Page 44 of His Forgotten Bride
He chuckled, and his lips touched her ankle, sending a skirl of nervous energy skittering through her. “Ah, Claire,” he sighed, and his warm hands glided along her thighs, catching up the edge of her chemise, learning the shape of her body as he divested her of it. A searing slide along the outline of her hips, her belly, a grazing of her breasts and shoulders, and then it was off and over her head, and she sat, naked and trembling despite the warmth of the room.
She resisted the mad urge to draw up her legs, to cover her breasts with her arms, striving to summon forth a courage she had all too recently lacked. He made an approving sound deep in his chest, and his fingers massaged the nape of her neck.
“Beautiful,” he murmured, and the words were lost in the fine hair near her temple with the press of his lips. Something about the tone of his voice seared her heart, and she felt the burn of tears behind her eyes, feeling more like a bride than she had on her wedding night. There was none of the urgency of years ago, when they had been young—too young, really—none of the anxious eagerness.
They had both become different people since then. And yet their diverging paths had led them to the same destination. Two broken, lonely people, taking comfort in one another.
“Claire,” he said again, in a whisper, as if her name were a secret shared just between the two of them. “I assume it has been…some time for you.”
Her fingers plucked at the knot in his cravat, freeing the snowy linen from about his neck. “Seven years,” she whispered back, knowing the words for a confession he could not possibly understand. In truth, there was little opportunity for a woman of her position to engage in anaffaire, unless one wished to subject oneself to improper advances made by the master of one’s household, which she never had.
His hand caught her fingers, holding them tightly. For a moment he wavered, as if caught between conflicting desires. But at last he was moved to his own confession, and he said with a sheepish grin, “Then we are evenly matched.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“No,” she said, shaking her head. A man of his position?Seven years? Ridiculous. “No, that’s—”
“The truth.” His fingers squeezed hers. “It’s not common knowledge—nor something a man would generally admit to, you understand. But I thought you ought to know.”
“Why? Why did you not…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, and she wiggled her fingers in his grip, but he did not release them.
“Because no one was everright,” he said. “Let’s just say I could never summon the...er, enthusiasm.” He readjusted his grip, pushing his thumb against her palm to open her hand, and pressing her fingers to his cheek as if luxuriating in the feel of them there. It seemed rather odd to her that he would so enjoy it, when her hands bore the calluses of her labors. “I’m seven years out of practice, Claire. I’m telling you because there’s every chance I’ll embarrass myself and I’d rather your understanding than your scorn.”
Her breath whistled through her teeth. “I wouldn’t scorn you.”
His eyes softened. “No, you wouldn’t, would you? Because youareright.”
She tried to shake her head again, to deny what he was determined for her to understand, but his free hand slid into her hair, stilling the instinctive motion. With a deftness she would not have expected from him, he plucked out pins and cast them aside. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
She forgot that she was naked and he was still clothed. She forgot to deny his claim again, because as he unwound each lock of her hair from where it had been precisely pinned, she felt as if he were unravelingher. Stripping away the layers she had collected since they had been separated, peeling back years of insecurity, of anguish, of heartbreak and loneliness.
She wasn’tright. He simply didn’t know howwrongshe was. And she was selfish enough to want him anyway, to take this moment of bliss and revel in it.
Her hair tumbled down her back, and he released her fingers to tunnel both of his hands into it with a raw sound of pleasure, rubbing the strands between his fingers. She’d always thought it such a plain color, stick-straight and a nondescript shade hovering between blond and brown, belonging truly to neither color. And yet he held a handful up to the flickering firelight, admiring the hank of hair caught in his fist.
“The color of honey,” he said, his voice imbued with admiration. “Of course I cannot purchase you such personal items before we are married, but when we are, you’ll have tiaras and hair combs and—”
“Gabriel,” she said, laying her palms on either side of his face. “Shutup.” And, just on the off-chance that he would decide upon tendering to her a proper proposal, she kissed him.
His hands settled on her shoulders, his warm hands sliding along her skin, sending shivers in their wake. With deliberate delicacy he smoothed his fingers over her back, exploring the texture of her skin, the dip of her waist, the contours of her hips.Shewas the first woman he had touched in this way in seven years—and the last woman he had touched before them.
He groaned when she shifted, clutching his shoulders to balance herself as she drew up her legs and climbed astride him, and his arm banded about her back, holding her in place.
“Claire,” he whispered against her lips. “My waistcoat.”
And his shirt. His breeches, stockings, and boots. She attacked the buttons of his waistcoat with a violence that would have given his valet apoplexy, shoving it off of his shoulders between frantic, desperate kisses. With one arm he flung it away, and it looped around the bedpost, forgotten. His hands, newly freed, cupped her breasts and for a moment she was distracted by the careful pressure, the reverent strokes of his fingertips across her bare flesh.
She listed toward him like a flower stretching for the sun, her hands caught in the soft linen of his shirt. She had grabbed handfuls of it, intending to tug it free of his breeches, pull it over his head—but his warm breath coasted over her breasts and she was transfixed.
His lips touched her chest, just over her heart, and she wondered if he could feel the frenzied beat of it, if he could hear her love in the rush of her blood through her veins. And then his mouth, his beautiful, wicked mouth closed over her nipple and every thought scattered to the farthest reaches of her mind.
Abandoning her grip on his shirt to slide her trembling fingers into his thick, glossy hair, she cast her head back and whimpered, “Gabriel. Please. Touch me.”
As if he had only been awaiting the invitation, his hands glided down her sides, his thumbs tracing down her belly, flirting briefly with the crease of her thighs. His fingertips sifted through the curls at the apex of her thighs and lower, finding the entrance to her body already damp and aching. He shuddered in reaction, his teeth catching her nipple in a delicate bite, his tongue teasing the tip. Beneath her bottom, his erection felt like an iron bar, impossible to ignore.
She wasn’t going to get his shirt off. She certainly wasn’t going to manage his boots or his stockings or breeches. With his lips on her breast and his fingers skillfully opening her to his gentle caress, he needn’t fear that he would embarrass himself—because she was moments away from embarrassingherself.
With a renewed sense of urgency she found the buttons of his breeches and slipped them through their holes, peeling back the front placket. His shaft sprang free, and she closed her fingers around it greedily, feeling it pulse in her grip. Her hand easily found the remembered rhythm he had once taught her, and he groaned against her breast, his muscles bunching and straining.
