Suddenly You(10)

“Amanda,” he whispered, mistaking the reason for her unshed tears. “I’ll make you feel better…be still for me…let me…”

His hand searched beneath her skirts until he found the tapes of her drawers, his fingers working expertly to untie them. Her head whirled, and she lay still and trembling while her arms remained wrapped around his shoulders. He touched the soft skin of her stomach, thumb brushing lightly over her navel, and then his fingers slid downward to the place where she had never imagined being touched, where she tried never to touch herself. His hand smoothed over the patch of crisp curls, and then his fingertips searched carefully, making her h*ps jerk and twitch.

His Irish accent was thicker, heavier than before. “Is this where it aches, mhuirnin?”

She gasped against his throat. His fingertips teased and rubbed, finding the most exquisitely sensitive place of all, a tiny peak of flesh that quivered to life at his touch. Heat blossomed in her loins, br**sts, head. She was a willing prisoner to his gentle manipulations, all her skin flushed and prickling from her scalp to her toes. One finger pressed and intruded until it slid inside her, the small penetration burning slightly as her body clasped him with a jolt of innocent reluctance. Her head fell back, and she looked up dizzily at his face. His eyes were a color she had never seen before, except perhaps in dreams…bright, pure blue, filled with a sexual knowledge that stunned her. His finger flexed inside her while his thumb nudged the burgeoning little point of pleasure, and he repeated the maddening stroking until she arched upward with a shaken cry, unraveling, her volatile senses finally catching fire.

She rode on a lingering swell of feeling, drifting through the warmth, until Jack finally pulled away with a muted groan and sat up, his face turned away from her. The withdrawal of his hands and mouth, the absence of his touch, were almost painful, and Amanda felt her entire body yearning for him. She realized that the release he had given her was not something he intended to allow himself. Tentatively she reached for him, her hand settling on his trouser-clad thigh as she tried to communicate her desire to give him the same pleasure she had just experienced. Still not looking at her, he took her hand from his leg and brought it to his mouth, turning her palm upward to receive his kiss.

“Amanda,” he said gruffly, “I don’t trust myself with you any longer. I have to leave while I’m still able.”

Amanda was stunned by the dream-swept, faraway sound of her own voice when she replied. “Stay with me. Stay all night.”

Jack threw her a wry glance, and she saw the flush that lingered on his cheekbones. Continuing to cradle her hand, he stroked his thumbs over her palm as if rubbing in the kiss he had placed there. “I can’t.”

“Is it…do you have another…engagement?” she asked tentatively, while a horrible feeling swept through her at the thought of him going from her arms to another woman’s.

He laughed shortly. “Good God, no. It’s just—” He broke off and gave her a moody, contemplative glance. “You’ll understand soon.” Bending over her, he brushed kisses on her chin, her cheek, her closed eyelids.

“I—I won’t send for you again,” she said uneasily while he reached for a nearby lap blanket and draped it over her.

Amusement curled richly in his voice. “Yes, I know.”

She kept her eyes closed, listening to the rustling of clothing as he dressed himself before the fire. Floating on currents of shame and pleasure, she tried to consider all that had happened to her this evening.

“Good-bye, Amanda,” he murmured, and then he was gone, leaving her disheveled and half dressed in the firelight. She kept the soft cashmere blanket over her bare shoulders, her hair coiling over her body and the arm of the settee.

Senseless ideas occurred to her…she wanted to visit Gemma Bradshaw and ask questions about the man she had sent. She longed to know more about Jack. But what purpose would that serve? He occupied a different world from hers: a sordid, secretive world. There was no possibility of a friendship with him, and although he had not taken money from her this time, he certainly would the next. Oh, she had not expected to feel this way, so guilty and yearning, her body still throbbing with delight, her skin tingling as if silk veils were being stroked over her. She thought of his finger reaching inside her, his mouth teasing her breast, and she pulled the blanket over her face with a mortified groan.

Tomorrow she would carry on with the rest of her life, just as she had vowed. But the rest of the night she would let herself drift in fantasies of the man who, already, was becoming more of a dream-figure than a real being.

“Happy birthday,” she whispered to herself.

Chapter 3

After the death of Amanda’s father, the decision to move to London had not been difficult. She could easily have stayed in Windsor. It was only about twenty-five miles from town and also harbored a few notable publishers. She had always lived in Windsor, and both her older sisters’ families were located nearby, and the small but comfortable Briars House had been left to her in her father’s will.

After her father’s funeral, however, Amanda had sold the place promptly, drawing howls of protest from her sisters, Helen and Sophia. They had all been born in that house, the sisters told her angrily, and she had no right to sell a vital part of the family history.

Amanda had received the criticism with outward patience, but she had concealed a grim smile as she reflected that she had earned the right to do as she liked with the place. Perhaps Helen and Sophia still cherished a fondness for the house, but for five years it had been a prison to her. Her sisters had married and moved into homes of their own, while Amanda had remained with her parents and nursed each through their last illnesses. It had taken her mother three years to die of consumption, a slow and messy and singularly unpleasant process. And afterward came her father’s long decline, fueled by various complaints that had led him to waste away to nothing.