A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)

“Yes.” A thrill shot through her. “I want nothing more.”


She gasped as he plucked her from the floor and carried her to the mattress. One-armed, as though she weighed nothing.

While she lay there, he stood back and began wrestling with the closures of his breeches. He worked left-handed, and clumsily. After a few moments she couldn’t bear the suspense.

“Won’t you let me help?” She sat on her knees and reached for the buttons. The buckskin was butter-soft and stretched taut as a drum. Her mouth dried as she worked one row of buttons loose, freeing one side of the falls. Then she reached for the small row of closures in the center. She slid one fingertip beneath the waistband to aid her efforts. When her touch grazed his belly, he flinched, ticklish.

Kate smiled. She loosed one button, then another, exposing the dark line of hair that widened and thickened as she moved lower. It seemed she couldn’t look her fill—until the moment when she grasped the final button, and then she couldn’t bear to look at all.

She tilted her face upward and found him staring down at her. His face was grim with restraint and his eyes dark with hunger. She slipped the last button free and watched his face as she slid her hand inside his breeches, exploring the hot, hard flesh within.

She marveled. He was so solid, so sleek, so intriguingly textured.

And so big.

Goodness. She was meant to take all this inside her?

As Kate watched him, his eyes fluttered closed and his head fell back. He pushed into her grasp with a strangled moan. She loved the sensual abandon in his expression, but she worried about the physical dimensions of his ardor. With every inch her sliding fingertips explored, he seemed to grow longer still—and she grew increasingly doubtful about the logistics involved in this enterprise.

Perhaps her sense of touch was misleading her. Maybe if she looked the organ head-on, it wouldn’t seem so intimidating.

She dropped her gaze and pushed his breeches down over his hips. Up it sprang from a thatch of dark hair. A thick, dusky curve of pure impossibility.

Were all men like this?

She put her hand on him again, since he seemed to enjoy it. He filled her grip, and then some. Kate suddenly had the urge to call a temporary halt to this entire interlude and pay a hasty call on a few of her married friends. Then she’d return wiser, worldlier, and prepared with some kind of soothing poultice for afterward.

He gripped her hand, squeezing tight. “Enough.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No. No. It’s too right. Too good. I won’t last.”

Since she didn’t suppose she could implement her first plan to dash out for education and herbal remedies, having this over with quickly didn’t seem like a bad alternative.

“I don’t mind if it’s fast,” she said shyly.

For the second time in an hour she heard him laugh. It was such a lovely, gruff sound, she didn’t even mind that he was laughing at her.

“You should mind.” He stepped out of his breeches and set them aside.

She felt so stupid. He’d been with many women, and no doubt all of them had been accomplished in a way that actually mattered. Proficient in bed sport, rather than arpeggios.

“I’m sorry. I haven’t any useful experience to draw on. I just hope you’ll tell me what pleases you.”

“You please me.” He sat next to her on the mattress and drew the fabric of the borrowed shirt aside to bare her shoulder. His lips traced the slope of her neck.

“I mean, I should hate to suffer by comparison.”

His lifted his head. His eyes flashed. “There is no comparison. None.”

He slid his hand beneath the shirt to cup her breast. His strong fingers molded and shaped her.

She moaned as he teased her nipple, rolling it under his thumb. “Samuel.”

“Yes.” His voice was husky as he drew the shirt up and over her head. “Give me my name.”

“Samuel,” she whispered, glad that he’d given her this one way to please him. “Samuel, I missed you every day that you were gone. I’ve missed you so much.”

He stretched his body over hers, covering her with his weight. She loved the feel of his body—hard and heavy and covered in dark hair. So very different from her own. As he kissed her, he slid one thigh between hers. It excited her to feel his bare skin against her most intimate flesh.