He closed the door as best he could, given that he had so recently smashed through the latch in his quest to reach her side. “I am sorry. I should have knocked.” He could think of no excuse for his poor manners, beyond the fact that his thoughts had been fixed on the dilemma of his wife’s future happiness, rather than his wife’s breasts.
Though they were certainly on his wife’s breasts now.
He’d come to talk, to dissect their options. To determine if even a spark of the passion she had shown him that night in the folly might still be glowing beneath her skin, waiting to be kindled back to life. But as she straightened over the bath, the hopeful evening light danced about the thin fabric and tripped across the outline of the lithe body against which it floated. And that frantic, gasping glimpse told him—beyond any shadow of a doubt—she was wearing nothing beneath that wrapper.
Bloody hell. This was no way to end a marriage.
The physical demands of his body were already colluding against the analytical arguments he needed to make. “I have interrupted your bath,” he said, rather stupidly. “I can return when you are . . . er . . . presentable.”
“ ’Tis your bedroom, Patrick,” she said, and her lips lifted in a manner that skirted into dangerous territory. “You have no need to knock, or to leave. And this is not my bath. I ordered it for you.”
Her smile became as translucent as her wrapper as she stepped toward him. The diaphanous white hem billowed out around her ankles, and his eyes felt burned by the glimpses of curves beneath it. She stepped closer still, until she was upon him and his nostrils were filled with her feminine, cinnamon scent. “We must decide what our future holds. You are covered in mud, and look as though you haven’t bathed since your arrest. I would have the conversation with a cleaner version of my husband.”
He swallowed. “Even if the conversation is about whether I will no longer be your husband?”
She held out her hand. He watched it come, transfixed by the sight of Julianne reaching for him. Patrick struggled to comprehend the incongruity of what she seemed to be offering. Not an hour ago, she had flinched from the merest brush of his fingers, but this seemed a seduction of the highest order. Was this yet another demonstration of her superb dramatic skills?
Or something else entirely?
Her fingers uncurled slowly and his breath lodged deep in his throat. In her palm lay nothing more seductive than a bloody cake of soap.
“Do you really think a bath is a higher priority than this discussion?” he asked.
“Your bath is,” she told him, her lips turned down.
He reached out his hand and took it. The soap warmed in his hands, releasing its scent. It smelled . . . well, “heavenly” was the word that came to mind. He could see now why she always smelled like cinnamon. She was a cosseted, perfumed, damnably inconvenient intrusion into his easy, ordered, unhygienic life.
And he was convinced of the need to keep her there.
He sat on the edge of the tub and began to pull off his boots. At the moment, he was anxious to plunge into the arguments of keeping their marriage intact, not plunge into a bath. But if dislodging the worst of his dirt would help her sit quietly through this coming conversation, he supposed he ought to delay the inevitable another five minutes, even though every instinct in his body told him that this reckoning needed to be taken by the throat.
As he began to work on the buttons of his shirt, the scrape of heavy furniture across the floor caught his attention. He turned to see Julianne shoving his reading chair in front of the door. “What are you doing?” he asked, perplexed.
“Ensuring we will not be interrupted. You’ve destroyed the latch, after all.”
Patrick shouldered out of his shirt. There was that damned “we” again. Maddening, perplexing woman, when she had just demanded her freedom.
How was he going to do this? If she was going to strip him down to his most vulnerable and settle in to watch, she was going to see that he was fast becoming interested in doing things more intimate than talking.
She glided toward him, her hand held out for his shirt. “I’ll take that now, thank you.”
Instead of dropping it on the floor, as he would usually do, he placed it hesitantly in her open palm. Incredibly—inconceivably—she accepted the filthy thing, folded it carefully, and laid it on top of the bureau. “Now the trousers,” she said, then treated them to the same exacting process.
“Why take the time to fold clothes that I probably ought to burn?” he protested.
