A little wary, Gabby nevertheless allowed her hand to be squeezed, lifted—and deposited atop that most private of male parts.
Gabby gasped, snatched her hand away, and shot off the bed like the cap from a well-shaken bottle of ginger beer. Her hand seemed to burn—the thing had actually stirred and grown beneath it!—and she could not help herself: she stared down in horror at the male appendage between his legs. It was huge now, jutting away from his body at a near ninety degree angle—and she had actually touched it.
She shuddered, wiping her hand convulsively against her skirt. Oh, God, she could still feel the sensation of it moving beneath her palm.
His eyes remained closed. His expression was serene. His hand, which she had flung away with no regard whatsoever for his debilitated state, rested limply on the mattress at his side, fingers curled slightly inward.
Of course, he was unaware of what he had done, she reminded herself. He was lost somewhere in a feverish dream.
Thank goodness. Her breathing slowed. Her pulse steadied. Keeping that thought firmly in mind, Gabby screwed up her courage to the sticking point. Averting her eyes, she gingerly reached for the blanket to cover him. . . .
As quick as that, he caught her wrist and yanked her down on the bed beside him. Feet flying out from under her, she landed on her still sore hip with a gasp. Before she could make so much as a move to escape, she found herself on her back with him rolled atop her, his big body crushing her down into the mattress.
15
She felt warm and good lying beneath him, and she smelled of—vanilla. Burying his face in the curve between her neck and shoulder, he inhaled deeply.
Gabriella. He knew who she was. Had known, in some dimly aware corner of his mind, for some time.
The scent of her was intoxicating. So was the feel of her, slender and delicately made and, at the moment, buckram stiff with tension.
He moved against her, rocking his pelvis into hers, nuzzling her neck, expecting every second to feel her fighting to be free, to hear her ordering him to let her go.
Until that happened, he meant to enjoy the moment. He slid his mouth along to the pulse point beneath her ear and rested there a moment, feeling the agitated pitter-patter with a quickening of his own heartbeat.
Whatever she was thinking—and he hated even to try to guess—her body was responding to his with an instinctive softening that made his senses heat. Her breath came faster. He could feel her breasts pushing into his chest as she drew in air.
He pulled her earlobe into his mouth, and made a meal of the tender flesh.
Her hands clutched his shoulders. Her nails dug into his skin. She quivered, moving beneath him, and gave a tiny moan. Her response set him on fire.
He wanted to make love to her with an intensity that was almost painful. He wanted her naked and moaning in his arms, kissing him with feverish passion and locking her legs around his waist.
He wanted to put himself inside her.
He couldn’t have what he wanted, of course. Even as woolly-headed as he felt, he knew that.
At least, he couldn’t have all he wanted. He was not, in the final analysis, that big a cad. But he could have something.
He slid his hand over her breast.
“Oh,” she said, on a note of surprise. And from the way she said it, he knew that she liked the feel of his hand on her breast almost as much as he did.
Wasn’t there some saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?
16
His ear was right beside her mouth as his hot, bristly face nuzzled into the sensitive curve between her shoulder and neck. It seemed to her, lying pinned beneath him as he pressed his mouth against an exquisitely vulnerable spot just below her ear, that he weighed about as much as a fully grown horse.
She couldn’t help it. The moist heat of his mouth just there was causing her to breathe faster. It felt . . . It felt . . .
Wonderful.
What he was doing touched a chord deep within her that she hadn’t even known was there. In her entire twenty-five years of life, no man had ever caressed her in such a way. She never had been so much as kissed by a man, and she had never missed it. Indeed, she had thought that she, personally, and possibly most ladies of her class, were immune to the kinds of animalistic emotions that she knew, from witnessing them firsthand, were the unenviable lot of the male gender. When she was younger, and marriage had still seemed like an almost certain part of her future, she had speculated occasionally on the details of marital relations, the broad outlines of which were known to her. She was a country-bred miss, after all. The duties of the marriage bed she had expected to find vaguely uncomfortable, at best. She had considered them the price a gently-bred female had to pay to obtain a husband, and, in the fullness of time, children.
