Clutching at his back, she strained up toward him. His loss of control didn’t frighten her. It excited. His desperation fed
hers.
He wasn’t gentle. Heaven help her, she didn’t want him to be. She wanted him to invade her. His touch conveyed power
and savagery. Her refusal to believe his declaration had angered him. And hurt. How she hated that she’d hurt him.
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For one radiant moment, the words,I love you, Grace, had settled warm, calm, sure in her heart. She’d almost done the
unforgivable and said,I love you, Matthew, in return.
Almost. Before vile truth stung her like a cobra. She couldn’t tie him to her with commitments he’d later regret.
While he wanted her, she was his.
Oh, Grace, lie to Matthew. Don’t lie to yourself. You’re his until the day you die.
He placed one hand around her throat, forcing her head up to his kiss. His anguished kisses made her shake. He tasted of
desire, he tasted of passion, he tasted of need.
Almost roughly, he palmed her breast. She gasped and writhed, hooking her legs around his hips so she lay open to him.
Blood pounded in her veins. She’d explode if he didn’t take her. Take her hard. She moaned into his open mouth,
snatching at his shoulders to drag him closer. She nipped his earlobe and felt his sex twitch against her belly.
A thrill raced through her. Where was demure Grace Paget? This wild wanton harpy was a stranger.
He drove himself into her to the hilt. For a long, panting moment, she lay pinned under his delicious weight. With a
groan, he began to pound into her irrevocably, implacably. She rose to meet him, jerking with the force of every thrust.
This is lust, Grace. Lust. That’s all he feels for you. That’s all he’ll ever feel for you.
But the heart she tried to silence cried out its love. And begged for Matthew to love her in return.
She clenched into climax, clutching at him, imperiously demanding he stay inside her. Still he rode her. Taking her higher
into blinding pleasure. The blazing rapture sent her reeling. At the peak, she called out his name.
This time when her passage gripped him, she held on until he joined the glorious conflagration. She milked him until he
was spent. Even then quivers of ecstasy shook her.
He groaned and pulled away to lie at her side, struggling for breath. She ached all over. She’d never felt so good. She
turned her head to look at her lover.Her lover . Languor thick and sweet as molasses oozed through her veins.
She watched his lips curve in a weary smile, creasing his cheek. She loved his smile.
You love everything about him. You love him.
Dawn must be close. To confirm the thought, the first bird called from the orchard outside. Matthew drew her into his
arms and kissed her softly. She breathed in his musky sweat and nestled against him with her hand on his heart.
Matthew emerged from sleep slowly, luxuriously. It must be nearly noon. He swam up from the depths of a calm warm
sea. The glittering sea of the far south that he’d read about. A blue sea under a glorious sun. A sea full of pearls and exotic
creatures and soft silky water.
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And mermaids.
Indubitably there were mermaids in this sea.
His particular mermaid slept naked in his arms.
When he was inside her, she undulated in endless waves like a sea of pleasure. How startled he’d been when he realized
she was capable of climax.
But then, he knew so little of women.
Perhaps he hadn’t wasted those lonely years learning scientific method. After the hash he’d made of the first time, he
seemed to have got the idea. He already planned further experiments. Perhaps he’d write a treatise.
He smiled.
A treatise in scholarly Latin for the journals that published his botanical work. A treatise on pleasing the woman you
loved. That should make them sit up and pay attention.
Her essence lingered where he licked his lips. She tasted of salt and female. He wanted to taste her again. The thought
made him hard. Or harder. He’d woken in a familiar state of arousal.
The room was a wreck. Bedcovers trailed on the floor, the mattress wasn’t square on its frame. Clothes lay scattered
where he’d thrown them.
He lay flat on his back under a crumpled sheet. His arm circled her bare shoulders and she turned toward him so her
slender form shaped itself to his side. One hand rested on his chest. Her nails were uneven and torn from physical work.
The calluses on her hands were silent testament to her familiarity with drudgery. The faint roughness of her touch had
been erotic torture last night.
Difficult to believe she’d been married nine years. Sleeping with perfect trust in his embrace, she could still be sixteen. A
gentle pink flushed her cheeks and her lips were red and swollen from his kisses. They were slightly parted, hinting at the
dark mystery within.
Looking at her face, he noted the marks his shadow beard had left. He wanted to kiss her. He wanted more than that. He
beat back burgeoning desire. She was exhausted.
A tendril of hair snaked over her shoulder to curl across her breasts. Her beautiful breasts. The nipples were full and pink,
not the sweet hard nubs he’d suckled last night. It was the difference between a tightly furled rosebud and the softness of
an open rose. The change fascinated him. As did the faint pattern of blue veins under her white skin.
His beard had left traces there too. He’d kissed her everywhere, hadn’t he? The sensitive skin of her thighs must bear his
mark too. The thought pleased. As though he’d secretly branded her his.
He wondered what she dreamt.
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He could imagine. But perhaps he gave himself too much credit. He bit back a snort of derisive laughter.
My, aren’t we proud of ourselves this morning? Quite cock of the walk.
Grace sighed and snuggled closer. The soft exhalation made his sex throb. It wasn’t so different from the breathy sounds
she made when he took her.
He’d loved hearing her lose control. He wanted to hear that again. And soon.
Not yet. It was too sweet lying in this sunny room remembering the night just past, planning the night to come.
And the day.
She stirred on the threshold of waking and buried her nose in his chest. A deeply voluptuous growl emerged from her
throat as if she craved his scent like she craved breath.
He looked up from her breasts to find her staring sleepily at him. She looked rumpled and confused.
