The sight of his bare chest brought up more of the restless, twisting feeling inside her. He was too thin, his ribs pressing against his skin, but there was something about the broad set of his shoulders, the ridge of his collarbone, that made her vaguely warm and unsatisfied. And when she slid the cloth across his chest, the heat licked higher in her.
Laura was beginning to suspect she was wanton. Even as concerned as she was about James and his fever, she enjoyed stroking him this way. It was stirring and somehow exciting, and when he opened his eyes and looked at her, hunger flaring in her eyes . . . well, she enjoyed that even more.
He clamped one hand around her wrist, stilling it, then pushed her hand downward, leaving the cloth behind. She sucked in her breath, her eyes going wide with astonishment as she felt him move beneath the cloth of trousers, hard and pulsing. James made a low noise and sank his other hand into her hair, pulling her head down to his. Laura didn’t resist.
His lips were velvety soft, as hot as she had imagined them, and more aggressive and insistent than his gentle kiss the other day. His mouth moved against hers, opening her lips to his questing tongue. Laura jerked in surprise. This was wrong, surely. This was fierce and hungry, not at all loving. This was . . . delightful.
He no longer held her hand against him, but Laura found she had no desire to pull it away. She moved her fingertips lightly over the buttons of his trousers and felt his flesh surge in a primitively gratifying way.
His hand wandered up her body, hot as a flame wherever it touched. He slid in beneath the lapel of her dressing gown, flesh searing through the thin cotton of her nightshirt, and settled on her breast, and though that, too, was a surprise, she did not flinch. She was growing accustomed to these new and pleasurable things he was doing, and now she waited for them with anticipation.
James groaned and turned, pulling her beneath him. His body was heavy on hers, pressing her into the soft mattress. His mouth left hers to roam down over her throat, and a shudder shook him. Suddenly he let out a low moan of an entirely different sort, a sound of loss and desperation. “No . . . no . . . don’t go.” He buried his face in her neck, his hand clenching into the sheet beneath them. His breath, already hard and fast, came in pants. “I won’t . . .”
He shivered and rolled away from her, throwing his arm up over his eyes and muttering to himself. Laura sat up shakily, struggling to pull her tattered composure into order. He was delirious. She slipped off the bed, straightening her dressing gown and retying the loosened sash.
It was more difficult to pull her thoughts together. She sank down onto the chair, putting her head in her hands. She was a doctor’s daughter. She had long been aware of what went on between a man and woman. Or at least she had thought she understood. Clearly the mechanics of it didn’t begin to explain what actually happened.
She sat back, leaning her head against the chair, and took a calming breath. Eleven years ago Graeme had kissed her a few times—sweet, stolen kisses that had made her pulse quicken and promised a rosy future.
But it had been nothing like the fierce way James crushed his lips to hers and invaded her mouth. The way his hands roamed her body. She closed her eyes, remembering his palm cupping her breast, his thumb teasing at her nipple through the cloth. His ragged breath as he rolled over, pinning her to the mattress beneath him. The thickened flesh beneath the cloth of his trousers and the way it pulsed against her hand.
Her cheeks flamed at the memory—not just with embarrassment, but with another kind of heat altogether. For however unexpected his kisses had been, they had not been as astonishing as her own reaction. Her entire body had simply burst into flame. She’d wanted to press her body into his; she’d reveled in the weight of him on her, the intensity of his passion.
What in the world did that say about her? Even worse, what did it say that she hadn’t wanted him to stop?
The truth was, her pulse was still racing, and she was suffused with heat. Her insides had melted, a low throbbing ache starting deep in her abdomen. If James had not broken it off, his delirium taking him off on another path, there was no telling what she would have done.
If she had not given up Graeme, if they had married, is that what would have passed between them—no, that was too embarrassing to even think of. She could not imagine doing such things with the man who had been her friend since they were children.
Far easier to feel this way about the man who had that wicked smile, whose silver eyes glittered in sardonic amusement at the world, who had no interest in being any better than he was. James de Vere was not a gentleman, which made her less ashamed for not acting like a lady.