Page 27

For a long moment he held her, pressing his face against her stomach, breathing in the scent of her through the cotton nightgown.

He felt her fingers in his hair, caressing him, andhe carried her to the bed and laid her down on the sweet-smelling sheets.

Her hair spread out over the pillow, a tangle of twisted darkness, like the feelings seething inside him.

He kissed her then, a gossamer touching of lips at first, barely a taste—she was an innocent, he had to remember to go slowly—but she made a little humming noise deep in her throat, twined her arms around his neck, and drew him closer.

Heat surged through him. He speared his fingers through the glorious mass of her hair and ravished her mouth with slow, soft kisses, while she returned kiss for kiss, enthusiastic little baby bird pecks.

The sweet clumsiness of those kisses forced a bridle on his rampant desire. No virgin, his bride, but an innocent nonetheless. She knew nothing about lovemaking.

He teased her lips apart, and as their tongues tangled, she grabbed his shoulders and shivered against him. He deepened the kiss. The taste of her flickered like flame along his veins.

She returned caress for caress, an eager, giving pupil.

He sucked on her full lower lip, and she writhed and clutched his arms with urgent fingers.

Her nipples, under the cotton fabric, were hard little points.

He brushed lightly across them, and she arched and made a sound deep in her throat.

He brushed again, and again, rubbing his knuckles over them, and she shuddered and gasped.

He kissed and nibbled his way past the fragrant hollow in the base of her throat, to the shadowed valley between her breasts. Further progress was barred by a series of fine ribbons tied in dainty knots. His fingers were clumsy. She helped him undo them.

He reached for the hem of her nightgown, and with a complete absence of maidenly bashfulness she helped him pull it up and over her head, and she was bared wholly to his gaze.

The sight of her, naked, a slender ivory flame against the rumpled white sheets, took his breath away.

Her eyes were wide, dark, and aroused, burnished gold in the candlelight, watching him looking at her.

He must have stared too long, too hard, because she looked a little anxious and a slow flush rose to darken her skin.

Her hands came up to shield her nakedness.

“No, don’t,” he whispered, preventing her. “You’re beautiful.”

For a second it looked as if she’d weep, then she turned her head away and her eyes fluttered closed. She looked so beautiful he had to kiss her again. And again.

The small moment of stiffness dissolved as she melted in his embrace again, responding with an honesty and wholeheartedness that pierced his heart.

There was no guile in her—well, there was plenty; she was as full of tricks as a bag of monkeys, but not in this, not here, not now. Whatever she felt, she showed.

He ran his palms over her warm, silken skin, brushing the dark triangle of curls at the base of her belly, over her stomach, tracing the lines of her ribs—she was thin, so thin he ached for the deprivation that made her so. She quivered beneath his touch. So warm, so responsive.

He cupped the sweet, small breasts and teased the nipples with his thumb.

She gasped, and then he lowered his mouth to one breast, caressing it with lips and tongue, and sucked, biting very gently.

She jerked and gave a small high scream and then fell back, panting, her eyes dark and sleepy-looking with desire.

He unfastened his drawers and kicked them off.

She reached for his undershirt. “No,” he said and stopped her questing hands by capturing them and pressing them back above her head on the pillow, holding them one-handed.

Before she could query him, he covered her mouth with his, plundering her, devouring her.

He nudged her legs apart with his free hand and stroked the satiny skin of her inner thighs, running his hand up to the warm center of her, barely touching her and then moving away… teasing, enticing.

He stroked her between the legs and found her hot and slick and ready.

He inserted a finger. With each pull of his mouth on her breast, he felt the answering pulse deep within her.

He found the tiny slick nubbin in the folds of her sex and stroked.

She gave a jagged gasp and her eyes flared in shock.

Her trembling limbs opened in wordless demand.

The scent of her arousal fired his senses.

He should take the time to bring her to orgasm first, as he usually did with women, but urgency, red-hot and explosive, drove him now.

He couldn’t wait a moment longer. He positioned himself between her thighs.

She wrapped her legs around him and clung on tight, kissing his jaw, his neck, sliding her palms beneath the undershirt along his back, over his buttocks, eager, aroused. His bride. His wife.

He was hard and aching, and the strain was starting to tell.

