He held his breath as he awaited her verdict.
But when she sighed in what sounded to him like a very martyred fashion, he decided that if she wanted him to leave, tonight, then she was damned well going to have to tell him outright.
He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he found he couldn’t bear the suspense.
‘Are you awake?’ he murmured into her ear.
She still said nothing. Though he could almost hear her thoughts flitting through her head. Was she considering the correct way to dismiss a husband from her bed? Or…dammit! Never, in his whole life, had he wanted to know what a woman was thinking when she was in bed with him. But this was Clare. Who could tie him in knots with a sigh, a tilt to her shoulder and silence.
‘You are awake,’ he declared. ‘So you may as well open your eyes and admit it.’
She turned her head then and by the light of the moon he could see a very determined expression settle over her features. As though she was steeling herself to face some kind of battle.
Which she wasn’t, he promptly decided, going to win, not tonight. Not if it took every ounce of skill he possessed to seduce her into letting him be the husband he’d wanted to be all those years ago. Just for one night.
With what one of his conquests had termed his I’m going to have my wicked way with you smile, he gently tucked a stray tendril of hair behind her ear.
‘I like your hair like this,’ he said.
‘What, in a mess?’
‘Streaming across my pillow, rather than being confined in one of those braids you have insisted on adopting every night so far.’
‘A braid is practical, at night.’
‘It is not seductive, though. You should wear it loose, like this, in bed.’
Something nebulous flickered across her face. Something that looked…
‘What thought has just crossed your mind?’ he asked her. ‘You got a very wicked look in your eyes. As though you were plotting mischief.’
‘Perhaps,’ she whispered, looping her arms round his neck, ‘I was.’
‘If it is the sort of mischief I am hoping it was,’ he began, before pausing to kiss her, ‘then I have to say…’
She turned in his arms and pressed her breasts into his chest. She pressed up against him. His heart started pounding so fast he felt dizzy with it. He swooped to her lips again and kissed her with all the finesse of a starving beggar falling upon a meat pie. He’d always known her fire would be able to warm the cold places in his soul. He’d never dreamed she’d be so hot they’d create steam.
After a few seconds, perhaps inevitably, she pulled away.
He braced himself for the recriminations.
‘What,’ she panted, ‘were you about to say?’
‘Say?’ She wanted to know what he was thinking? ‘Nothing of any consequence,’ he replied. ‘At least, it cannot have been because I have completely forgotten what it was.’
She wriggled against him, again, with a positively naughty look on her face.
No matter what else she thought of him, there was no denying she enjoyed doing this. And, it occurred to him, if he could take her to such heights that she fell asleep immediately after he finally finished with her, then he’d be able to remain in her bed without having to make any explanation at all about why he’d been so quick to leave it before tonight.
And so he paid great attention to detail. Kissing and caressing every inch of her alabaster skin. Running his tongue over the areas he’d already learned were particularly sensitive. Until she was moaning and writhing with need. At which point he honed in on the obvious target, flicking his tongue over her to tease her to the point where she was desperate for his penetration. Which he denied her. Not until she’d gasped out in surprised rapture. Not ’til he’d roused her to that same pitch all over again and she was almost sobbing with a mixture of exhaustion and frustrated need.
Only then did he slide up and into her, and give her all of himself.
His body, that was. He would never trust his heart to anyone, for them to stamp on and grind under their heels. The way she’d stamped on his when she’d…
Only she hadn’t. Not intentionally.