Catching Captain Nash (Dashing Widows #6)(11)

Now her scent filled his head, as familiar as if he’d slept beside her last night. And every night since the day they married.

He thought she’d settled, but she rolled over with another sigh. The sound held a troubled note. It was almost like she searched for something.

He knew that feeling well enough.

Just who was she dreaming of? Was she missing her lover Garson? If she spoke the bugger’s name, Robert might just lay waste to this pretty chamber.

When she curled in his direction, still without touching him, the breath jammed in his lungs. Every time she moved, he tensed up taut as a sail in a high wind. He wanted her touch. God alone knew how much he wanted it. But if she got too close, he couldn’t rely on his control.

Her head tossed on the pillow, and she gave a mew of displeasure.

Robert wanted to comfort her. He heard distress now, and however much he might question her faithfulness, he couldn’t bear her suffering. From the first, he’d have cut off his arm to save her from pain.

Then she wriggled closer and pressed that soft, sweet, damnably female body against his side. A lusciously round breast cushioned his arm.

She sucked in a shuddering breath, then released a deep exhalation of what sounded like contentment. Her arm in its silky sleeve snaked across his chest, and she cuddled into him, laying her head on his shoulder.

His heart stopped, then slammed against his ribs. His head buzzed with her nearness, and the shameful tears he’d fought all night pricked at his eyes. Just so had she slept beside him during the few weeks when they’d been together. Just so had she rubbed her cheek against his skin in a wordless declaration of love.

How he loved her. How he wanted her.

And how the devil was he to keep his hands to himself, when all his dreams were wrapped up in one slender woman who clung to him as if they’d never been apart?

He squeezed his eyes shut and told himself that he’d lived almost five years without her. One more night made no difference.

But when he’d survived without her, she hadn’t been snuggled up against him, soft as a kitten. She hadn’t been so near that he merely had to twitch a finger to touch her.

The room turned suffocatingly hot. Although the fire had burned down to embers, and he’d nearly frozen when he’d stood outside, trying to gather the courage to come in.

He gulped for air, which seemed to be in remarkably short supply. It didn’t make any noticeable difference to his troubles. His heart pounded as if it fought to break free of his chest. And his skin burned all along his side where she touched him. Thank God she lay still now, although the soft brush of her breath across his bare shoulder threatened to send him mad.

Since he’d been gone, he’d faced a thousand dangerous situations. He’d been in constant pain and fear for his life. He’d suffered torture and injury and fever.

Nothing compared to the agony of lying beside the wife he loved and restraining his impulse to take her.

Fate continued to have a laugh at his expense.

Just as he whispered a prayer of gratitude for her stillness, she started to wriggle again, nudging closer. This time, blast her, she used her hands.

At first, he thought the soft strokes across his chest were purposeless. He could almost resist, when he knew her actions verged on innocence.

Then that seeking hand drifted lower. His belly shrank away from her touch, but the heat seared him from head to toe.

Impossible to resist when her hand ventured further and curled around his cock. He’d imagined he couldn’t get any harder, but the touch of Morwenna’s fingers almost sent him shooting out of the bed.

She made a sleepy sound of satisfaction and tightened her grip until he saw stars.

When they’d first met, she’d been sweetly virginal. But she’d soon become a lover whose passion had fueled his fantasies for the past five years. Hell, he wasn’t sure he’d have survived his privations—and nor would his sanity have survived either—if he hadn’t been able to escape into his head to relive their sultry nights.

Her touch was beguilingly clumsy. But before he could ponder what that might mean, she crushed her hot face into his bicep and kissed him.

The subtle movement of her lips on his skin beggared resistance. The poignant tenderness bypassed all his elaborately constructed defenses, and damn it if he didn’t blink away a tear as he stared into the darkness. Since he’d left her, tenderness had been a cruel absence in his life. He was powerless against it.

With a groan, Robert rolled over and pulled Morwenna under him.

*



Morwenna knew she wasn’t dreaming, although in a thousand fantasies since she’d lost him, Robert had seized her in his arms and risen above her in the darkness.

She was half-asleep, but she recognized that the living man was here with her. That this time at last she wouldn’t wake empty and unfulfilled and crying. Sometimes she’d reached such a pitch of need that she’d touched herself to take the edge off her desperation.

Even as she’d shuddered in lonely pleasure, it had been a barren release.

She missed the marital act, but nowhere near as much as she missed her dead husband. The banal touch of her hand where she wanted to feel Robert, hard, vital, ardent, couldn’t satisfy her heart’s cravings.

But this time, Robert’s presence was too solid, the details too physical for her to mistake this as anything but reality. His rich scent, heightened with arousal. The hot weight of his rod in her brazen hold. The rasp of the hairs on his bare legs against her skin as he settled between her thighs.