Not a command, but not quite a request.
She had averted her gaze from his nudity, but she had not retreated. Her slender shoulders stiffened. “Jasper.”
Fine. Perhaps she was not ready for more lovemaking yet. It had been one hell of a long day, and although his body was eager, it was also sore and tired. He could wait.
A foreign word slipped off his tongue. “Please?”
Who had he become?
She turned back to him. “I am not ready. Not after what happened this afternoon.”
Ah, so he would need to earn her affection and his place in her bed once more. Never mind that. Jasper accepted the challenge. He had complete faith in his skills of seduction.
“I am weary, Octavia,” he explained. “All I want is for you to sleep next to me. I’ll be the perfect gentleman.”
Well, perhaps that was a lie.
She raised a brow. “You, a perfect gentleman?”
He grinned, relieved for the lightness in her voice. “As perfect a gentleman as I can be,” he corrected.
A small smile curved her lips. She hesitated for longer than he would have preferred. But then, at last, she nodded.
“Very well. I shall.”
The relief that hit him in the chest was almost enough to make his knees buckle.
But he would worry about that another day.
Chapter 10
Octavia awoke from a sinfully wicked dream of Jasper’s mouth between her legs. She was breathless, heart pounding, but as she blinked and lucidity returned, chasing the remnants of slumber, she realized he had made good on his vow to be a gentleman. They had not made love the night before. Instead, they had settled into bed and he had been asleep before Queen Mab had claimed her.
However, Jasper moved a great deal in his sleep.
Currently, there was a heavy male arm draped over her waist and a long leg tangled between hers. As awareness returned, she noted a hand cupping her breast through the thin fabric of her night rail and the deep, even breaths of her husband.
She was facing him, and his eyes were closed, his face relaxed. A dangerous man in repose. He was not awake.
But she was.
And her body was painfully aware of his nearness. Of his thigh pressed between hers. Her nightdress pulled high on her hips from twisting and turning in her sleep, and the center of her was wet and throbbing. The effects of the dream. And the spicy heat of her husband, his breath warm and fanning over her exposed throat. His touch.
She was in his bed.
Wrapped up in him.
And longing for more.
She shifted, attempting to disengage herself, but the subtle movement—her attempt not to wake him—only served to lodge his leg more firmly against the apex of her legs. It was there that she pulsed and yearned for more. Now that she knew what more meant, she was rather restless and needy.
You cannot trust him, she cautioned herself.
But the rest of her had different ideas than her practical mind. And every shift of her body produced the most delicious friction just where she wanted it most. Whether it was the restorative effects of a night’s sleep or his explanation and half apology the day before, or even his request that she spend the night next to him, she could not say.
But by the faint strains of the morning, some of her anger and disillusionment had dimmed. Perhaps partly due to the fires of need burning to life. The memories of their wedding day. How delicious it had felt, the weight of him pressed atop her, his body entering hers.
As she remembered, the ache blossomed.