“A tower room!” she exclaimed, looking back at the tall figure who had followed them. “What is the meaning of this?”
Heath grinned. “It is for your own protection.”
“Protection? I feel as if I’ve been taken prisoner.”
“That is utter nonsense.” He gave the footman a slight nod. “Thank you, Collins. You may leave the traditional bread and water outside the door in the morning.”
“Very funny,” Julia muttered as he opened the creaking door onto a surprisingly intimate candlelit chamber furnished with a gilt dressing table, a writing desk, and a mahogany four-poster hung with burgundy velvet curtains. An inviting fire burned in the pink-veined marble fireplace. “I— Oh, it’s lovely. The loveliest prison I have ever seen.”
He smiled drily. “This is where the male members of the family brought their princesses.”
She admired a watercolor above the fireplace of a shepherd and shepherdess in a meadow until she realized just what the bucolic couple were doing under the hay. One could hardly stare at it without thinking of uninhibited sex, of abandonment, of earthly pleasures. “I don’t think I need to ask why they brought women here,” she said, turning slowly . . .
To find him standing directly behind her, his gaze drifting over her with unmistakable sensuality. She put her hand to the fastening of her gray wool mantle. All of a sudden the room felt rather too warm. When would she learn that the Boscastle family never did anything in half measures? This must have been what Jane meant when she had warned her to beware.
“Why so uneasy, Julia?” he asked, his voice teasing. He circled her, laying his hands on her shoulders, his voice exuding magnetic male confidence. His body pressed into hers, the hard wall of his chest inviting her to lean back against him.
“Uneasy? Do I seem uneasy?” Faint. Light-headed, definitely.
She turned and saw the alluring image of the fire’s flames in his eyes. If she dared to look closer, she would probably see the devil, too, or at the very least the reflection of her own desires. Her breasts felt flushed, and her breath seemed to catch in her throat. Warmth swept through her in swirling waves.
“Julia,” he said, lifting one dark eyebrow in reproach.
There. For a fleeting moment she glimpsed Satan in his gaze as he added, “It’s only me.” His hands moved to the front of her mantle.
“Precisely.”
With a flick of his fingers he unfastened the garment. “It’s warm in here, isn’t it?” he asked, looking deeply into her eyes.
“Roasting.”
“Perhaps you’re overdressed.”
“I’m perfectly capable of undressing myself. I’ve been doing it for years, actually, ever since I was three.”
“One can always use a helping hand.”
“I think I’ll manage.”
He brushed his fingers down her back in a subtle caress that stopped her breath. “I happen to be good with my hands.”
“Was that ever in question?”
She watched the mantle slither to the thick, patterned carpet. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected the design woven into the heavy wool depicted another voluptuous scene to stir the senses. Not that the typical Boscastle male needed help in that field.
Neither did she. She was drowning in need, so desperately in love with him that she could not contain it. Having waited so long for happiness, she wanted to savor every moment of it. Moments that would lengthen into months, then years, if she had her way.
“Where is Hermia going to sleep?” she asked, a small gasp escaping her as his hands slowly crossed around her shoulders.
His eyes gleamed playfully. The scar on his upper lip thinned as he gave her a disarming smile. “Safe in the other wing.”
“The other wing!”
“Hamm is in the room beside her. After all, I can’t be expected to guard you both at the same time.”
She stared down at the carpet, anything to take her mind off the desire that pounded through her blood. The pattern appeared to be an erotic tableau from a Dionysian orgy. “Interesting rug. Decadent, but interesting.”
He lifted her chin with his knuckles. A wave of anticipation washed over her at his sultry look, his eyes heavily lidded. “Our rooms are connected.”
She glanced at the door behind him. “You mean by the outer hallway?”
He brushed his thumb back and forth across her lower lip. The sensual friction almost brought her to her knees. She swallowed a gasp, her legs trembling. He spoke in the quiet voice of a hunter calming his quarry. “The dressing closet links our rooms. I’m only a call away.”
“I don’t see a lock. It must be on your door.”
He shook his dark head. His smile held hers without mercy, the message clear and beguiling. “No lock. Only the door to the hallway.”
She stood immobilized on the carpet as he turned toward the closet. “Don’t you feel safer knowing that I’m in the next room?”
“I might if there were iron bars between us,” she said with a frown.
Another smile carved creases beneath his broad cheekbones. She saw his compelling reflection in the cheval glass as he murmured, “Is that because you don’t trust me, or yourself, Julia?”
Julia had undressed for bed but could not sleep. She felt like the princess in the fairy tale who fretted the entire night because there was a pea beneath the mattress. The chamber had been designed for comfort, to close out the rest of the world, to allow a woman to concentrate on only one thing.
“Seduction,” she said, sitting bolt upright in the warm shadows of the bed. The book she had been attempting to read slid to the carpet. She pushed off the mound of lavender-scented bedclothes and leaned down to retrieve it.
When she straightened there was a man half reclining beside her on the bed. A very dangerous-looking one in a loose-fitting white linen shirt and black trousers that molded his sculpted musculature.
She opened her mouth to scream.
He silenced her with a kiss.
