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He sucked in his breath.
“You could heave about under me,” she said softly.
He told himself to ignore what she’d just said, but the image rose in his mind’s eye, and his rod rose eagerly with it.
It had been a month since she’d told him she loved him. It had been a month since she had actually invited him, instead of simply cooperating. Enthusiastic as the cooperation had been, he’d missed her brazen overtures almost as much as he’d missed the three precious words.
Besides, he was an animal.
Already he was as randy as a rutting bull elephant.
He lifted her off the table. He meant to set her down, because carrying her would be too dangerously intimate. But she wouldn’t be set down. She clung to his arms and wrapped her legs round his waist.
He tried not to look down, but he couldn’t help it.
He saw soft white thighs encircling him, caught a glimpse of the sleek, dark curls just below the sash that was no longer holding the gown decorously in place.
She shifted a bit, and the robe slid from her shoulders again. She slipped first one, then the other arm from the loose sleeves. The elegant robe became a useless scrap of silk dangling from her waist.
Smiling, she brought her arms up to circle his neck. She rubbed her firm, white breasts against the opening of his dressing gown, and it gave way. The warm, feminine mounds pressed against his skin.
He turned and came back to the table and sank down upon it.
“Jess, how the devil am I to climb the stairs in this condition?” he asked hoarsely. “How is a man to see straight when you do such things to him?”
She licked the hollow of his throat. “I like the way you taste,” she murmured. She drew her parted lips over his collarbone. “And the way your skin feels against my mouth. And the way you smell…of soap and cologne and male. I love your big, warm hands…and your big, warm body…and your immense, throbbing—”
He dragged her head up and clamped his mouth over hers. She parted instantly, inviting him in.
She was wicked, a femme fatale, but the taste of her was fresh and clean. She tasted like rain, and he drank her in. He inhaled the chamomile scent mingled with the fragrance that was uniquely hers. He traced the delectable shape of her with his big, dark hands…the graceful column of her neck, the gentle slope of her shoulders, the silken curve of her breasts with their taut, dusky buds.
He slid back and down upon the table, and drew her down on top of him, and traced those feminine outlines again with his mouth, his tongue.
He stroked down her smooth, supple back and molded his hands to the sinuous turn of her slim waist and the gentle flare of her hips.
“I’m clay in your hands,” she breathed against his ear. “I love you madly. I want you so much.”
The soft voice, husky with desire, swam in his head and sang in his veins, and whirled its mad music through his heart.
“Sono tutta tua, tesoro mio,” he answered. “I’m all yours, my treasure.”
He grasped her sweet rump and lifted her onto his manhood…and groaned as she guided him into her. “Oh, Jess.”
“All mine.” She sank, slowly, down upon his shaft.
“Sweet Jesus.” Pleasure forked through him, jagged and white-hot. “Oh, Dio. I’m going to die.”
“All mine,” she said.
“Yes. Kill me, Jess. Do it again.”
She came up and sank again, with the same torturous slowness. Another lightning bolt. Scorching. Rapturous.
He begged for more. She gave him more, riding him, controlling him. He wanted it that way, because it was love that mastered him, happiness that shackled him. She was passionate chatelaine of his body, loving mistress of his heart.
When the storm broke at last and, trembling in the aftermath, she fell into his arms, he held her tight against the hammering heart she ruled…where the secret he’d hidden for so long pounded in his breast.
But he wanted no more such secrets. He could say the words now. So easy it was, when all that had been frozen and buried inside him had thawed and bubbled up, fresh as the Dartmoor streams in springtime.
With a shaky laugh, he brought her head up and lightly kissed her.
“Ti amo,” he said. And so ridiculously simple it was that he said it again, in English this time. “I love you, Jess.”
If love had not exploded into his life, her husband informed Jessica a short time later, he might have made a mistake he’d never forgive himself for.
The sun was inching up from the horizon when they returned to the master bedroom, but Dain wasn’t ready to sleep until the evening’s events were clarified, explained, and settled.
He lay on his back, gazing up at the canopy’s golden dragons. “Being besotted myself,” he was saying, “I was forced to see how easily any man—especially one of Vawtry’s limited intelligence—could stumble into a quagmire.”
In a few contemptuous sentences, he told her of his suspicions about Beaumont’s role in the Paris farce, and how the spitefulness had continued. Jessica wasn’t much surprised. She had always considered Beaumont a particularly unpleasant human being and wondered why his wife hadn’t left him long since.
She was, however, both surprised and amused by her husband’s approach to the problem. By the time Dain had finished describing his intriguing methods for dealing with both Vawtry and the repellent Beaumont, Jessica was laughing helplessly.
“Oh, Sebastian,” she gasped. “You are too wicked. I should give anything to see the expression on Beaumont’s face when he reads Vawtry’s th-thank you n-note,” she sputtered. Then she went off into whoops again.
“Only you would appreciate the humor of the situation,” he said when she’d quieted.
“And the artistry of it,” she said. “Vawtry, Charity—even that spiteful sod Beaumont—all dealt with, settled in a matter of minutes. And all without your needing to lift a finger.”
“Except to count out bank notes,” Dai
n said. “It’s costing me, remember?”
“Vawtry will be grateful to you for the rest of his life,” she said. “He will race to the ends of the earth to do your bidding. And Charity will be content, because she’ll be set up comfortably with a man who adores her. That’s all she wanted, you know. A life of idle luxury. That’s why she had Dominick.”
“I know. She thought I’d pay her five hundred a year.”
“I asked her how she came to that addled conclusion,” Jessica said. “She told me it was when all the grand folks came to your father’s funeral. Some of the gentlemen had brought their birds of paradise along and deposited them at nearby inns. Along with other London gossip, Charity heard tales—exaggerated, no doubt—of settlements and annuities made for certain noblemen’s illegitimate offspring. That, she told me, is why she didn’t employ the usual precautions with you and Ainswood, and why, when she found herself enceinte, she took no corrective measures.”
“In other words, another brainless trollop put the idea in her head.”
“Charity thought all she had to do was have one child, and she’d never have to work again. Five hundred pounds was unheard-of wealth to her.”
“Which explains why she settled so easily for your fifteen hundred.” Dain still had his eyes fixed upon the dragons. “You knew this, yet you threatened to give her my icon.”
“If I’d had to deal with her by myself, I could not risk her creating an ugly scene in front of Dominick,” Jessica explained. “Like you, he is acutely sensitive and emotional. The damage she could do with a few words in a few minutes might take years to repair. But with you there, that risk dropped considerably. Still, I preferred she go away quietly. That is why I armed Phelps with a bribe.”
Dain turned onto his side and pulled her into his arms. “You did right, Jess,” he said. “I doubt I could have dealt with a sick child and his screaming mother simultaneously. I had my hands full—both of them—and my mind fully occupied with him.”
