Lost in Your Arms (13 page)

“I hope so. I would like to have her silver-backed brush. I remember”—her voice quivered again, and she steadied it—“I used to brush her hair in the evening before she slept. She said it made her sleep better.”

Her hand followed the ridge of muscle that formed his pectorals. Absentmindedly, he was sure. “Then perhaps you’ll have the silver-backed brush.”

She circled his nipples with her fingertips.

Absentminded or not, she had to stop. Catching her hand, he lifted it off his chest. “I hurt for you when you cry. I wish I could make everything better for you.” He took a deep breath. “But I am a man. I am your husband. I want to console you in the time-honored way. Do you comprehend?” With the ball of his thumb, he tilted her face up to his.

The signs of grief were fading, soothed away by the damp, cool cloth, and that inner light that had brought him back from death glowed in her glorious blue eyes and through her velvety complexion. “I comprehend,” she whispered.

The light drew him. He wanted to warm his hands on her, absorb her into himself, and the strain of self-
discipline made him gruff. “If you touch me like that, I will comfort you as a husband does a wife, and I will not have you accuse me afterward of taking advantage of your grief.”

She stared at him keenly and frowned ferociously.

Good. She was taking solemn note of his good intentions. Perhaps he would get credit for them, for God knew he got no satisfaction from denial.

In a halting voice, she said, “I’m tired of being sad, and angry, and biting my tongue when you . . . when you lash at me.”

He lifted his brows. “You’ve been biting your tongue?”

“I’m tired of doing the right thing, of being lonely, of suffering . . . a cold bed.”

Everything in his unruly body rose to attention.

“I’m tired of longing for . . . for . . .”

She couldn’t stop now! “What?”

Shoving him away, she scrambled out of bed and turned her back on him, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.

Damn. Damn! If she wanted to pay him back for his ill-temper, she was doing a hell of a job. He wanted to shout at her, yet her stooped shoulders and bent head stopped him. For all these weeks, she had been a tower of strength. Enid in a fragile state was a new experience, one that touched his heart as well as his body. “Don’t run away. I won’t jump on you.”

“I . . . I know. It’s not that.” Turning back, she considered him, head cocked. “I just remembered . . . how much I loved you once.”

Had it truly been such a horror?

Or was she coming to love him again? “You don’t
have to stand there.” He lifted the covers invitingly. “You can come back into my arms.”

Sidling close to the bed, she took his hand and threaded her fingers through his.

He rubbed her palm with his thumb, noting the calluses caused by hard work.

“I’ve given up everything for you, because you are my husband. I’ve had all of the duties and none of the privileges. Not your financial support, not your affection, not even your presence.” She lifted her chin. “So just for tonight, we’re going to do things my way.”

His heart thumped. He tugged her close.

She sat on the bed beside him. “All I want is you.”

Chapter 14

“Do you mean as man and wife?” MacLean gently squeezed her hand. “Naked in a bed?”

“Both of us.” During the days Enid had cared for MacLean, she’d come to know by the way he smiled, by the power of his kisses, by the roll of his muscles, that this man could give her pleasure.

“You’re not thinking with any amount of clarity.”

“Yes, I am. I’m thinking very clearly.” Now that the bitterness and the sorrow had passed, she was profoundly aware of him. Of the hard plane of his muscles beneath her. Of the scent of mint soap on his skin. “I’m thinking you’re too weak to do anything but lie there while I pleasure myself with you.”

“As a threat, that fails to strike fear into my heart.”

“It should.” Scars on his chest parted the hair in sharp lines, but he had healed well—and he had filled out stunningly. The exercises he performed each day had created a man hard of muscle and sinew. With the flat of her hand, she stroked the dusting of curly auburn
hair that grew over his pectorals, down the center of his breastbone and disappeared from sight beneath the sheet. “Because I intend to make you suffer.”

Perhaps it was simply that she had been without the touch of another human being for so long that she wished to soak up every fragment of kindness. Perhaps she was a wicked woman snatching at any chance for happiness.

She circled his nipples with her fingertips.

Perhaps she needed him.

“We should be sensible.” But his voice grew fainter as she slid off the bed. The closed curtains puffed at the windows, moving with the faint breeze, but night cloaked the cottage as she unbuttoned the first button at her neck.

“Who cares?” She didn’t. Not now. She had drunk deep of sorrow, and she wanted a taste of life. “I want something more than duty and responsibility. What could be wrong about that?”

“You’re distraught,” he said hoarsely.

“Do stop your bloodless mutterings. This is no time to develop morals.”

He desired her.
She’d known for weeks, and not just because he’d kissed her. He watched her with a heated gaze. He resented it when she laughed with Mr. Kinman or Harry. More and more, he hated it when she waited on him as if he were an invalid.

