“Oh,” she said, “it’s nothing.”
His hands were already on her, gently angling her leg so he could examine the plum-sized bruises on her skin.
“Who did this to you?”
“No one . . . I fell when they took me,” she added when he looked up and she met his feral expression.
She shuddered, strangely more aroused than before.
She extended a hand toward him. “Please,” she whispered, “come to me.”
His gaze traveled over her bare body, sprawled on the bed, and as she had hoped, it distracted him enough for the bloodlust in his eyes to fade.
He sank to his knees. When he brushed a kiss onto her shin right below the bruise, it felt different. His kisses had been charged with desire, the need to possess. This was soft as the touch of a feather. Revering. As if she were precious and made of glass. Another kiss on her thigh, and his fingers stroked the sensitive skin at the back of her knees. The sensation flowed over her warm and sweet like syrup. A flash of tongue on the inside of her thigh, gentle sucks, a light nip of teeth, and she shifted restlessly on the sheets. A warm hand palmed up her other leg, to the junction of her thighs, and there his fingers splayed and anchored her . . . until his thumb moved over her. She jerked. He did it again, a knowing flick, and her lips parted on a silent moan. Heat welled everywhere he touched with his clever fingers, his silky mouth. He kissed her between her legs, his tongue on her warm and fluid, and she was lost, lost to him. He licked and caressed her deeper into oblivion until her hands clenched in the bedsheets and she arched against him with a cry.
She was still limp and pulsing when he rose over her and braced his elbows on either side of her head. The hot, hard nudge at her entrance sent a jolt through the daze.
She flattened a hand against his chest. “Please.”
He made a strangled sound, his handsome features stretched taut with the effort to stop.
She said it quickly. “Please don’t get me with child.”
An unintelligible emotion passed over his face. Then he gave a nod.
She gasped when he pushed forward. It had been too long, and he was big, and there was the instinctive trill of feminine apprehension right on the brink of letting someone in.
He sensed her struggle beneath him, and his movements gentled, became endlessly tender and slow.
“Don’t, my love,” he murmured, “just let me come to you . . . yes . . .”
His body belied his even voice. Beneath her palms, the muscles in his back were trembling.
It was that, or the husky murmur of his voice near her ear, or the soft scrape of his cheek against hers, but something in her gave, and she watched his eyes glaze over as he sank into her.
He filled her utterly, body and mind, and he planted himself deeper until she had no more to give. Her gaze was riveted on his face, taut with a primal tension, until the feel of his thrusts dissolved any boundaries, left no beginning or end between them. She felt him shudder and wrench away from her just as she peaked again.
His head dropped to the crook of her neck and he slumped against her.
Her hand curled over his damp nape.
He rolled off her and lay like a dead man.
* * *
She watched as he crossed the room to the corner with the pitcher and basin and washed, then returned to the bed with a damp cloth. She should feel embarrassed at seeing him wander around stark naked. Most definitely at him carefully wiping her down. But she must have lost the last of her inhibitions somewhere between his chamber door and his armchair.
She placed her hand on her belly, where he had spent himself earlier.
He had kept his word. He had protected her. Wild horses wouldn’t have pulled her from the path to ecstasy on which he had set her with his talented mouth, so she had a good idea of what it had cost him to hold on to his wits. Wonderful, trustworthy man.
The mattress dipped when he stretched himself out by her side again.
Raised on his elbow, his chin in his palm, he studied her with half-lidded eyes. He looked different. Younger. She couldn’t stop her hand from drifting up to trace the curve of his bottom lip with her fingertip. His mouth, too, looked different, soft and full. This was intimacy, knowing he could look this way. Very few people would ever see him like this, Montgomery the man, not the duke. How she wished he were only a man.
He captured her inquisitive hand and began toying with her fingers. Too late, she remembered to pull back. He wouldn’t let her. “You always try to hide your hands,” he said. “Why?”
She sighed. “They are not nice.”
He gently pried her fist back open. “What makes you say so?”
“The ink stains,” she muttered.
He kissed them. “Hardly blemishes.”
“And I have calluses,” she said, all at once strangely driven to point out her flaws to him.
“So do I,” he said.
Her gaze flew to his in surprise.
He spread the fingers of his right hand wide and pointed at a small bump near the top of his middle finger. “From holding the pen.” He placed her finger between his middle and ring finger. “From holding the reins.”
Watching their fingers stroke and entwine triggered a longing pull low in her belly again. She was greedy all right, especially where he was concerned.
“What about this?” She touched a hard spot in his palm.
“That is from the mallet.”
“The mallet?”
“Yes. A big hammer for driving fence posts into the ground.”
“And do you do that often, Your Grace, drive fence posts into the ground?”
The corners of his mouth twitched. “Often enough. Working on the land takes my mind off things.”
“That explains these,” she murmured, and traced her fingers over the curve of his biceps. It hardened reflexively under her perusal. She smiled, also because she was now entitled to touch him like this.
“Did you really give a man a nosebleed?” he asked. He had turned her hand over and studied the pink knuckles.
The smile faded from her lips. “Yes.”
She could feel the languor leaving his body.
“Why?” he asked.
“I suppose because the village lads I ran with as a girl didn’t teach me how to slap like a lady.”
He leaned over her, not a trace of humor in his eyes. “What did he do?”
She evaded his gaze. “He was . . . hurting a friend.”
Montgomery’s face set in harsh, unforgiving lines. “I see.”