Suddenly You(7)

“Do you have a family?” she asked.

“None to speak of. Do you?”

Hearing the change in his tone, Amanda glanced up at him. His eyes were serious now, and his face was so austerely beautiful that the very sight of him made her chest ache with pleasure. “My parents are gone,” she told him, “but I have two older sisters, both married, and too many nephews and nieces to count.”

“Why aren’t you married?”

“Why aren’t you?” she parried.

“I like my independence too well to relinquish any part of it.”

“That’s my reason, too,” she said. “Besides, anyone acquainted with me will confirm that I’m uncompromising and obstinate.”

He smiled lazily. “You just require the proper handling.”

“Handling,” she repeated tartly. “Perhaps you’d care to explain what you mean.”

“I mean that a man who knows anything about women could have you purring like a kitten.”

Annoyance and laughter billowed together in her chest…what a rogue he was! But she would not be deceived by his facade. Although his manner was playful, there was something underneath—a quality of patient watchfulness, a sense of restrained power—that made her nerves thrill in warning. He was no callow boy, but a fully mature man. And although she was not a worldly woman, she knew from the way he looked at her that he wanted something from her, whether it was her submission, her sexual favors, or simply her money.

Holding her gaze, he reached for the gray silk cravat around his neck, tugged it loose, and unwound it slowly, as if fearing any sudden move might frighten her. While she watched with wide eyes, he undid the first three buttons of his shirt, then leaned back and studied her flushed face.

In her childhood, Amanda had occasionally glimpsed her father’s grizzled upper chest as he walked through the house in his dressing robe, and of course she had seen laborers and farming men with their shirts unbuttoned. However, she could never recall having seen anything like this, a man whose chest seemed to have been sculpted from bronze, the muscles so defined and heavy that they literally gleamed. His flesh looked hard and yet so warm, the firelight dancing over the smoothness, shadows settling in the indentations of muscle and the triangular hollow at the base of his throat.

She wanted to touch him. She wanted to put her mouth on that intriguing hollow, and draw in more of his tantalizing scent.

“Come here, Amanda.” His voice was a low scrape of sound.

“Oh, I can’t,” she said unsteadily. “I—I think you should go now.”

Jack leaned forward and caught her wrist gently in his fingers. “I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “I won’t do anything that you don’t like. But before I leave you this evening, I’m going to hold you in my arms.”

Confusion and desire swirled inside her, making her feel unanchored, helpless. She let him pull her forward until her short limbs rested stiffly against his much longer ones. He ran a large palm down her back, and she could feel a trail of sensation in its wake. His skin was hot, as if a fire burned right beneath the smooth golden surface.

Her breath shortened, and she closed her eyes, shivering, luxuriating in the feeling of being warm all the way down to her bones. For the first time in her life, she let her head fall into the waiting crook of a man’s arm, and stared up at his shadowed face.

As he felt the trembling of her limbs, he made a crooning sound and cuddled her closer. “Don’t be afraid, mhuirnin. I won’t hurt you.”

“What did you call me?” she asked in bewilderment.

He smiled down at her. “A small endearment. Did I neglect to mention that I’m half Irish?”

That explained his accent, the neat cultured tones tempered with a sort of musical softness that must be Celtic in origin. And it also explained why he had turned to Mrs. Bradshaw for employment. Often tradesmen and mercantile institutions would hire a lesser-qualified Englishman over an Irishman, preferring to give the Celts the dirtiest and most menial work.

“Do you have a distaste for the Irish?” Jack asked, staring steadily into her eyes.

“Oh, no,” she said dazedly. “I was just thinking…that must be why your hair is so black and your eyes so blue.”

“A chuisle mo chroi,” he murmured, stroking the curls back from her round face.

“What does that mean?”

“Someday I’ll tell you. Someday.” He held her for a long time until she felt steeped in his warmth, every nerve saturated and relaxed. His fingers slid to the high-buttoned neck of her brown-and-orange-striped gown, where muslin ruffles had been stitched to form a small ruff. With great care, and no particular hurry, he unfastened the first few buttons, baring her soft, cool throat. Amanda couldn’t seem to control the rhythm of her lungs as they surged in unsteady expansions, her br**sts rising repeatedly. Jack’s dark head moved over her, and she made an inarticulate sound as she felt his mouth press against her throat, lips gently searching.

“You taste so sweet.” The whispered words sent a shiver down her spine. Somehow, whenever she had imagined this intimacy with a man, she had thought of darkness and urgency and groping. She had not expected firelight and heat and this patient courting of her body. Jack’s lips wandered in a velvet path from her throat to the sensitive opening of her ear, played lightly, and then Amanda jerked in surprise as she felt the tip of his tongue stroke along a tiny inner crevice.