‘Some of us do, and we aren’t idiots, Alex. It makes sense of the way Matthew was goading you. But they were wrong, weren’t they? I mean, you and I…’
‘Yes, they were wrong. My father’s an intolerant old bully and I was too artistic, too neat and precise for his liking. Then when he realised what Peter felt—which was more than I did in my innocence—he put two and two together and made fifty. I stormed out full of thoroughly embarrassed righteous indignation, stopped on the way to rant at Peter about the stupidity of my father, then left for Oxford without any idea of the bombshell that I’d dropped at his feet.’
‘If that hadn’t happened, then both you and your father would have calmed down, reconciled,’ Tess said.
The sadness in her voice was like a jab in the solar plexus. What had she to be sad about? Was he just another of her lame dogs to be taken in and cared for? It was his grief, his anger, and he hadn’t asked her to care, certainly hadn’t asked a sheltered young woman to understand variations of sexual preference that should have sent her into strong hysterics. Alex found he was becoming weary of maintaining an unruffled front, of not revealing his feelings, of appearing tolerant and self-assured and all the things that right at that moment he most certainly did not feel.
‘Are we going to bed or am I going to stand here all night discussing my family?’
Tess blinked at him, obviously startled by the harsh edge to his voice. Well, damn it, it was about time she realised that he wasn’t a nice man hiding bounteous goodwill to all God’s creatures behind a cynical exterior. Nor was he some hapless victim of cruel fate. Just at that moment he was a man who wanted a woman and who was on the edge of losing his temper for reasons he was not at all sure he understood.
‘Yes, of course.’ Tess flipped back the covers and moved across. She was wearing a nightgown tonight, he saw. A prim and proper flannel abomination, tight to the throat and the cuffs without a single frill or ornament to its cream plainness. ‘I hoped you would come,’ she added as he tossed his robe aside.
Her eyes widened. Had she seen him erect last night? Surely she had. Was she frightened? Then Tess ran the tip of her
tongue over her lips and a surge of primitive power jolted through him. When he joined her on the bed she reached for the hem of her nightgown and pulled it over her head without hesitation, turned into his arms and lifted her face for his kiss. No, not frightened.
He took the lips that were offered to him, caressed the quivering, urgent body, found, without conscious intent, that he was already over her, nudging against the wet heat that was so ready for him. There was a rushing in his ears, a thunder of blood mingling with their panting breaths. Her mouth was open to him, sweet and fierce, her body closed around him, urgent, yielding, demanding. He surged in her, riding the pleasure like a wild horse, focused only on the turmoil of their two bodies, heard her cry and, somehow, found the focus to pull from her body before he crashed into his own shattering climax.
*
Pleasure, exhaustion, sticky heat, softness, the beat of a heart under his. Alex lay still, let his lax body come to itself while he gathered his wits, rubbed his cheek against the soft one next to it.
Gradually the human part of his brain gained some ascendancy over the triumphant, sated, animal part. He was sprawled with all his weight on the slender figure beneath him.
Tess. God, what have I done. He rolled off with a contraction of muscles that almost sent him off the far side of the bed. She was as near as, damn it, a virgin, and I used her like a courtesan.
*
‘Alex?’ Tess blinked her eyes open onto a chilly world where the lovely, big, muscled body that had been squashing her so deliciously was gone. Alex’s lovemaking had been a revelation. The excitement, the urgency, the sheer vibrant sexuality of it, had shaken her in a different way to his tenderness and care the night before. That lovemaking could be so varied had never occurred to her. What would it be like tomorrow?
He was staring at her across the width of the bed. ‘Tess, I am sorry. I hurt you.’
‘No, not at all.’ Why wouldn’t her come to her, hold her?
‘I was a brute. An animal.’
‘Alex, don’t—’
‘I won’t, don’t be afraid that after that I would touch you. No, don’t try to tell me it is all right, you are too forgiving, Tess.’
I will come over there and show you the opposite of forgiveness if you won’t let me get a word in, Alex Tempest! She opened her mouth to override him, shout him into being forgiven for whatever male sin he thought he had committed, if that was what it took to wipe that look from his eyes.
‘I meant to say this after Christmas, but it is best now. Tess, I can’t have you going back, dragging round agencies, finding yourself a position as some sort of drudge to a cantankerous old lady or a house full of screaming brats.’
‘But—’
‘I will find you a house somewhere, a pleasant market town, perhaps. Somewhere you and Dorcas can settle down respectably. I’ll give you an allowance. You won’t have to see me again. My man of business will handle it all discreetly.’
You won’t have to see me again. At first her brain could not make sense of what he was saying, then it was as though her body realised at some deeper level. She began to shiver. ‘You are paying me off? A house and an allowance is very generous in exchange for two nights in my bed, especially considering my complete lack of skill or experience. My goodness, what might I ask for if I acquire some more tricks?’
‘Tess, it is not like that.’ Alex swung off the bed and stood up, over six feet of naked, angry male. ‘You didn’t expect me to marry you. We talked about that. And don’t flinch. Do you think I am going to hit you next?’
‘I am not flinching. I am recoiling from a man I thought I knew and now find I do not. How dare you treat me like a whore! How dare you offer me money!’ She scrambled from the bed in an ungainly lurch, picked up his robe and threw it at him. ‘How dare you suggest that I am angling for a marriage so far above my station!’
Alex caught the bundle of red silk one-handed. ‘Tess.’
‘Miss Ellery to you, my lord.’ The shivering had stopped, replaced by a strong desire to be sick. ‘Now get out of my bedchamber.’