‘It’s the enforced intimacy—that’s what it is,’ he grated. ‘We’ve been thrown together in unusual circumstances and you’re feeling...grateful to me. Attracted, too, I don’t doubt. Just as I’m attracted to you. Extremely so.’
Her heart leapt.
‘Though I feel I should warn you that it might well be due to some after-effect of the drug they gave us.’
Her heart plummeted.
‘And once this is over...’
No, no, it wasn’t just because she’d unwittingly swallowed a sleeping draught. The only reason their enforced intimacy had made her admire him so was because all the tests they’d faced had proved what he was really like, beneath the harsh exterior.
‘I will still feel like this tomorrow—I’m sure I will.’
‘Prudence, Prudence...’ He did reach up to cup her face then. ‘God, whoever gave you such an inappropriate name? Practically begging a man to make love to you is the least prudent thing an innocent girl like you could do.’
‘I haven’t begged you to make love to me,’ she protested, her pride stung. ‘I was speaking in a hypothetical way, about marriage. You were the one who leap-frogged over the practicalities and went straight to the wedding night.’
‘How can I help thinking about the wedding night when you’re lying here half-naked and talking of wrapping yourself around me like a vine?’ He pulled her down so that she was sprawled half over his body. Then, just to make sure she knew what he was talking about, he shifted slightly, so that his pelvis made contact with her hip. ‘Can you not feel what you do to me?’
Oh, yes, she could feel it. She’d spent her early childhood following the drum. She’d learned a whole lot more about what went on between men and women than sheltered girls her age would have known.
‘So you do want me, then? It isn’t just me feeling like this?’
‘Of course I want you,’ he growled. ‘I’ve wanted you ever since the moment you sat up in bed this morning and gave me an eyeful of your breasts!’
‘But...you threw me out of your room.’
‘I thought you were trying to entrap me. I thought...’ He groaned. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’ He ran his hands up and down her back. ‘But I...’ He hauled her close and breathed in raggedly. Clasped the back of her head to his throat.
He was trembling.
‘Prudence, I beg of you, don’t tempt me any more. You have placed your trust in me. Told me you think I am an upright, honest man. And it’s true that all my life I have prided myself on doing the right thing. Even when I knew my wife had committed adultery I refused to sink to her level. But right now I am so close to behaving like the worst kind of scoundrel. It’s bad enough that people will be accusing me of taking your innocence. If I do so in fact I will have become the very villain they sought to make of me.’
‘No, you won’t,’ she protested. ‘But I understand what you’re saying. And you’re right.’ She sighed. ‘If we sin together tonight we would have to marry.’
She didn’t want it to come to that. She didn’t want him to regard her as an obligation. She didn’t want him to wake up in the morning feeling that he had no choice but to marry her because he’d ruined her reputation.
She supposed it would have to be enough to know that he wanted her. Wanted her enough to tremble and spear his fingers into her hair, to run his hand to the upper curve of her bottom before snatching it back. To know that the fierce attraction wasn’t one-sided.
She snuggled into his embrace. ‘We should just go to sleep, then.’
He made a strange kind of strangled sound. ‘Sleep? How do you expect me to sleep now?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, yawning sleepily. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep my eyes open for much longer. I’m exhausted. Aren’t you?’
He muttered something under his breath that she didn’t quite catch. By the tone of his voice, it wasn’t anything particularly pleasant. So she didn’t ask him what it was. She just closed her eyes and surrendered to the bliss of being held in his arms.
Chapter Ten
Technically, this was the second night he’d slept with a woman—but since last night he hadn’t known anything about it, it felt like the first.
It was the first time he’d been aware of her generous curves pressing into his side. The first time he’d breathed in the scent of her hair and rubbed his cheek against the soft profusion of her curls. The first time she’d tucked her poor little ice-cold feet between his legs, seeking warmth—and inadvertently creating it in his own loins.