Dangerous to Kiss (33 page)

“Kiss me,” he said.

“Where?” she asked.

He opened one eye, and when he saw that she was serious, he rolled on his back and flung one hand over his eyes. His shoulders were shaking.
“Where
, the lusty wench wants to know,” he gasped out. “Oh God, every man should be so lucky!”

She was done with being the butt of his hilarity. A considerate lover would have known she hadn’t a notion of what was expected of her. A considerate lover would have answered her question. With a snort of wounded pride, she made to get off the bed. He pounced on her and rolled her beneath him. She glared up at him and opened her mouth to upbraid him, but she wasn’t given the chance. He swooped down and kissed her into silence. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back.

He released her mouth and buried his face against her throat. “It’s never been like this before. I never dreamed that there could be a woman like you for me. You are everything I’ve ever wanted.”

“Truly?”

He raised his head and their eyes locked, his in
tensely blue, hers as dark as raw emeralds. “Truly,” he whispered.

In one smooth thrust, he entered her. He moved. She responded. He braced himself on his arms, sinking deeper into her body. She shifted her position to accommodate him. They both smiled.

“Perfect?” he asked.

“Perfect,” she agreed.

Then their smiles dissolved, and they knew nothing beyond the driving need of their bodies to make them one.

She was curled into him, and her breath tickled his armpit. Disengaging himself carefully, so as not to waken her, Gray rolled from the bed and went to add another log to the fire. When he returned to the bed, he lay on his back with his arms crossed behind his neck. Deborah sighed, nestled closer, and pillowed her head on his chest.

He draped one arm around her inert form, drawing her closer. Something sweet and ineffably tender moved him. Nothing in his varied experience of women had prepared him for this one slip of a girl. He couldn’t remember a time, not once, when he had convulsed in laughter during the sexual act. His usual experience was a great deal of skill and finesse, moaning and panting, and a tumultuous climax that had left him replete, but hardly hungering for more. He knew that there would never come a time when he would be sated with Deborah. He would always hunger for more.

Turning his head, he looked down at her. Her hair was different in this dim light, darker, almost chestnut. Her features were love-soft, her skin was love-flushed. When he traced a finger down her patrician nose, she batted his hand away, then began to make sniffing noises which lapsed into intermittent snores. He knew there was a big smile on his face. That
she
should be the one to capture him both surprised and delighted him. She was perfect for him, but if someone had tried to tell
him so before he had met her, he would have laughed himself silly.

He smiled down at the top of her head and twisted one short, silky curl between his fingers. Even when she had played the part of a dowd, he had felt the tug of attraction. She had felt it too. It would have been so much simpler if they had met under normal circumstances. She would have been his that much sooner.
His
, he thought, and something dark and primitive moved inside him.

He groaned. He couldn’t take her again. She was an innocent. This was all so new to her. Only a brute would give in to his baser instincts. Gritting his teeth, he fought to master his body.

Deborah wasn’t helping. One hand was absently stroking along his shoulder and the other was caught between their bodies, pressing against his groin. Just thinking about it made him go hard with wanting.

She stirred, and came to herself slowly. “Perfect,” she murmured. “It was perfect.”

“How do you feel?”

She raised on one elbow to get a better look at him. “Wonderful,” she said, smiling. Her fingers curled around his shaft, squeezing and stroking with exquisite pressure.

Gray writhed; he groaned. “I should never have taught you that trick.” His teeth were clenched. “I thought you were sleeping.”

“Hardly,” she answered demurely. “This is all so new to me. I must be shameless, Gray. I can’t get enough of you.”

He took her at her word. Surging against her, he carried her to her back, and he crushed her mouth beneath his. There was no gentleness in him now, no restraint. She could have stopped him with a word, a touch. Instead, she incited him to greater passion. His urgency was matched by hers. His desperation fed her desperation. Together, they went hurtling toward the edge of mindless delight. Once, she stilled his movements, and she grasped his hands and showed him what she wanted. He laughed in sheer triumph, then groaned
when she touched him intimately, the way he had taught her. Catching her wrists, he held them above her head. Panting, bucking, she strained against him, demanding he take her.

There was a moment when he savored her expression, the passion-dazed eyes, the trembling lips, the flush of desire on her skin. Then she begged him to take her once too often and his control shattered. She gasped when he drove into her.

“Deb?” he said on a breath of apology.

In answer, she wrapped her legs and arms around him, locking him to her. She set the pace. He followed, exulting in her unfettered response. This was more than pleasure, more than passion, more than anything he had ever known. She was his. He was hers.

“Mine,” he said fiercely, as he felt the rhythmic spasms begin deep inside her. “You are mine,” he said again as she writhed beneath his thrusting body. Then coherent thought disintegrated, and he gave himself up to his own explosive release.

They lay for a long while after, trying to recover their breath. In the aftermath of spent passion, Gray was appalled at himself. He knew he had been rough with her. “Violent” was not too strong a word for it. He was sure there would be bruises on her white shoulders where he had held her down at the last. And what on earth had possessed him to suck on her delicate skin as though he were a vampire straight out of hell? No woman should be subjected to such treatment from her lover.

He pulled from her body and rolled to his back, bracing himself for the reproaches that were sure to follow. “No woman has ever had this effect on me,” he muttered, thinking aloud.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really a very gentle girl. I don’t know what comes over me in the throes of passion.”

He opened his eyes and looked up at her. “What?”

She bit down on her lip. “Are they very painful?”

When she brushed her fingers over his shoulders, he looked down and saw the scratches and red scores from
her fingernails. The knot of tension inside him uncurled. “I like your marks on me,” he said.

