Simply Unforgettable

He had lowered his head to nuzzle the hollow between her neck and her shoulder. His hands were cupping her breasts through the wool of her dress beneath her shawl, molding them, making them tender with need.

When he lifted his head, his hair looked slightly rumpled, his hazel eyes heavy with passion.

“I want you,” he said against her lips. “I want you in bed. I want to get inside these clothes.”

She was not so far gone into mindlessness that such plain speaking did not jolt her. It was the moment of ultimate decision. She knew that. He would not force her—she knew that too. There were all sorts of dangers and moral concerns to discourage her from proceeding. And he was, when all was said and done, little more than a stranger. She knew almost nothing about him. She would be sure to regret giving in to a temptation that she had been fighting valiantly since last evening.

But she knew too in the few seconds that elapsed before she answered him that she would also and always regret not being bold enough to carry her adventure to its ultimate conclusion. She could spend this one night with Lucius Marshall if she chose. Or she could spend the night virtuously tossing and turning in her own solitary bed and forever regret that she had said no.

Besides, saying no now would make her into a tease. She had come too far—much too far—to pretend that she thought they had been indulging in a mere kiss.

“Yes,” she said, hearing the throaty catch in her voice as if it were someone else’s. “It is what I want too.”

It was a relief to have spoken the words, to have owned her own desire, her own freedom of choice.

Her own madness.

He drew her close again and parted his lips over hers.

“It will be good,” he promised. “This will be a night to remember, Frances.”

She did not doubt it for one moment.

They did not take a candle with them when they went to her room. But Wally must have taken the rare initiative of starting a fire in there unbidden. It burned warmly in the grate, and light from it flickered over the walls and ceiling—and over the bed. But it was only when they stepped inside the room and he shut the door behind them that he realized how very chilly the Assembly Room must have been.

She turned to face him, her very dark eyes heavy with desire, her teeth sinking into her lower lip. She lifted her arms to wrap about his neck, and he set his arms beneath hers and reached up to tackle the prim schoolteacher’s knot at the back of her head. He dipped his head to touch his lips lightly to hers. She released her lower lip and thrust both softly, and parted, against his own.

This was not seduction, he told himself, or even half seduction. She was very willing. And it was not cynical amusement he was taking with a willing partner to while away an idle night. He burned for her, though, if he had been forced to put into words the powerful attraction he felt toward her, he would have been hard-pressed. He did not normally favor either dark women or tall women. He admired small women with blond curls. And he liked them well rounded and softly feminine. He liked English rose complexions. Frances Allard was none of those things.

But he burned for her as he had rarely burned for any other woman before her.

His fingers deftly removed hairpins, and her hair came cascading down over her shoulders, heavy and sleekly gleaming in the firelight and almost waist length. It framed her narrow face, and made her look like a Renaissance madonna. At that moment he could not imagine any woman more beautiful, more desirable. He ran his fingers through her hair, wrapping them in it in order to cup the back of her head and keep her face tilted toward his.

“It is glorious,” he said. “And yet you keep it so ruthlessly confined. It is a crime against mankind.”

“I am a schoolteacher,” she said, feathering light kisses along his jaw to his chin.

“Not tonight,” he told her, dipping his head to take her mouth with his again. “Tonight you are my woman.” He sucked her full lower lip into his mouth.

She drew back her head and gazed into his eyes, her own heavy-lidded now with desire.

“And tonight,” she said, “you are my man.”

Well. He felt himself harden into arousal.

“Yes, tonight,” he said, kissing her eyes closed, kissing her lips again, kissing the hollow at the base of her throat. “For tonight, Frances.”

He took hold of her shawl and tossed it aside before opening her dress down the back. He felt her shiver against him as her fingers twined tightly in his hair, though he knew it was not with cold.

He slid first one hand inside the soft wool of her dress, and then the other. Her flesh was warm and smooth, with the slight stickiness of desire. He drew the garment off her shoulders and down her arms until of its own momentum it fell to the floor. She wore a chemise beneath but no stays—an explanation, perhaps, for the fact that he had thought her small-bosomed until he had cupped her breasts in his hands in the Assembly Room. They were not voluptuous, but they were enticingly feminine for all that. He held her a little away from him and looked down at her.

She was long-limbed, slender, beautifully shaped. With her thick, very dark hair about her, she looked younger.

He drew a slow breath.

“Sit down on the bed,” he said, turning to it and drawing back the covers.

He set his hands on her bare shoulders as she did so, and bent his head to kiss one shoulder in the hollow where it met her neck. She smelled enticingly of soap and woman.

He went down on one knee before her and lifted one of her feet onto his raised knee before rolling the stocking down her leg and off her foot. He leaned forward and kissed the inside of her knee and trailed kisses down her shapely calf to her heel and her instep.