It had never occurred to her that she might find the physical attentions of a man . . . pleasant.
No, not pleasant, she corrected herself with incurable honesty as her nails curled into the hard muscles of his shoulders: divine. That was the only word that did the tremors racing over her skin justice. Beguiled by her own pleasure-ambushed senses into immobility, she gave herself a moment, just a moment, in which to experience something that was never likely to come her way again.
His unshaven jaw scratched over the tender surface of her neck as he brushed hot, firm lips against her skin. His mouth found her ear, pulling the lobe into the scalding wet cave, sucking on it, nibbling at it. Her lips parted; she fought for breath. The sensation was very strange, and at the same time intoxicating. Little quivers raced along her nerve endings from where his mouth performed its magic clear down to her toes. Even his weight pinning her to the bed was not as crushing as she would have supposed, given the difference in their sizes. Or at least, if it was crushing, it was crushing in a good way—a rousing way. Actually—and she didn’t know why she was surprised to realize this—her body seemed designed to accommodate his. With some inborn sense of its own, it seemed ready to yield, to conform, to mold its softer female shape to his hard male form as necessary.
Gabby realized with a renewed sense of shock that he was pushing his—his—engorged shaft against the most secret, feminine part of her.
Thank goodness, she thought as she experienced the sensation with parted lips and widening eyes, that she was fully dressed. Otherwise—otherwise . . .
The intricately pleated crimson canopy at which she stared blurred as the pressure of his pelvis rocking rhythmically into hers provoked the most amazing reactions inside her. Deep in her most feminine parts, everything seemed to be coiling tight. There was a warm, delicious—tingle. Her loins began to clench and throb in a rhythm that answered his.
She was growing hot. Really, really hot. Hotter even than he felt, and he felt like he was burning up.
Out of nowhere, a tiny sound emerged from her throat. With dismay, she realized that it could be characterized only as a—as a moan.
Shocked, Gabby blinked, clamped her lips together to prevent any more wayward sounds from emerging, and realized that her once-in-a-lifetime sensory experience was quickly getting out of hand.
Time to call a halt, she told herself firmly. At once. Through sheer force of will rather than any real desire to escape, she turned her head sharply, pulling her earlobe free.
Air suddenly cooling the wet lobe felt almost reproachful. Meanwhile, his hot mouth slid down the side of her neck.
She drew in a quick, shaky breath. Her eyelids fluttered, and she realized that they were, of their own volition, wanting to close. Determinedly she kept her eyes open. Her hands tensed against his shoulders, crumpling the soft linen that covered their firm, tensile width. It was time to fight free of this unexpected whirlpool of delight before she could be drawn in any further.
He shifted his weight slightly to one side; his uninjured side, she realized, wondering if it was an instinctive move in response to pain. At any rate, now that he was not lying completely on top of her, it should be
slightly easier to win free.
If that was what she wanted.
It was a wayward thought, shocking in its implication, and Gabby dismissed it instantly. Of course she wanted to be free. Anyway, whether she did or not, she was freeing herself.
So there.
She took a deep, steadying breath. If she could just maneuver him a little more onto his uninjured side . . .
A hard warmth settled on her breast, distracting her. It was his hand, she discovered, glancing down. The sight of his long-fingered, swarthy-skinned hand splayed against the bodice of her staid black kerseymere gown made her breath catch. Never in her life had she seen anything more wanton.
Just looking at it made her mouth go dry.
“Oh,” she said.
He fondled her breast, squeezed it, kneaded it like someone might a roll of dough, then pressed his thumb down over her nipple.
She liked it. Dear God, how she liked it! Her breast seemed to tighten and swell beneath his hand. Her nipple hardened to quivering attention as he rubbed it, then rolled the erect nub between his thumb and forefinger. Her feminine parts seemed to quake, and grow—liquid.
