LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘And fathers,’ he said and decided, since he had her hands locked in his, he might as well put his free arm about her stiff shoulders and offer her some of his warmth and maybe more, if she would only let him.

      ‘I’m not your daughter,’ she argued with a militant stir in his embrace he gloated didn’t go far enough to shake him off.

      ‘Does it feel as if I look on you as other than a fully mature woman totally unrelated to me, Mrs Wheaton?’ he asked and let the heat of her next to him run under his skin like wildfire wherever their bodies touched, despite her bombazine armour and that truly absurd cap she had jammed back on her head any old how.

      ‘Um, no,’ she admitted and he waited for a militant objection.

      She surprised him by sighing deeply, then snuggling into his embrace as if she’d needed him to hold her all day. Something like triumph roared through him, but caution came in its wake. She was looking for comfort. Only yesterday they had buried the woman who had given her security, shelter and love these last ten years, while the rest of the world turned its back on her and twiddled its thumbs.

      Perhaps his friend Mantaigne could have offered her a broad shoulder to lean on and share some human warmth with on a dark day and been just as welcome. Grief and injustice had ruled her life for too long and the world must seem out of kilter to her now Virginia wasn’t here to keep it at arm’s length. Maybe wily old Poulson would have done equally well to offer comfort, or even, Heaven forbid, his brother James?

      He would have wanted to kill every one of them if he’d found them sitting in his place like petrified granite, trying to give what she wanted and not what he needed so badly it hurt. Except for the extraordinary fact they would probably offer comfort and no more, whether from male stupidity or fear of him he wasn’t quite sure. He seemed the only one deeply aware of her beauty and potential for passion, but he lusted after her so rampantly it made up for them. He squirmed in his seat to shift her so she wouldn’t be terrified by the evidence, fully awake and roaring for satisfaction as it was when she was in the same room, let alone in his arms.

      ‘I don’t want a stand-in father,’ she murmured and he could hardly believe his ears.

      ‘Good, I want you so badly I can’t remember my own name,’ he admitted with shaken acceptance she was looking at him as if the sky might fall on her head.

      ‘Kiss me, you idiot,’ she ordered.

      ‘Willingly, my lady,’ he agreed with a sense of inevitability in his heart and did it anyway.

      To leash his inner beast he framed her face with his hands, noting the contrast of pale feminine skin with his calloused hands—he was so impatient of wearing gloves he often rode without them. Her lashes swept down to hide her thoughts from his fascinated gaze so he studied them instead. Tipped with fiery gold, they were darker than her hair and ridiculously long, almost sweeping down to touch high cheekbones he wanted to explore in the finest, most intimate detail.

      No good, he was making himself more outrageously male rather than less so by lingering over every detail of her face like a miser. She was a lovely woman; not a secret cache of inanimate gold. He sighed a whisper of intent against her pert nose and felt the precipice they were walking narrow under his feet and still couldn’t make himself draw back from the brink. He gloated over the perfection of her rosy lips before he met the slick softness of them with a gasp of awe and they stepped off the cliff together and who knew where they would land?

      Let me not hurt or shock her, his inner lover begged as she seemed to have to remind herself to breathe under the onslaught he was holding so carefully under control. Let her be caught up by this endless storm of wanting too much to fear it.

      ‘Delicious,’ he heard himself whisper as if testing a fine wine and a flush of mortification almost burned away the one of fierce arousal already scorching his cheeks. Idiot, he chided himself and heard the word slip from his lips as he held a little away from her tender mouth and sucked breath into his aching lungs. Somehow he had to stop himself plunging into her shy welcome like a boorish great bull.

      ‘If I’m one, you are too,’ she informed him crossly and so close he felt the movement against his aching mouth and her breath on the tongue he used to slick moisture on to his dry lips.

      ‘Not you, me,’ he managed to rasp and heard her chuckle, felt her chuckle and it threatened to turn him completely feral.

      ‘My idiot,’ she argued, sounding nearly as ambushed by need as he felt. ‘Kiss me properly then, you great fool. I won’t break.’

      ‘No, but I might,’ he breathed and did exactly what they both wanted until he could hardly remember his own name for wanting Chloe Wheaton with every fibre of his being.

      * * *

      Chloe tumbled into mysteries that had been beyond her wildest imaginings even after their first, disastrous kisses all those years ago. Not even longing for him so badly it hurt had prepared her for this. Her wildest fantasies; dreamt of and half-recalled with a blush when she woke, hadn’t said how it felt to be kissed so deeply by this unique man. Those wild dreams, she supposed now, were brought on by lack of this. Lack of him; Luke Winterley; the only man she would ever love. It jarred through her in a long, hot shudder as he used touch and taste to fit them closer, strove for unity deeper than flesh on flesh. It opened up huge chances for pain as well as promises, added the feel of falling through vastness, tumbling into loving him as if her life might depend on it, to the already novel feeling of walking on fire.

      He was the one—her Luke; her love. Of course it didn’t hurt, his mouth on hers, his gentle, fascinated touch as he padded sensitive fingers through her loosened hair as if he loved the feel of it and when had he done that?

      Her mouth kicked up in a smile even as he teased her lips apart. The rogue had more seduction in his fingertips than a hardened rake had in his whole armoury. He’d disposed of her hairpins so neatly she hadn’t even spared a breath to ask why he’d let her heavy hair hang loose down her back and now seemed to adore the heavy weight of it against his skin. The thick mass felt wild and undone, just like her.

      The hand he hadn’t kept free to weave her ever deeper into his spell, learning her features by touch, was smoothing her back through the waves and weight of it. The bane of her younger life was being gloated over by her lover; a shiver of joy slid through her as he reminded them both he liked her carroty hair far more than she’d ever dreamt a man could, but he also adored her eager mouth and had work for it.

      Oh, never mind her hair, he’d thrust the tip of his tongue into her mouth as if asking if he could. Chloe gasped in a breath and opened on an unmistakable yes. He would be a fool not to read surrender in every inch of her and she spared a thought to chide herself for that, before he cindered it by deepening his kiss. This was him, the man she had longed for and lingered over in her head for so long passion and need and love stuttered down her supple spine and warmed her toes. Yes wound a little tighter, she wriggled closer so she lay against the cushions and felt him shift to follow her down with a smile of satisfaction he read on her lips. She used her freed hand to pull him after her and still his hot, deep kiss never hesitated on her willing mouth.

      Wasn’t it amazing what ten years of trying to live without a man she’d cried for far too often could do? Fire shot through her everywhere they touched and she found out how to shiver with sensual heat in mid-winter. Still he held himself away to shield her from the full force of his arousal. Bless the man; doesn’t he know his rampant need makes me melt from the inside out? If he wanted her this much, it must be possible to play with fire, now she had the lick of it deep inside her to remind her there was more to making love than kissing.

      A snatch of uncertainty nibbled at her conscience, but she loved the tightly muscled fact of his powerful torso tensing under her hands, as if he felt her touch and wanted to take her deeper. All the reasons she couldn’t loose her gown or rip off his neckcloth and push away his snugly tailored coat to insinuate herself closer screamed in her head. She tried to ignore it as every inch of hot satin-smooth skin over hard muscle fascinated her; for a precious few moments he was her Luke.

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