“Because it is the natural order of things. And it hurts my eyes to see them tossed about on the floor.” She beckoned with her fingers. It was to be smallclothes next, then.
Oh bloody, bloody hell.
“If we are discussing natural order, you should know that a gentleman usually shaves before his bath,” he told her, turning over his smallclothes and the last shreds of his dignity. Any hope of wrangling his unruly body into something approaching respectable was lost. He’d been at attention from the moment he’d stepped into the room, and that interest had no hope of flagging now that at least one of them was naked.
“I thought it was well established sometime ago that you were not a gentleman.” She raised a brow. “Should I shave you then?”
He shook his head. Julianne and sharp objects and his neck were a combination of events best avoided in the heat of an argument. “If you think I am handing you a razor, given the conversation we are about to have, you are mistaken, wife.”
If she was startled to hear his proprietary claim, she hid the emotion well. Her lips pursed, and he felt the scrape of her eyes against his jaw as acutely as any straight razor. “That is just as well, because I find I rather like this rakish, unshaved look.”
And then her gaze arced downward, sliding along his body to pool somewhere far too low for comfort. “And the rest of it as well.”
“Julianne.” The sound of his voice echoed like the snap of a whip, jerking her gaze in a more northerly direction.
Her cheeks flamed warm against his stern, knowing gaze. Did he know what the sight of his body did to her? Did he understand that despite her offer to end this marriage, to give him his happiness, the loss of him—if it came down to that—would cripple her?
“Yes?” she answered hoarsely.
“What game do you play here?”
Julianne swallowed. “I wish to test a theory.”
He swore, something filthy and flush-inducing. “You’ve said you wish to end our marriage, and yet you are sending rather mixed messages in that regard. For God’s sake, have a bit of mercy here, wife.”
Julianne moistened her lips, which felt as dry as glass paper. He had called her “wife” again. And he had not yet said he wished to end the marriage. “If you would think back to our discussion before you stormed out, I did not say I wished to procure an annulment. I said we ought to discuss the possibility.” She paused, her heart in her throat. “Have you? Given it any thought, I mean?”
He jerked away from her with a snarl of frustration. She had a meager, heart-stuttering glimpse of the bare arse she had once ogled from Summersby’s foyer, and then he was lowering his tall frame into the bath. Water sloshed heavily at the sides as he worked the soap into a frenzied lather. “MacKenzie says there may be a way.” He scrubbed up one arm, and then down another. “Your age is misrepresented on the wedding documents.”
She stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Apparently you are forty. Or else, pretending to be.”
“But . . . that is ridiculous. I do not even reach my majority until next month.”
“You signed a document stating otherwise. MacKenzie has suggested it could be used to argue a claim of fraud.” He lifted his soapy hands to his head and scrubbed his hair for a long moment. “Apparently, I must pretend I’ve a taste for older women. You are to be a disappointment to me.” His lips firmed. “Or something of that ilk.”
Julianne felt as though she were being pushed und
er the very tub in which he sat. As he submerged his head to rinse the soap from his hair, her eyes fixed on the sloshing, brown water. She had hoped—prayed, actually—that Mr. MacKenzie would tell Patrick the contract was unbreakable. That they were well and truly sewn into this marriage, despite her offer to free him. She had hoped there would be nothing for it but to regroup, accept their situation, and fall back into each other’s arms.
But apparently, this marriage could be dissolved as easily as the blasted soap.
He came up sputtering, groping a hand for a towel. She snatched it up and stepped forward, dangling it in front of him. “And are you really willing to lie about this?” she demanded. “You knew exactly how old I was when we married. There was no fraud involved in the negotiation of that contract. And you seemed remarkably pleased with me that night in the folly.”
He reached for the towel, but she jerked it higher, angry now. How dare he contemplate an annulment that required her to lie to procure it for him?
How dare he contemplate a blasted annulment at all?
“It is the only way.” His brown-eyed gaze shifted from the towel to her face. “And yes,” he told her. “I am willing to lie for you.”