Thank God she wasn’t a virgin, he thought, as he positioned himself at her entrance and thrust deep.

She stiffened and screamed. And not in a good way.

He was too far gone to stop. His body thrust of its own accord, pumping once, twice, into her stiff little body, and then the world exploded.

When he came to himself he withdrew from her, aware she winced with his every movement. He glanced down and, with a dull feeling of inevitability, saw a smear of blood. Her face was pale, her eyes dark and distressed. Tarnished gold. “You’re a virgin!” he accused.

“I… I can’t be.” Bella shuddered. How could it all end so horribly? One moment she was having the most blissful time of her life, and now she was in bed with a hard-eyed stranger. Naked. She gathered the bedclothes around her, covering her nakedness, burrowing away from his accusing stare.

“Obviously you’re not a virgin now. But you were.” His voice was caustic. His hard, dark eyes stabbed her.

It didn’t make sense. She’d never questioned that she wasn’t… But the evidence was there, the red smear of blood on the sheets. She’d have to get the stain out before the landlady saw it. It would be so mortifying after the fuss they’d made to get clean sheets.

“Well?” The hard voice intruded on her thoughts.

“Well, what?”

“Do you have an explanation?”

“For what?”

“I was told you weren’t a virgin. And yet…” He gestured at the sheet.

“I didn’t know! It’s not my fault.” She flung him an angry, wounded look. “What kind of bridegroom complains about his bride’s virginity, anyway?”

He clenched his jaw and looked away.

So she said it for him. “One who thinks he was trappedinto a marriage.”

“ Thinks? ” His lip curled.

She punched his shoulder. “I was trapped into it, too, you know!”

“You?” he snorted.

“Yes, me. And I’m the one who’s stuck with a bad-tempered Englishman who’s going to take me away to a foreign country where it rains all the time and I don’t know a soul.”

His jaw dropped.

“You’re not that big a prize, you know,” she raged, tears—angry ones—blurring her sight. “I was an heiress before you married me! I could have had any man in Spain, almost.”

He frowned, an arrested expression on his face.

“Don’t look at me like that. Don’t you dare look at me like that! I know I’m not pretty, but with my mother’s fortune, I could have married well. Very well!”

Her mother’s fortune was substantial. There were bonds and land and various investments—a manufactory of some sort and a woolen mill. Bella had an idea there might even be a ship or two, for her mother’s grandfather had been a ship captain, and English, so most of the investments were in England.

Papa used to rant about it. It infuriated him that the fortune was so huge but he couldn’t get his hands on any of it. After Mama died it was kept in trust for Bella, until she turned twenty-one, or married.

That was why Papa had quarrelled so bitterly with her grandparents and banned them from Valle Verde. Her grandparents had died soon afterward. She’d been so sad when Papa told her, because they’d died alone, without family. As she was now.

She glared at the man who was her husband. “I didn’t need to entrap anyone into marriage, let alone a horrid, suspicious Englishman. And besides, it was your idea to marry me! I was only thirteen. What did I know?”

His mouth tightened.

“Yes, all right, I know I agreed to it. I was even happy about it, God help me for a naive fool. Saving my fortune from Ramón—so generous of you! Besides, I wasn’t the one who denied the annulment. I didn’t even know about it.”

He made an exasperated sound, and she wanted to hit him again. “I know you don’t believe me, but I didn’t.”

“But you must have told someone—”

“That I wasn’t a virgin? Wrong! Reverend Mother told me .”

“ She told you?”

“Yes.” She scrubbed at her eyes with angry fists. “When I was first at the convent, I used to have bad dreams, nightmares about… you know, that day. I kept waking up screaming, and it upset the other girls, so they moved me to a room by myself.”

“Go on.”

“Reverend Mother—well she wasn’t Reverend Mother then, just my Aunt Serafina—she asked me about my dreams and what happened that day, and I told her.

” Her mouth wobbled, and for a horrible moment Bella thought she might burst into tears, and she was damned if she’d give him the satisfaction.

“And then she said it was a good thing I was married because I was no longer a virgin. That that man who attacked me had known me—in the Bilical sense, you understand—and therefore…”

He gave her one of those long, enigmatic looks she was starting to hate.