The Next Best Bride (13 page)

How effortless it would be to confuse the uncomplicated physical intimacy he had shared with her for something deeper and more lasting. Such as love. She knew she would fall in love with him too easily. She was half in love with him already, and had been since his reckless, laughing courtship of Rosaline had begun. If she were to be honest, William had been a distraction from her forbidden attraction to her sister's future husband. She had given him her heart so easily, perhaps in hopes he would keep it safe from the earl.

Fortunately — this time — only her body, not her heart, had been stirred by the pleasant feel of his moving against her, kissing her, the pulsing flow of his seed when he reached his release. But for how long would that hold true? For how long could she guard her heart against a man who had the devil's own ability to tempt her?

She wasn't certain why he had apologized at the last. He had done what was necessary to get his heir, and more. He had taken care not to hurt her, to please her. Indeed, she had found the act unsettlingly enjoyable, which prompted the hope she was soon expecting a child. For every sensible bone inside her warned that too much time spent with him like this would leave her vulnerable to foolishly giving away her heart again.

She watched the even rise and fall of his chest. How easily he slept. Did that mean he had done this so many times, with so many other women that it no longer affected him deeply, as it had her? Was she a fool to wish he would wake and make love to her again?

Restless, her thoughts churning, she rose from the bed and threw on her dressing gown. To give her heart to William, who had at least proclaimed his love for her — false though it was — had been an understandable mistake.

She took up her sketchbook, fiddled with the shape of Rand's bent knee and then switched to a clean page. She glanced up at her husband — sleeping deeply, his eyes closed, his dark lashes fanning his cheek, and began to sketch. To give her heart to Rand, who had made it clear he would never see her as more than a convenient amusement as well as a handy way to obtain his heirs — that would be disaster.

* * * * *

The dawn light woke him and a pleasant rush of memory caused him to turn over to embrace Helena. Her side of the bed was empty. He sat up, panicking for a moment that his lovemaking had sent her back to her family in tears. She had been afraid enough to lie, after all. And he had been as clumsy as a boy at the last.

He was halfway to the door when he saw her. She was curled in the chair by the fire, her sketchbook open on her lap. Her arm hung down limply by her side. Her dressing gown gaped open just enough to reveal the swell of a breast. Asleep.

He approached cautiously, hesitant to wake her. Would there be tears? Had she been afraid to stay in the bed with him, for fear he might wake up wishing for another bout with her? Was she disappointed in him? He wasn't entirely sure he wanted the answer to those questions.

As he approached, he saw what she had been sketching as he lay in an exhausted slumber. Him. She had only managed to capture his face and shoulders in any detail. His body was suggested by a few strokes of the pen. But his face. Did she truly see him like that? She had called him the wicked earl last night, but she had drawn him here with an almost innocent grace. He leaned in to examine the work more closely, inadvertently brushing against her shoulder.

She woke with a leap, clutching her sketchbook to her breast as if she feared someone would wrest it from her arms. She relaxed when she saw him. "Rand."

He settled himself in the chair opposite hers. "If you find the chair so comfortable you wish to spend the night in it, you have only to tell me, Helena, and I will have the landlord send it on ahead of us to Parsleigh."

She rubbed her neck and massaged her arm alternately. "No thank you, my lord. I wanted to capture something —" she gestured to the sketchbook, but closed it before he could examine her drawing of him any further. "I must have fallen asleep."

She stowed the sketchbook and pen in her basket and stood to stretch her cramped muscles, oblivious to the view she gave him of her breasts straining against the thin silk of her dressing gown. She turned to smile at him, and the welcome in her eyes took his breath away. "I much prefer the bed, Rand. I will be glad enough to leave these chairs behind."

Apparently, then, last night had been more successful than he believed. He moved behind her and massaged her shoulders and neck until she leaned in abandon against him, murmuring her approval. He rubbed his unshaven cheek against her sleep-cramped shoulder.

