Burning Up

“I want to see you.” Her voice was a Siren’s voice, lilting, irresistible. She reached him with her hands and with her words, her fingers circling, squeezing, moving higher. Her knuckles brushed his sac. “Let me see you.”

He had never been a vain man. Or a coward. She deserved to see, to know who she lay with. That didn’t stop his mouth from drying as he dragged his shirt over his head. He knelt over her on the bed, braced for her rejection, dreading her pity.

He did not close his eyes.

Neither did she. In the warm light that spilled from the windows, in the clean air that blew from the sea, she studied the damage to his body.

He had been lucky. The Ninety-Fifth had been caught in the breach, trapped between trenches laid with pikes and sword blades and the two big guns filled with canister shot. He had been fighting his way to the guns when the French fired the mines beneath the slope. The earth had vomited rocks and flame. The sky rained dirt and body parts. His world had exploded in death, in darkness and in pain.

But he had survived.

With one finger, she traced the jagged gouge high on his arm. She brushed the red pucker at his hip. She laid her palm against the twisted mass of purple scars where the surgeon had probed for shrapnel.

“This is what you men do to each other in war,” she said.

He could not read her tone.

“Sometimes,” he said stiffly. He fought an absurd inclination to apologize. For his gender? His profession?

She met his gaze, her eyes like tarnished gold. “You do not wish to talk about it.”

He had left his shirt on to shield himself as much as to protect her. He did not want to go down into the pit again, into the pain, into the bloody surgeon’s tent and the long, agonizing time before and after. “A gentleman does not discuss such subjects with ladies.”

He sounded like a prig.

“Even a lady he is naked and in bed with?”

“Especially not a lady he is in bed with,” Jack said firmly.

He did not want to bring those memories here, into this room, into this moment. He didn’t want that ugliness to touch her.

Yet she continued to touch him, her fingers at once soothing and inflaming. She rubbed small circles against his chest, scraped her nails gently across his abdomen. His cock swelled, hard and eager, shameless at her approach. Her hands wandered over his torso, laying claim to him, to all of him, making no distinction between his damaged flesh and the rest.

He swallowed against the constriction in his throat. “You don’t have to touch them.”

Touch me, he thought.

Her smooth shoulders shrugged against the pillows. “Why not? Your scars are part of you. As my feet are part of me. Not the most interesting part,” she added. Her teasing look set him on fire. She circled his erection with both hands, cupping him lightly. He gritted his teeth against the exquisite pleasure of it. “I am sorry you were hurt. But if we want each other, we must accept each other as we are, with all our scars and all our parts.”

He wanted her. He ached for her, with his body and in his soul. He craved her joy, her acceptance, her unabashed appreciation of life.

“I want you,” he said, his voice as raw as his need.

She smiled up at him. “Now.”

Forever, he thought.

He lowered himself to her. They came together in comfort and in lust, her arms lifting around him, her hands sliding down his scarred back to grip his buttocks. Her legs twined with his. Holding him. Touching him. She felt so good, soft, warm, wet. He made a sound deep in his throat and thrust. She surged to meet him. And despite their differences, or because of them, all the parts fit. As if he had found the other piece of himself, the missing half that made him whole. His mind blurred as they moved together, two bodies with one rhythm. One flesh. His breath shortened. His heart raced. Her body rose and strained beneath his, matching him thrust for thrust. He plunged and withdrew, plunged and held himself still inside her until he felt her tense and go lax around him, softening at her climax. He pressed harder, deeper. The tremors that took her shook them both.

She held him, held him close, as he turned his face into her hair and emptied himself.

Slowly, Jack returned to his senses. His knee throbbed like a sore tooth. His thigh ached with strain. He was exhausted and sweaty . . . and more content than he could remember ever being in his life.

He turned his head on the pillow. Morwenna lay half under him, her face perfect in the golden light, smooth and rounded, luminous as a pearl. She smelled like sex. Like sex and the sea.

Webbed toes, his brain reminded him, but he silenced thought and listened to his heart instead.

She was all beautiful. Beautiful and his. Every part of her was his.

He threaded his fingers through her hair, combing the white gold strands from her brow. “Morwenna.”

Her lips curved. “Major.”

Silent laughter swelled his chest. “Under the circumstances,” he said gravely, “I believe you might call me Jack.”

She opened wide golden eyes. “Jack?”

“Or John, if you prefer.”

“Jack,” she repeated. “I like it.”

Tenderness raked his heart. He kissed her again, a long, slow, openmouthed kiss that stirred him all over again.

He cleared his throat. “Your brother was right, you know.”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon.”

“It isn’t wise for you to live alone here. It isn’t . . .” Proper. “Safe,” he concluded.

His weight still pinned her to the mattress. But already he could feel her withdrawing, regrouping, pulling away from him. “It isn’t your concern.”

“I am concerned,” he said honestly. “You obviously haven’t been responsible for managing your own household before. You need help. Protection.”

Her quick frown gave her mouth a sulky look. “I told you once I will not live with you.”

“Not with me.” That would cause even more talk than her living alone. “Your brother is in the area, you said. You can stay with him.”

“No.”

“I will escort you.”

“I am not one of your soldiers. You cannot command my obedience.”

“I would call on him in any case.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You wish to meet my brother.”

“It is customary,” Jack said carefully. “When a couple is . . .”

What? he wondered. Courting?

Could he seriously be considering making her an offer? An unknown woman of dubious background living alone on the edges of his estate?

Yes, his heart insisted.

“Getting to know one another,” he said.

She wiggled under him, making him acutely aware of her naked body. “We already got to know each other. Twice.”

He smiled. “Which makes my introduction to your family the next—the only—appropriate course of action.”

“My brother would not agree with you.”

“Then give me the opportunity to change his mind. Let me ask his permission to court you.”

There. He had said it. Certainty settled into his bones and lightened his chest.

“That is not necessary,” she said.