The Temptation of Your Touch (32 page)

A
NNE GAZED INTO
D
RAVENWOOD’S
eyes, mesmerized by their crystalline clarity. It was as if he was seeing her—
truly
seeing her—for the first time. His regard was like the most rare and costly of gifts, giving her back something she had believed to be forever lost.

Herself.

He slid his hand through her hair, his fingers toying with the velvety locks, then curled his palm around her nape and gently drew her mouth down to his. His fever might have faded, but he was probably still under the sway of his illness. He couldn’t possibly be thinking clearly, if at all. Anne knew she should pull away, should ease him back to the bed and urge him to rest, but she had neither the will nor the desire to resist him. As he tenderly molded her lips to his, she breathed in his breath as if it held her only chance of survival after being submerged
beneath the water for a lifetime. His breath was no longer scented of sickness, but of peppermint and hope.

She felt her shawl skitter from her shoulders to the floor, but didn’t care. She was too lost in the tantalizing flick of his tongue against hers as he breached the seam of her lips and tenderly ravished her mouth.

When her tongue responded with a bold foray of its own, he wrapped both of his arms around her, groaning deep in his throat. This was no groan of pain but of a pleasure sharper and more dangerous than pain.

The two of them might never meet on a ballroom floor to share a waltz, but he swept her into his bed in a dizzying turn until she was lying beneath him. Even as his mouth continued to work its dark and delicious wonders, one of his hands slid down her side, lingering ever so briefly against the fullness of her breast before tracing the graceful dip of her waist, the flare of her hip, then slipping beneath her thigh to lift one leg so he could wedge himself in the cradle of her hips.

Anne gasped, her hips arching off the bed of their own accord to embrace the evidence of his desire. There was no cure for this delirium. The fever was contagious and had infected them both. She could feel its flames licking higher as his hand slid around
and up the silken skin of her thigh, easing her nightdress up with it.

The cold, distant man she had once believed him to be had vanished, leaving a hot-blooded stranger in his place. There was no time for thought. No time for caution. No time for regrets. There was only the warmth of his tongue stroking the velvety recesses of her mouth in a rhythm that was unmistakably and irresistibly carnal. The heat of his hand as he slid it to the side and pressed its heel against the tender mound between her thighs, urging her to ride him to some extraordinary place where pleasure was not only possible but inevitable.

A shuddering sigh trembled on her lips as his fingers followed the path his palm had forged. She buried her face against his shoulder to hide her burning cheeks as his long, elegantly tapered fingers slid through the softness of her nether curls and began to have their way with the silky flesh they found beneath—stroking, gliding, caressing until her sighs turned into breathless, little gasps. When the callused pad of his thumb brushed the throbbing little bud at the crux of those curls, her womb responded with a shiver of delight and a pulse of pure liquid pleasure that made her ache to clench her thighs together.

But his hand was still there, urging them apart, urging her to cede dominion of all that she was—
all that she would ever be—to his desperate hunger. Even then, he was not content to simply seize the prize he had won. He continued to toy with her, each deft flick of his nimble fingertips threatening to incinerate her in a consuming fire.

“You came to me, angel,” he whispered hoarsely, the scorching heat of his lips tracing the column of her throat until they settled against the pulse beating wildly beneath her skin. “Now come for me.”

He was her master. She had no choice but to obey his command.

The waves of pleasure broke over her in a blinding torrent. But instead of dragging her down as she had feared, they sent her shooting up out of the darkness and into the light.

Anne was still quaking with delectable little aftershocks when he covered her again. She clung to his shoulders, torn between drawing him closer and pushing him away. He suddenly seemed very large, very overpowering, very . . . male.

His mouth closed over hers once more, sampling the honeyed sweetness of her lips with a tender ferocity that soothed her panic, gave her the courage to open her thighs for him when he sought to nudge them apart with his knee. She felt the heavy weight of his arousal settle against the part of her still throbbing from his touch. He rubbed himself in the creamy pearls of nectar he’d coaxed from her
melting core, then entered her with one long, smooth stroke, sheathing his rigid length deep within her.

Rent asunder by both the agony and the wonder of it all, Anne dug her fingernails into his back and sank her teeth into his shoulder to muffle a helpless wail. She had been foolish enough to believe she had known passion before, but that had been only a pale shadow compared to this, a frivolous little ghost of pleasures to come. A guttural groan tore from Dravenwood’s throat as he rocked hard against her, deepening both the pace and the intensity of his thrusts until her wordless pleas swelled into shuddering moans she could no longer contain.

Still he did not relent, making it clear he wouldn’t be satisfied until those delicious shivers of ecstasy began to wrack her womb once again. The second they did, he stiffened and surged within her, an even deeper groan tearing from his throat as he was swept away by the same relentless tide of rapture he had sent spilling through her.

A
NNE’S EYES FLUTTERED OPEN
to find the misty light of dawn breaking through the French windows of Dravenwood’s bedchamber. She sighed, her limbs weighted with a delicious languor that made her feel as if she had somehow melted during the night, then been reformed into something finer. Unlike Pippa,
who whined and groaned and buried her head beneath the pillow when required to rise before ten o’clock, Anne had always been a cheerful riser. She would bound out of bed and dress quickly, eager to face the challenges of the day. But on this day, she would have been perfectly content to lie abed until noon, her every muscle a little sore, but still tingling with satisfaction.

She stretched with all of the languid grace of Sir Fluffytoes as she rolled over to seek the source of that satisfaction.

Dravenwood was lying on his back, one muscular forearm flung over his head. She sat up on one elbow to study his rugged chest and beautifully sculpted profile at her leisure. He looked so incredibly peaceful.