To her horror she realized that something inside her body must be melting. She was growing unmistakably damp between her thighs.
The knowledge both excited and appalled her.
Her breast fit neatly into his palm, she discovered with some fascination as he flattened his hand over it. He began to trace circles around her breast, his fingers almost teasing. Concentric circles, which grew smaller and smaller, with her nipple as the obvious ultimate target. By the time he got there, caressing the erect nub, tweaking it quite firmly through the layers of cloth, her whole body was quivering.
It felt delicious. So delicious that her toes curled in their sensible wool stockings. So delicious that she was breathing hard, almost panting really, and gritting her teeth to keep from making another of those embarrassing sounds. The melting was now accompanied by a warm, deep ache.
He moved, shifting his weight again, pressing his knee between hers. Her skirts, she discovered, were twisted somewhere around her thighs. His legs tangled with hers. She could feel the hard boniness of his bare knee, and the heat of his muscular thigh, through her stockings.
His hard-muscled thigh settled between hers as if it belonged there. She felt a sudden, disturbing flutter of panic. This was wrong, she thought. This she knew about. The male part of him went in between her legs and . . . and . . .
Oh, dear Lord, what was he doing now?
His hand left her breast to move slowly and sensuously down her body, caressing everything in its path before tugging at her skirt.
Her skirt was halfway up her thighs and being compelled higher inch by inexorable inch before Gabby recovered enough presence of mind to struggle in earnest.
“I like it when you wiggle like that,” he said in her ear, the words quite distinct. Shocked to hear sensible speech emerging from one she had thought quite unaware, she went completely still.
To her horror, he lifted his head, and she found herself staring into gleaming indigo eyes.
“You’re awake,” she said, her voice shrill with indignation.
“Did you ever doubt it?” He smiled at her, a slow, sensous smile that made her heart lurch. Then, before she could react, before she could punch him or demand to be released or do any of the thousand and one things that crowded into her mind, he bent his head and pressed his mouth to her breast.
She could feel the heat and moisture of his mouth clear through the layers of her dress and chemise. She could feel it burning through to her already aroused nipple, dampening it, setting it aflame. Heat shot through her. Her body quivered and quaked. Another of those humiliating little moans escaped her lips. Her back arched instinctively; her hand slid around to the back of his head, pressing his mouth closer to her breast.
Horror at her own response shocked Gabby back to her senses. Galvanized, knowing that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, could not possibly allow this to go any further, she began to struggle wildly, shoving at his shoulders in an attempt to free herself. When that didn’t work she leaned forward, quick as a pit viper, and bit his shoulder, hard.
17
“Ow!” He yelped, rolling onto his back, his hand clapping over the injured spot. A dull thud and a muffled, feminine-sounding oomph brought his gaze swinging around. She had apparently slid off the side of the bed to land on all fours on the floor. His gaze narrowed on the very top of an untidy auburn head that popped like a cork in water into view. “You could have just said something like, let me up.”
To his surprise, he sounded oddly hoarse.
“And you would have listened?” Gabriella appeared to find nothing amiss with his voice. Gray eyes glared at him over the edge of the mattress. Fine dark eyebrows twitched together over her nose.
Ridiculously, despite various aches and pains and the inexplicable weakness that made his head swim, he discovered that he was enjoying himself.
“Of course I would have listened. What do you take me for?”
Her expression was so speaking that she didn’t have to say a word. Her whole face was in view now, and the answer to his question, in a nutshell, was clearly nothing very flattering.
“Miss Gabby?” The door to his room opened without warning. Glancing around, he discovered Jem entering without so much as a by-your-leave. He frowned. Thank God the man hadn’t come in five minutes earlier. Gabriella would have been humiliated past redemption, and he found he didn’t like the thought of that.
The servant closed the door and approached the bed, peering past him at Gabriella. She, meanwhile, scrambled to her feet, running a quick, self-conscious hand over her hair, which was tumbling free of its pins in a most fetching way.
