Page 41 of Better Love Next Time
He brushed the lock against Kitty’s cheek, remembering the girl she’d been. Missing her. He shifted to lie beside her and gathered her in his arms. She was slight, her bones fragile and her body soft, just as he remembered. She had become a mystery to him, a woman without a smile. The small, weak part of him wanted to love her again. The majority wished to shake the sullenness out of her. Shock her into fighting back.
He brushed the tangled curls from Kitty’s cheek and grazed his fingertip where her dimple was. The one he hadn’t seen in what felt like years.
At four o’clock, he called for Miss Dixley to watch over her new mistress and walked to the old yard to visit Sam Worthing and his wife and children. Some two hours later, he returned to a slumbering Kitty and a praying Miss Dixley.
Julian checked his wife, noting her breaths coming faster. He nudged her nose, an intimate gesture from long ago. “Kitty?”
She grimaced.
“Will you open your eyes for me?”
She cracked open her right, the other smashed into the pillow, and turned her back to him.
Julian spent an hour combing again through her drawings while uncertainty pricked at him. They could not go back. And he had been certain of their future.
He returned her books to her trunk and, at the bedside, stripped down to his drawers. Rolling her to the far edge of the bed, he slipped in with a good two feet between them.
Someone was touching him.
Julian opened his eyes, blinking away sleep. Diffuse moonlight bathed the room enough to see Kitty’s dark headan inch from his, her body supine and her hip pressed to his beneath the red counterpane. In sleep, his body had betrayed him, growing lengthy and thick just to have a woman beside him.
He was not, was absolutely not, going to touch her. But contrary to his vow, his cock kept the lead, aching and rock hard. It felt as if it might suffocate if it wasn’t freed. To do the unthinkable.
“Katherine,” he said. He elbowed her.
She rolled in his direction, a sweet, carnal hum floating from her lips, and he felt it on his cheek. A warm, slender hand grasped the shaft of his cock.
He jerked his hips and froze. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” she whispered.
“You have my cock in your hand.”
She gripped it tighter. “Is that what men like you call it?”
“Men like…” He groaned in desperation. “You should stop.”
“I won’t tell. If you don’t.”
She pulled on his pulsing shaft and threatened to blow him to pieces. Was this happening? Was he going to let it happen?
Her shadow loomed over him, her hair curtaining his face, the scent of soap and woman fanning his lust. She skimmed her cheek against his. Her lips brushed the corner of his mouth. In his fevered mind it struck him as innocent and out of place with what she was doing. And wildly erotic.
“I saw you,” she whispered. “I knew you would have me.”
When? When had she seen him?
“What is that word?” she asked, her mouth plucking a warm kiss. “Fait accompli?Tu es mon fait accompli.”
What was she talking about? He was her fait accompli? Another innocent kiss. Whispers in French. His hips jerked, urging her on.
Her hand remained at the top of his length, her palm loosening, tightening, her fingers exploring no farther. In theheady haze of lust, he realized she had no idea what she was doing.
He cupped the back of her hand, guiding her to stroke him. She learned quickly, awkward but eager.
Shamelessly, he rode her hand. He wanted her mouth, so sweet, so damn hot and sweet. With a groan, he captured her lips, entwining his tongue with hers as she did the same with her hand, learning him.
“I’m so glad you answered my invitation,” she said in French.
