Things ran riot in her. Heat, want, confusion. What was he doing? Was he even aware of what he was doing? And did she want him to stop this moment…or not to stop at all?
He certainly wanted to go on. Behind her he was now rock hard. She heard herself pant in a mixture of astonishment and desire. She wanted him. When she heard about his satisfied lovers, she’d always wanted to be one of them. To enjoy him for blind pleasures, without entertaining any other thoughts.
But she couldn’t. She could never be content just to sleep with him.
A sound of lust came from the back of his throat. His hand came up to her chest. Before she knew what was going on, he’d cupped her breast.
Her mute shock translated into a frantic thumping of the heart.
He nuzzled her neck. His fingers found her nipple. His thumb rubbed it through the linen of her nightgown.
She leaped out of the bed, knocking over the glass of water on the nightstand in her hurry. The glass fell on the rug. It didn’t break, but it did roll off the rug and make a clear clink upon coming into contact with the leg of the armoire.
“What the—” he said sleepily.
She made not a sound.
After a while, she thought he’d gone back to sleep. But he asked, “Why are you out of bed?”
“I…I can’t sleep when there’s someone right next to me.”
“Come back. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“The floor is wet now.”
He sighed. “I’ll sleep in the chair, then.”
His footsteps. She shrank back. He brushed past her and felt for the chair. “Go.”
“I think I should—”
She yelped—he’d picked her up. He crossed the few feet to the bed and deposited her squarely in it. “Sleep.”
A thin light crept past the curtains. She lay on her side, facing away from the chair where he sat—facing so much away that her face was almost nose first in the pillow.
It was cool in the mountains, but she’d kicked off the bedcover from her legs. And he had a good, if poorly lit, view of her ankles. In fact, he could see halfway up one delectable calf.
Delectable. An odd word to use on one’s wife. But everything in view was fresh and pretty. And everything not on display…
He turned his mind away from that unprofitable direction: Everything not on display would remain out of sight for years to come. Six years she’d proposed, but he had to extend it to eight. How stupid he’d been, to believe that he’d always feel the exact same way about her, about everything.
She stirred faintly, his woman of mystery.
He kept no particular secrets from her. But she, she was like a castle from another era, full of hidden passages and concealed alcoves, the full knowledge of which she revealed to no one and at which he could only guess.
Until her detailed recital the other night, he’d never given much thought to his modus operandi with regard to getting women in bed. It was true he preferred to achieve his objective discreetly, with the least amount of energy expended, but she was mistaken in comparing him to a spider.
Appearances to the contrary, he’d always been shy where women were concerned. Even with Isabelle, she’d been the one to take the initiative and tell him that he vast preferred her to every other girl on the planet—he’d only needed to agree.
Looking for a woman to gratify his lust was hardly the same thing as baring the contents of his heart. But the same reticence prevailed. He’d rather they came to him, and let “young, gleaming, and assured” be the only advertisement of his intentions.
She stirred again and turned onto her back. Her toes wiggled slightly. One foot slid up along her other leg. He watched with avid interest. He would not mind at all for her sleepy, unmindful motions to hike the hems of her nightgown farther north—a great deal farther north.
She stilled. Then, slowly, deliberately, she drew her legs up and pulled the blanket over them.
“Good morning,” he said.
She sat up, obviously about to pretend that he hadn’t seen her unclothed almost up to her knees. “Good morning.”
She glanced about the room. Even though he’d put on his trousers and his shirt and was presentable enough to his own wife, she seemed intent on not looking at him. He was not, as a rule, terribly excited by primness in a woman. But somehow, her primness seemed not so much stuffiness as avoidance. As if she herself did not want to know how she’d conduct herself in a more charged situation. And that made him curious: How would she conduct herself?
“Did you sleep well?” he asked.
“Passably. Did you?”
“Let’s see. In the middle of the night, I had to get up and go sit in a chair because my wife doesn’t like to sleep with me. How do you think I slept?”
She stared at her knees, now tented up beneath the bedcover. “I would have taken the chair.”
He scoffed. “As if I’d let you sleep in a chair while I took the bed.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Did I do something?”