Little Love Affair (Southern Romance 1)

“If I stay, I’ll do things we’ll both regret.” He shuddered as she flattened her palm against his chest.

“Are you sure?” She leaned closer, smiling, and brushed her lips against his.

“Very sure.” His fingers clenched against her back.

“No.” Clara traced a finger over his skin. “Are you sure we’ll regret it?”

“Woman, you will be the death of me.” He caught his breath in a laugh and stepped back, running his fingers through his hair. His breath coming hard.

“Jasper.” She wanted to say his name, and she felt a smile grow on her face, unstoppable, when he looked over at her.

He could hardly hold himself away from her. “This would ruin you,” he murmured.

“I don’t care,” she whispered back. She did not, in this moment, she cared for nothing but the touch of his lips again. “I don’t. Please, Jasper.”

“Don’t say that,” he whispered. “Don’t say my name, Clara. I can’t bear it.”

She turned away, heart pounding. She wanted to run into his arms and away from him, too. She was terrified, yearning, desire and fear tumbling over one another in her chest. The red of the farmhouse showed faintly between the blowing branches of the willow, rain coming down in sheets.

There was no going back yet.

She did not want to go back. It was more than desire, she realized. She longed for the touch of his skin against hers once more, but more, for the first time in her life, she understood the feeling others had described to her. It was something she had never expected to find. She had thought she was immune to it.

How could it feel like both the storm and the haven? And how could it take every ounce of self-control she had built up over the years and scatter it to the winds? Clara turned, hardly realizing what she did. Her fingers were on the buttons at the front of her bodice, unhooking each slowly. She did not have to look down to know that the lace of her chemise showed, along with the swell of her breasts. She kept her eyes fixed on Jasper’s, watching him clench his hands to keep from moving towards her.

He did not move until she sat, skirts billowing around her, but then he was at her side in a moment, kneeling on the carpet of leaves and moss and cupping her face between his hands for a kiss.

He laid her out on the ground gently, hand behind her head to cushion it. He was hesitant, bracing himself on his elbows, and Clara left the buttons of her dress half-unbuttoned to reach for him and pull him down on top of her. One hand slid along his ribs, the other tracing down the muscles of his arms, and she opened her mouth for his kiss, hearing a gasp and a moan—her own voice.

She had not known she would ever be so wanton. She heard stories of women undone by poor behavior and wondered at it; and now she could not have stopped her hands from questing over his body any more than she could have stopped the rain from falling. The buttons of his vest sprang open and Jasper groaned as she let her fingers play over his skin.

“Clara.” His mouth was moving on the skin of her throat, hips driving against hers, and she bit her lip to feel his hardness through the layers of her dress.

Their legs twined together as they moved, her hands tracing over his back and down the rippling muscles in his arms, then rising to cup his face as she drew him back up for a kiss. One of his hands cupped her breast gently, thumb rubbing over the nipple, separated from her skin only by a layer of fine linen; Clara heard herself gasp again, and her hips moved up to meet his.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered when he slowed.

It was the wrong thing to say. His eyes closed and he bent his head. One hand clenched against the ground before he rolled away, onto his back.

“Jasper?”

“Don’t say my name,” he whispered again. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?” She knew the reasons and asked it anyway, daring him to speak it.

“Because your family would never allow you to marry me. Because I would never dishonor you.” Trembling, he reached out to lay his palm against her face, and his thumb brushed against her bottom lip. When she turned her face to kiss his hand, he drew it away quickly. “Clara, if I stay here with you now, I will dishonor you.”

“It’s not dishonor,” Clara whispered, and he looked at her gravely.

“You know that not a single person in this town would call it anything else. I would be killed, Clara, and you would live the rest of your life shamed for it. I could never allow that.”

“I’m not a child,” Clara said passionately. “I’m a woman, Jasper, and I’m choosing this.”

“What of the future? What if...” His breath caught. “What if you were to bear my child?”

He was right, damn him. She turned her f

ace away, eyes squeezed shut against tears. She could see the boy in her mind’s eye: Jasper’s dark eyes and her fair hair, toddling unsteadily between them in the fields. She thought she had not known love until Jasper kissed her, and it was true—but she had not known, either, the wave of protectiveness she felt to think of her child. Whatever consequences she could face for herself, she could not bear that a child might face them as well.