Rebecca Hagan Lee (36 page)

Elizabeth’s breath caught in her throat at James’s use of the casual endearment.

“That bad, huh?” she teased.

“That good,” he pronounced.

“It gets better?” she asked in a voice so full of wonder that James couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’ve always thought so,” he said. “I’ve always thought that kissing the stars is a pasttime best experienced when two people do it together.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But you may disagree.”

“How can I disagree?” Elizabeth asked, her desire surging by leaps and bounds as James nipped her bottom Up with his teeth, then gently laved the tiny wound with his tongue. “When I’ve nothing with which to compare?”

James’s leer was positively lustful as he placed a knee on the bed and leaned over her. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He reached down and began unbuttoning her bodice. He kissed her hungrily as he fumbled with the tiny jet buttons that seemed determined to thwart his best efforts to slip them through their buttonholes. When she was finally unbuttoned, James searched the whalebone of her corset, feeling for more buttons or hooks or laces, anything he could undo. He had little experience with corsets. Mei Ling had quit wearing the torturous device shortly after they married, when she gave up Western dress and returned to her loose robes and silk and satin tunics and trousers.

“How do I open this thing?” he asked, his frustration rising along with his passion.

“Hooks,” Elizabeth gasped as he took advantage of her open bodice and traced the tips of her breasts with his rough silk pads of his fingers. “The hooks are hidden beneath the front flap.”

“Hidden?” James muttered. “Hidden from whom? You know where they are. And what man is going to look at hooks when he can feast his eyes on this magnificent bounty?” He felt beneath the front flap and groaned when he met with a hundred or so tiny hook and eye closures. “Bloody hell!”

Elizabeth should have cringed at his vivid curse, but she giggled instead. James’s honest frustration with her feminine accouterments was proving to be a powerful aphrodisiac.

He sighed with relief as he finally unhooked the contraption and freed her. He lifted her to pull her corset and the tight-fitting bodice of her dress from beneath her, then tugged the hem of her chemise from the waistband of her skirts and up and over her head, leaving her gloriously naked above the waist. Encouraged by his success with her corset, James unhooked her skirts, untied the waistbands of her petticoats and unbuttoned her lacy drawers. When everything was unfastened, he peeled the garments down her long, slender legs along with her silk stockings and frilly garters.

Completely nude and suddenly shy, Elizabeth closed her eyes and tried to roll to the side of the bed to extinguish the lamp he’d left burning, but James wrapped his arm around her waist and stopped her. “Leave it,” he urged. “I want to look at you.”

“Please,” she began, “I’m—”

“So damned beautiful you take my breath away,” he whispered, genuinely awestruck.

Elizabeth opened her eyes to see if the expression on his face matched his tone of voice and was instantly gratified to see that it did. She blushed. “What do I do?”

James raised an eyebrow at her and grinned. “Lie there and enjoy while I see if you taste as good as you look.”

Elizabeth met his heated gaze, trusting that James meant to continue his intimate exploration with his fingers. She was startled when he stretched out between her legs and, resting his head on her thigh, turned and pulled her toward him. The feel of his hot breath came as a complete surprise. Elizabeth clamped her legs together. James raised his head and looked at her. “Trust me, Elizabeth. I’m not going to hurt you,” he coaxed. “I’m only going to love you. If you’ll let me.”

When he looked at her like that, Elizabeth found she couldn’t deny him anything—didn’t want to deny him anything. As long as he kept his promise to love her, her body was his to do with as he pleased. “Please do,” she begged politely.

“My pleasure.”

Elizabeth thought she’d kissed the stars while his fingers caressed her, but when James began to taste and tease the places his fingers had explored, she captured the stars and held them inside, her.

He drove her to the brink of rapture and beyond. James moved up her body and cradled her beside him, capturing her cries with his mouth as she shuddered back to the earth in his arms. He brushed her damp hair off her flushed face, wiped the tears from her eyes, and murmured love words of praise and encouragement in her ear.

She opened her eyes to find James staring down at her.

“Nice trip?” James remembered thinking, the first night they met, that a man could drown in those marvelous blue-green eyes of hers. Now he knew it was true.

“Hmm,” she murmured, snuggling beside him and stretching languidly, like a cat.

