“What does?” she blurted.
With a sweeping gesture, he motioned to the holiday décor.
“Oh.” She fiddled with the fabric of her gown. “I didn’t believe you’d noticed, Jasper.”
I notice anything and everything where you’re concerned, Katherine.
Since that not too distant day ago when her high-pitched desperate cry reached his ears across the Thames River, he’d developed a keen sense of awareness of his wife.
Just as he’d known the harshly spoken words he’d hurled at her in the Portrait Room had wounded her.
Now, as she stood before him, with an uncharacteristic wariness in her usually cheer-filled eyes, he confronted the change their short marriage wrought upon his wife. He’d thought himself content to live a solitary life, buried away in his castle. Until Katherine, he’d not realized the truth; he’d not been content, but rather he’d been hiding, embracing his sorrow as a kind of penance.
In just a few days, she’d torn down those protective white coverings throughout the castle and restored a sense of joyfulness to the cold, dank walls of the castle.
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.#p#分页标题#e#
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.