Arabella closed her eyes. Heat washed through her. This was what she’d wanted in the carriage last night: his mouth on hers, his hand at the nape of her neck.
He kissed her lips, her chin, the curve of jaw and cheek, her temple. Feather-light kisses. Kisses that made her tremble at his gentleness. Then he returned to her mouth, nipping her lower lip lightly with his teeth.
Arabella opened her mouth to him.
He tasted her with his tongue, fleetingly, and then withdrew and whispered, “Kiss me,” against her lips.
Her eyelids fluttered open. St. Just drew back slightly, watching her, his eyes dark. For a moment she hesitated, and then she did as he asked, sliding a hand around his neck, pulling him closer, lifting her mouth to him, kissing him.
She learned the shape of his lips, and then his mouth opened for her and she tasted him shyly. She felt him shudder, and shuddered herself.
Time ceased to have any meaning. Their kisses grew slowly more intimate. Arabella lost all sense of where she was, sinking deeper into heat, into pleasure. When St. Just finally drew back, she opened her eyes and stared at him, dazed.
“The bed this time,” he said, and stood. He drew her to her feet and picked her up as if she weighed no more than thistledown.
“Adam!” she said, clutching him.
He carried her across the room and laid her on the bed. “Don’t be afraid,” he said. “It won’t hurt this time.”
She wanted to tell him that she wasn’t afraid, but he was kissing her again and she had no breath for speech, no thought of anything beyond St. Just’s mouth, his hands, his long body stretched alongside her on the bed.
He peeled the nightgown from her and touched her far more intimately than he had the first time, running his hands over her breasts, her belly, and then following that path with his mouth. The pleasure she felt shocked her. She was wanton, wanting. Heat and urgency built inside her until she was almost mad from it. She had never felt so alive. This was what her body was made for: to be touched like this, to want like this.
She was dimly aware that St. Just’s dressing gown was gone, that her braid was undone and her hair spread across the pillow. “Adam . . .”
He lifted his mouth from her breast and looked at her. His eyes glittered blackly in the candlelight. His face was flushed, his hair tousled, and there was a sheen of sweat on his skin. Arabella had never seen anything more beautiful. She reached out and touched his cheek. His skin was hot beneath her hand.
“Now?” he asked, his voice hoarse, and she nodded, and suddenly his weight was pressing down on her. Her hips rocked at the exquisite pleasure of it.
Adam St. Just moved, thrusting into her. Her body responded eagerly, greedily. There was no pain, only a swiftly rising sense of urgency. Time blurred, and then fragmented into a long moment of ecstasy, when the world seemed to splinter around her.
Arabella spiraled slowly down, aware of a sense of completion, as if for the first time in her life she was whole—and then abruptly St. Just was gone, and her body felt bereft.
She opened her eyes, looking for him. He was alongside her on the bed, turned away from her. She felt him shudder, heard him gasp, and reached out and touched his shoulder blade lightly. Such a strong, beautiful body. Such a strong, beautiful man. I love him.
With that thought came panic and a terrifying sense of vulnerability. Love meant grief, it meant loss.
St. Just turned. He gathered her in his arms and held her pressed to him. Arabella closed her eyes. She inhaled the scent of his skin, drank in the heat and strength of his body. This was what her mother had had, what her mother had lost: being held in someone’s arms, being safe, being loved, knowing you were precious to them.
She listened as St. Just’s heartbeat slowed.
“Bella,” he said softly.
She tensed. Don’t ask me.
“Please . . . marry me.”
There could only be one answer, even though it terrified her to utter it. “Yes,” she whispered.
St. Just pressed a kiss into her hair. “Thank you.”
Her throat closed. Tears filled her eyes. She had no defenses against this: Adam St. Just’s love, his tenderness.
I love you, she told him silently, and felt an almost overwhelming sense of panic.
THE PANIC DIDN’T fade overnight—if anything, it strengthened. Arabella picked at her breakfast, pushing the food around her plate, while Grace talked cheerfully beside her.
If Adam St. Just was afflicted by the same panic, it wasn’t apparent; he ate a hearty breakfast. His eyes, when he caught hers, held a warm smile.
She rose early from the table and walked in the cloister, hoping that the fragrance of the roses and the hum of bees, the peace, would calm her.
St. Just found her there. “Are you all right?” he asked, looking closely at her.
I’m afraid. Loving Adam St. Just was more terrifying than anything she’d done in her life.
Arabella tried to smile. “I . . . I was . . . I was thinking about how it will be in London, once people know.”
St. Just pulled a face. “That comment of mine.”
“Yes.” Their engagement would afford the ton considerable amusement.
“I’m proud to be marrying you,” St. Just said softly, holding her gaze. “But if you prefer, we won’t announce it yet.”
Arabella bit her lip. “Would you mind?”
“I want whatever makes you happy.”
The words, the warmth in his eyes, brought a feeling almost like pain to her chest, as if her heart had turned over. She felt a fresh surge of panic.
St. Just captured her hand. “Why did Tom never pay me a visit? I know I deserved it.”
Arabella looked away from those smiling gray eyes. “After Lord Crowe, I never took revenge for myself.” She shuddered.
St. Just’s grip on her hand tightened. “Crowe deserved what you did to him.”
“Perhaps.”
St. Just was silent for a moment. “Were there others who deserved it?”
“Mr.
