The Swordmaster's Mistress: Dangerous Deceptions Book Two(55)

‘I thought you an arrogant witch, that first hour or so,’ he admitted readily. ‘But one who had me by the throat.’

‘By the throat?’ she teased.

‘And areas further south.’ He moved against her slightly, demonstrating the point. ‘But you were the subject, the object of my employment. I could not afford to care like that.’

‘You do now?’ But the question was lost against his mouth and the kiss Jared took was hot and hard and urgent. He freed his hands and pulled her against his body and that was hot and hard and urgent too. Guin tugged awkwardly at his coat, clumsy in her need to touch bare skin. With a fluid twist of his shoulders it was free for her to push down. There was a moment when they were apart as he shook it off, then he had her again and her fingers were fisting in the fine linen of his shirt and under it was skin and muscle and strength and she wanted that too.

He tasted of coffee and cinnamon and aroused male. As she recovered from that first heady contact his lips softened, his tongue curled, playful in its exploration, and she yielded to it even as her busy hands yanked the shirt from the waistband and finally, finally, she could touch his body. So hard, so smooth except where ridges and knots betrayed old wounds. She feasted with her fingertips, thrilled when he arched against her hands like a big cat seeking caresses.

Guin felt her legs losing strength, knew she was sinking towards the floor, realised she did not care and gave a moan of protest as Jared broke the kiss.

‘I am damned if I am going to make love with you for the first time on the floor or a desk top.’ He unbuckled his sword belt, let it drop.

‘We made love in a barn – ’

‘We had sex in a barn. My bedchamber’s nearest.’





Chapter Eighteen


‘No, my room. There’s a not-so-secret door and stair in the corner here.’ Guin tugged at his hand, impatient when he stooped to retrieve his coat. Trust Jared Hunt to leave no incriminating evidence behind him. He dropped it and pressed a kiss into the angle of her neck. Her fingers fumbled on the old oak panelling until she found the right angle to press, then the door opened and they climbed, cramped, bumping on the twisting stair, so narrow that Jared’s broad shoulders brushed the walls.

It opened into her bedchamber and Guin turned to see Jared at the stair door, framed by the old oak panelling as he pulled off his shirt.

‘You look like a returning knight storming his lady’s chamber after years away at the Crusades,’ she said, half laughing at her own fantasy, half deadly serious.

Jared tossed aside the shirt, heeled off his boots, his gaze steady on her as his hands went to his waistband. He was stripping himself naked for her, making himself as vulnerable as such a controlled, dangerous man surely never could.

Guin caught her breath at the sight of him revealed, aroused for her. For me. If he can trust, so can I. Her gown fell in silent folds at her feet, her slippers kicked off easily. Her corset defeated her but from the look in his eyes, it would not defeat him. Guin walked the six steps that brought her to the man who was to be her lover and reached up, pulling free the leather tie that held his queue of hair tight. It came loose under her raking fingers, shook out around his shoulders, the mane of a lion, kinked by the braid and silkily alive in her hands.

Jared smiled, slow and sensuous, and reached around her for the strings of her stays, deft even though he could not see what he was doing. ‘Sure?’ he murmured.

The question in that husky voice was reassuring, but he did not have to ask: she was quite certain about this. It had been a long time since Francis, and he had been an unsatisfactory lover – even with her complete inexperience she had known that – so this might be far from comfortable in the beginning, but she trusted Jared to care for her.

‘Quite sure.’ The words were muffled as her corset fell away and he whipped her chemise off over her head.

She was not certain what to expect next, but it was not to be held away from him, his palms cupping her shoulders, while he studied her face. ‘This can only be a temporary affaire, Guinevere. Of course, you already know that – you are a titled lady, I am a swordmaster. That is all it can ever be.’

‘I am not looking for a third husband, that is certain,’ Guin said, perhaps more crisply than she had intended. ‘But if I were, I am not sure that a foolish young woman of moderately respectable breeding who ruined herself with a rake, and was then fortunate enough to be rescued by an elderly viscount, is in any position to give herself airs. Especially about a man who, however mysterious he chooses to be about his upbringing, is clearly a gentleman by both breeding and nature.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Now, please can you forget all those very honourable scruples and just kiss me?’

‘I live to serve,’ Jared murmured, provoking her into parting her lips so that his mouth on hers caught her mid-retort. Then his tongue teased inside and she lost all track of what she had been about to say.

They were naked, skin to skin, feminine softness against hard male demand and she rubbed herself sinuously against the lean body, honed by disciplined exercise. Jared bent her back over his arm to kiss her breasts, his hair falling over her shoulders, another caress. He stooped, caught her up and carried her to the bed, followed her down, continued his open-mouthed exploration of her breasts until she arched up, clutching at his head, wanting him not to stop and yet wanting more. Wanting him.