“You’re not … disgusted?”

“Ask me that in a few hours when you see the marks I’ve left on you.”

Her eyebrows rose.

They both smiled.

Quite unconcerned for her nakedness, she slipped from the bed and began to gather her discarded garments. Gray pulled to a sitting position, one knee drawn up with his arm resting across it. A smile tugged at his lips. The light from the fire dappled her skin, enhancing her soft curves and contours. It pleased him that she could be so natural with him. This was real intimacy, and he’d had enough of the other kind to last him a lifetime.

She was examining a torn stocking. When he made a sound, she looked over at him. “This is nothing to laugh at,” she said. “These are silk stockings. They are incredibly expensive.” She poked her finger through a hole in the toe and waggled it at him. “Fortunately, it’s easily mended.”

“Don’t worry, love. When we are wed, you will never have to worry about the price of silk stockings again.”

When she stiffened, he hastened to explain. “I shall be a generous husband, Deborah. You’ll have more pin money than you will know what to do with.”

“Husband?”

He realized that he had shocked her, and he sat up a little straighter. More cautious now, he went on. “I thought we could manage it within the fortnight if I procure a special license. That should give you time to arrange for bride clothes and whatever trifles are necessary to satisfy a woman on such an occasion.”

She moistened her lips and glanced nervously at the clock on the mantel. “Speaking of time,” she said, “shouldn’t we be on our way? The sky is beginning to lighten.”

He studied her for a long time then said softly,
“Marriage, Deb. It’s not a dirty word. There’s nothing to fear. People get married every day.”

She made a small sound of derision, moved to a leather armchair beside the grate, and began to pull on her stockings. “It never entered my head that you were thinking of marriage,” she said. “Why should it? You do this kind of thing all the time.”

That did it. He let out a roar and sprang from the bed. When he bent over her, with his hands supporting his weight on the armrests of the chair, she shrank back, then lowered her lashes to shield herself from the effect of those powerful bunched muscles in his chest and arms. Her pulse leapt wildly in her throat, but not entirely in fear. She knew the feel of him now, knew his touch and taste.

“I have never trifled with innocent young women,” he said in a voice that made her wince. “I am no reprobate. I know the score. And I knew what the consequences would be when I claimed your innocence for myself.”

“Must we talk of this now?” she murmured and glanced desperately at the door.

“Damn right, we must. I’m warning you, Deb, until we thrash this out, you are not leaving this room.”

“Then would you mind if we got dressed first?”

“Why?” he snarled, ignoring the appeal in her huge, pleading eyes. “So you can pretend that nothing happened between us? I know every inch of you intimately now, and I promise you, I’m going to know you intimately again and again. When I want to take you, I shall, and you won’t stop me. Do you know why, Deb? Because you’ll want it too.”

Her lips parted and a blush spread from her throat to hairline. “I know,” she said in a constricted tone. “In fact, it’s what I hoped you would suggest.”

“What?” he asked, nonplussed.

Her eyes dropped away. “You know. I’m not sure how these things are managed, but you do have that empty house in Hans Town. I really haven’t given it much thought, but … couldn’t we meet there from time to time?”

Suddenly straightening, he combed his fingers through his hair. “Deb, you can’t mean what I think you mean.”

“Why can’t I?”

“Because … because you’re not cut out to be a man’s mistress.”

Her mouth tightened and her eyes ignited. “I wasn’t suggesting that I become your mistress. I have no wish to be a kept woman. I’ll not have a gold bracelet pressed upon me when you grow tired of me.” She leaned forward to make her point. “I want us to be lovers, Gray,
lovers.”

“Lovers?” The word exploded from his lips. “Lovers? And what the hell do you mean ‘when I grow tired of you’? I love you, dammit. I want to be with you for the rest of my life.”

Though his words moved her, they did not weaken her resolve. “Gray,” she whispered, “I shall never marry. You had better make up your mind to that right now.”

“You don’t love me?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t know what love is, but from what I’ve seen of it, I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. No, listen to me. Even if I did love you, it wouldn’t make any difference. I still wouldn’t marry you.”

But she did know what love was. He could see it in her eyes. All was not yet lost. Slightly mollified, he grabbed a sheet from the bed, wrapped it around himself, and sprawled in the chair opposite hers.

“It really is time for us to be on our way,” she said, pleading with him.

“Oh no, Deb. You’ll not escape me that easily. I asked you to marry me, and I’m entitled to an explanation for your refusal.”

She darted him a small smile. “Actually, you didn’t ask. In your usual high-handed fashion, you told me that we were to be married.” There was no answering smile on his lips, and after a moment, she lifted her shoulders and said, “I’m not averse to the institution of marriage. My quarrel is with the laws of England. Gray,
do you know what happens to a woman’s property when she marries?”

“Since you don’t have two pennies to rub together,” he said nastily, “I don’t think that’s relevant.”

She stiffened. “Just for the sake of argument, let’s say I was a great heiress. If we wed, you would have control of all my moneys.”

“Control, perhaps, but that does not mean I could do whatever I wished. You don’t think I shall allow Meg to marry without tying up her fortune so that she and her children are well provided for?”

“Oh yes, I know what happens in theory, but in practice, things are very different, and the laws of the land allow it. Do you know, if Meg found her marriage intolerable, and left her husband, she would lose her children? They would be his, and he could prevent her from seeing them ever again. And if she found work to support herself, her earnings would belong to him too. She would be destitute, and in the end, she would be glad to go back to him, if only to survive.”