Apparently the volume in her hands was sufficiently absorbing that she hadn’t noticed his presence. As he stood in the doorway watching, she tucked a stray wisp of dark hair behind her ear. Then she licked her fingertip and turned the page.
His knees buckled. In his mind, he scrambled to piece that half second into a lasting memory. The crook of her slender finger. The red pout of her lips. That fleeting, erotic glimpse of pink.
She did it again.
Ash gripped the doorjamb so hard, his knuckles lost sensation.
He wanted her to read the whole cursed book while he watched.
He wanted the book to have a thousand pages.
She closed the volume and added it to a growing stack on the chair. Then, turning her back to him, she stretched on tiptoe to reach for another. Her heels popped out of her slippers, revealing the arches of her feet and those indescribably arousing white stockings.
God’s blood. A man could only take so much.
“Don’t move.”
She froze. Her arm remained lifted; her hand was still poised to take a green volume from its shelf. “I only wanted a book.”
“Don’t,” he repeated, “move.”
“A novel, poetry. Something to pass the time. I thought perhaps I’d even try some Shakespeare. I didn’t mean to disturb—”
“Stay. Just. As. You. Are.” He approached her in slow, deliberate paces—one step for each low, deliberate word. “Not one finger. Not one toe. Not one tiny freckle on your arse.”
“I don’t have freckles on my . . . Do I?”
He didn’t stop until he stood directly behind her. He reached to cover her raised hand. With a flex of his fingers, he tipped the green book into place.
“I’ll leave you to your work.” She moved to lower her hand.
He pinned her wrist to the shelf. “Not just yet.”
She sucked in her breath. He knew her well enough to recognize that sound. It wasn’t fear, but excitement.
Good. Very good.
“Do you know,” he said in an idle tone, stroking his thumb along her delicate wrist, “I’ve been thinking.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“Oh, it is.” With his free hand, he cupped the swell of her breast, stroking her softness through the muslin. “The object of this marriage is to get you with child.”
“Yes.” Her voice was drowsy. “I seem to recall that was our bargain.”
Her head tilted to the side, and he ran his tongue along the elongated slope of her neck. She tasted both tart and sweet. Delicious.
“So if we do this twice a day,” he murmured, “that would make our objective twice as likely.”
“I . . . I suppose it would.”
“No supposing about it.” He tweaked her nipple. “It’s simple mathematics.”
After a pause, he heard a little smile in her voice. “Is it, my fawn?”
Saucy, impudent wench.
The race was on. She helped him hike her skirts to her waist. He stroked the seam of her cleft, tracing it until he found that essential spot at the apex. She gasped with pleasure, gripped the bookshelf with both hands. He couldn’t unbutton his falls fast enough.
After what seemed an epoch of fumbling with garments, they finally pressed flesh to flesh. His hard, aching need against her wet, ready heat.
“Now?” He growled the word.
Her reply was breathless. “Yes.”
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes.
The dalliance in the library was the first of many daytime trysts. Now that Ash knew her to be game for unconventional bedsport, his imagination knew no bounds. His stamina was nowhere near depleted, either. Making love unclothed in full daylight still felt like too great a risk. When they were that close, that intimate . . . he hated the idea of pity intruding into moments when he ought to be strong. He worried that if she touched him, he might snap back.
And there was always the other risk: Repulsing her completely.
How could I bear to lie with . . . with that?
No, he couldn’t chance it. However, with a willing, adventurous partner, there were ways around the hurdle. Pleasure needn’t be confined to fumbling nighttime encounters.
Emma did not object, he found, to being bent over the nearest sturdy piece of furniture. The billiard table made for one particularly enjoyable liaison. He pulled her into shadowy alcoves and deep closets and took her propped against the wall in the hot, musky dark. They discovered all manner of accoutrements—cravats, sashes, handkerchiefs—could be pressed into service as blindfolds.
No matter what he suggested, she never told him no.
She always said yes.
She said “yes” and “yes” and “more” and “please.”
As always, those little sighs and moans sank straight to his cock, urging him closer to release. But as their passionate afternoons melted into weeks, her words found deeper targets. He even came to adore her endlessly absurd pet names. They pierced through his scar tissue, battered at the bony cage around his heart.
Ash struggled to rebuild that barricade daily.
Don’t make too much of her willingness, he scolded himself. She was a passionate woman by nature. No doubt she wanted this child-getting business over and done with, too.
And yet he could not stay away from her, could never satisfy his desire. There was no floor to the chasm inside him. It wasn’t only her body he craved, it was closeness. Acceptance. The feeling of being wanted, and never turned away.
Yes.
She always said yes.
Until the night she didn’t.
One evening, Emma failed to appear for dinner. Her maid delivered a message to the table. Ash sipped a brandy as he unfolded and read the note written in his wife’s hand.
She was indisposed, it read, and she suspected a few days’ time would pass before she felt fully restored. With apologies, she could not welcome his visits at present.
Well, then. It didn’t require much effort to sift through the delicate phrasing. Her monthly courses had arrived. She wasn’t pregnant, not yet.
He ought to have been disappointed.
Instead, all he felt was relief.
She wasn’t with child. That meant he had another month.
Another month of whisking her into dark spaces, turning her face to the wall, and feeling her teeth scrape the heel of his hand when she came.
Another month of “yes.”
Another month of not being alone.
Another month of Emma.
Something in his chest went buoyant with joy.
Ash drained his brandy. Then he propped an elbow on the table and lowered his forehead until it rested against his thumb and forefinger. He massaged the knotted scar on his right cheekbone.
You are a dolt. Ignorant as dirt. This was more than infatuation. He’d allowed a foolish, irrational attachment to develop. Now something must be done about it.
He called for another brandy. And then another. When he’d drained the