Recognizing a golden opportunity when it was presented to him, Rand slid his hands down the silk, warm from her body. The swell of her hip gave way to the curve of waist, which led to a swell of breast. She offered no complaint, so he unfastened the tie which held her dressing gown closed and slipped his hands inside. To his astonishment, she turned to him, putting her face up to be kissed.

He obliged her willingly, gratified but wary of the change. After a moment he took her face in his hands and looked into the deep blue eyes focused on him. "I have a different wife today, it seems. I know for certain that Ros is on her way to America. Were there perhaps three identical sisters and you are the third?"

"Would you wish for that?" Beneath the openness was still caution, he saw. He could hurt her with the wrong words. So he said nothing, simply kissed her again and carried her to the bed. This morning there would be no excuse to deny her the full measure of satisfaction she deserved.

He began by kissing her toes, watching her eyes change from self-conscious enjoyment to wanton arousal as he moved his attentions upward, slowly. He used all the means at his disposal — fingers, tongue, teeth, lips, breath — to inflame her, determined to see her climax come before his own this time.

When she was ready for him, he teased himself inside her, almost languidly, pleased with the way her hips moved restlessly beneath his. He would have been willing to wager she was on the edge of her own climax, ready to go over with a little more tender attention. Attention he was more than happy to give her.

But then she tensed beneath him, not from pleasure but from fear. "The maid," she whispered hoarsely against his shoulders. She would have pushed him away from her in a panic of modesty, but he held her close with one arm while he reached swiftly to pull the covers over them. The rocking motion of his movement drove him deeper inside her until he wanted to groan aloud.

He stilled her gasped protest with a hard kiss and a warning, "Lie quiet. The girl will assume we are simply sleeping."

Lying motionless, locked together, under the covers, they listened to the maid sweep the grate, lay new coals, and light them. Every task seemed to take a thousand years to Rand, who only wanted to finish what he had started. Helena gripped him tightly with both her hands and her thighs, as if she feared he would rear up and begin to plunge into her like a reckless stallion, despite the shock such an action would give the unwitting maid.

Rand gritted his teeth, trying not to move, knowing he had a relative innocent in his bed. The interruption might have been the opportunity for a heightened encounter, if Helena were less new to the experience of lovemaking. But she was not. The maid worked slowly to set out the cold breakfast they had ordered yesterday. He could feel his bride's fevered arousal cool as, no doubt, her embarrassment grew.

Damn. He would not have her disappointed this time. To fan the embers to heat once again, he rocked his hips against her in tiny motions, sliding ever so slightly away and back again. Not enough motion to catch the maid's eye, but enough, he hoped, to remind his wife that they had business yet to finish.

Her breath caught and her hands clutched his hips as if she would stop him, which only served to press him even deeper. He laughed soundlessly in her ear. Closed his eyes against the desire to ignore the maid's presence. Against the burgeoning desire to drive himself into his wife until she understood what it was to make love to the fullest.

He moved his fingers, slowly, determined to find the nubbin that would restore her cooling ardor. As he reached the sensitive bud and rubbed gently, she clenched around him, in surprise or protest he could not tell. He risked a low whisper. "Don't move."

But his warning came too late. She clenched around him once again, more forcefully this time. No matter what had compelled her movement, his control shattered and his own climax flooded over him in an inexorable rush. The effort to remain silent and still against the force of his desire to move nearly killed him. But he managed. Barely.

He collapsed slackly onto Helena, unable to support his own weight. As the sound of the blood rushing in his ears receded, he heard the door shut behind the maid. He groaned. Cursed girl. Why couldn't she have been a few minutes quicker?

* * * * *

Helena heard the sound of the door shutting behind the maid and let out a rush of breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding. "How could you?" She released her sadly ineffectual grip on Rand's hips and pushed his heavy body away from her.

"I am sorry, Helena." He didn't look nearly as repentant as he should have been, lying there sated and drowsy-eyed. "I wanted you to find your pleasure before me." He shrugged laconically, his dimple flashing. "But... you moved just so..."

