For Love of the Duke(82)

Katherine made to step around him. “If you’ll excuse me,” she murmured. “I should speak to Cook regarding dinner for the evening.”

Jasper matched her movement, effectively barring her escape.

She wrinkled her brow, and took an opposite step left. Jasper matched her movement, again.

Katherine looked up at him, imploringly. “Jasper, what do you want of me? You were so very clear in the Portrait Room. You desire nothing from me.”

Oh, how wrong his hopelessly alluring wife was. He desired too much from her. More than he deserved. More than he’d ever believed himself capable of.

“You’re under the bough,” he murmured in a gruff, husky whisper.

Katherine tipped her head.

Jasper raised his hand and curved it around the nape of her neck. Ever so gently, he tipped her head back so she might view the kissing bough above them. “We’re under the kissing bough,” he amended.

Her gaze locked on the piece. Then, her throat worked. She closed her eyes. “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

Jasper leaned down and placed his lips to her fast-beating pulse there.

Her eyes slid closed. Jasper moved his search upward to the corner of her lip. He placed a kiss upon her siren’s mouth, and continued on, kissing her cheek, the tip of her pert nose, her gloriously long, thick brown lashes.

“What are you doing?” Her voice broke on a breathy moan.

“Tell me to stop, Katherine. Tell me, and I will stop now, and leave.” It will kill me, but I shall do it because I’m helpless to deny you anything.

Katherine raised her fingers to his jaw. She stroked her knuckles across his skin. A muscle twitched at the corner of his eye. She met his gaze with a boldness better suited to a woman many years her senior. “I do not want you to stop, Jasper.”

I am lost.

Jasper swept her into his arms and strode up the long, sweeping staircase, down the long corridor, hating the massiveness of the castle. Her quick breaths, blended with his harshly drawn ones, punctuated his steps. He pressed the handle of her bedchamber doors and kicked it closed behind them hard enough to shake the wood panel in its frame.

Jasper strode over to her wide four-poster bed and lowered her onto the green woven coverlet. Katherine edged backwards, into the center of the mattress. Her skirts climbed up around her ankles, ever higher, exposing the muscles of her calf that spoke of a woman who excelled at horseback riding. His body turned to stone as he imagined those legs wrapped about his waist, urging him on.

She angled her head, and a brown ringlet fell over her cheek. “Jasper?” Just that. His name, a breathless moan which bespoke of innocent desire.

A groan rumbled from deep within his chest. He shrugged out of his jacket and then tugged his shirt free. He tossed them both aside.

Katherine’s eyes, the color of the finest French brandy, widened. God help him, he should go slower. She was an innocent, unschooled in the ways of lovemaking.

And he’d never been consumed by this uncontrollable, burning desire to lay claim to a woman.

From the moment he’d held her to him in the confines of his carriage that fated day he’d saved her, he’d battled his hungering, convinced himself his desire stemmed from the many years he’d gone without a woman.

Now, studying her delicate frame upon her bed, elbows propped behind her, and her lips swollen Jasper could no longer deny the truth—he wanted Katherine. Only her. Just her. Forever.

And he’d allow the terror of that reality to seep into his mind after he made her his.

Jasper tugged off his boots, one at a time, all the while his gaze remained fixed on Katherine.

She followed his every movement; a becoming pink blush bathed her cheeks. He threw the gleaming black Hessians atop his now rumpled jacket upon the floor, and hovered at the edge of the bed.

Don’t do this.

Yours is a marriage of convenience.

Your heart is dead.

This is a betrayal of Lydia.

…Only

…It felt like none of those things.

As he lowered himself beside Katherine’s still form, a sense of absolute rightness besieged his senses.

Katherine scrambled up right, and pushed herself to her knees. “Jasper,” she whispered.

He came up beside her. “Yes, Katherine?”

She blinked. Her gaze fell to his chest. The pink hue of her cheeks flamed red. “I d-don’t know,” she stammered. “I don’t know what I’d intended to say. I just—”

Jasper kissed her to silence.

Her body went taut in his arms, and then her slim arms climbed up his neck. Katherine angled her head, allowing him better access to her mouth. He slipped his tongue inside. All the while he worked the long row of buttons down the back of her gown. One popped off. He cursed and wrenched his mouth from hers.