Page 30 of The Winter Husband
“I fixed the door,” he said. “It won’t fly open. Wild things won’t get in.”
Her lashes made crescent shadows on her cheeks. “It isn’t right for you to be sleeping in the barn. Not when there’s a perfectly good bed for you in the other room.”
He grunted, trying to block off the fantasy of Marie curled up with the firelight dancing on her naked skin. She wasn’t offering herself up as a bedmate.
Was she?
The thought raised a lot more than his hopes
“You’re asking me,” he said, the air going thin in his lungs, “to sleep in this cabin with you.”
“I can sleep right here.” Her voice rose an octave as she slipped a leg out from under her and tapped the hearthstone with a toe. “On a pallet, right by this fire—”
“I won’t make my wife sleep on the floor.” He clenched his jaw. “What kind of man do you think I am?”
“I think you’re a man of your word.” She fussed with the corners of the pages, her chin rising. “I think you’re kind, Lucas. Though…I haven’t shown much gratitude for your kindness.”
Hell, it wasn’t gratitude that he wanted. And it wasn’t kindness that pushed his blood south. Did she have any idea how hard she was tempting him now? She was just a few feet away, curled up like a cat, talking about beds. How easy it would be to lift her up, burrow his face against that lovely throat, and show her what pleasures they could share.
He checked himself.
I won’t be a monster.
She said, shifting her gaze to the flames, “Have I told you the story about the house that stood just inside the walls of my old orphanage?”
“No.” Another story would kill him. “Tell me about it some other night—”
“It was the caretaker’s house,” she interrupted, plowing forward, “but no one had lived there for a long time. A previous caretaker had died in some horrible way…or that was the rumor, anyway. I spent a night there on a dare. Boards creaking, the wind howling. And now, every time I close my eyes in this cabin”—she raised her lashes—“it feels like I’m alone, surrounded by ghosts.”
For the second time in a day, he lost the capacity to move. Her midnight-blue eyes pleaded with him. He lifted his eyes to the ceiling, distracting himself by counting the knots on the pine boards. Marie didn’t know what she was asking of him. There was more than one reason why he shouldn’t sleep close to her.
And yet.
“You take the bedroom,” he heard himself saying. “I’ll sleep here.”
***
The fire Lucas laid in the bedroom hearth had already burned the chill from the room by the time Marie bolted the door behind her. Bracing herself, she turned and faced the enormous bed she’d been avoiding since her arrival. It was Lucas’s bed, so how could she not imagine him stretched upon it, stripped of fringe and breeches? In her mind, his broad chest bore a dusting of hair that caught the glint of firelight. Her palm tingled as she thought of running it over the swells of his body.
She released a deep sigh and leaned against the door. Time to stop lying to herself. She had tried to ignore this attraction, but if she were honest, she’d been roused from the first moment she’d seen him in Madame Bourdon’s salon. And now, having pressed against his solid chest, having bathed in his big body’s warmth as he taught her to shoot, having felt his subtle perusal as she read…she could no longer ignore what was happening to her. She wanted to throw herself at Lucas. Not solely because she was in a dangerous place and he made her feel safe. Shewouldn’tbe safe in his arms, because all her best intentions would shatter.
One kiss, and she’d be wild again.
She yanked on her bodice strings, thinking about how the nuns used to talk about the treacherous demands of the body in a way that bore no resemblance to the storm of unsettling, heart-pounding feelings that blasted away a woman’s better judgment. She hadn’t been alone with Lucas for more than a few days, and already she was losing her senses. But she’d be a fool to succumb.
A woman was helpless once she gave herself over to a man.
Shivering in her shift and stockings, she slid a knee onto the bed and burrowed under the thick pile of furs. She lay back, huffing out a breath, worn down by the conflicts between them and within herself. The pillow she seized smelled of feathers and cold. Lucas had told her he’d visited this cabin many times before Talon had actually signed it over to him, to walk the land and make preparations for winter. She wondered: had he brought a woman into this bed? Did he pull her naked body against his? Did he kiss the hollow behind her ear? Did that woman slip her fingers down his abdomen to take him in her hand—
Arrrgh!
She seized a second pillow and covered her head. She tossed and turned as her body’s warmth took the chill out of the bed linens. The fire in the hearth leapt and popped. She squeezed her eyes shut to count backward from one hundred, as Cecile had once taught her when she first had trouble sleeping in the restless dorm. She sank deeper into the mattress as she repeated the exercise in Latin…
Marie jerked awake with a start. She opened her eyes, wondering if she’d even slept. The room was dim and red, lit by the glow of wood coals. All was quiet, but it felt more like the absence of noise, like she’d been jolted awake by some racket that still vibrated soundlessly in the air. Another restless dream, she thought, as moments slid by. She laid her head back down upon the pillow, sinking into the warmth and comfort—
And heard it again. She hauled herself up on her elbows. In the other room, something fell with a clatter.
Kicking off the furs, she seized a poker from the stand before unbolting and throwing open the bedroom door. The first thing she noticed was that the front door wasn’t swinging open to the storm. The next thing she saw was Lucas, silhouetted against the hearth light, reared up to his full brawny height. His linen shirt hung from one shoulder and exposed a bare arm and the muscled nakedness of his chest. Flexing her grip over the iron poker, she searched for the danger that had put him in such high alert, but nothing else moved in the room but his bellowing chest.
