‘Yes, but that is another two hours and there will be all the business of arriving at a hired house which is never straightforward, however early one sends down the staff. We could rest and then have dinner and go to bed early.’ His eyes had the heavy-lidded look she had seen before, the one that sent an answering frisson of desire through her.
‘Rest, my lord?’ Caroline pushed away the niggling little doubt that it was talking about his former lovers that had made Gabriel think about bed now.
‘A convenient euphemism I have learned from my married friends. It is amazing how weary marriage makes some couples. It is, after all, our wedding night.’
‘Then, yes, let us take a bedchamber. You have warned me, after all, not to overestimate your stamina.’ She widened her eyes at him in mock-innocence and felt a certain return of confidence when he got immediately to his feet and strode from the room.
* * *
There was a chamber, charming and old-fashioned with a great oaken four-poster bed, a thick Turkey carpet on the uneven floor and a ceiling that bulged and dipped so that Gabriel banged his head as he straightened up after dragging the curtains part-way across the window. Caroline bit her lip with sympathetic amusement, then felt the laughter die as she saw his face, recognised the heat and the desire. He wanted her and she wanted him, wanted him with a fever that had consumed her for days, ever since he had shown her what they could be together.
‘No, leave it all,’ he said as she lifted her hands to open the catch on her necklace, a fine double string of pearls left to her by her mother. They lay warm and comforting against her skin, now she arched her neck so he could lift her hair away from the nape and manipulate the delicate fastening.
Gabriel seemed in no hurry. His fingers played along her hairline, making the fine hairs stand up in response to his touch, then he bent and kissed her nape, his lips slightly open so she felt the heat of his breath, the tiny touches of his tongue.
The pearls curled on to the dressing table, then he unhooked her earrings, kissing behind each ear. Caroline leant into the delicious, teasing caress as he nibbled his way down the tendon at the side of her neck and gasped as he closed his teeth over it and bit down gently.
‘Mine,’ Gabriel murmured, his voice possessive. ‘My bride to unwrap like a particularly delicious parcel.’
She had changed into a walking dress of deep sapphire, worn under a pelisse of paler blue that she had removed when they sat down to tea. Now Gabriel had unobstructed access to the row of tiny enamelled buttons down the back, which had taken Harriet her maid minutes to fasten, but which seemed to evaporate under his touch. The gown vanished, so did her petticoats, chemise and shoes, which left her in a corset, stockings and garters.
Gabriel stepped back from the bed and surveyed the result, like some pasha viewing the latest slave girl brought from his harem, she thought with mingled excitement and indignation.
She reached for her garters and he growled, ‘Leave them.’
‘But this feels more indecent than when I was wearing nothing,’ she protested, flustered.
‘I know.’ The growl became the purr of a large cat. ‘That’s because it is. Very arousing. Look.’ He tipped the glass on the dressing-table mirror so she could see herself sprawled on the pale-rose coverlet, her breasts pushed up by the tight lacing, her legs looking longer with the white stockings and the blue of the garters drawing the eye...
Caroline closed her legs abruptly and curled up against the headboard. ‘You are still wearing all your clothes.’
Gabriel sat down, hauled off his boots and stockings together, shed his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth, unbuttoned his shirt and then his falls. The breeches slid down his long flanks, taking his smallclothes with them. ‘Better?’
His shirt, open for the first ten inches, showed a tantalising amount of chest and hid a tantalising amount of everything else. Without troubling to remove it he sat on the edge of the bed and pulled her towards him.
She wanted to say, No, take it off, let me look at you in daylight, but the words stuck to the roof of her very dry mouth and then Gabriel was running his finger along the top edge of the corset, teasing her nipples in their tight confinement. He pushed at the edge until they were free, then bent to blow gently on the tips.
‘Like cherries on a plate being offered up for me to nibble,’ he said, and did.
The corset was tight, the pressure seem
ing to tip both her pelvis and her breasts towards Gabriel, into his clever hands and wicked mouth. She was breathless, racked with tension and delicious, terrifying sensation, desperate to touch him, to have his skin against hers. She tugged at the hem of his shirt, but it was crushed between them, then her hands found the neck opening and she jerked the sides apart, heard the fabric rip, then burrowed down to fasten with lips and teeth on to his right nipple.
Everything happened very quickly then. Gabriel was inside her and her body remembered him, responded without her having to think or do more than cling to him as he swept her up into the storm of his own powerful urgency. Her fingers knotted into the shirt over his shoulders, her heels locked into the small of his back, she heard her own voice gasping his name, heard the sound of their bodies meeting in hot, wet, desperation and then he reared up on his knees, lifting her with him so that he sank impossibly deep and she buried her face against his neck as the pleasure exploded, spinning her into fragments and she was lost in him.
Chapter Eighteen
Gabriel woke her by trailing deliberately sloppy kisses and licks around her right ear.
‘Beast!’ Caroline sat up, batting him off.
‘It was the only bit of you I could get at,’ he grumbled, falling back on to the pillows. ‘You were curled up like a hedgehog.’
He was still wearing the ripped shirt and nothing else. When she leaned over and ran her fingers into the dark curls on his chest he caught her hand and pressed it flat until she could feel the beat of his heart under her palm. ‘Caroline.’ She looked up to meet his gaze and saw he was suddenly serious. ‘Did I hurt you? I was too rough, I forgot that this is still new for you.’
‘No, you didn’t hurt me, although, frankly I doubt I would have noticed. And I was rough, too, I ripped your shirt.’
‘That was exciting, my little hellcat. No one has ever done that to me before.’