“Are you all right?” Jem was frowning at her.
“I’m fine. I just—lost my balance.”
She was leaning rather heavily against the bedpost at the foot of his bed, and sounded as if she were short of breath. Come to think of it, he was slightly short of breath himself, and as his gaze ran over her matters didn’t improve. Discovering hidden treasure—and he considered the body hidden under that God-awful crow’s dress hidden treasure—was more exciting than he could have dreamed.
“I don’t recall hearing a knock, or bidding you to come in.” There was a faint peremptory note to his voice as he addressed Jem. At the same moment, a quick downward glance assured him that, tangled in the bedclothes as he was, he was decent.
“Awake, are you?” Jem cast him a scathing look.
“He is indeed,” Gabriella replied before he could answer for himself, her voice as collected as if she had spent the last five minutes embroidering before the fire, rather than tumbling around in his bed. Her gaze just brushed his before meeting the servant’s. Her eyes were rainwater cool. What a pity, he thought dryly, that she couldn’t as easily control the giveaway pinkening of her cheeks.
She was no longer looking at him, but the old man was. Lying flat on his back as the servant curled his lip at him didn’t suit him; he dug his elbows into the mattress, meaning to heave himself back against the headboard and into a sitting position.
As he raised himself into a semi-sitting position, a gut-wrenching stab of pain skewered him like a white-hot poker. What the devil . . .? Clenching his teeth to hold back a groan, he stopped what he was doing on the instant, falling back against the mattress, gasping for breath. As the pain twisted knifelike through his body, he tensed against it, closing his eyes, feeling sweat break out across his forehead. When he relaxed enough to open them again, what seemed like many long moments later, it was to find both Gabriella and her henchman ranged together beside the bed looking down at him. Jem, arms crossed over his chest, frowned at him with open dislike; Gabriella regarded him warily.
“You shouldn’t try to move. You could start the wound bleeding again.” Her concern, if that was indeed what he detected in her voice, seemed reluctant.
“You shot me
.” Flat on his back again, afraid to move in case the pain should attack him once more, he stared up at her as memory came flooding back.
“You deserved it,” she said. Jem nodded his head in vigorous agreement.
“God, I feel like I’ve been run over by a mail coach.” It was a groan. In light of the unsympathetic nature of his audience, the complaint would have been better left unuttered, he realized as soon as he said it. But he hurt too much, and was too disoriented, to be as stoic as he normally was.
“You’ve been very ill.”
The unmistakable chill in her voice earned her a frowning, sideways glance from Jem. Seeing it, and no doubt realizing that her attitude was giving rise to questions where none had existed, she managed, strictly for the servant’s benefit he knew, to banish the frown from her face.
“For how long?”
Deep breaths helped, he discovered. The pain was receding.
“This is the third day.”
No doubt about it. Her tone told the tale. Milady was feeling hostile, whether from the way her body had responded to his, or from his knowledge of the way her body had responded to his, he couldn’t be sure. But if he had to bet, it would be on the latter.
“So you’ve been nursing me.” A wealth of hidden meaning underlay the words, and he managed a suggestive smile although it was becoming something of an effort simply to maintain the conversation. His tongue felt thick and swollen, and the rustiness of his voice was beginning to worry him. So, too, was the dizziness that assailed him every time he lifted his head from the mattress. The pain in his side, while no longer the burning stab of agony that had made him fear he was going to pass out, was still very much present. The only other time he could remember feeling this out of curl was when his horse had been shot out from under him in the peninsula. It had landed on his leg, breaking it in three places, and made such a mess that the surgeon had in the end wanted to take the limb off. Only his own adamant refusal to permit such a thing, and Barnet’s subsequent watchdoglike devotion when he’d gone unconscious, had prevented the surgeon from sawing off the leg and having done. Remembering, he looked at the pair standing over him rather suspiciously.
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