All About Seduction(108)
She shook her head and straddled him. “It wasn’t you.”
He tensed. If it wasn’t him, who the hell was it? He caught her hips because he had to touch her.
Leaning forward, her hair brushed his chest and the heat of her feminine core settled against him. His head spun, caught between sexual desire and wanting to know who had hurt her.
“Caro,” he growled. When he left, had she returned to one of the gentlemen?
She made a small sound and wiggled on him.
Heat flashed through Jack and made him shudder with need. He fought to find sanity. He just had to focus on any one of a dozen aches in his body, but all he could think about was her leaning toward him, engaging in his kiss, her fingers stroking his cock, and the desire he’d been so close to stirring in her.
“What are you saying?” he sputtered out.
She tensed all over and stopped trying to seat herself on him.
He fisted a hand in her hair at the nape of her neck and pulled her head back to look at him.
She bit her lip.
He let go, ashamed that he’d just promised to not hurt her and then yanked her head back by her hair. He gentled his voice, although it was lower and rougher than normal. “Caro, what are you saying?”
“When I was in the library,” her voice was high and breathy, “I got through the encounter by imagining I was with you.”
A wave of tender dismay swept through him. When she emerged from the library, he’d been so disappointed in her. Yet, she’d been thinking of him. But that was neither here nor there. As much as he liked knowing she had been thinking of him instead of the man she was with, it was a distraction. He worked to keep the anger from his voice. “If it wasn’t me who made you sore, who was it?”
“I didn’t mean to say anything,” she said on an unsteady voice.
“But you did. And I know I hurt you last night.” Had it only been last night? It felt like a lifetime ago.
She lifted a shoulder. “I didn’t want you thinking you had really hurt me. I was only a little tender when I left you last night.” Her voice ended on a barely audible squeak.
He knew who had hurt her before he cupped her shoulders and pushed her up to where he could see her face. Blackness fisted in his gut. The man deserved to be drawn and quartered, even though that punishment had been done away with as too inhumane. “Broadhurst.”
She refused to meet his eyes. “He’s my husband. He has the right.”
“No, Caro, he doesn’t have the right to”—mark her with his scent as a dog marks its territory—“rape you.”
Jack closed his eyes and saw red. Drawing and quartering was too mild a punishment for the man. He should be boiled in oil and fed to the lions in the queen’s menagerie. If it was the last thing he did, he would rid the world of that evil man.
Chapter 21
“I shouldn’t have said anything.” Caroline’s chest tightened.
Jack’s fingers dug into her hips. His jaw was like granite. He started to lift her, but she sat up and let her weight bear down on him. His self-condemnation was so misplaced she’d slipped.
His eyes looked through her. The violence coursing through him seeped into her as if she could absorb his emotions through her skin. She shuddered.
She had to distract him. In his present state, Jack would be no match for her husband. Or at any time in the future. “Jack, I want to stay with you tonight. Sleep in your bed where I feel safe.”
“I’ll kill him,” Jack gritted out.
“No. If he were to die today, I’d be left with nothing. Not the mill, not his wealth, not the house. I need this baby. I need you to help me.”
His brown eyes flicked back to her as if remembering she was there, sitting on his lap, their privates pressed together if not yet engaged. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want more than my freedom from him.” Her voice was heated. “I could go back home if that was all I wanted. I want all that he would deny me. All that for which I have endured fifteen years of marriage. He will not live forever, but I have to have a baby to secure everything.”
Jack’s mouth tightened and his nostrils flared.
“You cannot do anything rash. I need you.” The word “love” pounded in her brain, but she held it back. Now was not the time. There might never be a time. She reached down and touched his stomach. “I want you.”