She studied him, not knowing what was wrong or what to do, not knowing what would help or what would only serve to hurt him more. “We’ll leave this place. Tomorrow, if that’s what you want.”
He didn’t answer, he didn’t look at her. Wanting him to see her, not his ghosts, she reached up and laid her palms tenderly against his cheeks, turning his face toward hers.
He flinched and leaned forward, grasping her wrists, pushing her hands away. “Go back to the house.”
She shook her head in refusal. There were wounds in him, deep wounds somehow connected with this place, and though she knew she couldn’t heal them herself, she could perhaps be a balm for them until time and love did the rest. “I’m not going unless you come with me.”
He was rigid and still as she curled her arms around his bent knees again. She pressed a kiss to his knee, then rested her cheek there. “I love you,” she said.
A tremor ran through his body, then he jerked with sudden violence. His feet came down from the edge of the table on either side of her and he slid forward, the insides of his thighs brushing her hips.
“I want you to leave,” he told her. “Right now.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the door across the room, where she could clearly see the latch and bolt. Returning her gaze to his, she shook her head.
“I said leave.” But even as he spoke, his hands gripped her arms, as if to prevent her from obeying his command.
“You don’t want me to go,” she said, reaching up to smooth back a lock of his hair. “If you didn’t want me here, you would have locked the door.”
“Damn it, Prudence, I’m not made of stone, you know. If you stay, I won’t be able to keep to that promise I made you this morning.”
She considered that for a moment, but oddly enough, the stringent moral principles with which she’d been raised seemed curiously irrelevant now. He needed her, and though she didn’t know why his emotions were in such turmoil, no one had ever needed her before. “I understand that.”
“Here? In this dusty old lavender house—is that what you want? Because that’s what will happen if you stay. There’ll be no holding back. No calling a halt.”
“I won’t call a halt.” Her fingers tenderly caressed the nape of his neck. “I love you.”
He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer, until her abdomen was pressed against the hard edge of the table. His thighs tightened at her hips, keeping her imprisoned between his legs. “God help you for it,” he muttered, and captured her lips with his.
His kisses that morning had been lush and tender, but there was nothing tender about the way he kissed her now. Nothing in it to beguile or persuade. This kiss was hard and blazing hot, demanding and possessive, and if she hadn’t already known there would be no going back, his kiss would have told her so.
Her eyes closed and her lips parted willingly beneath his. He gentled the kiss, relaxing his hold to slide his hands beneath her arms. His palms flattened against her back, his fingers pressing her shoulder blades, his thumbs brushing the sides of her breasts. Because she was in a tea gown, she wore no corset or corset cover, and with only a few thin layers of clothing between them, his touch seemed to burn her skin even more hotly than it had that morning.
As he kissed her, she raked one hand upward through the thick, silky strands of his hair. Her other hand touched his face—the sandpapery texture of his beard-roughened cheek, then the hard line of his jaw, then the velvety soft skin just below his ear. She breathed in the earthy, smoky scent of him along with the lavender in the room, the two fragrances a potent combination that went to her head like strong wine. His body was hard and aroused where he was pressed against her stomach.
Suddenly, he tore his mouth from hers with a groan. His hands pushed her back a step and he slid off the table, his feet hitting the floor. His arms still around her, he turned their bodies, slid his fingers into the knot of her hair and pulled her head back, then recaptured her lips in a deep, long, slow kiss that seemed to drive all the air from her lungs and spread aching warmth through her entire body.
He was so much larger than she. Prudence’s arms tightened around his neck as if to bring him even closer, and she stirred in his embrace, glorying in the hard strength of his body pressed so intimately against her.
He groaned against her mouth. Still kissing her, he pulled back far enough to pull off his jacket. He tossed it onto the table behind her, then his hands opened at her hips, grasping fistfuls of her tea gown and petticoat. He caught up the layers of pink mousseline and white muslin, bunching fabric between their bodies as if to keep it all out of the way, then cupped her buttocks in his hands.
