Confessions of a Royal Bridegroom(120)

She gaped at him. “You want to make love to me in a tack room?”

The disbelief in her voice drew him up short, his hands halfway down the front of her bodice. When he glanced around the room, the reality of the situation finally sank in. Bridles, saddles, and tack hung from the wall, along with various farrier and shoeing implements. The place was well-swept, tidy and, given the dreariness of the winter day, almost cozy, retaining warmth from the banked coals in the small stove in the corner of the room. The cot itself looked clean and perfectly comfortable.

But they were in a stable, for Christ’s sake. What was he thinking? Only a brute would take his wife under these circumstances, treating her with no more respect than a bloody schoolboy would treat a kitchen maid.

Or like his father had treated his mother.

Self-disgust snaked through his gut. He drew his hand from her bodice, clenching it into a fist.

“Forgive me, Justine,” he said, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice. “I’m obviously forgetting my manners. Not that I ever had many in the first place, as you’re aware.”

She gazed up at him, her brow slightly wrinkled. The air settled thickly around them, invested with the kind of tension that seemed to hint of a momentous decision. Over the pounding of the rain on the tiled roof, he heard Justine’s steady, calm breath and realized he’d been holding his.

As he forced himself to exhale, her lips trembled into a mischievous smile, one so innocently seductive that it made the hairs stand up on the nape of his neck.

“I suppose we could go back to the house,” she said, putting a finger thoughtfully to her chin. “But I’m sure you’re right. Someone is bound to interrupt us there, which would be very annoying. Besides . . .”

When she trailed off, Griffin had to repress the mad urge to growl. As much as he wanted to push her down onto the cot and toss up her skirts, claiming her in the most primitive way, he wanted—no, he needed—Justine to be sure. It suddenly seemed essential that she choose this path of her own free will, knowing there would be no going back. Both his mind and his body rejected the idea of seducing her into submission.

“Besides?” he prompted, almost wincing at his eagerness.

She gave a charming little shrug, as if yielding to fate. “It’s simply pouring out. We don’t want to get soaked running back to the house, do we?”

Griffin finally loosed the predator inside him as he reached for her. “No, my sweet. We certainly do not.”





CHAPTER Nineteen



As Griffin captured her in his arms—and capture described it perfectly—Justine’s legs began to tremble. In fact, her entire body shook from a combination of longing, anxiety, and excitement.

The trembling had started deep inside when she first heard his step on the stable floor and had then seen him strolling toward her, looking as if he were on a leisurely walk about the grounds in the pouring rain. But the predatory gleam in his eyes had told her better than words why he had searched her out, and that had been a considerable surprise.

God help her, she welcomed his desire, too, on some level that defied every shred of sense she’d ever possessed. But her body had a logic all its own, and no contrary argument she posed in her mind had the power to refute it.

As for her heart, she rather thought it best not to examine it too closely for fear it was even more foolish than her body.

Griffin’s voice was as smooth and dark as polished obsidian. Murmuring in her ear, he told her how beautiful she was as he lowered her to the cot. When he knelt beside her and went to work once more on her bodice, Justine had a sudden, infuriating attack of shyness. She put her arms around his neck and clung to him, trapping his hands between their bodies. She hid her face against his shoulder, taking in the clean scent of rain on his coat and in his hair and silently berating herself for acting like a totty-headed maiden of seventeen.