Page 67 of A Wicked Kind of Husband

In only a few strides, he was back in her room. He hauled her off him and she flew through the air and landed on her mattress with a bounce. Her nightshift was tangled up around her thighs and she automatically tried to smooth it down.

“Stop it,” he ordered harshly.

She froze. But he was not looking at her legs.

“Stop trying to fix my family,” he said. “You’re trying to fix your sisters and my brothers and me and—whatever it is you’re trying to do, stop it. It is very tedious and extremely unwanted.”

She lifted her chin mutinously. “He’s going to stay here. I’ve invited him.”

“Of course. Why shouldn’t everyone move into my house?”

“It’s my house too.”

He glowered at her. “And stop being so right all the time. Now, I’m going back through that door and you will not bother me again.”

She scrambled up onto her knees. “But what about the other thing?”

“What other thing?”

“My bed jacket. And my wifely duty.”

He buried his fingers in his hair and made a sound like a growl. “You’re trying to seduce me again. You and your wifely duty and your empty womb and your ugly bed jacket. I don’t have time for this. I have some very important work to do.”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning.”

“Then I have some very important sleeping to do.”

No, he would not leave! She would not let him.

Cassandra grabbed the hem of her nightshift and pulled it up over her head. And then it—Oh no! It caught on her hair and she yanked at it, yanked harder, feverishly aware that her whole body was exposed to him—she should never have done this, it was so brazen, and now she felt a fool—and she yanked again, and the shift came free, half her hair tumbling down her back after it.

But his eyes burned as they roamed wildly over her nakedness, and she basked in the heat, unable to move.

Not an inch of him moved but his eyes. Her ragged breaths were too loud in the silent night and her heart performed a drunken quadrille. She swallowed away her nervousness, and the sound of her gulp, so embarrassingly loud, made her unfreeze. She whipped the shift in front of her and clutched it over her breasts.

“Perhaps I should not have done that,” she said, her voice strange, uneven.

She watched, mesmerized, as he extended one arm, with slow, deliberate care, and flicked the door shut. His eyes were dark and liquid in the candlelight, and a matching liquid heat pooled in her belly.

“Done what?” His voice was rough velvet caressing her anguished skin. “Taken off your shift, or tried to cover up again?”

“Um.”

He eased closer. The height of the bed brought their faces level. If she leaned forward, her covetous breasts would graze his chest. She pressed her arms more urgently over her breasts, not for modesty now, heaven help her, but because they needed to be touched and pressing them like this felt good.

A gleam in his eye suggested he knew, or maybe that was her imagination, because how could he know, and why did he have to be so wicked, and why did she long for his teasing to continue even as she longed for it to stop?

“I think you’ll find, my lovely wife, that both of those were a mistake.”

He tugged at her nightshift. She clutched it more tightly. He raised an eyebrow, wicked playfulness mingling with heated promise.

“It’s only fair,” he murmured. “You saw me naked.”

He tugged again, and this time she let him take the shift and drop it onto the floor.

Chapter 15

Joshua caught barely another glimpse of Cassandra’s exquisite breasts before she crossed her forearms over them, her hands on her shoulders. A thrillingly inadequate effort. Her hair was tumbling down around her face, her eyes were wide and dark, and she breathed in short, shuddering breaths that echoed his own.

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