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  He bit back a sigh and cupped her cheek. “We’re strangers, Philippa. I want you, but I’m not a barbarian. If you’re not ready, I can give you more time.”

  For a prickling interval, she studied his face in silence. He struggled to convey patience and understanding, although she must also see his barely contained hunger.

  He steeled himself to retreat to the room next door. Or perhaps she’d relent and let him sleep beside her. Holding her in his arms without possessing her would be torture, but still it seemed preferable to the lonely hell of a night without her.

  Reluctantly Erskine withdrew his hand and straightened. He told himself that this was for the best. No man of honor could expect his wife to welcome him tonight, whatever rights this morning’s ceremony had conferred.

  Which wasn’t much consolation when he faced a cold bed.

  “Sleep well, Philippa.”

  In the light of candles and fire, her eyes turned even darker. He shifted away slowly like a man going to his execution. He knew he did the right thing, but the knowledge offered no satisfaction.

  His wife remained very still, watching him, although her hands curled slowly into the sheets at her waist. He’d been trying very hard not to notice the way the nightgown molded over her breasts. Now his gaze dropped helplessly to where her nipples pressed, beaded like raspberries, against the white material. That image would torment him through a restless night, damn it.

  He expected Philippa to look relieved or, best of all, grateful. He’d like her to be grateful. A grateful wife was likely to invite him to consummate their union sooner rather than later. Hopefully before he went completely mad wanting her.

  He’d risen to his feet before she spoke. “I trusted you yesterday.”

  Because of that, he’d lay down his life for her. “Yes, you did. Thank you.”

  Without lowering her gaze, she bit her lip. He wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but he’d much rather stay than leave, even if she only wanted to talk.

  “You’ve always been kind to me.”

  It was his turn to frown. “You make me sound like an aged uncle.”

  A rueful smile twisted her lips. “You’re nicer to me than Uncle Theodore ever was.”

  He didn’t smile back and his voice emerged with a bite that he regretted but couldn’t contain. “Philippa, let me be frank—I don’t feel remotely avuncular when I look at you.” He sucked in a breath and spoke the words likely to terrify her into running back to her unpleasant mother. “The first time I saw you hovering in the shadows like a little ghost, I wanted you. I wanted you when we were trapped in the dressing room. That’s why I kissed you. Every hour since then, I’ve wanted you more. Tonight I’m offering you a postponement, but I don’t….I can’t let you think that I’ll accept a chaste marriage.”

  He waited for an appalled reaction, but she didn’t flinch away. Neither, confound it, did she leap into his arms declaring overwhelming desire.

  “I…see,” she said slowly after a tense interval.

  He stepped closer to the bed, even if it was a step he’d need to retrace when he left her. “Have I shocked you?”

  “A little.” She paused. “You have a husband’s rights.”

  “I’m not a bully.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He should go. This awkward conversation just extended the torture.

  Her eyes flickered away and her hands stopped twisting at the sheets. Instead, she began to pluck nervously at them. Not much of an improvement.

  Why the deuce was the chit nervous? Hadn’t he just given her a reprieve? Surely that saintly act alone must cancel out a few of his sins in the heavenly register.

  “It’s late,” he said regretfully, starting to feel like a fool standing in the middle of the room, gazing at Philippa like a dog slavering at a butcher shop window. He turned to leave.

  “Don’t go.”

  Erskine stopped, wondering if he’d heard her aright. Slowly he faced her. He couldn’t read her expression. “What did you say?”

  Her deep breath made her breasts swell voluptuously against her nightgown. He closed his eyes. God give him strength. She wasn’t doing this to get him excited. Although he was undoubtedly getting excited.

  She licked her lips. How he wished she wouldn’t.

  Philippa swallowed and spoke in a rusty whisper. “I said…don’t go.”

  He braced his shoulders and told himself he could be strong. They had years to get this right. A wedding night was just another date on the calendar. “You don’t want to sleep alone in a strange place? I can understand that.”

  Her eyes flashed with annoyance, surprising him. “No, I don’t want to sleep alone. But that’s not what I mean.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Her lips tightened with displeasure. “You’re the blasted rake. You work it out.”

  His heart kicking into an excited gallop, he stared at her without moving. It took him far too long to realize that while she looked uncertain, she also looked…interested.

  He could work with interested, by God.

  On an astonished laugh, he dived across the floor and onto the bed, dragging her into his arms. “Prepare to be ravished, lassie!”

  Before Philippa could reply or, heaven forfend, change her mind, he captured her lips with his in a kiss that wasn’t chaste at all.

  Chapter Eight

  PHILIPPA HAD TIME to snatch one shocked breath before Blair seized her in his arms and kissed her as if waiting another second would kill him. The sensation was overwhelming, like being caught up in a whirlwind or tumbling against the beach in a great wave. Compared to the sweet tenderness of his last kiss, this was closer to those wild, passionate moments they’d shared in his dressing room. As heat poured through her, she immediately softened against him and moaned in surrender.

  Through the tumult, she was vaguely aware of him flinging away his dressing gown. When her seeking, stroking hands met warm skin, a thrill sizzled through her. She’d never touched anyone like this. A man’s body offered a banquet of unsuspected pleasures. Blair was hard where she was soft; straight where she curved; powerful and potent. The musky scent of his skin flooded her senses.

  She gave a soft protest when he drew her to her knees, interrupting her exploration. Then a gasp of shock mixed with excitement when he tugged her nightdress over her head and sent it flying through the air.

  She had no time to feel self-conscious because he caught her up and kissed her with an enthusiasm that sent the blood pumping madly through her veins. She tasted claret on his breath.