Her eyes widened in alarm. Dear Lord, what if his heart had been too weak to withstand their exertions? What if she had inadvertently finished him off?

She touched a hand to his chest. She could feel it rise and fall with each even breath, could count each steady beat of his heart beneath her palm.

She collapsed back on the pillow, grateful tears springing to her eyes.

Love is still the most powerful medicine of all.

As Nana’s voice echoed through Anne’s mind, a smile touched her lips. She had somehow
accomplished what all of the poultices and medicinal teas had failed to do—she had saved him.

She was still feeling rather pleased with herself when he reached over without opening his eyes and drew her into his arms. She settled against him, her back pressed to his broad chest. When she felt his arousal nudging the softness of her rump, she couldn’t resist giving her hips a taunting little wiggle. His immediate response made her grin. Yes, he was most definitely showing signs of life.

He tugged her even closer, his possessive embrace making her feel warm and safe and cherished for the first time in a very long while.

“Maximillian,” she murmured, savoring the taste of his name on her lips.

A husky groan escaped him. “Hmmm . . . my angel . . . my sweet . . . my Angelica . . .”

Chapter Thirty

A
NNE FROZE, GLARING BLINDLY
at the French windows. One of Dravenwood’s hands closed around the softness of her breast, gently squeezing. Anne hesitated a moment, then reached down and flung his hand off her. As she struggled out of his embrace, he grunted in protest, then rolled to his opposite side and began gently snoring.

Anne slid out of the bed and snatched her discarded nightdress from the floor, determined to make her escape before he could discover he had taken the wrong woman to bed.

W
HEN ANNE CAME MARCHING
across the gallery a short while later, bathed, dressed, and starched to within an inch of her life, Angelica was lying in wait for her on the landing. Anne was determined to ignore her, but as she started down the stairs to the
entrance hall, she could feel the legendary beauty’s taunting gaze boring into her back.

She swung around, pointing an accusing finger at the portrait. “If you don’t stop smirking at me like that, you conceited cow, I’m going to draw a pair of mustaches, some bushy eyebrows, and a wart or two on your disgustingly perfect nose. And then we’ll see just how fetching your precious Lord Dravenwood finds you!”

Angelica continued to gaze down her disgustingly perfect nose at Anne, her amusement at Anne’s expense undaunted by the threat.

From the entrance hall below came the sound of someone clearing his or her throat. Anne jerked around to find Pippa standing at the bottom of the stairs.

The girl was eyeing Anne cautiously, the same way they all tended to eye Hodges whenever they caught him jousting with the chickens or scampering through the gardens at twilight trying to catch a gnome. “Just who were you talking to?”

“No one,” Anne snapped, casting Angelica one last baleful look before descending the rest of the stairs at a brisk clip. “No one at all.”

M
AX AWOKE TO FIND
himself alone for the first time in days. He struggled to sit up. His head spun and his
stiff muscles throbbed in protest, forcing him to flop back to the pillows with a groan. He lay gazing up at the canopy, waiting for his muzzy head to clear.

Despite his lingering weakness, he was flooded with an undeniable sense of well-being. For as long as he could remember, he had felt as if he were suffering from some ravening hunger that made him snarl and snap at everyone around him. But now he felt deliciously sated, like a giant jungle cat that had just devoured a nice juicy gazelle.

Closing his eyes, he lifted his balled fists above his head and stretched, his rusty muscles rippling with exhilaration. He’d never felt quite so happy just to be alive. Ironic considering his last visitor had been a ghost. His eyes flew open, his memory honing in on the source of his satisfaction.

Angelica.

She had come to him in a dream, just as she had before. Only this time when he had reached for her, she had melted into his arms instead of back into the night.

Max sat up, his confusion growing. Pale, early-afternoon sunlight streamed through the French windows, shining on the empty rocking chair that had been drawn up to the very edge of the bed.

He would almost swear the woman in his arms last night hadn’t been a vapor of mist, but flesh and blood. She had been warm and responsive, her
mouth a living flame beneath his. Surely no hallucination could be
that
vivid.

He raked a hand through his tousled hair, scouring the blurred edges of his memory. If he concentrated hard, he could almost hear a voice gently coaxing him to part his parched lips so the cool metal of a spoon could be slipped between them. Could feel the scrape of a straight razor wielded by steady fingers against the bristles of his beard. Could feel a cool hand on his brow, gently testing the temperature of his fevered flesh.

He could see a woman bending over him, her skin as fine and pale as alabaster, exhaustion shadowing her hazel eyes. Her hair had escaped its unraveling chignon to hang in limp strands around her worried face. A face that suddenly came into focus with brutal clarity.

It was the face of his housekeeper, Mrs. Spencer.

Not Angelica, but Anne.

A wave of horror washed over him. Dear God, what had he done? Had he dragged the woman into his bed and forced himself upon her in his delirium?

That scenario didn’t fit the tantalizing glimpses stealing through his memory—the softness of her lips flowering beneath his to welcome his kiss; the trusting warmth of her hand twining through his hair to caress his nape; the enticing way her hips had arched off the bed in an invitation no man could
resist; the throaty little cry she had tried to bury in his throat when his fingertips had coaxed her over the precipice of pleasure into ecstasy.

As the memories came flooding back one by one, Max could feel himself growing hard all over again. He swore beneath his breath.

There was only one way to prove the
memories
were nothing but the ravings of his feverish brain. He would seek out his housekeeper and no doubt find her calmly going about her duties, proving nothing untoward had transpired between them.