Untouched

“We could deceive my uncle. If we share a bed…” He stopped. “If we share a bed, no one need know we’re not lovers.”

For one bright moment, rescue beckoned, then she remembered what the ruse would cost him. “Then your uncle will think he’s won. After what you told me today, I know the stakes.”

“My pride isn’t worth your life, Grace.”

But pride kept Lord Sheene alive. If he conceded victory to his uncle, he was lost. She couldn’t let that happen. “No.”

His expression twisted with pain. “I vowed I wouldn’t hurt you, Grace.”

Useless tears welled up again. She felt so utterly helpless. “Everything’s impossible.”

Surprisingly, he gave her the sweet smile that made her heart cramp with futile longing. “It won’t look so bad in the morning.”

The comfort one offered a child. Grace recognized its essential falseness. Still, when Lord Sheene drew her into his embrace, she slid up the sofa to lean against him. He cradled her upon his bare chest as tenderly as if she were indeed a child. But when she rested her sticky face on his cool skin, the feelings that flooded her were unmistakably adult.

Her failed seduction had opened the doors to forbidden knowledge. After tonight, his smell and his taste had permeated her bones. She wanted his arms to bind her to his side forever. She wanted him to kiss her again and again with his open mouth. The unsatisfactory kisses she’d forced on his unwilling lips only whetted her sinful curiosity. She wanted him to push her onto her back and thrust inside her, solid, heavy, possessive. She wanted him to make her his in a way her husband never had.

He said she could trust him. And she did. It was herself she didn’t trust.

Especially now she knew she didn’t yearn alone.

Chapter 11

As Grace slept in Matthew’s arms, he read exhaustion and unhappiness on her face. She’d come to him tonight to whore herself. The candlelight revealed what that decision had cost. Even in sleep, she looked strained to breaking.

Matthew eased along the sofa so her body curved into his side and her head rested on his shoulder. For once, the cramped space was welcome. Whimpering, she snuggled closer and her bare legs tangled in his.

He’d seen her naked body. He’d touched her skin. The world had changed for him tonight. He groaned softly into the fragrant hair on her crown as he recalled how she’d straddled him. Spending daylight hours with Grace stretched control to the limits. Nights holding her in his arms would test him beyond bearing.

Yet he had to convince Lord John they were lovers.

He had to protect her. What did his struggle with his uncle matter if it meant her destruction? He’d die before he let anyone harm her.

Even asleep, she seemed to sense his turmoil. One slender arm, clad in his shirt sleeve, slid across his naked chest in a protective gesture.

The thought was absurd. He meant nothing to her. How could he? Malicious fortune had catapulted her without warning or consent into his tragedy.

He lay awake watching her as the candle guttered and gray predawn crept into the room. His eyes traced the pale smoothness of forehead. The elegant arch of eyebrows. The straight, delicate nose. The determined chin.

He’d likened her to a painted Madonna. But this particular Madonna was stubborn. Courage and will tempered her sweetness. Grace was no pliant reed.

Thank God. Or his uncle would crush her.

Or mold her into an obliging puppet.

His eyes rested on her mouth, soft and vulnerable in relaxation. The mouth she’d used on him tonight. He couldn’t call that violent meeting a kiss. Although the fleeting possibility of a kiss had trembled between them.

What would it be like if she kissed him in genuine passion?

God help him, he’d never know.

The next morning Grace discovered the marquess standing in a clearing. Unreliable sun glanced across his dark head and gleamed on the boots he wore with black breeches and a loose shirt. Her heart missed a beat at his magnificence.

Apprehension and unquenchable curiosity warred inside her. She’d kissed him. Touched his body. Flaunted her nakedness before him. Cried in his arms. Slept next to him wearing only his shirt. She’d felt the contained power in his long sinewy muscles.

It was a level of intimacy she’d never achieved with her husband. She’d done her duty by Josiah but the act was always quick, furtive, performed in darkness while they remained clothed.

In silent fascination, she hovered behind Lord Sheene. She watched him aim a pebble at a small patch scraped into the bark of a beech about thirty yards away. The sharp ping as the stone struck the makeshift target explained the noise she’d followed to find him.