Page 39 of The Winter Husband
His cock reacted as if it knew something he hadn’t yet figured out. But she couldn’t be talking about that.
“Pregnancy,” she continued, “would complicate things between us and destroy our plans. Don’t you agree?”
He grunted an assent, all he could manage.
“It would make an annulment impossible. Then I couldn’t return to Paris, and you would be stuck with a wife. But if there’s a way to avoid making a baby…”
“We’re already avoiding pregnancy in the surest way.”
“Yes.” Her face flushed. “But—”
“What you’re talking about is risky. Doesn’t always work.”
“I trust you to be…careful.” She lifted her gaze. “Aren’t there other satisfying things to avoid pregnancy…besides celibacy?”
A blinding white light burst in his mind. It pushed off rational thought and ushered in images he’d tried not to dwell on when he lay down alone on his pallet in the barn. All the ways he could take Marie’s body, make her writhe underneath him. Visions of her stripping off her clothes, letting her hair down, crawling naked onto his bed, and offering up her sweet—
“Yes.” His voice came out raw. He clung to a last vestige of reason. “If that’s what you want.”
“Oh, Lucas.” She sucked her plump lower lip between her teeth. “I don’t want to be alone in that bed anymore.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Marie caught her breath as Lucas shot off the chair.
He would seize her now. He would haul her up and carry her somewhere and press her down, on a bed, on the floor, on the table…he would tumble her to her back, hike up her skirts, and then flip open the buttons on his breeches. She doubted she’d see anything but the froth of her petticoats flying before he took her, but she wasn’t frightened. The pressure between them had been building for so long. She could admit it now.
This was what her wilder nature craved.
He rounded the table in two strides and dropped to a knee before her. She breathed in the dizzying scent of pine resin and fresh-cut wood. His silver eyes darkened to smoke as he cupped her face and kissed her hard, a hungry kiss that coiled sensation tight and deep in her body. He shifted the angle of his head as he drew her lower lip between his. An odd thought fluttered through her mind as his kiss deepened.
This was no unleashed brute.
Lucas knew what he was doing.
A whimpering moan escaped her as his lips retreated, but not so far that she couldn’t still feel his breath on her face. She leaned in for another kiss, but he pulled back farther, repeating that motion until she realized, with a swaying sense of disorientation, he had coaxed her into standing.
His fingers tightened on her jaw. “Are you sure?”
Yes.She couldn’t manage the word. She could barely stand on her feet.
“I need to hear you say it, Marie.”
Her lips tingled, but her tongue was not her own. Couldn’t he see she was already lost? She bobbed her chin and then added, in a breath, “Yes.”
With a rushed exhale, he dropped his grip on her jaw and engulfed one of her hands in his. She stumbled in his wake as they passed into the bedroom, toward the bed piled with pelts. The whole room was cast in a dull red glow from the fire she’d lit hours ago, hoping he would agree to her mad proposition and finally make love to her.
Even if it wasn’tlovethey were making.
He stopped beside the bed and swiveled to face her. The sheer size of him still amazed her. Burned in her mind was how he’d looked that night she’d caught him in a nightmare, the animal power of his bulging arms, massive shoulders, and rippled abdomen. All the strength he’d kept leashed in an effort to make her feel safe, to keep to their agreement. Now her bones melted at the realization nothing but deerskin and a linen shirt separated their bodies from merging.
A reedy thought fluttered through her mind that she should probably be acting shy or anxious—Lucas would expect innocence—but no, no, that would be ridiculous. She’d already stripped herself naked in the parlor by admitting she wanted to give herself to him. Why bother pretending nerves when her whole body sang with eagerness? In a spurt of daring, she seized the front seam of her bodice and squeezed the two sides together to loosen the metal hooks from the crocheted loops. She peeled the russet wool apart to reveal her stays to the man watching her every move.
Lucas ran his finger across the bare skin of her upper chest. “This won’t happen just once, Marie.”
“Promise?”
She maneuvered her arms out of the sleeve holes and lifted the bodice high by one finger, letting it dangle for a moment before dropping it. His gaze darkened as he rewarded her by dipping a warm knuckle into the hollow of her cleavage. Could he feel her heart pounding? Could he see what he was doing to her?