“What do you mean, lie for me? I am not the one about to destroy this marriage!”
A very clean hand snaked out of that very filthy water. And then she was seized in his grasp and tipping into the tub, towel and all.
“Aren’t you?” he all but growled as he hauled her against his damp chest. The shock of the water was nothing compared to the shock of his skin, humming through the meager layer of wet muslin. “I am not the one who broached this subject.”
“You spoke of an annulment with MacKenzie before I ever mentioned it,” she protested, her hands pushing ineffectively against the wall of his chest.
His hands came up to cup her face, holding her still to his gaze. The horror of the used bathwater fell away to the thrill of his touch. “That conversation happened before we married, before I even knew you. I married you with the understanding it could not be undone.”
“You married me for revenge—”
His fingers gripped tighter. “What kind of lunacy is that? I’ve never wished to hurt you, not even in the worst of it. Do not pretend to me an annulment is logical, or necessary to right a great wrong. You married me knowing I didn’t love you—I never pretended otherwise. But how can you leave me, knowing I love you now?”
His words swam upstream in her brain, seeking a coherence that continued to outwit her. “You . . . love me?” she asked.
“Yes.” His eyes darkened. “Christ. You really can’t see a thing in front of your face.”
And then his lips slanted over hers, warm and brandy-touched and violently right.
She sank into him. Shimmered there, floating, until the press of his mouth was no longer enough. He loved her. Merciful heavens, how had it come to this? She’d imagined only convincing him to keep her. This was a gift beyond hope.
She lifted her hands into his damp hair and yanked him closer into her. They clashed there, wet heat and open mouths and pounding hearts. “I love you as well,” she gasped against his mouth. She sucked in a breath, unable and unwilling to take it back. “But I thought . . . I thought you would no longer want me, now that you had been freed of the murder charge.”
“Bloody hell, Julianne, I want you in my sleep. You are the only thing that kept me sane over the last week, during those long, dark days in gaol. When I thought you were in danger, I was tossed back to hell, staring down the barrel of a rifle with no future in sight.” He tipped his wet head against hers, breathing hard. “And then, just as I was clawing my way out, just when I could see the end of this nightmare, you told me you wanted to live apart. But I can’t face it. You belong here, with me.”
Julianne choked on a sob. “Say it again.”
His lips curved up, mere inches from her own. “The part where you belong with me?”
“The part where you love me.”
He laughed. “I love you, wife.”
She pressed her finger against his lips, determined to commit the act to permanent memory. “Again.”
“I. Love. You.” The rumble of words against her finger sending a skitter of warmth through the whole of her. “I will say it every day, if that is what it takes to keep you here. I can’t do this without you.”
“You don’t have to,” she told him.
And then she pulled him in for a kiss.
Chapter 33
Though he’d spent a good deal of time tonight trying to see through it, Patrick’s affair de coeur with Julianne’s wrapper was at an end.
The damned thing had to go.
He stood up from the tub, his wife in his arms, water streaming off them both. The towel was now soaked, but he found he did not care. The air in the room was languorous and warm, thanks to the fire blazing in the grate. Neither of them risked being felled by pneumonia as a consequence of what he was about to do.
Because while the next sensible step might have been to cover up her wet body as quickly as possible, he wasn’t feeling entirely sensible at the moment.
He carried her, soaking wet, to the bed and set about peeling the wet, transparent wrapper from her skin. The fabric stymied him at every turn, clinging to her shoulders, sticking to her arms. Slowly, slowly he tugged, until it bunched about her waist and the pale perfection of her breasts tipped into his greedy view.
A word took a claw-hold in his mind. Mine. A simple enough sentiment, one that even a fool like himself could understand. And yet, it was so much more complicated than that.
She was finely molded, peaks and valleys tempting a man to chart his own course, a fever dream one wished to never wake from. He leaned in and feathered a kiss down the slope of one breast before running his tongue up the other.
