Page 28 of Fatal By Design
Following base desire, Audrey nudged her lips closer, kissing him. She stood on the tips of her toes, and Hugh’s arms, already encircling her, flexed. He held her so securely that although she tried to drop her heels back to the carpet, they did not. Her toes remained hovering over the floor. The muscles underneath his shirt could have been steel plated for how firm they felt against her. He held her as if she were a treasure that he feared would be stolen away. In his arms like this, she felt safeguarded against any possible evil.
Her temperature rose, and her pulse knocked in her neck. He kept her sealed to his chest and abdomen with one powerful arm, while the other lowered to the sash tying her banyan. She pulled her lips from his with a small intake of air.
“I don’t want you to regret anything. I don’t want you to regret me,” she said, laying bare her deepest fear.
Hugh cocked his head. “The only thing I could possibly regret would be not giving us a chance.”
Audrey swallowed a sob of relief. She had fully expected him to walk away, to tell her he would not compromise. He kissed her then, the heat of it chasing away the sob. And when he tugged the sash of her robe, loosening it to allow the banyan’s panels to open, she forgot to breathe.
“Your mourning period doesn’t end for another nine months,” he said, his hand touching down on her hip, his palm warming her skin through the muslin nightgown. “If you would prefer to wait until then for me to stay—”
“No.” The word rushed out, barely formed, barely perceptible. Clawing for what remained of her senses and dignity, she swallowed and said more clearly, “No, I don’t prefer that.”
Hugh’s answering grin revealed he’d been hoping for that response, and that he knew exactly what she was feeling inside. Her longing for him, to love him in the way she never thought she’d love anyone. To let him love her, touch her, in the way she feared he never would.
The satin banyan slipped from her shoulders and fell to the carpet at her feet under the gentlest tug of his hands. Then, in a rush of motion, Hugh bent and swept her legs out from under her while bracing her back. Locked in his arms, Audrey hooked her hands around his nape. She’d often wondered what it might feel like to run her fingers through those dark, glossy strands, and so she learned that his hair was thick and soft as he carried her to her bed, his gaze steady on hers. The gravity of his stare was slightly alarming. He had looked at her with longing before, but this was something altogether different. This lookseared. He was going to make love to her, and while she would rather the world end than stop him and send him from her room now, the barest doubt lingered.
He must have recognized it in her eyes, or in the way her arms went rigid around his neck. Hugh stopped as he reached the bedside, and still cradling her, said, “You are nervous.”
“A little.” There was no point denying it.
“You trust me?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. Then, with a coy grin, “You have saved my life a few times, after all.”
The corner of his mouth rose, dimpling his cheek. He kissed her languidly while lowering her feet to the floor. Her skin prickled everywhere as he bunched the muslin at her thighs and in unhurried torment, began to lift the gown’s hem.
“We’ll go slowly,” he said in the half-second his lips were parted from hers. “Tell me to stop, and I will.”
But she already knew she wouldn’t want that. Her trepidation wasn’t rooted in fear of the actual act; it was in how things between them might change afterward. Up until this point, she had known one part of Hugh. Now, she would know another. She didn’t want that to change them. Unless it was for the better.
Audrey lifted her arms, and with her heart in her throat, he drew the gown over her head and off her fingertips. Cool air from the open window kissed the backs of her thighs and the bare skin between her shoulders as the cloud of muslin cleared her vision. Once again, she was looking into Hugh’s eyes. His heated gaze lowered, though only briefly, respectful as he was of her nervousness.
His hands brushed down her arms, raising gooseflesh, and then curled over her hips. “You are as gorgeous as I imagined you would be.”
Audrey bit her lower lip to stop her preening grin. “And you are still clothed, Mr. Marsden.”
He kissed her throat, then her shoulder, as his hands traveled the bare expanse of her backside, sending shivers of delight and need through her. “Don’t you mean,my lord?” he whispered against her earlobe.
The bit of humor put her at ease, and Audrey reached for his shirt. As she tugged it from the waist of his trousers and her palms flattened against the warm, smooth skin of his abdomen, her hesitation all but vanished. There was nothing for her to worry over. Hugh was already her partner in so many ways. This would simply be one more.
When they were equally undressed, and Audrey had admired Hugh’s impressive form through bashful glances, he lowered her to the bed. In that moment, nothing she’d experienced in the whole of her life had ever felt so right or so beautiful. As promised, he moved slowly, telling her between kisses what would come next. Restraint deepened his voice and tensed his muscles as he held himself in control. When the dashing pain faded, however, she whispered to him to let go. And at last, they came together in a rapture of long hindered desire, every touch one of reverence, every gasping breath a promise of devotion. He sighed her name with a vulnerability she’d never dreamed he’d show her, and when the world collapsed around them in shattering sparks of light, his kisses swallowed her nonsensical whimpers.
Later, as the sun rose and gilded the counterpane covering them, they lay sated and sleepy in each other’s arms. It was then, while resting her head against Hugh’s chest and listening to his heartbeat that Audrey finally understood true happiness. She’d found it. This was her chance. And come what may, she would not let go.
ChapterEleven
Hugh directed the horses onto the long, winding lane that led to Greenbriar just as the bloated white clouds that had been drifting across the sky all afternoon turned an ominous gray. The winds increased, whipping leaves over to show their silvery backsides. They had been traveling the heavier trafficked post road and sparser country lanes since earlier that morning, only stopping once to change out the horses and eat, though both tasks had been hurried. They were too eager to reach Greenbriar and learn what more had been discovered since they left to engage in much conversation along the way. And considering Greer sat between them, nothing could be said about the exquisite early morning hours he and Audrey had spent together.
Traveling with Greer had been slightly awkward at first, especially since the maid had quietly entered the bedchamber just past dawn to wake her mistress and prepare for their early departure. Hugh had already been awake, reclining on pillows with a sleeping Audrey curled up against his side, her rhythmic breaths gusting across his bare chest. Greer, ever tactful, had immediately retreated and snicked the door shut behind her. He’d decided not to mention it to Audrey when she woke; she would have only been mortified. And upon her waking, he’d been too distracted by her to think of her maid anyhow.
Hell, he could still feel her bare legs shifting over his as she stirred and stretched, her cheek turning against his chest as she craned her neck to look up at him. With her hair in loosed waves of golden silk, her lips still pink and swollen from his mouth, she’d been irresistible. Making love to her again in the full morning sunlight, hearing those soft sounds she made that drove him to the brink of madness, he’d decided then and there that they would never leave her bed. The rest of the world could burn, and he wouldn’t give a damn.
“I didn’t know this feeling was even possible,” she’d whispered after as she lay loose-limbed in his arms, dropping kisses along his chest and skimming her foot up his shin.
“Neither did I,” he’d replied, to which her foot suddenly went still. She’d lifted herself up and rested her chin on his pectoral.
“I am not naïve, Hugh. I know you’ve been with other women.”