She broke their kiss, sucking in a deep gasp of surprise as his hands tightened on her buttocks and he lifted her onto the table. Her skirts fluttered down around her hips and over her knees in a puffy circle of silk and lace. His hands slid from beneath her, and he worked to unfasten the hooks that held up her drawers.
“Lean back and lift your hips,” he ordered, and she complied, leaning back on her arms and raising her body. He tugged the drawers down her legs and over her feet, dropping the garment to the dusty stone floor. The silk lining of his jacket, still warm from his body, felt slick against her bare bottom as she sat up.
His fists closed over the lacy frills at the edges of her tea gown, and he slid the long robelike jacket from her shoulders and down her arms. She pulled her hands out of the sleeves as he began unfastening the hooks at the front of her bodice.
She looked up, studying his face in the afternoon shadows as he undressed her, and it struck her anew just how beautiful he was—sheer, masculine beauty like nothing she had ever seen in her life until she’d set eyes on him. His was truly a flawless face, grave now, with his attention fixed on his task, his long, straight lashes lowered over his extraordinary eyes.
As he unfastened the hooks of her gown, he slipped the tiny pearl buttons of her chemise free as well, his knuckles brushing her breasts. She gave a soft sigh, and he paused to look at her face as he slid his hands beneath the edges of her garments with purposeful intent. When his fingertips grazed her bare nipples, she moaned, closing her eyes against the shameful excitement that began flowing through her even as she flattened her palms on the table and arched her body toward him.
“Does that please you?” he murmured, and when she nodded, he rolled her nipples between his fingers as he had that morning, so tenderly and so sweetly that she moaned again, her hips stirring against the warm silk beneath her.
“What about this?” he asked, opening his hands over her breasts. “How does this feel?”
She made a faint sound, striving to answer, but as he shaped and cradled her breasts in his palms, the warmth within her deepened and spread, making her ache, and she couldn’t seem to form a single word.
“And this?” He bent his head, opening his mouth over her nipple, and Prudence’s whole body jerked at the sweet sensation of it. To her amazement, he began to suckle her, pulling her nipple with his lips, scoring it gently with his teeth, and the pleasure was so exquisite she could not stop the soft cries that came from her throat. “Does this feel good?”
She nodded, a quick, definite affirmation. “Yes,” she gasped. “Yes.”
He pulled and teased one nipple with his mouth and the other with his fingers, and as he did, she cradled his head, exhilarated by his touch. When he slid his free hand beneath her skirts, a powerful wave of anticipation surged through her, for after their experience that morning, she knew what he would do next.
But he confounded her, for instead of touching her as he had that morning, he ran his hand up and down her bare thigh in a light caress.
Her hips writhed, need clawed at her. “Rhys,” she moaned, holding his head to her breast, her hands tightening in his hair. Each time his palm slid up her thigh, he came a little closer to what she craved, but it was a teasing that soon became unbearable. “Oh, don’t! Don’t!”
He lifted his head a fraction. “Don’t?” he repeated softly. His tongue licked the pebbled skin around her nipple, and his fingers paused at the apex of her thighs, tickling. “I said there would be no stopping, remember?”
Stopping was the last thing she wanted. Desperate for the same sweet pleasure she’d experienced earlier, she reached for his hand.
“Touch me,” she whispered, hotly embarrassed by her own lack of modesty, even as she pressed his hand to the place he’d touched before. “I don’t…don’t want you to stop.” she managed, struggling to get the words out past her panting breaths. “Oh, don’t stop.”
Rhys pushed her back until she was lying on the table. He slid his hand between her thighs, but then he once again began to tease, caressing her in feather light circles all around that magical spot he’d touched so deliciously that morning. She arched her hips again, urging him closer to what she wanted, but he ignored her, still teasing. She groaned his name, a plea and a command, but he still didn’t give her what she wanted. “Touch me,” she ordered, desperate, unable to stand this sweet torture. “Touch me.”
“I am touching you.”