She desired him.
She didn’t want to, but since the day she’d seen him unconscious, since the moment he’d opened those extraordinary green-and-gold eyes, she had craved his touch, his body, his approval.

She wore the simplest of undergarments, but by the way he watched she might have been dressed in silk
and lace. The muscles corded in his neck. His hands formed fists. His mouth opened with awe at seeing her discard her clothing with a fine insouciance she could never match on a day when wisdom ruled.

She much enjoyed the sight of his amazement. “Besides,” she said, “we’re married. Remember?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

“Take my word for it.”

“I do. I take your word for everything.” His eyes were hot, but his voice was cool. “You are the reason I’m still here. Without you, I would have already gone seeking answers.”

Tossing her dress on the floor, she leaned to slide her hands across his shoulders in a long, slow glide. “You’re not really thinking of leaving?”

“I don’t know who I am.” He caught her wrists and brought them, one by one, to his mouth. “I don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t know who’s after me.” He kissed her pulse points, slow, warm, wet kisses that made her close her eyes to savor the delight. “A man like me needs answers. But you hold me here with your brief, brilliant smiles and your sharp, honest tongue, the sway of your hips and your assiduous attention.”

Did he think she’d been beguiling him on purpose? “I haven’t been trying to entice you,” she said faintly.

“Oh, I know that.” He rubbed his thumb across her damp skin.

Then what did he mean? “I just want you to get better.”

“I am better.” He stroked his tongue along the outside of her thumb, then lightly bit the tip. “I’ll show you.”

When he touched her like that, she could hardly
catch her breath. When he looked at her as if she were a tidbit and he a hungry wolf, she wanted to flee in disarray. But more than that, she wanted to stay and feed his hunger . . . and her own.

Turning her back on him, she removed her drawers. When she put her hands behind her to untie her petticoats, his fingers brushed hers away.

She looked behind her. He had leaned off the bed, his face intent. His wide, beautiful mouth was serious. His eyes narrowed on his task, and he pulled her close and efficiently freed her from her petticoats.

“Have you given up your feeble attempts at good sense?” She laughed softly, an effervescence bubbling in her veins.

“I have no good sense where you’re concerned.” He stroked the length of her hip, caught the hem of her white lawn chemise.

Turning on him, she put her knee on the bed and pressed her hands to his shoulders. “I’m handling this. You just stay quiet and do what I tell you.”

His gaze feasted on the breasts that escaped the confinement of her corset and thrust at her chemise. She suspected he could almost see them through the thin cloth; she knew her nipples had come to attention at his notice. She took a long, slow breath; she taunted him with her body.

“Tell me to unlace your corset,” he whispered, his lips forming each word with loving precision.

She watched the motions and knew he wanted to leap at her. But for once in her life she held control. He would do what she wanted, because if he didn’t, she would walk across the room and he wouldn’t be able to follow. She was pitiless. She was unfeeling. She was
exacting revenge and the promise of ecstasy, and she loved every moment.

“Unlace my corset,” she commanded.

His hands weren’t quite steady as they rose to their task, but he loosened the strings and began, with long, slow motions, to liberate her from almost the last of her clothing. Beneath the corset was her chemise, and beneath the chemise was bare body. She knew it, and he knew it, and he wanted to see her so badly that the knowledge brought the flush of triumph to Enid’s skin. All of Enid’s skin.

So to show herself, she untied the ribbon at the neck of her chemise.

It drooped over one shoulder.

MacLean faltered.

She slid her hand along her collarbone and under the bagging garment. Without taking her gaze from his face, she pushed her chemise down her arm. The ribbon snagged on her nipple for just a moment, then her breast popped free.

MacLean gave a groan that fed Enid’s pleasure-starved soul.

She floated her fingers back up her arm and over her own nipple, erect with excitement. She flicked it with her fingernail while he stared, fixated by the sight. She asked, “Aren’t you going to finish with the corset?”

He jerked on the string so hard that he ripped the material around the eyelet.

She should have cared, for she didn’t have another; she laughed.

The speed and strength he used to pull the corset down dragged the chemise off the other breast and halfway to her belly. She helped him push the corset
over her hips, and while she finished the job he managed to get ahead of her and shove her chemise down her arm.

She was naked, he was in a hurry—everything was just as she remembered. But before she could experience disappointment, he paused. With his hands framing either side of her, he looked. In a voice of absolute worship, he said, “Dear God, you’re beautiful.”

What was a girl to say to that? “Thank you.” She felt beautiful. He made her feel beautiful.

Strands of his uncut hair shone auburn against the white pillow. His eyes slanted softly, and one lid drooped more than the other—a result of the explosion. The scars on his face were faded, but they, and the jut of his jaw, lent him a toughness he had never possessed before. For all that he couldn’t walk, his body glowed with muscled, muted power. She might have been undressing for a pirate, a robber king, a stranger, and the sense of muted danger made her pause and—shamefully—thrill.