“Merciful lord,” she murmured when she could speak, falling back onto the scented bedclothes, captive beneath the sensual weight of his body.
He leaned over her. “There’s no need to thank me,” he said in a husky voice. “I am here to protect you.”
She stared over his shoulder into the indistinct shadows of the room. “From what?”
“I heard a noise.”
“You must have the ears of a wolf, Heath Boscastle. And the instincts of one. I dropped my book only a moment ago.”
“I thought there might be an intruder. I came to investigate.”
“There is an intruder,” she retorted.
His eyes narrowed in feigned concern. “Can you describe him?”
“Perfectly. He is sinfully handsome, sinfully devious and . . . and altogether sinful. Most intruders are.”
His gaze flickered over her like a touch of flame. “I think I ought to stay in case he comes back,” he said, his hand stealing up her arm, drawing her nearer. “Unless, of course, you want me to leave.”
She closed her eyes with a shiver, whispering, “No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“What do you think?”
“I’ve waited so long for you,” he whispered. “I’m warning you that after tonight, you won’t get away from me again.”
Her heart fluttered. “I wouldn’t want to.” She would stay with him now no matter what, even if Russell caused a scandal over their broken engagement. She would be Heath’s until the end.
She had risen to her knees to unbutton his shirt, to pull it roughly from his shoulders to his lean waist. Between deep hungry kisses he untied her nightrail and tore it from her body. She rubbed her swollen breasts against his hard, scarred chest. She would devote herself to healing him with her love. She would help him forget everything he had suffered. He thrust his lower torso against hers, opening his thighs to balance her as her body softened, yielded to him. She wanted to give herself to him in every way that she coul
d. Her heart had always belonged to him. At last her body would, too. How beautiful to love so freely.
“Oh, my God, Julia.” Heath could feel the depth of her emotion in her response to him. She was a little wild, sweetly willing. He dragged his mouth down her throat to her breasts, drawing a dusky nipple between his lips. She arched, shivered, pushed against him. She craved this as badly as he did, but it wasn’t enough. He wanted her to know fully that marrying another man was a mistake. That it was him she needed, had been meant for all along. He had resisted telling her about Russell’s disloyalty, but he was tempted. He knew he would never betray Julia. He could not imagine why any man would want to, but Russell’s loss was his gain.
He ran his hands possessively over her naked body, gripped her bottom so that she could feel how hard for her he was, how desperate she made him. She shook, burying her face in his shoulder. “I want . . .” Her voice was muffled.
He traced his thumb across the rise of her rump. No woman had ever excited him as she did. “I know what you want.”
“Then don’t you think it’s time to make me stop wanting?” she whispered against the hard line of his jaw.
“You aren’t going to leave me afterward.” His hand drifted down her hip into the warm hollow between her legs.
“I’m—”
“It wasn’t a question.” He lowered her to the bed, pinned her down with the muscled weight of his thighs. “It was a statement. And I won’t leave you, either. There is nothing that can take me from you this time.”
She strained against him, her spine arching. He stared down at her with a smile. He meant to show her imprisonment of the most erotic variety. When he was done, she would gladly be his slave in bed, as he was enslaved to her. “I crave you,” he said.
She gazed up into his eyes. “I’ve wanted you since the very moment we met.”
“We should have been together, Julia. How did we go so wrong?”
She lifted her hands to his chest, her touch both soothing and seductive. “We’re together now.”
His eyes met hers as she caressed him, her fingers exploring the mysteries of his male body, stroking the striated muscle of his flat abdomen. He leaned back to shed his trousers, so hard he could not hide it. His need for her raged through his blood, settled into his bones. It took all his willpower to remind himself that he wanted to prove his love, his desire, to make every movement with her something she would remember. To make up for the years they’d been apart. He had been too eager and impatient the first time they’d been together. He knew so much more now, about pleasure, about what truly mattered in life.
“I’m going to give you what you want, Julia.”
“I want you,” she said without hesitation.
“And—”
“You—”
She lowered her hands, taking his manhood between her fingers. His groin tightened at her arousing touch, and fire streaked through his body. He moaned in approval as she stroked him, showed him that in the game of desire she was not an opponent to underestimate. He mourned the years they had lost, shook at the pleasure of the moment, at the love he allowed himself at last to feel.
She was what he had wanted, had needed, had missed in his life. She raised up on her elbows to take him into her mouth, and he stared down at her in fierce longing, reveling in the seductive warmth of her lips, the unbearably sweet suction. The pressure in his loins built. He battled for sanity, for control. If she sucked him any harder, he would climax helplessly like a schoolboy, and he wanted so much to impress her.
He ground his teeth and caught her by the shoulders, forcing his knee between her legs. She fell back on the bed, open and enticing. He bent his head to kiss her; he felt her arms clutch his shoulders, and his muscles contracted, responded to her touch. He settled between her thighs and thrust. Wet heat welcomed him, closed around his throbbing shaft in blissful sensation. Years of waiting, of wanting, and she was his. He closed his eyes and let instinct take over, let himself join her in bliss.
Chapter 23
“There is something I have to confess,” she said as they lay together; neither of them seemed ready to sleep, to relinquish a single moment of what time remained in the night.
