Page 67 of The Dangerous Love of a Rogue
Her dark eyelashes flickered against her pale skin as her eyes moved beneath her eyelids.
She cried when they came upstairs after dinner, because she missed her family. He had feared she would change her mind when it was too late, but then she kissed and made love to him with everything she had.
No other woman, in his experience, did that.
He was afraid when the storm came she might change her mind and learn to hate him. He was afraid she loved her family more than him…
Jealousy roared and extended its claws.
When her father caught up with them, Mary’s trial would follow.
Their first coupling tonight had been quick, evidence that she would respond to him. Their second, slow, as he tried to enchant her with his body – so that she might love him the most.
The candle flickered, then went out. He could no longer see her, but he could hear her breaths and feel them on his skin. Now he knew how good life could be with her, it would be unbearable to lose her.
She must marry him, there was no choice now. But he could not endure a heartless marriage. He wanted this sprouting seed of love to grow. Roses blooming on the briar inside his soul. She could give him that, teach him how to live like that. Life would become the two of them together against the world, he would be her defender and she his. That is what he wanted.
He had not prayed for years, but today…Please, Lord, let her lean towards me for comfort and protection. Let me be who she cries her tears for.
He wanted her now.
He needed her now.
He only had a few hours left to convince her to love him as much as he loved her.
His hand touched the satin-soft skin at her hip.
He wished to be inside her, to calm the fear in his head, and appease the possessiveness in his soul. He did not know how to be what she needed. He was terrified of failing her – of failing himself. Of her rejection. How could his love compare to the affection of her family?
She moved beneath his hand, rolling onto her back. His palm rested over her breast and he kissed her shoulder.
This was all he knew, he knew how to please her in a bed.
Please, God, let that be enough.Let my physical love wrap around her heart and form a wall that will hold against her father’s and brother’s defamations.
22
Mary woke with a smile on her lips, blissfully happy, her muscles trembling from a night of adoration, embers glowing warm beneath her skin. She lay amid tangled sheets, his thigh resting over her legs and his palm on her stomach, weighting her down.
Andrew had made love to her thrice more through the night. After the rushed experience, they had sat side by side on the bed, drinking wine, as he talked more about his friends. He spoke of his friends as she would speak of her family, with relaxed amusement. Then he made exquisite love to her; it had been excruciatingly and beautifully slow and gentle. The next time was in the middle of the night, and that time was different too. She woke up while he was touching her, arousing her. Then he had rolled her on top of him and taught her how to kneel across him, rise and lower. It made her feel exposed, but her self-consciousness was soon forgotten as her body heated to flowing lava.
During the last time, she felt like an earthly goddess half awake and half asleep as the first light of dawn had flooded the room. He’d worshipped her body with his lips, tongue and teeth, until she was panting and begging him to be inside her. Then he had settled between her thighs and ridden her deeply until she was mindless.
It felt as though he tried to teach her everything he knew about physical pleasure in one night.
Mary pushed Andrew’s leg from atop hers, rolled away, got up and gathered her clothes. The air was heavy with the scents of their bodies.
A clatter of horseshoes on the inn’s cobbles in the courtyard pulled her attention to the window.
‘Hey!’
‘You!’
‘My good man!’
Men’s voices shouted and others responded in sharp tones.
‘Where?’ That one word sounded like her father’s voice.