Nonsense, of course. He was no stranger. They
were
married. Perhaps time had improved his character, but she knew Stephen MacLean. He was an actor, and although he practiced an air of untamed menace, in truth he was only a petty thief and inveterate gambler. She was using him, and that was fine. He owed her.

With a shimmy of her hips, she shook free of the chemise.

His gaze followed its descent, and he said hoarsely, “So beautiful.”

Her skin prickled, and she caught his wrist when he would have buried his fingers in the thatch of hair at her thighs. “Not yet,” she said.

She thought he might cavil at the restraint, might even free himself and make a grab at her.

Instead he smiled a lopsided smile and waited until she released him. Then, not quite touching, he traced the shape of her hip with his hand.

She swallowed. His slow, sensuous pantomime fed her hunger and denied her thirst at the same time. His palm slithered up her belly—oh, not really, but just beyond touch—and traced the plumpness of her breasts. Her breath caught again and again at the hint of contact, the whisper of sensation. Each motion promised and didn’t fulfill, and she, who had wanted only promises, now sought fulfillment.

She swayed forward, but his hand glided away, up to almost caress her collarbone, to almost stroke her neck, then to actually take a tress of her hair between two fingers and arrange it so it curled about her nipple, made coy by concealment.

Ah, but she could tease, too. Catching the sheet in her hand, she slid it off of him, tormenting him and herself with the slow revelation of his hard-won and reconstructed body.

His shoulders and arms bulged and rippled with imposing masculine power. Below, his ribs still protruded more than she would have liked, yet his hard work had layered muscle over the previously sharply defined ridges, and he was breathtaking. The distance between his collarbone and his waist seemed to stretch forever, and the spot where his flesh disappeared beneath the band of his shabby, cut-off trousers proved a provocation of the primal sort.

She had seen his torso many a time; it had been impossible
to avoid the sight as he lifted weights and tortured his body. But she had never seen below the trousers.

She wanted to see below the trousers.

He chuckled. “Curious, dearling? There are answers to be had.”

He failed to take her domination seriously. He seemed to think he could control her with charming smiles and smoking desire.

Two could play that game. She placed her hand atop the bulge in his trousers.

He stopped smiling.

The magnitude of him astounded her. Her hand could not encompass his length—and she tried. She stretched the tip of her longest finger toward the base and her wrist toward the tip, and realized she had forgotten more about MacLean than she remembered. Snatching her hand back, she glared at him. “Do you realize I haven’t done this in eight years?”

“Damn, lass.” He lunged for her, grabbed her around the waist and pulled her over and onto him. “For all I remember,
I
might not have!”

She laughed at his fierceness, then the impact of his bare chest on hers took her breath away. Catching the back of her head, he brought her lips to his. She met him eagerly. They pressed, open-mouthed, tasting each other, consuming each other. Her bare breasts against his chest seemed wicked and glorious, and she shifted back and forth, just enough to allow his curling hair to rasp at her nipples.

He tore away his lips from hers. “Lass,” he said. Just that, but he moved with her as if the closeness delighted
him, too. Sliding his fingers into her hair, he said, “I have wanted to love you since the first time I saw you. I want to pamper you, to see your face when you’ve indulged in love and you’re soft and warm . . . and ready for more.” He massaged her scalp in slow, circling seductions, and he tilted her head up to gaze into her eyes. “You’re the reason I didn’t die, do you know that?”

“No,” she whispered. Smoothing her palms down his ribs, she wished he’d stop talking.

Yet she reveled in his praise. He didn’t seem shocked at her licentiousness. He encouraged her. He didn’t seem repulsed, he seemed proud of himself. Proud of her. And his pride showed itself in the arousal that prodded at her stomach.

Now he described her as if she were an angel. “Tell me,” she urged.

“Every time I opened my eyes, there you were, feeding me, talking to me, bathing me—”

“You were so thin.” She kissed his wrist. “You’re so powerful now.”

“Sometimes at night, you’d be wearing that ghastly pink wrapper of yours—”

Indignation drew her from her balmy nest of satisfaction, and she struggled to sit up. “There’s nothing wrong with my robe!”

“—And when you leaned over, I could see down the neckline to your breasts.” His gaze dropped to her bosom, and he caressed one with the lightest touch. “Your breasts have lured a man from the grips of death.”

She giggled. A silly laugh, but he sounded so
earnest, and the day had been so dreadful, and this . . . this time was a time set apart, a dream to match her long-lost fantasy of love. She thought she had forever squandered that fantasy on this marriage, but tonight, for just a moment, this man was the prince she had dreamed of. He had provided her with fulfillment; she would return the favor. “Wait until you see what I can lure with my whole body.”