Page 105 of In the Prince's Bed

No, he wouldn’t lose her. He couldn’t. “Now that you’re here, we can marry at once. Tonight, if you want.”Ifhe’d brought that license from London. “I’m sure the vicar in Ipswich would be happy to oblige us. We can send for him right away.” He couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom…that if he didn’t secure her as soon as possible, he’d lose her forever.

She gazed up at him through passion-glazed eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re getting a conscience about our…coupling before marriage. That’s not like you.”

“I want you to be mine, that’s all.”

She pulled his head down to hers. “I’m yours already.”

You won’t be if you find out the truth,he thought as he kissed her again. And that thought perversely fired his need even higher.

Sliding from the bed to shuck off his drawers, he pointed to her chemise. “You said if I came to bed, I could see the rest. Take it off, sweetheart. It was too dark in the orangery for me to see you well the last time.”

She swallowed. “I-I don’t know if I want you to see me well. I’m so thin and freckled, and my hair is too…red.”

“I don’t believe that.” He might not have her blasted poet friend’s gift for pretty words, but he could surely reassure her. “Come on, let me see you.”

Sitting up, she dragged her chemise off over her head, then lay back down on the bed, looking so vulnerable it made him ache. “There, look your fill.”

His breath quickened at the sight of her smooth alabaster skin. “My God, Katherine, you’re perfect, absolutely perfect,” he said in a husky voice.

With a frown, she reached for her chemise again. “You can’t look at me if you’re going to make fun.”

Snatching it from her, he tossed it on the floor. “Have you no idea how beautiful you are?”

She eyed him askance. “You’re the first to think it.”

“Then the rest of them are blind.” Climbing back onto the bed, he lay down beside her, then kissed her mass of curls spread out over the coverlet. “How could they not notice how lovely your hair is?”

“It’sred,Alec.”

“I know. It reminds me of the sea.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “The last time I checked, the sea was green or blue. Decidedly not red.”

“Except when the sun rises or sets.” He twisted a curl around his finger. “On the Suffolk coast, it rises over the water. As a boy on holiday there, I used to watch it turn the sea to fire. And the fire ended in foam at the water’s edge.” He combed her tangled curls with his fingers. “Like your hair, all wild and tumbling.”

A smile tugged at her lips. “And you claim you can’t use pretty words like the poets.”

“That’s what you do to me—turn me into a poet.” Her chuckle became a sigh when he trailed his hand down the side of her face to her jaw, then traced a line along the smattering of freckles on her upper chest. “And you know what they say about freckles—that they’re fairy love bites.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who says that?”

He grinned. “Somebody must. Isn’t that what they look like?”

A laugh bubbled out of her. “I don’t know. What’s a love bite?”

Bending his head, he sucked the skin low on her shoulder, then rubbed the red spot with his thumb. “That’s a love bite.”

“Oh,” she whispered as she stared down at it.

“You see?” he said, kissing her freckles. “Fairy love bites everywhere.” Then he pressed more kisses down the slope of her breast. “And as for being thin…believe me, you have the right amount of flesh in all the right places. Like here.”

She moaned as he circled her nipple with his tongue. He sucked her breast until her nipple stood to attention, a sweet pearl he could lick and nibble all day. He lingered for a moment before dragging his open mouth down to her belly to dart his tongue inside her navel.

“And here.” He planted a wet kiss to her belly. “Just enough flesh to make you soft, the way a woman should be.”

As she stroked his hair, he slid lower until his mouth hovered over the patch of fiery curls that barely covered her silky petals. But when he pressed an open-mouthed kiss there between her legs, she gasped and tried to pull him away. “Alec…my goodness…what are you doing?”

He lifted his head to smile at her. “Breaking the rules.”