‘Oh, yes, you did. I was most…ah…impressed.’
‘Hussy.’ Ridiculously flattered, he stood and closed the half-door, then fully unshuttered both lanterns. ‘If we are going to take any clothes off, I want to keep warm, regardless of how well I stand up to the cold.’
‘You first.’ She was sitting with her legs drawn up, her arms wrapped around them, her chin resting on her knees, those great dark eyes watching him. Cris stripped as fast as he could, given that he had to stoop under the low ceiling. It was not cold, but it was cool enough not to want to prolong undressing. And besides, he was beginning to desire nothing more than to be skin to skin with Tamsyn now, to discover whether her body was as tempting warm and dry as it had been wet and shivering.
He sat on the edge of the bed to pull off his boots and she reached out to run her hand down his spine, lingering over each bump of vertebrae. ‘I love your back.’
It was difficult to pull off a pair of Hoby’s boots when a desirable woman was beginning to twine herself around you. Cris persevered, resisting the temptation to tear off her clothes, rip open his breeches and take her with his boots on. It was an arousing prospect, but he did not know her well enough to judge whether she would find that exciting or insulting.
Barefoot, he stood up to pull off his breeches and she came up on her knees, her hands slidin
g over his torso, her mouth trailing down his ribs. Cris stilled, breathing hard, his hands arrested on the fastenings of his falls as he tried for some self-control. Much more of this and she would have him spending like a green youth. He could not remember when a woman had made him quite this aroused so fast.
He kicked off his breeches and to his relief she sat back on her heels and just looked. ‘If you touch me, I won’t answer for the consequences,’ he warned as she gave a low hum of approval.
‘Very well.’ She began to undress with a straightforwardness that matched his own, shrugging off a simple gown to reveal nothing beneath it but bare woman.
Cris almost swore, swallowed the oath and kept his eyes fixed on her fingers as she pulled the long braid of her hair over her shoulder and began to loosen it. ‘Your hair is beautiful.’
‘Thank you.’ She bent her head and shook it so the mass of dark brown shifted and fell, wavy from the plait. When she looked up it covered her breasts, shadowed the junction of her thighs as she knelt on the bed. ‘Cris…’ Her voice trailed away, then she seemed to gather her courage. ‘I have only slept with one man before. I will not have the skills of the lovers you are used to.’
‘You have the skill to bring me to my knees,’ he said, and went down on them beside her, pulling her beside him on to the mattress and dragging the blankets up over them. ‘I desire you intensely. Can you doubt that?’
‘No.’ She buried her face in the angle of his neck and shoulder, suddenly shy, it seemed. But her hands were not shy, or clumsy.
‘You are sure?’ He had never doubted his self-control before, now he knew that a few more moments of this and he was lost.
‘Sure.’ Tamsyn slid under him, like the sea creature he had imagined her as, and her damp, hot, softness met his desperate body and he drove into it and stopped, almost shuddering with the pleasure of it, his weight on his elbows, his forehead resting on hers. ‘Ah…’ she murmured, and her hands fastened on his shoulders and her legs curled around him until her heels were in the small of his back.
‘You are perfect,’ he said on a breath that was almost a gasp. ‘Perfect.’ Then he ceased to know where her body ended and his began as they moved together. It was as though they had done this a thousand times together and yet never before. There was a rightness, a harmony, balanced by a freshness and the wonder of discovery. Somehow he hung on until her eyes opened wide and then closed in ecstasy and she convulsed around him. Somehow he found the strength to withdraw and find his release, straining against the strong, soft, wonderful body in his arms.
For a while he lay dazed, conscious only of their heartbeats, their breathing, the sound of the sea crashing far below. Then he rolled to one side and Tamsyn came with the movement, curling around him, her head on his chest, her body relaxed and trusting. Her lips moved against his skin with silent words, or, perhaps a kiss, then she was still. He sensed her slipping into sleep and closed his own eyes.
But oblivion would not come. He was utterly relaxed, utterly satisfied, warm, content and completely awake, and his mind was apparently determined that he would enjoy none of it. A few months ago, before Katerina, he would simply have been grateful to have experienced such mutually satisfying lovemaking. The fact that he hardly knew Tamsyn, that she was from another world completely, would not have mattered. They were mutually attracted, he could make love with her without compromising her and it would have been a perfect idyll, one that would be ended naturally with a departure that she expected and accepted.
But now he could not help examining his motives, his desires. He was not in love with Tamsyn, but he no longer knew what that meant, not after the shock of self-realisation over Katerina. Was he just using her? But she was not an innocent and she had her own needs, too. The urge to toss and turn, pummel the pillow, had to be suppressed because of the woman draped, limp and trustful, over him.
He should return to London, find a suitable bride, court her, wed her, he told himself. And then stay faithful to her. Gabe the ultimate cynic, was prepared to believe that their friends, Alex and Grant, had fallen in love, but to hear him talk about this was as rare an event as finding a unicorn in the back garden. According to him the remaining two disgraceful lords had no excuse for tying themselves to some woman’s apron strings. If he explained his thinking to his friend, Gabriel would laugh at him, tell him that this attack of conscience, of sobriety, was the onset of old age.
Cris opened his eyes and stared up at the weathered old wood of the roof while Tamsyn’s curls tickled the underside of his chin. If twenty-nine was old, then he might as well open that door, go back down the cliff and walk back into the sea to finish the swim that had brought him here.
Chapter Twelve
‘What is wrong?’ Tamsyn swam up out of the sleepy, satisfied haze and found Cris beside her, his arm heavy across her waist. She could feel the tension in him, despite the sprawl of his long body. ‘I can hear you thinking.’
He laughed, an almost convincing sound, but she had come to know him very quickly over the past week and he was not amused.
‘Are you regretting what we have done?’ she demanded, wriggling round so she could sit up and look at him properly.
‘No.’ This time the smile was quite genuine, a small, sensual twist of his lips. ‘I was brooding, that’s all. Gabriel would say I am getting old.’
‘Truly?’ Feeling wicked, she slid one hand under the blanket and explored. ‘I don’t think so.’
Cris caught her hand, but did not move it from where it lay, her fingers lightly curled around the hardening length of him. ‘Mentally old.’
‘A sudden attack of responsibility? That is very ageing.’ She tried to make a joke of it, but he only frowned.
‘No. I’ve always been responsible, I think.’ He shrugged. ‘I was brought up to be, to accept who I was, what I needed to do to fulfil that role.’ There was an edge of bitterness there that puzzled her. What kind of burdens had his upbringing laid on him? ‘Whatever hell I might have been raising, I always did what needed to be done, looked after the people who relied on me.’