He hesitated, his thoughts still distracted. He’d never had sex like that before; his body was practically shaking from the strength of his orgasm. And he wanted her again. Oh, God, she intoxicated him. What had she said? She wanted to confess? He sensed that she was going to tell him that she’d gone to Audrey for advice on how to seduce him. Well, it wasn’t his duty to deflate her illusions of secrecy, especially not when her goal had been to lure him to her bed. He wasn’t about to ruin the most enjoyable night of his life by admitting he had investigated her. And discovered her naughty secret.
He chuckled and folded one arm casually behind his head. His other arm pulled her closer to his nude body. “Confess away, sweetheart. I’m in a forgiving mood.”
Not that there was anything to forgive. Julia’s sensuality tonight was every man’s private fantasy. But most women enjoyed a sense of mystique. He smiled indulgently as he felt her pull away from him. She looked a trifle shamefaced in the shadows that enclosed them, although she had done nothing to be ashamed of. Frankly, he couldn’t wait to be the recipient of whatever sexual knowledge she had gained. He was primed for lovemaking.
She leaned forward, staring at the curtains. He walked his fingers down her spine to the cleft of her white bottom. “Spill it. It can’t be that shocking.”
“Oh, it could,” she said quickly.
He sat up slowly. The sheet fell to his waist. The low pitch of her voice warned him she had more to confess than studying the sexual arts. What could it be? Something more serious. Hell’s bells, could she have found out about Russell’s infidelity?
His heart went out to her, even if he hated to see her upset over another man. He burned with jealousy at the mere thought that they had just made love and she could still even think of Russell. “What is it, Julia?” he asked, more coolly than he intended. He had never experienced such deep passion before.
She gave a little shiver. “Perhaps I should tell you in the morning.”
“You’ll tell me now.”
“Why spoil a perfect night?”
He scowled at her shadowy, alluring form. “Do you think that I cannot be trusted?”
“No. That isn’t it.”
He laid his hand on her shoulder, turning her toward him. Her dark expressive eyes roused a fresh surge of fierce desire inside him. He had never been so satisfied and left hungry for more in his entire life.
“Then what is ‘it’?” he demanded. “Russell?”
“Russell?”
“Russell. My former friend. Your former fiancé.”
She frowned back at him. “What on earth does Russell have to do with anything?”
“That is what I’m trying to find out,” he said impatiently.
She sank back against the pillows. “Will you promise to be merciful? Will you remember that I did not do this deliberately to hurt you?”
He leaned over her, suddenly alarmed. “What have you done?”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
He stared down at her, waiting, reassuring himself that she was incapable of an unforgivable act.
“Do you remember the sketch I did of you?” She pulled the sheet up to her shoulders. “The one I did for charity?”
He straightened. “Don’t tell me you sold it?”
She shot him a reproachful look. “Of course I didn’t sell it. This was my private sketch, not the one intended for the club. Do you think I’d share my vision of you with the world? At least that vision.”
“No.” He released a deep sigh of relief. “I don’t. But for an awful moments there, you gave me a—”
“I lost it,” she said, drawing the sheet up over her face.
“Lost it? You mean in the town house? Misplaced it, you mean? You don’t remember where you hid it?” He tugged the s
heet down from her face. Her eyes peered up at him beseechingly. “Tell me that it’s lost somewhere in your house.”
She swallowed. “I wish I could. But it isn’t. It’s gone. Aunt Hermia had the music room cleaned out by a couple of chimney sweeps she took off the street. We probably don’t have to worry though. What would anyone want, besides me and a thousand other Englishwomen, with your naked likeness?”
“Naked?” he asked faintly. He was hoping he’d misunderstood her. “You never finished drawing my clothes? Not a sheet? A few more fig leaves?”
“Well, I was debating whether I should have you hidden by your chariot when the sketch disappeared. It’s probably been thrown away by now, don’t you think?”
“I am afraid to think, Julia. I am positively frozen at the possibilities of my naked likeness circulating around the streets of London.” It was, in fact, a damnably embarrassing situation, but hardly worth spoiling the intimate mood between them. He would deal with the missing sketch in the morning, but the hours until then belonged to Julia.
She woke him in the middle of the night, her hands exploring his lower body. He stirred, and felt himself hardening at her touch. “Have you forgiven me yet?” she whispered, her body soft and warm from sleep.
He rolled over and trapped her between his heavily muscled thighs. “I think you should earn my forgiveness, don’t you?”
She smiled. “I’ll try.”
He held his breath as she nudged him onto his back. It was almost dawn, and the estate lay in utter silence. His belly muscles tightened as he felt her arousing mouth brush his groin. She rolled the crest of his shaft between her lips with a light, tantalizing friction. He tunneled his fingers in her hair, his heartbeat escalating, the tension unbearable, sweet agony.
“Forgive me?” she asked in a temptress’s voice.
He felt as if he would explode. Her agile tongue circled his engorged penis in skillful torture, teasing licks that set his nerve endings on fire. “Anything,” he said, the word a hoarse cry wrung from him.
The Wedding Night of an English Rogue Page 23
