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‘I didn’t have to run away quite so far.’ She put her robe on a chair, suddenly shy. ‘Jane is packing and we can be away tomorrow morning. If you want me to stay, that is.’
‘No.’ Gray shook his head. ‘No, I do not want you to stay.’ Then, before the sudden pang in her stomach could turn into anything worse he held out his hand. ‘I need you to stay, Gabrielle. I need you to stay for the rest of time and beyond.’ She reached out and took his hand in hers, let him draw her in until she could rest her head on his chest, listen to his heart beating, strong and sure. ‘If I was a proper gentleman I would do no more than press a respectful kiss on your lips until the wedding night. Unfortunately I do not appear to have a gentlemanly bone in my body because what I want to do is to make love to you from now until the wedding, pausing only for sleep and food.’
Gaby listened to the rumble of his words in his chest, felt the brush of his lips in her hair and released the great shuddering breath she seemed to have been holding since the moment she discovered she was pregnant. Perhaps from the moment when she realised she loved him and could not have him.
‘That sounds like an admirable programme to me,’ she managed, before he was kissing her, lifting her until her whole body was plastered to his, her hands on his shoulders, dizzy with
the feeling of weightlessness, with the magic of his lips against hers, the taste of him.
Gray let her slide gently down his body, his strength supporting the lingering descent until she was standing on the floor again. ‘I had a very good night’s sleep last night,’ he remarked with apparent inconsequentiality.
‘So you don’t think you might fall asleep after you make love to me?’ Gaby found that if she stood on tiptoe she could nibble her way around his right earlobe and trace the sharp, elegant whorls of his ear with the tip of her tongue. It had the intriguing effect of making him growl, deep in his throat.
‘Shall we see?’
Her gown sagged suddenly. He had been unfastening it blind, she realised. A modest woman would make a grab for the bodice as it slid. Gaby wriggled and the entire gown slipped down, over her hips, to the floor. Gray bent his head to nuzzle at her breasts, exposed as they swelled above the edge of her corset. Then that was released and Gray pulled it up, over her head and tossed it aside.
‘I am not going to ask how you learned to do that.’ It came out as a gasp as his lips fastened on to her left nipple, the sensations striking down, straight to her belly, lower, until she was shifting restlessly, her thighs tight together as though she could contain the vibrations that seemed to be shaking her.
Gray switched to the other breast, his tongue sweeping lavish, wet, delicious strokes over and over while his hands continued undressing her. She did not realise her shift and petticoats had gone until she felt the cooler air on her back, then the slide of the coverlet under her as Gray lifted her again and laid her down on the bed.
‘I am wearing too many clothes.’ He stripped with an urgent efficiency that was arousing in itself.
Gaby kicked off her shoes and reached for her garters.
‘Leave them.’ Gray knelt on the end of the bed at her feet and looked at her.
Blushing just a little, Gaby leaned back on her elbows and studied him in her turn. The winter evening was drawing in and he had lit the lamps in the room, bathing his skin in a flickering golden glow that slid over the breadth of his shoulders, the moulding of muscle in his arms and torso. She looked lower to where he was erect and felt her eyes widen as he seemed to thicken under the touch of her gaze.
‘You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,’ Gray said, his voice low. ‘I thought you lovely before, but I could not have looked hard enough, long enough. I will never be able to look long enough.’
His palms stroked over the arch of her feet, up her ankles, the fine silk of her stockings snagging slightly against his skin. He untied her garters, one by one, his fingers steady, slow on the ribbons, his big hands gentle as he rolled each stocking down her legs and tossed them aside.
Gaby gasped as he leaned forward, pressed her knees apart, but she opened for him, bathed in the heat of his gaze. Her arms gave way as he edged up the bed between her legs and she fell back with a little cry as Gray bent his head and she felt his tongue lick up the inside of first one thigh, then the other. He teased the crease between body and leg for a while, then stilled. When she lifted her head to look at him he was kneeling between her knees, his hands curled lightly over her belly.
‘There is nothing to see yet.’ His fingers stroked, tender, possessive.
‘No. It seems hard to believe and yet I know.’ She put one hand on top of his. ‘Boy or girl, I wonder? Do you have a preference?’
‘I want a child of yours. Any child of yours.’ Gray leaned over, kissed her stomach, his tongue tip playing for a moment in her navel until she fell back, laughing at the tickle. Then he slid down, his shoulders wide between her thighs, and began to kiss and lick into the core of her.
Lightning shafts of delight, teasing, aching strokes of his tongue, his lips, his teeth, sucking and nibbling, dragging every exquisite, tortuous shred of pleasure out of her. She heard herself moan aloud, bit her knuckles, then flung her arms wide, her hands fisting in the sheets as he slid one, two fingers into the heat that was tight with longing for him.
‘Gray.’
He answered her with the thrust of his fingers, the intensity of his kiss and she convulsed against his hand, gasping her love for him as he came up her body and took her mouth. She arched against him and he entered her in one hard stroke and then froze.
‘Gabrielle,’ he said against her throat, like a prayer. ‘Gabrielle.’ And now it was a demand, a challenge as he moved again, strong, slow, the rhythm as old as time, as fresh and new and miraculous as the moment.
‘Yes.’ She curled her legs around his narrow hips, dug her heels into the small of his back, clung to him and answered every thrust, every demand, gasping out her love and her pleasure as it built, tangling tighter and tighter. She felt him begin to lose his rhythm, heard his breath coming harder, harder against her face and then Gray went rigid above her as the knot of her pleasure unravelled into bliss. There was heat as he spilled inside her, the awareness that the only reality was the two of them, now one, and then she was lost in him.
* * *
‘Papa, why isn’t Thomas a lord? I’m a lord.’ James, Lord Travers, peered down at the face of his new day-old brother, just visible in the swathing shawl. ‘Is it because he’s very small?’
Gaby watched as Gray bent over his sons, checking that Jamie, seated cross-legged on the end of her bed, was supporting the baby’s head properly.
‘It is rather unfair, I agree,’ Gray said. ‘Only the eldest son of an earl gets to be a lord with a courtesy title. Your brother is the Honourable Thomas Laurent Frost Graystone.’
