Page 45 of The Companion’s Secret

His hands trembled as he wound the strip of linen around her head twice and carefully tied the knot so as not to tangle her wild hair within it. With her head tilted back, her throat was bare to the brush of his lips as he bent to kiss the wild pulse point that hammered just beneath her delicate skin.

He let his hands settle lightly on her shoulders and trailed his fingers down her arms, so that his touch would not startle her. Then, kneeling, he brought his hands to her uninjured ankle and removed her shoe. Easing his hands slowly up her calf, over her knee, he untied her garter and rolled her stocking down over her foot. She shivered. “Sensitive?”

“I—I don’t… Yes?”

He understood her uncertainty. His feather-light touch had raised gooseflesh. It could produce a ticklish sensation, if done carelessly. But he intended this to be something else entirely. Pure pleasure, sending a spark along every nerve ending, chasing along skin that had perhaps never known another’s touch. Greedy, he longed to run his fingers over her everywhere.

Instead, he released her leg and rose.

“No,” came her harsh whisper. “Don’t stop.”

“I won’t.” Beneath her eminently practical shift, he could see the tight peaks of her nipples but little else. “Can you stand, just for a moment?”

She rose without any visible difficulty or discomfort, although she listed slightly to one side as she shifted her weight onto her left foot. Again, he ran one fingertip along the gathered edge of her last remaining garment, that same light touch he meant to teach her to crave. Her chest rose, pressing toward his hand. Slowly, he plucked at the tie between her breasts, and when it was loose he eased her shift down over her shoulders. It met no resistance as it came to her hips and slid over them to puddle on the floor at her feet, like the marble gown of some Grecian goddess, draped over the pediment.

“Ah, Camellia. How lovely you are.” And she was, with her high, round breasts and skin like fresh cream, though there was a bruise on one shoulder from her fall, and she was far too thin. Had her aunt’s cruelty extended to starvation?

The sound of his voice seemed to remind her that his sight was unimpeded, and she moved her arms to cover herself. “Don’t,” he said, tracing one finger along the angle of her jaw. “If it will make you feel better, I’ll douse the candles, while you lie down on the bed.”

As he moved around the room, extinguishing the lights until all that was left was the soft glow of one flickering flame near the washstand, he shed his coat, his waistcoat, and his shirt, letting each garment fall where it would. When he reached the bed again, he propped himself against it to tug his boots free. She was lying half curled on her side, imagining, he supposed, that she was shielding herself from his gaze, though the sight of her long legs and the curve of her bottom were more than sufficient to send a bolt of heat straight through his belly and into his cock.

He did not generally let that organ do his thinking for him. It would have been death to do so at any gambling hell, where beautiful women were often employed as distractions. He knew he ought not to be thinking with it now, either. Whenever the right cards simply fell into his lap, he had taught himself to play as if the game were rigged, which it usually was. There had been women who wanted nothing more than a tumble with the notorious Lord Ash, of course, and he’d generally been willing to oblige. But he’d certainly not expected it of this one.

He wished he felt more confident of his ability to read her intentions. Perhaps the blindfold had been a tactical error. No matter—he did not have the strength to deny her, whatever her intentions were. Still, as he kneeled onto the end of the bed beside her feet, the shudder that passed through him was more than desire. A premonition of loss, perhaps.

Except what he feared losing in this gamble was not money or land or some other meaningless bauble that could easily be replaced.

His eyes fell on the scattering of silvery scars just above her makeshift bandage. She had risked at least her limb, perhaps even her life, to save her sister. What was it Fox had said about the burdens of being the eldest sibling? Always responsible, never quite free. He’d witnessed the same protective instinct in her treatment of Felicity. She had given a great deal of herself to so many.

Had anyone ever sacrificed anything for Camellia?

Bending low, he set his lips gently against the curve of her calf. The physical hurt from that incident with the dog was no doubt long gone. But there were other sorts of pain, and he would kiss them away, kiss every inch of her, until she let go of everything she’d been carrying and…flew.

Careful to skirt her injured ankle, he suckled her toes, then moved up her leg, nipping the soft flesh behind her knees, laying kiss after kiss along the back of her thigh till he came to her bottom and paused to pass his hand lightly over its plumpness, feeling her skin prickle to awareness, drawing her womanly scent into his lungs. Then he started again with the other foot, tasting salt. When her hips began to lift eagerly to his touch, he knelt above her and began at the top, sweeping aside her hair to kiss her neck, the slope of her shoulders, down the valley of her spine. Lips, teeth, tongue, over and over again, until she was breathless and so was he.

When he’d given her a moment, and only a moment, to recover, he cupped one shoulder. “The best is yet to come,” he said with a low laugh as he coaxed her to turn onto her back.

Chapter 14

As Cami turned, the straw in the mattress crackled beneath her and the faint fragrance of the field rose from it, not unpleasant. The sheets felt coarse against her bare skin, abrading her cheek, her nipples. To her surprise, that feeling was not unpleasant either. She had thought she knew what to expect when he stripped her of her sight, but she could not have anticipated this rush of awareness, the way even ordinary sensations threatened to overwhelm but never did. Touch, scent, sound—they left no room for modesty, crowding out her doubts and the niggling vestiges of guilt.

And she could only be grateful.

Though why should she feel guilt? He was not now Felicity’s, any more than he would ever be hers. It was only giving in once—or perhaps, if it was very good, twice—to the practiced seductions of a rake, as heroines were wont to do. But this time she was beholden to no pen but her own to craft a satisfactory conclusion to the affair. Once they reached Shropshire, she would leave him, and they need never see one another again.

She felt the bed shift as he rose, heard the soft sound of some item of clothing being shed. His breeches, almost certainly, for she had already heard his coat hit the floor. Oh, my. Heat rushed over her; the nighttime chill of the room was little more than a suggestion to be ignored. Once she was fully on her back, though, uncertainty nudged closer to her consciousness. She didn’t know quite what to do with her hands. Press them to her sides? Fold them primly in her lap?

A nervous sort of laugh bubbled in her chest at the mental image that arose. She felt the mattress sink again as Gabriel returned to the bed. “Something amusing, my dear?” His warm voice at her ear made her scalp tingle. The lingering hint of his cologne combined with the elemental scent of his maleness to tickle her nostrils.

“I was wondering where to put my hands,” she confessed.

“Mmm.” He nuzzled her neck and drew in a deep, hungry breath, granting her permission to do the same. “I have a few thoughts. But to start…” His fingers tangled in hers and he lifted her arms over her head, pinning them to the pillow as he came more fully over her. His mouth sought and found hers, his lips soft, his day’s growth of beard rough, his tongue sleek and demanding. And she surrendered to all of it with an eagerness that once would have made her blush.

As before, his kisses did not linger in any one spot. She felt his lips along her jaw, down her throat, over the ridge of her collarbone. What happened when he reached her—?

“Ahhh!” She bucked upward as his mouth closed over her breast. The flickering heat of his tongue was almost too much; then he began to suck. The wet sound filled her ears and spikes of lightning shot from the place where his mouth was through every nerve in her body. When she was absolutely certain she could not survive the pleasure, he shifted his ministrations to her other breast, freeing his hands from hers to run them down her arms and along her body, at last settling to cup the breast he had abandoned, to pluck her tender nipple between finger and thumb.

There could be no better feeling. She was sure of it. Another cry escaped her lips, this time a cry of despair as his mouth shifted once more, now exploring the valley between her breasts before grazing along her ribs and over her belly. When he lifted his body away from hers, she gripped the headboard so tightly the delicately turned spindles dug into her tender palms and gave her pain. Anything, anything to keep herself from begging.