have. Once the mission is over, assuming I survive, I’ll be coming back here. To claim you.”
He saw her lips tighten, saw not refusal of the prospect but refusal to believe cloud her eyes. His own lips thinned. “I can see that for some reason-which I don’t comprehend-you don’t believe I’ll return. But one thing I can and I will swear to you: If once this mission is over I still have a life worth sharing, I’ll be coming back here to lay it at your feet.”
She blinked once, twice. She studied his eyes, then an unusually gentle smile curved her lips. Raising a hand, she laid it along his cheek, but the disbelief didn’t leave her eyes. “I value your words-don’t think I don’t. But I’ve been me, myself, for too long not to face reality, and my reality is that no matter what you say, in the end, you won’t be back.”
He opened his mouth-
Placing her fingers over his lips, Linnet silenced him. Stopped him from saying anything more to wring her heart even more than he already had. She spoke as strongly, as decisively, as she could. “No-this is our last night together here, and I don’t want to waste it arguing.”
Lowering her gaze to his lips, she drew her hand away, then boldly raised her eyes again to his. “I want to spend tonight loving you. I want you to lie back and let me.”
One hand on his shoulder, she pushed.
Openly exasperated, he held her gaze for an instant longer, then sighed through gritted teeth and rolled back to lie as he had before.
Letting her come up on her elbow and hip alongside.
His dark eyes glittered as he crossed his arms behind his head. “So what now?”
She looked down over his large body, over the expanse of delectable male flesh, solid muscle, heavy bone, taut skin. Crisp, crinkly, black-as-night hair scattered across his chest, arrowing down to his groin. Where he was still fully erect.
She smiled, raised her gaze to his eyes. “Now you lie there, and let me feast.”
He obeyed. She had to give him that. Even when she pressed him to the very brink of breaking, he fought to remain supine and let her have her way.
Let her caress him, first with her hands, spreading them wide to sweep over his shoulders, over the bunched muscles of his upper arms, then down over the contours of his chest, lovingly outlining the broad swath before heading lower, over the rippling strength of his abdomen, over the concave hollow of his waist, over his flat belly to the rock-hard mucles of his cavalry officer’s thighs, the solid length of his calves, and his large feet, before returning, sweeping up his body again to take his member between her hands and caress, fondle, stroke.
Examine, weigh, assess.
She continued to touch him there, where he was most sensitive, where he most liked to be touched, while she rose up over his chest, found his lips with hers, and kissed, long, lingeringly, as openly possessive as he was with her, before drawing back and sending her lips to trace the path her hands had already forged.
Outside, the storm that had been threatening all day finally rushed in. It rattled the windows, lashed at the house, pelted rain in drumming fury on the glass. She heard it, but distantly, too wrapped in the warmth, in the pleasure as, finally, she rose up on her knees and straddled him, and, with his help, his direction, took him in.
Her head fell back on a gasp at the sensation of him filling her. Excitement skated over her skin as she realized that this time, all-everything she felt-was under her control.
That this time he’d ceded the reins to her and was letting her drive them both.
Her breath tight in her chest, she opened her eyes and looked down at him. His face showed the strain-the battle he waged not to seize control-as, his hands clamped about her hips, he urged her up, showed her how.
How to ride him.
How to pleasure him and please herself.
“Your chemise-take it off.”
The guttural words cut across her concentration, her inward focus on all she could feel. She considered them. Eyes closed, she rose up, sank down, down, down again, then reached for the chemise’s hem.
Opening her eyes, she drew it off over her head, flung it away.
Smiled down at him as she used her thighs and rose up yet again.
Closed her eyes as she slid down.
Felt his hands caress, then claim, her breasts, felt his long fingers close about her nipples.
She rode and he paid homage. There was no other word for the way his hands moved over her body, reverent and sure.
Too soon, she was panting, flushed and heated, her hair a mane of living fire writhing about her shoulders, lashing her sensitized skin, sending sensation lancing through her, flashing down to where the exquisite friction built and built between her thighs.
Eyes open yet near blind, she rode on in increasing desperation, searching, wanting. The peak was so close, but not yet within her reach.
Beneath her, he shifted, then drove upward into her, timing his thrusts to her downward slides so she felt him higher than before, sparking a furnace deep inside.
One hard hand captured one of her breasts, gripped and framed the swollen flesh. She glanced down, through her lashes saw him prop himself on one elbow and bring his mouth to her breast.
He licked, laved, then he took the ruched aureola and nipple into the hot wetness of his mouth. The sensation of scalding heat closing about the excruciatingly tight peak had her gasping.
Then he suckled and she screamed.
He suckled harder and she shattered. Flew apart in a long agony of bliss that went on and on and on. His mouth feasting at her breast, his hips pumping beneath her, he drove her through it, through the raging fire, over the precipice, and into ecstasy’s waiting arms.
She was barely aware when he gripped her hips, held her down as he thrust high and hard one last time. He held rigid for a fractured instant. Then on a long-drawn groan, he collapsed back on the pillows.
Boneless, she sprawled atop him.
Logan lay there, his heart thundering, feeling her heart beating against his chest. Waited for both to slow.
Eventually, he raised a hand, brushed back the rich fall of her hair enough to tilt his head and look down at her face. “I meant what I said. You can’t seriously imagine I won’t be back for you.”
She stirred, but didn’t seem able-didn’t seem to have the strength-to lift her head to look at him. “No matter what you say, once you get back to your normal life…” Weakly, she waved. “You’ll fit in there, and you’ll realize that’s where you belong.” She paused, then went on, “What can I offer you that you won’t have-and have in greater abundance-there?”
He knew the answers-the many answers. A ready-made family, the home of his dreams. A place he belonged. Her. Those many answers burned his tongue, yet he didn’t give them voice. Other than she herself, he couldn’t make a strong case for any of those things meaning as much as they did to him without revealing his birth-his bastard state.
And that he wasn’t yet ready to mention. He would, would have to, but not yet-not until he had set the stage.
Telling the lady you wanted to marry that you’d been born a bastard, albeit a well-born bastard, was something that needed to be handled with care.
Linnet wasn’t surprised by his silence-what answer could he give? She wasn’t the sort to undervalue herself, but in this she was simply stating fact and clinging to reality by her fingernails.
In order to protect her silly, foolish heart.
She couldn’t afford to believe his almost-promises.
Because her silly, foolish heart had already commited that most wayward of acts and fallen in love with him.
But he didn’t love her; he might desire her physically, but she wasn’t wife material, as he would realize once he returned to England. And he would soon be on his way, and that would be the end of this. Of them.
He shifted, reaching for the covers, dragging the sheets and quilts over them, then settling her more comfortably on him. She sensed an instant of hesitation, then he murmured, “No matter what I say, you’re not going to believe I’ll come back, are you?”
“No.” Spreading one hand over the spot beneath which his heart beat strongly, she pillowed her cheek on the
