Unclaimed (Turner, #2)

A breath of night wind curled through his window. Even that hint of coolness could not calm the storm of his thoughts. God, he wanted her. There was only one way to calm the clamor of his body.

What he was about to do was classified as a sin. He unwound his cravat from his neck, setting his mouth in a grim line. But it was a case of kittens: better the little sin of relieving this tension, than risk losing his mind entirely the next time he was in her presence. And there would be a next time. And a next. And a time after that.

The sun blinded him as he worked. But his vision was ruined in any event. Even without the sun, he wouldn’t have been able to see himself pull the tails of his shirt out. He wouldn’t have been able to make out the buttons on the fall of his trousers.

No. In his mind, no matter what he willed, he saw her: the pins slipping from her hair. Her curls, drifting past pale shoulders. And in his mind, it wasn’t the dark red dress that she wore. It was the black shift he’d glimpsed underneath, clinging to her every curve.

When he let his trousers fall to the ground, he was thinking about taking off her chemise. Of raising it, to show ankles he’d seen—and then more that he hadn’t. Calves. Thighs. If lust had clamored in him before, it rose up in him now—powerful and impossible to displace. His skin seemed on fire.

He was still standing. He shrugged out of his shirt; in his mind, he was not the only naked one. He caught hold of the carved wood post of his bed with one hand. With the other…

It should have been a clinical act, what followed. It was a sin, after all—a lesser one than actually taking a woman to his bed, but a sin nonetheless. But it didn’t feel like a sin when his erection filled his palm. It didn’t feel like a sin when his grip tightened around his member. And when he thought of her lips against his, remembered the taste of her mouth, sweet against his tongue—she felt right, no matter what his reason said.

It was not his own practiced touch that he felt, but the cool brush of her fingers. His imagination conjured up her body, sliding against his. Her hair, draping like cool silk over his chest. He strained forward, as if he might find her mouth.

His hand worked, quick jerks that sent little shocks of pleasure through him. As he moved, as he grew harder, as his lust grew more insistent, Mark opened his eyes and stared out the window into the dying sun. But even that fierce, red afterimage couldn’t steal the vision he had of her.

He was tight all over—his muscles contracted—thought washed away in a rush toward pleasure. His eyes shut at last, and he was bombarded by sensation, a barrage of images. Her hands. Her lips. The curve of her waist. And then, at the very end: Jessica, fully clothed, standing on the edge of the harsh rocks of the Friar’s Oven. Her skirts belled out around her in the wind, and she looked out over a sea of mist.

His release pounded through him, sweeping him away. It was welcome, so welcome. All that pent-up lust burnt like so much tinder in a wildfire. It savaged him, choking him, ripping his breath away.

Passion ebbed, and he was left with the furious pound of his pulse, the only echo of what had come before.

Mark opened his eyes. The light in the room was fast fading to navy-darkness. He breathed out; one final jolt of pleasure shook him, before his body subsided.

It was done. He’d banished his want.

Mark gingerly unwrapped his fingers from the wood post and walked to the basin on the other side of the room. The water was cold against his skin, the towel rough as he cleaned himself. He washed his hands, his skin. He could see the night sky outside his window. A lingering line of light painted the edge of the hills in claret.

With his want satiated, his thoughts should have been clear and rational. Instead, he felt even more muddled than before. He was alone with himself in the dark.

And he was in trouble.

With the sun of his want set, he’d expected relief from the blinding light of lust. He’d hoped for an utter absence of desire. Instead, he’d discovered stars—a thousand pinpricks dancing around him; an entire constellation of yearning, sketched into his skin.

He got into bed by rote. Once there, he longed for her touch as he drifted off to sleep. For her body, to pull parallel against his, that he might explore her skin with his fingers, his mouth. Not for lust. Not for sin. For…comfort. He’d uncovered a cavernous desire that was impossible to satisfy with fingers and palm.

Mark opened his eyes and blew out his breath. With every exhale, he banished her image. He called to mind dark, cold things: caves under water, winter storms blocking all hint of the sun. He concentrated on the reckless cry of a cricket somewhere in the night. Nothing danced in front of his vision but darkness now—black of night, shadow playing on shadow.

Even with his mind cleared, he could feel the subterranean tug of his desire.

Mrs. Farleigh—Jessica—wasn’t comfortable. She wasn’t demure. She wasn’t even respectable.