“So am I. And we’ve shared a bed together before. Don’t you remember?”
She giggled. What an uncomfortable night that had been. After that heady kiss in the parlor of the Queen’s Head, feeling her awakened body humming with life and hope, she’d lain stiffly on her half of the bed all night, the rolled blanket dividing the mattress and making a barrier between them. Every breath, every movement from Mal had grated on her sensitized, singing nerves. All she could think of that night was kissing him again, and the thought recurred at least once a minute in the time that had elapsed since.
It was a terrible temptation to let him into her room. A man could be forgiven if he roamed before marriage; indeed, it was expected. But a woman could never recover her virtue once it was lost.
“Come in,” she called anyway.
He looked delicious and comfortable, wrapped in a long velvet banyan robe with slippers, and she felt the inappropriate urge to press her mouth to the exposed skin of his throat. She pulled the coverlet over her hips, a layer of protection.
She wanted more of him, was greedy for more kisses, but at the same time she didn’t want to rush. She was enjoying the slow, delectable simmer of attraction, the deep satisfaction of having him near. No chair in the room being available, he stretched out atop the coverlet beside her, and every nerve in her body came alive.
“I thought I would find you with your book.” His smile sent heat curling through her to her toes.
“I can’t believe I have it back. Intact. There’s no mold, no spots, no nibbles from mice. Thaker thought to store it in a cedar chest, a cast-off from the house.” She ran her hands over theparchment, feeling the light indentations the nib had made as the scholar scratched his ink into the page.
“How lucky that he is the one who found it,” she marveled. “And now he is married, with children!”
“It’s the way things go for many a man, so I’m told.” Mal’s eyes captured the candlelight and its shadows of gold. There was something deep and fathomless in his expression, as if he felt the same current that she sensed: attraction, that undeniable pull, and the deliciousness of lingering in that expectancy.
“Not for my poor cousin, I’m afraid.” She giggled. “At least, not with me.”
“That’s why I came. I fear he might try to force himself upon you. I can sleep on the floor, if you wish.”
She gave him a demure smile, tucking a pillow into the space between them. “Against the door, like a squire guarding his knight? We did well enough before, though Eyde must never learn we shared a bed. I don’t care what Reuben’s servants think, though.”
She felt so much safer with Mal here. Outside the door, the rest of Penwellen loomed a forbidding mass, dark with shadows. Here, in the golden candlelight with Mal, they were held in an enchanted circle. She never wanted to leave.
She wanted to kiss him again.
“You can put the book between us. Better than a sword.” The warmth of his smile roused a curl of heat in her belly. Her entire body hummed.
“Bea would not approve, I am sure, but I am more afraid of my cousin than of your aunt.” She watched him kick off his slippers. Trying not to stare at his well-shaped feet, she fixed on turning the pages of her book, examining it for marks of damage. “And Joseph would be horrified. I wonder how he is faring with Miss Pettigrew?”
“I hope he has got as far as calling her Susannah, if not as far as sharing a bed. Only precontracted couples are allowed that, I should think.” He gave her a small, accusing look.
She swallowed hard. The candle dipped in a sudden draft of air, sending a wavering light over his face, its strong lines and shadows. Warmth emanated from his big body, glazing her skin.
“I do beg your pardon. It was all I could think of to make Reuben desist in his delusions that I should marry him.”
“I thought it very noble that you should sacrifice yourself to me. If he tries to coerce you, I have leave to call him out for attempting to alienate your affections.”
Mal reached across the pillow and laid a hand on her hip, lightly, a question. His hand was large and warm, and heat skittered through her belly, shooting darts to her legs and breasts. She recognized the sensations now, that fire being lit.
“You aren’t in the habit of fighting, are you?” The thought of Mal in a duel made her chest hurt.
“Only in practice, and not always successfully. Viktor’s trounced me more than a few times.” He leaned on one elbow, his eyes turning smoky. “How do you feel about kissing your intended?”
“I adore it.” She leaned down to touch her lips to his, and their mouths met as if two halves of a whole. He rose to meet her, his hard chest so close, and she slipped her arms around his shoulders, only just managing not to dive her hands beneath his robe. She could not lose herself completely.
But sense lifted away when his tongue teased against her lips. She parted her lips in surprise and he swept his tongue into her mouth, and a wild sweetness welled in her core, molten wax held to a hot flame.
This was delicious madness, utterly wanton, and her whole body came aglow, like those figures in medieval illuminations surrounded by a halo of gold. He smelled rich and earthy, likewarmed brandy on a winter night, and he tasted faintly of lemon. She scrabbled at his shoulders, urging him closer.
His tongue in her mouth stirred a deep wildness, a hunger inside that she didn’t know dwelled there. Her hips and the tops of her thighs felt hot, his hand a brand on her waist, and her breasts tingled as his warm breath wafted over her face with his kisses.
She panted for breath as he kissed her jaw, that stretch of her neck below her ear. She recalled their last embrace, how he had almost taken her breast in his mouth, and the very thought of him kissing hertheremade her nipples grow hard and aching. She mewled like a kitten, pressing mindlessly toward him, and something about her entire collapse, her surrender, made him raise his head.
“That’s enough for tonight, I daresay.”
