Regency High Society Vol 2: Sparhawk's Lady / The Earl's Intended Wife / Lord Calthorpe's Promise / The Society Catch. Miranda Jarrett

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СКАЧАТЬ that all the prisoners on the list still live!”

      “Pray she’s right, Caro.” He traced little circles on her cheek with his thumb, marveling as he always did at the softness of her skin. “Then pray for me, too.”

      “Why are you telling me this?”

      “Because when I’m gone, sweetheart, I want you to remember the moonlight and the stars and the fishing boats with striped sails,” he said tenderly. “I don’t want you to regret a blessed thing.”

      Her smile was unexpectedly bittersweet. “My whole life is too full of regret already. If I left you now, I would never forgive myself for what I had missed.”

      “Be sure, Caro,” he warned, knowing that this time there would be no turning back for either of them. “Be very sure.”

      She nodded, almost afraid to meet his gaze. Briefly her courage faltered. What if he said no? What if he dismissed her, or worse yet, laughed in her face? But she wanted more memories of Naples than moonlight and fishing boats. She needed this night with him to keep her warm through the lifetime of emptiness that remained before her at Blackstone House.

      “You and I are always pretending we’re what we’re not, aren’t we, Jeremiah?” she said, hesitancy and daring mingled in her voice. “But tonight I would pretend one more time with you. I will be your Caro, yours alone. I will be innocent again, the girl I once was, untouched by any man except for you.”

      His eyes narrowed as he listened, lingering over her lush, rounded body in the blue silk, a woman’s body, not that of an untried girl. Yet the game intrigued him, outlandish as it was; to pretend she was still a virgin was to make her husband and her marriage magically vanish. If this was what it would take to ease her guilt, than so be it. He wanted her too much to care any longer. Besides, the idea of being her first lover, even as a game, was enough to make his body quicken with growing interest.

      “And what role am I to play in this, eh, sweetheart?” he asked, his voice low and intensely male. “A highwayman again, come to rob you of your virtue?”

      “Oh, no, Jeremiah,” she whispered breathlessly, realizing he was agreeing. “You must be yourself.”

      “Easy enough.” He slid his hand back along her jaw to bury his fingers in the silvery silk of her hair. She let her head fall back, luxuriating in the pressure of his hand on the back of her neck, and unconsciously her lips parted, red, full, waiting for his.

      He kissed her gently at first, his lips barely brushing against hers, sensitizing them enough to make her sigh with delight. Her hands slid down his shoulders, her fingers digging deep into the muscles as impatiently she pulled him closer.

      “Don’t be in such a rush, sweetheart,” he whispered. “By my reckoning, we’ve all night before us.”

      Her hands stilled, her eyes so large with uncertainty that he chuckled. She was as good at this ruse as she’d been at all the other bits of playacting he’d seen from her. Maybe better. He could almost believe she’d never done any of this before.

      Lightly he touched his finger to her lower lip, moist from his. “I’m not telling you to stop, Caro. I’m only reminding you that the journey can be every bit as fine as the destination.”

      She smiled tremulously and he lowered his mouth to hers again, dipping deeper to savor her sweetness. His tongue met hers, coaxing and caressing as he urged her to join him. She shifted closer to him, seeking more, and he gathered her into his arms, reminded again of how soft and willing she was to hold as his lips moved from hers to the little hollow beneath her ear.

      Her laugh of sheer pleasure was almost girlish. “Come back,” she ordered softly. “You taste too good to let go.”

      “It’s only the rum,” he murmured, taking his time to reach her lips again. “Middling rum at that, just like you’d taste on any other sailor.”

      “No one’s like you,” she whispered vehemently. “My own Jeremiah.”

      He had never belonged to anyone, and he was surprised by how deeply her words touched him. Was it only part of the game, he wondered, protecting himself against the pain of feeling too much, or did she really wish to be his alone, if only for this night?

      When he kissed her now, he forgot about teasing and coaxing. Now he wanted to make her his in the one way he knew how, to possess her and mark her in a primal male way, and his mouth moved relentlessly across hers. He knew from the way she opened to him, drawing him deeper still, responding with the heat he remembered so well, that she felt the same need, moving against him with an urgent abandon that only inflamed him more. They had both waited so long for this.

      Ruthlessly he pushed the dressing gown off her shoulders and down her arms, and he felt her shiver as the silk slid across her skin like another caress. The shift beneath was even more insubstantial than he’d first thought, held together only by tiny ribbons at the shoulders above her bare arms. The sheer linen was no more than a mist across her body, tantalizing him with how much it simultaneously revealed yet covered, and he felt his body, already aroused, grow hotter still.

      Yet, though her face was flushed with excitement, her lips swollen from his kisses, there was an uncertainty in her eyes close to alarm. The game, he reminded himself, of course, it was part of the game, and he tried to tamp down the rising fire in his blood.

      “Forgive me if I frightened you, sweetheart,” he said gently, touching only her cheek to reassure her. “God knows I’d never want to hurt you.”

      “I know that,” she said softly, her trust so touchingly genuine that it wrenched at his heart, “and you won’t.”

      She turned her face into his hand to brush her lips across his palm, her eyes remaining turned toward his, their expression suddenly impish. “But it isn’t fair that you are still so…covered.”

      Wryly he looked down at his shirt and breeches. “I’m afraid I haven’t anything in my sea chest to match that shift.”

      “I’d rather see you,” she whispered, her voice husky with shy suggestion.

      He grinned wickedly and cocked one skeptical black eyebrow as he yanked his shirttails free of his breeches. “I don’t think a modest young maid would want to see a naked man quite this soon.”

      “This one would.” She took his wrist to unbutton the cuff of his shirt, the color of her cheeks stained darker despite her assurance. She stepped away as he drew the shirt over his head, tossing it carelessly across the back of a chair, and shook his thick, black hair back from his forehead. She swallowed as he unbuttoned the fall of his breeches, painfully aware of how he watched her face for her reaction.

      And by the light of the two candles, he was well worth watching. A lifetime ago, in her mother’s apartments, she had been shown men without their clothing, and she thought she knew what to expect. But Jeremiah was different from those men. Very, very different.

      As he stood before her, comfortable with himself and enjoying her scrutiny, his shoulders seemed broader, his waist and hips even more narrow. There was not an ounce of extra fat on him, his body honed to lean muscle and sinew by a hard life. That life had left other marks on him, too, not only in the long, jagged scar across his torso but in a half-dozen older ones, as well. They covered his body, arms, and legs, reminding her again of how lucky he’d been to survive this long—long enough to find her. Finally she СКАЧАТЬ