Page 34 of The Winter Husband
“Only just.”
“Not even close, woman.”
“One kiss,” she said, her throat flexing, “often leads to another. A second or third kiss leads to—”
“The way I remember it, I was the one who started the kissing.” He yanked another strip of rawhide through the white birch frame. “And I was the one who stopped it, too.”
She made a choked sound, followed by a catch of breath. Her head swiveled on that lovely neck until he couldn’t see any part of her face but the curve of a cold-kissed cheek. She wanted to deny it—he could see that clearly enough—but she swallowed the lie. It struck him like a hammer—she knew he was right.
By the saints. A rush of blood pounded in his ears. So he hadn’t imagined how pliant she’d been in his arms. He hadn’t imagined the moan she’d made against his mouth. Heat settled low in his belly, a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire blasting in the nearby brazier. It was one thing for him to want her—what man wouldn’t want her? It was another thing to suspectshewantedhim.
Shoving the frame off his lap, he shot up off the chair, making her flinch. Good. He wanted her to flinch. He wanted her to see how much bigger he was, how easy it would be for him to overpower her if he were a different kind of man. Better she see him as an ogre. Once she saw him as a bedmate, his will would be tested to the breaking point.
“Got something else to say, Marie?” He had to get her out of here before he started thinking with his breeches. “Or did you come into the beast’s lair just to give me a tongue-lashing?”
“I see one stool, Lucas.” Her voice was lake-ice steady. “Is there another?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll just sit here on the crate.” Her skirts made that rustling noise as she pushed the bowl and the bottle of rum aside. “You can sit back down on that stool and stop looming over me now.”
“Go back to the cabin,” he warned her, “and leave a man be.”
“For the next five months?”
Yes.
Damn it.
“Lucas.” She drew herself up like the nun who used to slap his hand with a switch when he failed at his letters. “After last night’s nightmare, I finally understand why you didn’t want to marry anyone—”
“You should have bolted yourself in the bedroom.” He wasn’t going to admit to anything, and he didn’t need her digging into his mind. “Stay far away from me when I’m in that state. I’ve broken men’s bones in my sleep, thinking they were enemy soldiers. You could have been hurt.”
“Perhaps so, if I hadn’t known to wake you up first.” She leaned forward. “I’ve seen this kind of madness before. I know how to manage it. It’s a condition, not a weakness.”
You’re my weakness.
“Tell me the truth,” she said. “You were on a battlefield in Flanders last night, weren’t you?”
He eyed her in a way that had once made new recruits tremble. If she thought he was going to talk about the nightmares that made him tear his clothes in his sleep, she had another think coming.
“Don’t tell me, then,” she retorted. “I suppose it doesn’t really matter. We both have secrets.”
Philippe’s warning flashed through his mind.
She’s hurt in the heart.
“Here’s the situation,” she persisted. “Considering your condition, as well as your promise to ship me back to Paris in the spring—”
In his mind, he counted five months as twenty weeks, as one hundred and forty days, all spent in the presence of this soft-looking, frank-speaking, rosewater-scented woman who moaned in pleasure under his kiss.
“—It seems prudent to have a frank discussion about how we’re going to manage a proper distance between us through the whole winter.”
“I already told you. I’ll stay here. You’ll go back to that cabin, and leave a man be.”
She cast him a baleful look. “Please sit down. I’m getting a pain in my neck from looking up at you.”
He breathed deep to take the edge off his frustration. She’d taken root on that damn crate, sitting as straight-backed and proper as if she were at a king’s table. He supposed she wasn’t going to leave him in peace until she had her say. He sat himself on the wobbly old milking stool and planted his hands on his knees.