And happy. Surely he wasn’t wrong about that.
“Good morning, Matthew.” A smile curled her lips. His heart broke into a rattling gallop.
“Good morning, Grace,” he returned gruffly, feeling like the worst kind of satyr. She’d only just woken, for God’s sake,
and all he could think about was tumbling her so thoroughly that she couldn’t see straight. The way having her naked in
his arms stopped him seeing straight. Although one part of him was painfully straight. And standing ready. Thank
goodness, the sheet hid what an insatiable monster he was.
“Did you sleep?” she asked softly.
A banal question, made less banal by the downward slide of her hand from his chest.
Searing desire licked at him and he struggled to answer. “Yes.”
Her smile broadened. “Good.”
Down. Down. Down. Slow. Excruciatingly slow.
His throat clamped shut as she brushed his cock. No chance now of concealing his rampant arousal.
Another glance of that cool hand across flesh that was so very, very hot. A pause. She wrapped her fingers firmly around
his sex. His heart shuddered to a stop and bright light blinded him.
“Jesus…” he bit out. Then the capacity to speak left him in a great whoosh as she rubbed him deliberately, up and down,
up and down.
Her rhythm wasn’t quite right. Which didn’t stop every drop of his blood rushing to where she touched him.
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Grace’s fingers continued their amateurish, unsure, breathtaking seduction. Squeezing him. Sliding over him. Cupping
his balls. The effort of control almost made him weep.
She rose and knelt over him. Her free hand swept the sheet away. He read curiosity and desire in her face. And a very
female satisfaction when she saw what she did to him. Her touch became surer, more competent, more likely to shatter
him.
As she leaned closer for a better grip, her breasts sheered across his chest. Fire blasted him and he jerked in her hand. Her
nipples were tight with arousal now. He heard her suck in a deep breath.
“I must have you.” With shaking hands, he pushed her onto her back.
Her hand fell away from his cock so she could curl her hands over his shoulders. She wrapped her legs around his waist.
“You most definitely have me,” she whispered and rose with beautiful ease to join him.
Immediately, he felt that amazing sense of connection. Pleasure and joy and belonging. For a man alone so long, this was
intoxicating, addictive, heady. Nothing his uncle had done in eleven years had come close to defeating him. He already
suspected, after only one night in her arms, that losing Grace would mean his destruction.
She sighed and bowed up, so he penetrated deeper. Almost reverently, he began to move.
He worshipped her. He adored her. He wanted her more than life itself. With every thrust of his body, he told her so. Even
while he strained to keep the despised words locked away.
Her hips took up his rhythm. As if to every thrust that saidI love you, Grace, her body replied,I love you, Matthew.
Only a fool would believe it.
He was a fool. God, he was a bloody madman.
Her crisis came quickly. How soon he’d learned to recognize the signs. Her face was naked with feeling. Tears weighted
the thick lashes shielding her eyes. He reached down to stroke the sensitive place where he’d kissed her last night. He
wanted her to achieve her quivering extremity. The most beautiful sight in God’s green world.
He pressed between her legs and felt her immediate convulsive response. She tightened around him and the hands on his
shoulders tensed into talons. Barbarian that he was, he exulted to think she marked him as he’d marked her.
Then thought itself deserted him as her climax forced his. He poured himself into her. The bitterness, the unhappiness, the
loneliness, his unworthiness.
His love.
Afterward he felt clear, cleansed, whole. He felt like a man with a man’s pride. And a man’s ability to love. And to protect
what he loved.
He tightened his hold on her and silently dared the devils haunting his life. They threatened his most precious jewel at
their peril.
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The world thought it held the advantage over Matthew Lansdowne.
He’d prove the world wrong.
Grace wandered through the sunlit woods in a daze of sensual bliss. She’d been Matthew’s mistress for three days and
her body ached delightfully from his frequent attentions. Each time they made love, the rich pleasure widened and
deepened until now it ran like a broad river beneath everything she did.
Hard to believe her assured lover had never touched a woman before he’d come to her bed. Hard to believe she’d never
considered herself capable of passion. Hard to believe she could draw such joy from irrevocable ruin.
She’d left Matthew to his roses half an hour ago. Reluctantly. But his experiments were at a crucial stage and her
presence distracted him. The knowledge made her smile. She looked forward to this evening, when he worked out the
day’s frustrations on her.
“Aye, that’s what I like to see.” Filey emerged from the overhanging trees and stood squarely in front of her on the path.
“A lass smiling with right ready welcome.”
Grace’s fragile well-being evaporated in an instant.
Fool, fool, fool.
How could she forget she was a helpless prisoner? How could she forget peril lurked around every corner?
She was alone and utterly defenseless. Matthew was in the courtyard. Wolfram had stayed snoozing beside his master.
She’d left her little table knife in the pocket of another dress. She’d become disastrously complacent.
Fear contracted her belly into painful knots and the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. The memory of Filey’s rough,
sweaty hands fumbling at her breasts rose in her throat like vomit.
“His lordship is just behind me.”
She cursed the betraying tremor in her voice. Nervously, she backed away. Could she run fast enough to escape? She
doubted it. And Filey was so strong, once he caught her, she had no hope of fighting him off.
Filey’s gloating grin was so wide, she could see the dark gaps at the back of his mouth where teeth were missing. “Eh, no
pulling the wool over my eyes, flower. I seen him digging at his garden. Bugger me if I’d leave a bonny lass for a parcel
of dead sticks. Time you got a real man between your legs. And I got the horn for you right bad.”
Revulsion bolstered her failing courage. She raised her chin in shaky defiance. “You have no right to talk to me like that.