“How were the stars?” he asked, kissing the tip of her nose.

Elizabeth gazed at him. “Lonely,” she answered.

“Really?”

She nodded. “I’ve been told that the trip to the stars is much nicer when you have a companion on the journey.”

“Just a companion?” He sounded disappointed.

“Well”—she wet her lips with the tip of her tongue as she pretended to ponder his question—“a lover would be better.”

James sucked in a breath as his body tightened and the bulge in his trousers threatened to pop his buttons. “Are you in the market for a lover, Miss Sadler?”

“I’d like to think I just found one, Mr. Craig,” she said primly. “But you may disagree.”

“I am not complaining,” James assured her.

“I am,” Elizabeth admitted. A wicked little smile played about the corners of her mouth and her eyes sparkled with merriment. She reached up and pulled him down to kiss her. “Because only one of us is naked.”

James kissed her quickly, then reached for the buttons of his shirt.

Elizabeth brushed his hands away. “I’ve never undressed a man before,” she told him shyly. “Allow me.”

“Be my guest,” he invited, giving himself up to the pleasure of having a woman’s hands on him after so many years.

She untied the knot at his waist and slid his silk robe off his shoulders, down his arms, and over his hands, exposing the hard muscles of his chest and stomach. Elizabeth rubbed her hands over the mat of hair on his chest, then leaned over and indulged herself by allowing the tips of her breasts to rub against the soft hair.

James’s blood rushed downward. The hard male part of him throbbed with each beat of his heart. He ached to sheathe himself in Elizabeth’s warmth. He ached to end his exquisite torment. Wrapping his arms around her waist, James gently rolled her onto her back. Elizabeth followed the line of his spine, sliding her hands down his back and over his tight buttocks, then back to the waistband of his trousers. She followed the strip of fabric from his back to the front of his trousers. James groaned aloud as she brushed her fingers against him. She located the buttons of his trousers and carefully undid each one. James kicked free of his pants, moaning his immense satisfaction as the hard jutting length of him spilled into Elizabeth’s waiting hands. She caressed him, marveling at the velvety soft feel encasing his iron-hard length. And she would have continued her exploration if James hadn’t gently lifted her hands from around him, then guided her legs up over his hips, and pressed himself against her, delicately probing her entrance.

Lost in a frenzy of need, Elizabeth locked her legs around his waist and pulled him to her.

James thrust inside her. He closed his eyes, threw back his head, and gritted his teeth as he sheathed himself fully inside her warmth. His entire body shook with the effort as he fought to maintain his control.

Elizabeth cried out in pain as he entered her and tried to
pull away. James realized too late that he’d just ruthlessly pushed through her veil of innocence. He held on to her to keep her from squirming and causing herself more pain as he soothed her with his words and kissed away the salt of her tears. “It’s all right, love, the worst will be over in a moment. Lie still. Let me kiss you.”

“It wasn’t supposed to hurt,” Elizabeth said. “It was supposed to be beautiful.”

“The first time always hurts, my sweet,” he soothed, “but the pain will go away soon, and I promise you, it will be beautiful. We’ll make it that way.”

Her pain subsided just as he promised, and as it did, Elizabeth began to move experimentally. James lost his battle to maintain control as her movement forced him deeper inside her. He began to move his hips in a rhythm as old as time. Elizabeth followed, matching his movements thrust for thrust. She clung to him, reveling in the weight and feel of him as he filled her again and again, gifting her with himself in a way she’d never dreamed possible. She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears of joy trickled from the corners, ran down her cheeks, and disappeared into the silk of her hair. And as she felt the first tremors flow through her, Elizabeth surrendered to the emotions swirling inside her, gave voice to her passion with small incoherent cries that escaped her lips as James rocked her to him and exploded inside her.

He brushed his lips against her cheek as he buried his face in her hair. He tasted the saltiness of her tears, then lifted his head and looked down at her face. God, but she was beautiful. James shuddered as a rush of emotions raced through him. He should have spoken words of love instead of words of passion. He should have cherished her and treated her tenderly instead of using her to slake his raging desire. Damn, but she’d been a virgin. She deserved more than he was willing to offer. James sighed. He wouldn’t think about tomorrow yet. He wouldn’t question his good fortune or ask for more than he deserved. He’d simply love her while it lasted.

