Suddenly You(8)

“Jack,” she whispered. “You don’t have to play the lover for me. Truly…you are kind to pretend that I’m desirable, and you—”

She felt him smile against her ear. “You are an innocent, mhuirnin, if you think that a man’s body reacts this way out of kindness.”

As he spoke, Amanda became aware of an intimate pressure against her hip, and she immediately went still. Her face burned crimson, and thoughts flurried through her head like snowflakes in a wind-ravaged sky. She was mortified…and extremely curious. With her legs entangled in his, and her skirts riding to her knees, she could feel the powerful length of his thighs and the hard shape of his erection. She had never been held against a man’s aroused body before.

“This is your chance, Amanda,” he murmured. “I’m yours to do with as you like.”

“I don’t know what to do,” she said unsteadily. “That’s why I hired you.”

He laughed and kissed the exposed part of her throat, where her pulse thrummed in a frantic rhythm. The situation seemed fantastical to her, so completely outside of all her experiences, that she felt as if she were someone other than Amanda Briars. The spinster with her quills and paper and ink-stained fingers, and old-maid’s caps and foot-warming jars, had been replaced by someone who was soft…vulnerable…able to desire and be desired.

She realized then that she had always been a little afraid of men. Some women understood the opposite sex so easily, and yet this understanding had always eluded her. All she knew was that even in the bloom of her youth, men had never teased and flirted with her. They had talked to her about serious subjects and had treated her with respect and propriety, never suspecting that she might have liked them to make an improper advance or two.

And now here was this resplendent man, unquestionably a scoundrel, who seemed more than interested in the prospect of getting under her skirts. Why shouldn’t she allow him to kiss and caress her? What good did her virtue do her? Virtue was a cold bedfellow; she knew that better than anyone.

Bravely she caught at the open edges of his shirt and urged his head down to hers. He complied at once, his mouth brushing softly over hers. She felt a shock of warmth, a rush of pleasure that paralyzed her. His weight settled on her a bit more heavily; his mouth teased and pressed harder until her lips parted. His tongue stroked inside her mouth, and she would have recoiled from the strangeness of it had her head not been wedged so securely in the crook of his arm. Sensation flared in the pit of her stomach and in areas of her body that she couldn’t even name. She waited for him to taste her again…oh, the way he explored her mouth was odd and intimate and exciting, and she couldn’t seem to prevent the small moan that rose in her throat. Her body relaxed slowly, and her hands came up to his head, stroking the coarse black silk of his hair, the cropped locks that tapered to a point at the nape of his neck.

“Unbutton my shirt,” Jack murmured. He continued to kiss her while she fumbled with the buttons of his waistcoat and the placket of his linen shirt. The thin fabric was warm and scented from his body, crumpled from where it had been tucked inside his trousers. The skin of his torso was smooth and golden, rows of hard silken muscles contracting at her timid touch. His body radiated heat, luring her like a cat to a patch of sunlight.

“Jack,” she said breathlessly, her hands creeping beneath his shirt to the long plane of his back, “I wish to go no further than this…I…this is quite enough of a birthday present for me.”

He chuckled and nuzzled the side of her throat. “All right.”

She huddled against his bare chest, greedily absorbing the heat and scent of him. “Oh, this is dreadful.”

“Why dreadful?” he asked, smoothing and playing with her curls, his thumb venturing to her temple and grazing the fragile spot.

“Because sometimes it’s better not to know what one is missing.”

“Sweet,” he whispered, and stole a kiss from her lips. “Sweet…let me stay with you a little longer.”

Before she could answer, he kissed her more deeply than before, his large hands gently gripping her head through the mass of curls that spread everywhere. She strained upward toward his mouth and body, unable to stop herself from pressing as close as possible. A deep physical agitation, like nothing she had ever felt, welled inside her, and she arched against him in an effort to soothe it. He was strong, big-boned, able to overpower her so easily if he chose, and yet he was astonishingly gentle. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she wondered why she did not fear him as she should. She had been taught since childhood that men were not to be trusted, that they were dangerous creatures who could not control their own passions. Yet she felt safe with this man. She put her hand on his chest, where his shirt gaped open, and the strong, fast beat of his heart resounded against her palm.

He took his mouth from hers and stared down at her with eyes so dark they no longer looked blue. “Amanda, do you trust me?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I don’t know the first thing about you.”

Laughter rustled from his chest. “Sensible woman.” His fingers worked at the buttons of her bodice, deftly freeing the bits of carved ivory from their moorings.

Amanda closed her eyes, while her heartbeat became at once light and violent, like the thrashing of a panicked bird’s wings. I’ll never see him again after tonight, she told herself. She would let herself do these forbidden things with him, and forever afterward keep the memory in some private corner of her mind. A memory for herself alone. When she was an old woman, long accustomed to the years of solitude, she would still have the knowledge that she had once spent an evening with a handsome stranger.