"My pleasure?" She was furious with him. So furious that she could barely control her temper. How dare he fall asleep as if he had done nothing wrong. "Is that all you can think of when that maid is no doubt telling the entire inn what we...you...were just doing. What of my humiliation?"

He came alert, at last. "You're only angry because I brought you so close to release before the maid interrupted us." He reached for her. "Let me see to your needs and you'll find yourself in a much better mood."

She twisted away from his grasp and landed lightly on the floor. "My only need is to be fully dressed before she returns to bring us hot tea."

He made no move to follow her, to her relief. He merely coaxed in his drattedly seductive voice, "Come back to bed, Helena. When I show you what that slug of a girl interrupted, you will no doubt demand the landlord fire her."

"She interrupted nothing, you lummox. Or have you forgotten? If so, may I assure you that you were not in the least inhibited by her presence."

"You cannot hold my climax against me, Helena. I did not will it." His grin crinkled the skin around his eyes. "Indeed, I promise you, I fought against it valiantly."

"She was in the room." The thought still sent a numbing wave of dread through Helena. What if one of them had made a noise and the maid decided to investigate. She shuddered.

"I'm certain she thought us soundly sleeping." He smiled, as if he remembered his sin quite without shame. "We hardly moved, you had such a hold on my hips, madam propriety. You cannot shift all the blame to me when it was your own sweet muscles tightening which sent me over the edge."

"You touched me." And that touch had sent a shock of sensation coursing through her that clenched every muscle in her body tight. "With the maid in the room, you touched me —" Helena had no words for what he had done. "She could have seen."

"Seen what?" The little repentance he had shown earlier disappeared. Most likely it had not been in the least bit sincere. "Our covers lifting and rising? No doubt she has seen patrons coupling without the benefit of cover in her service here." He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, apparently accepting that he would not get her back into the bed this morning. He grumbled, "Not everyone has your ability to cool so quickly."

Stung, she replied acidly, "Or yours to boil over with a stranger in the room." Did he speak from experience when he said the maid had likely walked in on people unashamedly coupling in the past?

"I have never done so before," he admitted, quashing the little seed of suspicion that had begun to take root. "And it is certainly nothing I intend to boast about."

She went cold. "You wouldn't dare tell anyone — would you?" She would never tell a soul, not even Ros.

"It would make an amusing story..."

"You cannot mean that. I would never be able to show my face in public again."

"I am only teasing. Your secrets are safe with me." His green eyes narrowed and focused on her and she saw that beneath his amusement was a touch of embarrassment at what he had done. "I don't know why I —" He paused to look at her accusingly. "Perhaps if my wife had not kept me at bay for nearly a week with a lie."

So it was her fault he could not control himself? Helena snapped, "Two days." And then, when he grinned at her again, wished she hadn't admitted that particular fact to him.

"See? The whole episode is entirely your doing. I am innocent of everything except wanting to see you reach your own climax." There was a look in his eye that warned her he had not yet entirely given up on that ridiculous notion.

"You have no need to see to my climax, my lord. I have lived perfectly well without one all these years, I can do so for many more."

"Spoken like a woman who does not know what she is giving up." His eyes had begun to warm again. "I suppose this is another area your lover saw fit to keep you ignorant of. Climax. Orgasm. The moment when pleasure takes you over the edge of reason into a new world of sensation."

"Is that how you convince women to come to your bed without benefit of marriage?" she scoffed. "Telling them a fairy story about this new world of sensation? Please. I am your wife, you do not need to coax me to your bed. It is my duty — except, in the future, when there is another person in the room."

His mouth opened for a moment in surprise. "Do you think I am lying to you? As an excuse for..." He shook his head. "I am not."

Perhaps if she had not lied... Helena had the feeling that if she argued with him much longer, she would find herself back in bed beside him. She sighed. The maid had likely thought them sleeping and if she had seen anything it would have been only, as he said, the covers moving.