The Stranger I Married

As was happening more often, the sudden flare of possessiveness the sight of him aroused was painful and piercing. He was a man any woman would beg to claim as her own private property, but she, the only woman who had the right to do so, could not. Would not.

He had removed his clothes and now wore only a thick silk robe. Before she could stop herself, Isabel touched his shoulder and watched the blue of his eyes turn to icy fire. A touch, a smile, a lick of her lips-all could stoke his ardor in the space of one breath.

“I’m weary,” she warned.

“You start it, Pel. Every damn time.” As he stood, he pulled her up with him and then held a towel out for her.

“I do not!”

As he wrapped her, he kissed the tender spot where her shoulder met her throat-a gentle press of his lips to her flesh, not the heated open-mouthed kisses she had grown used to. “Yes, you do. On purpose. You want me panting for you.”

“Your ‘panting’ is inconvenient.”

“I have come to realize you like it inconvenient. You like me hard and aching for you in public, and in private. You like me mindless with lust until I would fuck you anywhere, in front of anyone, at any time.”

She snorted, but shivered at his tone and the feel of his breath gusting across her damp skin.

Was it true? Was her aim to provoke him?

“You are always mindless with lust, Gray. You always have been.”

“No. Lustful, yes. Mindless with it, never. Sometimes, I actually think I could take you in public, Isabel, the craving is so provoking. Deny me now, and I may bend you over the dinner table and provide the evening’s entertainment.” He nibbled her earlobe.

She laughed. “There is no hope for you. You are a beast.”

He growled playfully and nuzzled against her. “You know how to tame me.”

“Do I?” Turning in his arms, she faced him with a smile and brushed one fingertip across the bare skin revealed by the part in his dressing robe.

“Yes. You do.” Gray caught her hand and thrust it lower, between the parting of his robe at his thighs so that she felt how hard he was.

“It is nearly ridiculous how quickly you rouse,” she chastised with a shake of her head.

And he was so base about it, so blatant. Yes, she was seduced by him, but he was not a seducer. Perhaps his outrageous handsomeness had made the need for coaxing unnecessary. Or perhaps it was the size of the cock that throbbed against her palm. That would accomplish the task for him nicely.

He flexed inside her clasp and smiled with wicked arrogance.

She smiled back, admitting to herself that she quite liked primitive. No games, no insincerity, no guessing.

“You don’t feel tamed.” She moved in a way that caused the towel about her to puddle on the floor. Stroking the heated length of his shaft, she licked her lips.

“Witch.” He stepped forward, pushing her back, catching her hips when she stumbled in surprise. “You enslave me with sex.”

“Not true.” He rarely allowed her the lead, preferring to remain in control.

“I came in here with the express purpose of taking a nap. You instigated everything I must now do to you to slake my craving enough to catch some sleep.”

The backs of her thighs hit the high bed, and he lifted and tossed her upon the turned-down mattress. Then he shed his robe and crawled over her.

Staring up at him, she found herself smitten with his smile, with the gleam in his eyes, with the dark silky hair that fell over his brow. How different he was from the brooding, gloomy man who had stood in her drawing room so recently. Had she wrought this change? Did she hold that much sway over him?

Her eyes drifted lower.

“That look,” he said dryly, “is the reason we spend so much time in this position.”

“What look?” Isabel batted her lashes mischievously, enjoying the renewed teasing banter she’d missed. There always seemed to be so much tension between them. Its absence was a pleasure.

Gray dipped his head and licked the tip of her nose, then pressed his mouth to hers. “It says, Fuck me, Gerard. Spread my thighs, mount me, make me hoarse and limp from pleasure.”

“Good heavens,” she purred. “It’s a wonder I manage a word in edgewise with such chatty eyes.”

“Hmmm…” His voice lowered to the tone she recognized as the immediate herald to troublemaking. “I certainly cannot manage speech when you look at me like that. Drives me insane.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t look at me, then,” she suggested, her hands coming up to stroke his lean hips.

“You would never allow me to ignore you, Pel. You foster my infatuation at every turn.”

Infatuation. She shivered. Could he care for her? Did she want him to? “Why would I do such a thing?”

“Because you don’t want my attention to wander.” He kissed her before she could digest what he said.

Isabel lay still, her mouth ravished by a kiss that curled her toes, Gray’s tongue licking across hers, gliding under it, drinking from her as if she were some delicacy. All the while in her mind, she considered what he had said. Was she attempting to bind him to her with sexual extortion?

When Gray lifted his head, his breathing was as disturbed as hers. “You do not afford me even half a moment to think of another woman.” His eyelids lowered, shuttering his thoughts. “You take me to your bed at every opportunity. You exhaust me-”

“Ha. Your appetite is inexhaustible.” But the rejoinder that was meant to be dismissing, was instead shaky and inflected with a question. Had she gone from wanting him to stray, to wanting to keep him all to herself?

In one graceful, fluid movement, he rolled and brought her over him. “I require as much sleep as any other human.” He pressed his fingers over her mouth to silence a coming protest. “I am not so young as to forgo sleep altogether, so discard any attempt to use that excuse again. You are not too old for me. I am not too young for you.”

Catching his wrist, she tugged his hand away. “You could always sleep apart from me.”

“Don’t be daft. You mistake my observation for a complaint, which it is not.” Gray stroked the curve of her spine, applying pressure so that her breasts connected more fully to his chest. “Perhaps once or twice it has crossed my mind that I should manage my cock, instead of allowing it to lead me. But then I remember the feel of your cunt in orgasm, the way it clutches me, the way you arch up and cry out my name. And I tell my brain to cease prattling and leave me alone.”

Dropping her forehead to his chest, Isabel laughed.

He tucked her into his side. “If you require a physical display of my affections at this moment, I am more than prepared to oblige you. We can’t have you worried about waning interest and all that. Whatever you need, Pel, to make it possible to believe in me, I will do it. I suppose I should have stated that bluntly earlier so there would be no doubt. I am not Pelham.”

The look in his eyes was fond, with banked lust-the look of a man who was just as content to hold her as he was to ride her.

Her throat tightened, her eyes stung.

“Where did you find these sudden insights into my behavior?” she asked softly. The Grayson she’d married had never looked far enough beyond himself to see such things.

“I told you, you have my undivided attention.” His fingers plunged into her hair, loosening and then pulling out the pins that held it up, before tossing them to the floor. “There is no other person I would wish to be with more than you, female or otherwise. You make me laugh, you always have. You never allow me to become too full of myself. You see all of my faults and find most of them charming. I’ve no need of any other companions. In fact, you and I will remain in our rooms this evening.”

“Now who’s daft? Everyone will think we are up here having sex if we skip dinner.”

“And they will not be wrong,” he murmured, his lips to her forehead. “We are honeymooners, they should expect nothing less from us.”

Honeymoon. Just that one word brought back the dreams she’d once had of a passionate, monogamous marriage. How hopeful she had been then. How naive. She should be too old to