Page 103 of In the Prince's Bed
“What are you doing, you stubborn man? Get back in that bed at once!”
He picked up a pair of shoes and faced her. “I’m fine, I told you.”
“You arenotfine.” She took his arm. “Now come back to the bed—”
“No.” Shrugging off her hand, he put on the shoes. “I have to check something in my study. I’ll just be a moment.” He had to find that license, had to make sure he could marry her before she figured out the truth.
Purposefully he headed out the door. He heard her following after him and quickened his pace toward the stairs.
“Wait!” she called out.
He halted with his hand on the banister. “What is it, Katherine?”
Her voice lowered to a throaty murmur. “I know one way to keep you in bed.”
His blood roared in his ears. He turned to find her standing in the doorway, wearing a seductive smile. She couldn’t mean what he thought. Could she?
As he watched, she removed the pins from her hair, then shook it out with the mischievous look of a woman who knew she was being naughty. “Come back to bed, Alec. I promise to make it worth your while.”
His mouth went dry. Damn her. It had been two long days since he’d touched her, two long nights since he’d felt her sweet softness beneath him.
“No, you come here,” he ordered, before he lost what was left of his control.
Wordlessly, she shook her head and disappeared inside the room.
“Blast it all.” He couldn’t do as she wanted—and not because of his throbbing skull, either. Making love to her with this lie between them would poison everything. Once they were married and he could tell her the truth, it would be different, but he couldn’t compound the deception by making love to her now.
Perhaps he should go downstairs and stay there until supper. But she’d left the bedchamber door open, and the thought of Emson or one of the housemaids finding her in some state of dishevelment…
Just imagining that state of dishevelment sent his cock into instant attention. He walked back to the bedchamber in a trance. His mind might balk, but his body knew exactly what it wanted.
Even if he couldn’t have it. He approached the open door, bracing himself for anything, yet he still wasn’t prepared for what he saw through the doorway—Katherine wearing only her chemise and stockings. Katherine with her hair spilling freely over her barely clad shoulders.
Katherine leaning against a bedpost, her eyes a smoldering chocolate brown as she stepped out of her shoes. “Come in and close the door, Alec,” she said in a throaty voice that nearly undid him.
He couldn’t move. He could only stand there staring, his eyes scouring the translucent muslin for whatever glimpses of her flesh he could get. And there were plenty, blast it. Her nut brown nipples showed dark and pouty through the fabric, and he could even see the flaming curls between her long, incredible legs.
That had to be the thinnest chemise in creation. And he could already remember how it felt to be inside her, driving hard, buried deep—
“No,” he growled, hanging on to the last bit of his self-control.
“You need to be in bed resting.”
“If I get into bed with you when you’re dressed like that, there will be no resting.”
She arched one brow. “And if you go traipsing about the house, up and down the stairs, you might pass out and injure yourself even worse. At least in bed you can’t hurt yourself.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.” He changed tactics, desperate to make her put her clothes back on. “Besides, your mother will come looking for us when she wakes. You don’t want to shock her, do you?”
“When Mama dozes, she sleeps for hours if she’s undisturbed, especially after she’s been traveling.”
“Yes, but what if one of the servants awakens her—”
“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. What happened to Alec the rule-breaker, Alec the rakehell who doesn’t care about propriety? Come here, Alexander the Great…break some rules with me.” Casting him a sultry smile, she wriggled her chemise off her shoulders and dropped it to her waist to bare her perfect breasts. “If you want to see more, you’ll have to come inside.”
Sweet God in heaven, see more? He wanted to tear her blasted chemise off with his teeth.
To hell with conscience and good intentions. This washisKatherine, inhisbedchamber tempting him intohisbed. He was only a man, and he wanted her. Striding through the doorway, he shoved the door closed behind him, then kicked off his shoes and advanced toward her in a trance.
