He reclined against the headboard with the counterpane drawn up to his waist. The fingers of lamplight played lovingly over his bare chest, giving him a golden glow perfectly suited to the archangel Gabriel. But if the devilish gleam in his eyes hadn’t already convinced her that he was no angel, his next words would.
“Now it’s your turn.”
A
s Simon nodded toward her nightdress, Catriona clutched it closed at the throat with a white-knuckled fist. “Pardon?”
“If we’re going to make this convincing,” he said, “I can’t be the only one not wearing any clothes.”
“I d-d-don’t see why not,” she stammered. “Couldn’t you just…”—she waved her other hand vaguely in the air, searching her trove of limited knowledge for inspiration—
“pretend that you lifted the skirt of my nightdress, then…um…covered me back up when you were…um…finished?”
He lowered his head to give her a disbelieving look. “Please don’t tell me that’s how your uncle makes love to your aunt.”
The very thought made Catriona shudder. “They don’t even share a bedchamber.”
“Well, they did at least once or they wouldn’t have spawned the charming Agatha, now, would they?”
“Alice,” Catriona murmured weakly. “And it had to be twice, because there’s Georgina as well.”
Careful to keep the sheet draped artfully across his lap, Simon folded back the blankets and patted the expanse of feather mattress next to him, his crooked smile achingly tender.
“Don’t be shy, darling. I promise I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”
She wondered just how many other women he had lured into his bed with those words and that smile. His words might promise one thing, but his eyes and his smile promised pleasures no woman could resist or regret. At least not while she was experiencing them.
Her bed had always seemed decadently spacious to her—especially compared to the narrow heather-stuffed tick she had slept on in Scotland as a child—but Simon’s big, masculine frame seemed to dwarf the elegant half-tester. She’d never dreamed that one man could take up so much room. Or so much air. As her gaze traveled from his smile to his broad shoulders to that enticing little arrow of hair that adorned the taut planes of his abdomen, her chest tightened and her breath grew painfully short.
Afraid she might compound her mortification by swooning, she dashed across the room, sprang into the bed and jerked the covers up over her head. Only then did she dare to wiggle out of her nightdress and toss it on the floor. With her head still buried beneath the blankets, she huddled stiffly on the very edge of the mattress, terrified that if she stirred, some wayward part of her might accidentally graze some even more wayward part of him.
“Catriona?”
“Hmmm?” she replied, halfway surprised that he had remembered her name.
“Do you plan to stay under there all night?”
Clinging to the last stitch of her dignity, if not her clothing, she sniffed. “Perhaps.”
He tugged on the counterpane until her nose and eyes were exposed. She blinked up at him.
“Would you like me to douse the lamp?” he asked.
“No!” she exclaimed, her panic deepening at the prospect of sharing the darkness as well as her bed with him. She sat up, clutching the sheet to her breasts and shaking her hair out of her eyes. “I have a much better idea.”
Within seconds, she had put her hands on every pillow and bolster she could reach. She plumped them up and began to build an impenetrable wall between them. When it was done, she could barely see over the top of it. She doubted Napoleon himself could have constructed such an impressive blockade.
“I feel as if I’m back in Newgate,” Simon said, his voice muffled.
“If my plan doesn’t work, you may very well be,” she reminded him, rolling over and presenting her back firmly to his side of the bed.
With a long-suffering sigh, he settled back on his side of the makeshift barricade.
Catriona closed her eyes. Despite her best efforts to relax and ignore him, she was still keenly aware of his presence. He no longer seemed to bear any kinship to the boy she had adored for so long. He was a stranger—as large and exotic and dangerous as an African tiger drowsing in the sun. An indefinably masculine scent wafted from his warm skin. It reminded her of melted toffee mingled with the bracing sea breezes at Brighton.
She rolled restlessly to her back and glared up at the tester. She’d never done anything as scandalous as sleeping without her nightdress. There was something deliciously decadent about the way her naked limbs glided over the sheets, the way the crisp linen tickled her nipples and made them pucker. Something that made her want to stretch and purr like a contented cat.
She flopped over to her other side and glared at the mountain of pillows, knowing that neither one of them would get so much as a wink of sleep on this night.
A muffled snore reached her ears.
Clutching the sheet to her bosom, she sat up and peered over the pillows. Simon’s eyes were closed, his mouth slightly open, his breathing deep and even. With his gilt-tipped lashes resting on his cheeks and a wayward strand of hair falling over his brow, he looked as innocent as a newborn babe. Or in his case a hellborn babe.
The sheet had slid all the way down to his hipbones. Catriona chewed on her lower lip, fascinated against her will by the mysteries that lay beneath. Thanks to Aunt Margaret’s reticence, her knowledge of male anatomy had never progressed beyond what she had gleaned from the mating rituals of the tomcats and stallions in her uncle’s stables. What would Simon do if he awoke to find her lifting the sheet to steal a peek?
All too afraid that she knew
exactly
what he would do, she settled back into the lonely nest she’d built for herself. He’d probably slept next to so many naked women in his lifetime that she was no more a distraction to him than if Robert the Bruce had been curled up against his leg.
She sighed, abandoning all hope of rest. But before she knew it, the cozy rhythm of Simon’s snoring had lulled her into a sweet and dreamless sleep.
******************
Simon awoke with a warm female body snuggled against his bare back and a raging erection. Although he was still more than half asleep, he knew exactly what to do with both. But before he could roll over and cover that warm female body with his own, seeking an oblivion even sweeter than sleep, he remembered exactly
whose
warm female body it was.
His eyes flew open.
