In Bed with the Duke(43)
‘No, you won’t,’ she protested. ‘But I understand what you’re saying. And you’re right.’ She sighed. ‘If we sin together tonight we would have to marry.’
She didn’t want it to come to that. She didn’t want him to regard her as an obligation. She didn’t want him to wake up in the morning feeling that he had no choice but to marry her because he’d ruined her reputation.
She supposed it would have to be enough to know that he wanted her. Wanted her enough to tremble and spear his fingers into her hair, to run his hand to the upper curve of her bottom before snatching it back. To know that the fierce attraction wasn’t one-sided.
She snuggled into his embrace. ‘We should just go to sleep, then.’
He made a strange kind of strangled sound. ‘Sleep? How do you expect me to sleep now?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, yawning sleepily. ‘But I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep my eyes open for much longer. I’m exhausted. Aren’t you?’
He muttered something under his breath that she didn’t quite catch. By the tone of his voice, it wasn’t anything particularly pleasant. So she didn’t ask him what it was. She just closed her eyes and surrendered to the bliss of being held in his arms.
Chapter Ten
Technically, this was the second night he’d slept with a woman—but since last night he hadn’t known anything about it, it felt like the first.
It was the first time he’d been aware of her generous curves pressing into his side. The first time he’d breathed in the scent of her hair and rubbed his cheek against the soft profusion of her curls. The first time she’d tucked her poor little ice-cold feet between his legs, seeking warmth—and inadvertently creating it in his own loins.
He ground his teeth at the effort it took to keep completely still, when what he wanted was to roll over and flatten her beneath him.
No—no, he didn’t! To do anything of the sort would be worse than anything that had befallen her thus far. She trusted him. Had told him she would even trust him with her fortune, her future, before curling up at his side and trusting him with her very virtue.
He bit back a groan. She’d told him she thought he was upright, when the truth was that the only upright part of him was the very part that wanted to betray her. Not that he would betray her. Whatever it cost him in terms of comfort, tonight he wouldn’t do that.
He wasn’t an idiot. Later, when she learned the truth about him, he needed to be able to remind her that he had been true to her—in this if in nothing else.
Someone up there, he mused, looking at the stars peeping through a gap in the roof, must be laughing at him. Because the first time he’d ever strayed from the narrow confines of his life—from the straight and narrow, if you wanted to put it like that—was the first and only time a woman had placed such faith in him. The first time that he had even cared about a woman’s opinion of him, come to that.
Heaven help him, now she was sliding her cold little hand round his waist. It was just as he’d predicted. The temperature had plummeted once the sun had gone down. The fact that he could see all those stars through the barn roof meant that the sky had stayed as clear as it had been all day. There might even be a touch of ground frost by morning. He’d think about frost. Or snow. Or ice. Anything cold. To take his mind off the way she was squirming closer to him in her sleep, seeking the warmth of his body.
It probably didn’t help that he’d slept so deeply the night before. It meant that now he didn’t feel in the least drowsy. Right, then... Since he was wide awake, he might as well turn the sleepless hours to good account. He would consider Prudence’s future, rather than what he wanted to do with her now. The satisfaction he’d gain from bringing down the pair of villains who’d cheated her and dragged him into their plot.
There. That was better. Considering the cold, relentless march of justice was a much more sensible way to spend the night than revelling in the way all her trusting softness felt in his arms. Or savouring the scent of her body mingled with the scent of warmed hay.
Damn. That had only worked for—what?—less than ten seconds?
It was going to be a very long night.
But at some point he must have drifted off. Because the next thing he knew he was being woken, for the second day in a row, by a voice raised in anger.
This time when he opened his eyes it was to see a ruddy-faced man pointing a gun in his face, rather than merely a woman threatening him with a bony finger.