Her eyes were shimmering with emotion as James leaned down and touched his mouth to hers in a kiss so gentle, so loving, so precious, it brought fresh tears to her eyes.

“I captured the stars,” he breathed at last. “I brought some back with me.” He stared down at her. “And they’re shining in your eyes.”

Elizabeth, touched his face with her palm of her hand. “They’re there to watch over you,” she told him tenderly. “So you never have to worry about ghosts in the dark.”

ELIZABETH FELT A
movement beneath her face and awoke to find her head on James’s shoulder, his arms wrapped tightly around her. She sighed, knowing at last that she was where she belonged. “What is it?” she whispered as James shifted her from his shoulder to the pillow.

“Diamond,” he answered, kissing Elizabeth on her brow. “She’s hungry.”

“Already?” she grumbled. They had made love twice since they’d left the balcony, and James had carefully bathed her before he pulled her into his arms to sleep. But Elizabeth felt as if she’d just closed her eyes.

“Uh-huh,” he murmured. “And I have to go feed her.”

“Do you have to?” Elizabeth yawned widely, then cuddled up to him, pressing herself against his body like a demanding kitten.

James chuckled. “Well, we could wait for the governess to wake up and tend to her.”

“Hmm, sounds like a plan,” she agreed, closing her eyes and almost drifting back to sleep before she remembered.
“I’m
the governess.”

“Uh-huh.” he nodded. “And Diamond’s crying. Do you want to go to her? Or shall I?”

Elizabeth eyed James and the distance to the door. She was deliriously exhausted and her body ached in places she’d never be able to explain. James, on the other hand, seemed well-rested, wide-awake, and relaxed. “You’re closer.”

James chuckled, then threw back his head and laughed. He rolled out of bed and reached for his silk robe. Elizabeth rolled to her side, propped herself on her elbow, and admired the line of his back and his nicely curved bottom before he covered it with his robe. She sighed.

James glanced over his shoulder, read her expression, and smiled. “Wanton.”

“I’m twenty-five years old,” she explained. “I have
years
of catching up to do.”

“Can we not do it all in one night?” he teased. “Not that I haven’t enjoyed every moment,” he assured her, leaning down to give her a proper good-morning kiss. “But I’d like to live to see my children grow up, and at this rate, I’m very much afraid I may not survive until breakfast.”

“If I were as wanton and insatiable as you suggest,” Elizabeth informed him, “you’d
be
breakfast.”

James raised both eyebrows at her in comical fashion and leered broadly. “Sounds like a plan.” He leaned toward her as Diamond’s cries grew louder and more frustrated. “After I go warm a bottle for the little one.” James couldn’t keep his gaze off Elizabeth. “Would you care to join me in greeting our little night owl?” He walked over to the door and reached for the knob.

Elizabeth slid down on the bed, pulled his pillow into her arms, and snuggled beneath the covers. “As soon as the sun’s up.”

James chuckled. “And just last night, I was complimenting you on your remarkable maternal instincts.”

She sat back up. “I have wonderful maternal instincts,” she retorted. “And Ruby’s living proof.”

“How’s that?” James stopped in his tracks and whirled around to face her.

“Ruby escaped her bathing last night,” Elizabeth joked.
“Because after the chaos she created yesterday, I was far too tempted to drown her in the bathtub.”

James went completely still. The color drained from his face.

Elizabeth knew immediately that she’d said the wrong thing. “I was joking, James. I’m sorry.” She stumbled out of bed and ran to hug him around the waist. “James, I didn’t mean it. You know I would never do anything to harm any of the Treasures. Or let anyone else harm them. Nothing bad is going to happen to those children while I’m around.”

James met Elizabeth’s gaze. “Look,” he said, raking a hand through his hair, torn between his deepening feelings for Elizabeth and his unconditional love for his oldest child. “I know Ruby’s been a royal pain since you got here. I saw what happened in the park yesterday. I’m not blind to her faults. I know how she’s behaving, or should I say, misbehaving? And we both know she’s responsible for Portia’s disappearance.”