Wondering if he was still dreaming, he lifted his head just enough to peer over his shoulder. No, there she was—Miss Catriona Kincaid herself, with her strawberry blond curls streaming over his pillow, her cheeks rosy with sleep, her breath a beguiling whisper on the back of his neck. As he stirred, she slipped one arm around his waist and drew him even deeper into the lush cup of her body, so deep he could feel the softness of her naked breasts pressed against his back. Although he wouldn’t have thought it physically possible, he grew even harder.
Groaning beneath his breath, he sank back into the pillow. Even though all of the other bolsters and pillows had been flung off of
her
side of the bed, she would never believe that he wasn’t to blame for this. He glanced downward. She had curled her hand innocently against his rigid abdomen, just a finger’s breadth away from both their ruins.
Shuddering with lust, Simon abruptly sat up and nudged her arm away from him.
Instead of waking as he’d hoped, she simply scowled, let out a disgruntled little snort, then nestled deeper into the mattress.
The sheet still draped all of her more pertinent parts, but in that moment Simon found the graceful curve of her throat and the delicate wings of her collarbone nearly as enticing as the dusky shadows of her nipples beneath the sheet. She smelled warm and feminine and musky with sleep. No French perfumier could have concocted a fragrance more erotic or irresistible to a man’s nostrils.
It might astound the casual observer, but he’d always prided himself on his self-control—especially where women were concerned. Every seductive word that flowed from his lips, every lingering kiss, every deft stroke of his fingertips was carefully calculated to bring about his lover’s loss of control, not his. But here he was on the brink of losing that winning advantage with little more than an artless touch from an innocent girl.
The lamp had gone out during the night. He squinted through the shadows but couldn’t quite make out the face of the clock on the mantel. The pearly light drifting through the window could be either moonlight or dawn. It could be minutes before they were disturbed or hours.
He studied Catriona. Her parted lips were as lush and tempting as rose petals kissed with the first drops of morning dew.
I promise I’ll be the perfect gentleman.
His own words came back to haunt him. Hadn’t he told her in that barn all those years ago that he wasn’t in the habit of making promises he couldn’t keep?
To so much as steal a kiss while she was vulnerable and defenseless just to satisfy his own carnal appetites would be unthinkable, unscrupulous…
He leaned over, gently brushing her lips with his own.
Unforgivable…
******************
Catriona was being kissed by a man who’d been born to the art. His lips were firm yet soft, grazing hers over and over, using just the right amount of pressure to coax them apart. She kept her eyes pressed tightly shut; if this was a dream, she never wanted to wake.
But she could not help stirring when he entered her mouth with his tongue. Her hips arched off the bed of their own volition, seeking the answer to some question she did not even have the words to ask. His tongue toyed with hers—teasing, tantalizing, stroking.
Making wordless promises she could no longer distinguish from lies.
Desire stirred thickly in her veins, pulsing in secret places she had dared to touch only in the dark, lonely watches of the night. His kiss promised that was but a shadow of the pleasure he could give her. He made love to her mouth with the same exquisite attention to detail she knew he would give the rest of her body if she was bold—or foolhardy—enough to surrender it into his hands.
Hands that were even now tracing the vulnerable curve of her throat, the delicate flare of her collarbone, the aching swell of her breasts. He gently cupped one of them through the sheet, testing its weight in his palm and flicking her distended nipple with the pad of his thumb. As he did so, he sucked softly on the very tip of her tongue, showing her exactly what wonders he could work if she would just let him. She moaned, the provocative motion sending a shiver of yearning deep into her womb.
She might have been able to convince herself she was still dreaming if she hadn’t felt truly awake for the very first time in her life. Her every sense was alive and tingling, a willing slave to the tender mastery of his mouth and hands. It would be all too easy to feign sleep until his seduction of her was complete. To let him bear the blame and the shame of it while she played the innocent victim, despoiled by his uncontrollable lust.
But her conscience would not allow her the luxury of such a ruse. She might not have the courage to look him in the eye and risk letting him see just how recklessly and faithfully she had loved him or how very long she had waited for this moment, but she could breathe his name into the honeyed chalice of his mouth. She could tangle her hands in the wheaten silk of his hair and kiss him back with an artless fervor that betrayed a lifetime of longing.
His response was something between a groan and a growl. The primal sound sent a heady thrill through her. For the first time she realized she had her own array of wiles—a power over him that did not require either experience or expertise.
Accepting her unspoken invitation, his tongue swept through her mouth in a kiss that was both tender and erotic, while his hand slipped beneath the sheet and glided up the bare silk of her thigh. Catriona gasped. She was about to be compromised in earnest, yet all of her moral fortitude seemed to have fled. Instead of protesting in outrage, all she could seem to do was welcome her ruin with open arms.
She had never dreamed that a man could be so gentle and so ruthlessly persuasive all at the same time. Simon coaxed her thighs apart as easily as he had coaxed her lips apart, his fingers breaching the softness of her nether curls with exquisite care.
Whatever he discovered there seemed to please him mightily. His powerful body tensed and shuddered as he dipped one finger between those tender petals.
Catriona buried her face against his shoulder and moaned deep in her throat as a sensation like no other threatened to rip the last of her inhibitions asunder. Pleasure was too common a word to describe it. It was bliss and agony and a desperate yearning all rolled into one. She didn’t think she could bear it for another second, yet she wanted it to go on forever.
“Please,” she whispered hoarsely. “Oh, please…” She didn’t even know what she was begging for. She only knew that if she didn’t get it, she might very well perish from longing.
He knew
exactly
what she wanted. His devilishly clever fingers spread and stroked and teased and petted until she was writhing beneath his hand. She did not know this wanton stranger she had become. She only knew that she craved his touch and the maddening pleasure it was giving her the way an addict must crave opium. She had been right about him all along. He was both angel and demon, relentlessly urging her toward the promise of paradise even as he sought to make her soul his own.