Jade Star (Star Quartet 4)

He groaned, and she simply smiled up at him as he became a wild man. Until she became as wild as he. Her last thought before her body exploded into almost painful pleasure was that, at last, she was a woman, a wife, Michael’s wife.

“Have I just been branded?” she asked after he’d calmed her and settled her against his body for sleep.

“Twice, branded twice. But,” he added, his voice deep with satisfaction, “you’ve been pleasured three times.”

“Such possessiveness,” she said. I will make him love me, she thought, oh yes, I will.

“Michael?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you enjoy making love to me?”

He was silent for a moment, and she could practically see the devilish grin on his lips. “It was all right, I suppose,” he said blandly. “You could have shown a bit more enthusiasm, of course. But all in all, I didn’t fall asleep from boredom, did I?”

“You’re impossible!”

She felt the deep rumbling laughter in his chest before it erupted from his throat. “You’re hairy.” She slid her hand over his belly.

“Dangerous, Jules, very dangerous. Have pity, sweetheart, I’m an old man.” But not that old, he thought ruefully; he wanted her again, powerfully.

“Do you know what I was thinking when you were over me, inside of me?”

He groaned. “I’m scared to know.”

“How powerful you are, how beautiful, and your legs, so strong and—”

He slipped his hand between them to cup her breast, and she made a sweet, mewling sigh. He said, “Would you like to know what I was thinking when I was covering you, inside of you?”

&nbs

p; “You weren’t thinking a single thing!”

“Shut up. I looked at you, so small, so delicate, so very female, and—”

He felt her punch his ribs, and he laughed, a deep, satisfied laugh. “Don’t try to outdo the master, Jules, else I’ll continue with how I felt when you wrapped your beautiful legs around me, drawing me deeper—”

“Michael!”

He eased her onto her back, kissed her breast, then said with all the triumph of a sated man who held a sated woman, “You’re mine, Mrs. Saint, and don’t you ever forget it.”

“No,” she said, so happy that she thought she would die from it. “No, Dr. Saint, I won’t ever forget.”

23

Lydia paused a moment in front of the closed bedroom door, started to turn the knob, then slowly drew back her hand. She walked to the smaller bedroom down the hall, saw that the door was open, and peered in. “Ah,” she said, her eyes glittering as she took in the mussed bed and Jules’s nightgown, a rumpled heap on the floor. “It’s about time, Saint Morris. Yes indeed, about time.”

She decided to take her leave thirty minutes later, a pleased smile on her face.

Upstairs, Saint, who usually woke quickly with his full faculties, slowly opened his eyes, My God, he thought, aware of the soft body curled against his, Sunlight poured through the windows, splashing across his face, and he smiled, a besotted smile he imagined, and tightened his arm about his wife’s back.

Jules mumbled something in her sleep and obligingly nestled her cheek against his throat. She’s mine, he thought. He didn’t wake her just yet, content to think about the pleasant turn the world had taken. He couldn’t quite understand how she could still love him, but she’d said she did. Had loved him since she was twelve. A heady thought.

“You’re a lucky bastard,” he said quietly to the bedroom. He’d prayed he could give her pleasure, but her naturalness had surprised him as much as it had excited him. He remembered so clearly the older woman who had taught him about women. Her name was Lottie. Older, ha! She’d been about the same age as he was now. She had seduced him, very gently, after he’d gotten word that Kathleen had died in Ireland. She had given him renewed life, then shown him how to satisfy a woman. He’d failed Kathleen, of course, but had been too ignorant to realize that she could and should enjoy sex as much as he. He’d learned since that most men considered it nearly a perversion if their wives enjoyed the marriage bed. More fools they.

Saint smiled, remembering Lottie’s exact words. “You’ve quite an aptitude for this, dear boy. Yes, indeed, I truly admire a man who enjoys his work.”

He slipped his hand between them very gently, again splaying his fingers to feel the width of Jules’s pelvis. She would have his children, but not more than two or three, he amended to himself. He would take no chance with her health, nor did he want her to bear a child every year until she was thirty. He wanted her to himself—himself and two daughters and a son. He was blissfully picturing a daughter, red-haired, vibrant, and loving, just like her mother, when he felt a smooth hand glide down his belly.