So stay,” he urged, his early morning voice even rougher than normal. “I’ll let you lick me all over.”
“Jed!” Quick as a heartbeat, Gussy sat up and bopped him with a pillow. “You’re not supposed to be so bold with a girl as meek and inexperienced as me. Use some restraint, will you?”
“Oh, yeah, oh, yeah,” he scoffed good-naturedly. “Poor little Gussy, the amorous heiress. Put upon by hordes of admirers who upset her dainty sensibilities.”
“Hordes?” What a joke. “Well, Jed,” she said perkily, “I can promise you that the hordes are no longer with us. Zip, zap, presto, I’ve made them all disappear.” She hugged the pillow to her abdomen. “You’re the only one I want to keep.”
Jed pushed himself up to a sitting position. “Is that so?”
She nodded, bashful again. “Uh-huh.”
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?”
She brightened and handed him the cup of coffee. “I’ve got it all figured out. Once I’m married, my husband and I get control of my Throckmorton trust fund, so money will be no problem. I could invest a good amount of it in your business, become your partner in that way, too, if you think that’s a workable idea.”
Jed blinked.
“Because some couples can’t handle working together and living together.”
He stared at his coffee, then at her. Her stomach roiled like thunderclouds before a storm. Excitement, she thought. Butterflies. This was a tremendously important moment, after all.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m…” She’d lost steam and had to struggle to continue as optimistically as before. “Okay, I suppose I should have waited for you to get around to it after a suitably lengthy courtship, but, well, the fact is I’m under the gun. Great-grandfather gave me an ultimatum. No, an order. I have to get married.”
“You have to get married.”
Jed was not responding at all the way she’d hoped. He was as still and stony as the sphinx, staring at her as if she’d just landed from Mars. She felt timidity and cowardice creeping up on her. If Jed didn’t propose soon, she might have a total relapse into mousiness.
“You have to get married,” he repeated, frowning. “I don’t imagine he meant for you to marry me, though.”
Gussy gulped, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat. “That’s just it. I know very well he and Grandmother meant Andrews, but Great-grandfather neglected to be specific, you see? He ranted and raved and then he told me that my time had run out and I must accept my next proposal of marriage. Meaning Andrews. I think Grandmother was setting it up with him—Andrews, that is. But since Great-grandfather didn’t actually mention Andrews by name, I thought…” Please, Jed, she begged silently. Please, please, ask me now.
“You thought I’d do?”
Although that was putting it rather more dispassionately than Gussy cared to after the past night, she nodded and said, “Yes, I suppose so.” She cleared her throat. “You’d do very well.”
“How cut-and-dried.”
“But it’s not!” she insisted. More than anything, she wanted him to open his arms to her, hold her close, whisper sweet words in her ear until she felt safe and secure in her scary commitment to him. While she needed the support to confront her grandparents, she needed it even more as reassurance that she hadn’t dreamed their passionate union. Presently, Jed did not look romantic in the slightest.
She was too timid to try kissing him until he remembered they were lovers, so she tried another tactic. “Marriage will be beneficial to both of us. I could be your entrée into the local social scene and that would give your business a tremendous boost. As for me, well, you know how I’ve wanted to…make my own way. I’m certain that as a married woman I’ll have the independence and separate identity I lack living at T
hrockmorton Cottage…” Her voice was weakening; she took a deep, shaky breath and continued. “Grandmother will have to admit that I’m an adult who can make her own decisions. I hope.”
Peering through her lowered lashes, she watched as Jed sprang from bed as if the mattress burned with hot coals. He grabbed the jeans he’d dropped the evening before and jammed his legs into them, the muscles in his chest bunched tightly beneath his skin. “Sorry,” he said shortly, not looking at her. His mouth twisted. “I don’t like to be naked when I’m discussing business.”
Gussy winced. “Business?”
“That’s what it sounds like to me. An arranged marriage. A marriage of convenience.”
“I didn’t intend—”
“Your intentions were clear.” His voice was thick and rough with a clotted mix of emotions. Anger was prominent, but so was disappointment. And inestimable regret. “You see me as a means to an end.”
“Maybe it sounded…I didn’t mean to—”
A brisk chop of Jed’s hand cut her off. She bit her lower lip, beseeching him with her eyes, knowing that even though she’d tried to be so careful, she’d very badly botched laying the groundwork for his proposal. If only she could just come out and say that above all else she loved him. Her heart throbbed with the declaration, but still her voice remained silent.
“You’re not exactly the sort of amorous heiress I thought you were, but here I am, manipulated just the same.” Jed stepped over to the window and braced his arms against the frame, his back to her. His head hung low between his shoulders. “Get this straight, Gussy. I will never marry a woman who wants to acquire me for her own personal gain. I will never marry a woman who doesn’t want me only for myself—who probably has no idea who I really am. I will never marry…” He turned slowly to confront her, his eyes burning brightly. “I will never marry you, Miss Augustina Fairchild.”
Fire flared in Gussy’s face, but the rest of her body felt curiously cold and numb. Somehow she managed to slide off the bed and onto her feet. She couldn’t feel the floor; she couldn’t feel her heart. Maybe that was fortunate. “Sorry,” she croaked, resorting to the automatic response. “Excuse me. I’ve made a mistake. I’ll be leaving now.”
The Amorous Heiress Page 12