She squirmed beneath him. “I’ve decided I like it when you meander,” she gasped.
“Meandering has its place, certainly.” He lingered over the damp scent of her as his mouth explored her body, moving up to brush his lips against the soft skin on the underside of her jaw. “But I confess, this particular waiting has come close to killing me.” He slipped the robe completely off her and rocked her gently back onto the bed.
He stared down at his wife’s flushed face, then tripped down to her toes and back again. Lord, but she was beautiful. She was pale, smooth perfection, and vivid red curls. The mere curve of her collarbone was eroticism redefined. He ran his hands down the still-damp length of her, pausing over the gentle flare of hip, stroking up the lust-provoking curve of her calf until he found the sweet, secret indentation at the hollow of her knee. He wanted to explore every inch of her, from the high arch of her foot to that lovely mouth that could slice a man in two or take him to heaven, depending on her mood and fate’s whimsy.
He hoped fate was feeling whimsical tonight.
He eased his own body onto the mattress beside her and trailed a finger down her abdomen. His hand brushed the tempting curls waiting there at the juncture of her legs. He found her more than ready to receive him, and his body jerked painfully at the discovery.
“Do you know how often I have dreamed of seeing you like this, naked beneath me?”
She shuddered beneath his touch, and her legs fell open in a silent but unmistakable invitation. “It cannot be that often. We’ve only been married three weeks.”
A chuckle built in his throat. “Oh no, love.” Slowly, slowly, he found the hidden place that made her tremble with pleasure and arch upward into his touch. “You’ve occupied a place in my mind for far longer than the length of our marriage. Almost a year now.”
“So long?” she gasped.
He pressed more firmly, enjoying the way her breathing had accelerated to quick, hard pants with just a touch. “Aye. Ever since that damned waltz. Devilish thing, that. I almost refused you. I knew you were trouble, sure enough, and looking for more. And I was right. When it was through, I couldn’t get you out of my head.”<
br />
“I thought you hated me,” she protested, thrashing her head with the pleasure he was determined to coax out of her.
“I wanted to hate you.” He slipped a finger inside her, and almost groaned from the contrast of silk and heat. “But I also wanted to tup you. Whenever I thought of you at night, in my lonely bed in Moraig, I imagined you flushed and panting beneath me, eager for whatever I had in mind. And that was after a single dance and a murder accusation. Imagine what I want to do with you now that I’ve had a taste of you.”
Julianne wanted to collide with her husband in damp, twisted sheets. She wanted to dive into madness and never come up.
And she wanted to do it now.
Desire snaked through her in a delicious, erotic pulse. His confession loosened some critical tether in her soul, and she pulled him down hard toward her mouth. She licked the space behind his ear almost experimentally. The taste of him—salt and subtle spice and the distinctive tattoo of her own soap—was a heady, forbidden thrill. Next she scraped her teeth across the skin at the base of Patrick’s neck, smiling as the gesture ripped glad laughter from his throat.
She had a feeling she was going to like tupping. Very much, indeed.
“Are you trying to mortally wound me, wife?” He chuckled, and the sound of his amusement was the most intimate thing imaginable.
“I am trying to get you to hurry,” she admitted.
Not that her body objected to the pace of her husband’s ministrations, per se. He was brilliant in his leisure. But the blood hummed in her veins. The argument that had led them here had left behind a thrumming heat demanding something more than the gentle press of her husband’s hand. They’d meandered enough on their way to this startling bit of happiness.
It was time to finish the journey.
“I don’t want to wait,” she told him, ready to beg if it came down to it.
“I’ve no objection to hurrying,” he told her, threading his fingers through her hair and anchoring her tight. “As long as we are hurrying together.”
He captured her lips in a deep kiss as he entered her. She yielded to the sweet torture that began where he joined his body with hers and ended somewhere in the vicinity of her heart.
Moonlight on My Mind Page 31