  He tipped her back against the bed and lifted his head to smile down at her with a masculine appreciation that made her tremble and sigh. “You’re glorious, my darling.”

  She hadn’t blushed when he flung off her nightdress. She blushed now at the awe in his tone. Once she might have argued with his remark. But staring into his glowing green eyes, for the first time in her life she felt genuinely beautiful. The experience was heady.

  “Thanks to you, I feel glorious,” she admitted with a touch of shyness, then leaned forward and kissed him. He gave a grunt of pleased surprise before he took charge with magnificent results.

  On a groan of anticipation he settled above her, her legs framing his lean hips. His weight crushed her into the bed and stole her breath in an unfamiliar but wonderfully pleasing way. She ran her hands up and down his back, fascinated to feel the powerful muscles flex. More fiery kisses burned away her brief curiosity to see his nakedness. His tongue tangled with hers, his arms lashed her to his long, strong body.

  For the first time, he touched her breasts. She cried out in startled pleasure as response sizzled through her. Those long fingers rolled her nipples into hard, aching points. She trembled at her spiking reactions.

  “Oh, Blair…”

  He bent his head and took one yearning peak between his lips, sucking gently at first, then with more pressure. Another thrill jolted her and a throbbing, impatient puls
e set up between her legs. When he’d kissed her before, she thought she’d discovered desire, but compared to this conflagration of need, that had been a mere flicker.

  Her trembling hands tangled in his thick dark hair, pressing him closer, asking for more of this exquisite torture. He made a wordless sound of appreciation deep in his throat and shifted his attention to her other nipple. Her restless, relentless excitement swelled.

  Philippa spiraled toward something her mind didn’t understand but which her body craved. She whimpered in desperation as the unknown goal remained beyond reach. The hot brush of Blair’s skin, the scent of his body, his lips on her breast, the touch of his hands, nothing eased the coiling tension.

  Blair raised his head to stare down at her stretched beneath him. In the candlelight, his expression was stark with need. She’d never imagined he could look like this. His green eyes glittered with hunger. The skin over his high Celtic cheekbones was taut. His mouth glistened from her kisses.

  Instead of this new version of Blair terrifying her into retreat, another shiver of arousal ran through her. He was such a superb man. And right now, he was hers to enjoy.

  Emboldened, she began to explore his body, learning the hard lines of muscle and bone, the jut of his hip, the curve of his buttocks. Yesterday, even an hour ago, she’d have hesitated to touch him like this. But she was beyond holding back. He was her husband and she wanted to claim every inch of him.

  “I feel like I’m caught in a storm,” she confessed, her voice husky.

  “Me too.” He cupped her jaw and tilted her face for more soul-stealing kisses. He nipped her bottom lip and drew it between his teeth, sending another of those extraordinary jolts through her. “You make me tremble.”

  “I’m glad.” Once she’d never have believed that plain Philippa Sanders could affect him so profoundly, but she couldn’t mistake the ripples of reaction running through the body poised above hers.

  Her hands tightened on his shoulders and she raised her mouth to his. The knowledge that she had this experienced man of the world shaking with desire made her want to cry. After her mother’s cold account of the sexual act, she’d dreaded her husband’s attentions. Now she began to suspect that her mother had neglected the most important information. The section about how her husband could drive her mad with anticipation. Blair’s kisses had always promised pleasure rather than shame and submission.

  Now the delight she found in his arms was astounding enough. Even more astounding was that yielding to Blair’s passion was an act of heart as well as body. Every brush of his hand or glance of his lips lured her far beyond the physical realm.

  “Oh, my beautiful sweetheart—” he groaned, grazing her neck with his teeth.

  She cried out at the tingling response. Her eager hands tested the hard ladder of his ribs, his narrow hips, the powerful thighs. Daringly she ventured lower, toward the part of him that remained a mystery.

  He groaned again as her hand brushed his silky heat. Briefly cowardice defeated curiosity. She withdrew and curled her hands across his back. He buried his silky head in her shoulder and breathed in great gusts that shook her with their force. Their kisses in his dressing room hadn’t prepared her for the powerful intimacy of lying beneath him.

  “Should I stop?” Philippa asked shakily. Her inexperience made her feel suddenly awkward. She had no idea what a man liked a woman to do to him.

  “Hell, no,” he gasped on a warm puff of breath that set off a fusillade of sensation inside her.

  “I may touch you?”

  His laugh was edged, as if he was in pain. “Please.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  Another difficult laugh. “I hurt with wanting you.”

  The jagged admission banished the last of her timidity. With more confidence, she curled her hand around him. He felt alive and strong and dauntingly big. How on earth would he fit inside her?

  “Goodness gracious,” she breathed, tentatively running her hand down the hot, satiny column, feeling vitality in the raised veins beneath her fingers.

  Liquid heat flooded her at her bold forays. She shifted, feeling sleek and needy. More slowly she moved her hand up until she brushed the swollen tip. He was damp, too.

  As all the new experiences of the night crashed down upon her, she snatched her hand away.

  She felt fretful, needy, hungry. This wasn’t at all what she’d imagined after her mother’s advice. She’d pictured herself lying back while he took control. This degree of involvement felt threatening, like she surrendered more than just her body. And however much she liked the man she’d married, she didn’t yet trust him as the keeper of her soul.

  She’d recognized Blair’s emotional power over her yesterday when she’d seen him with Amelia. Now fear and desire battled for supremacy and she wasn’t sure which was stronger.

  “Trust me,” Erskine said softly. When he’d asked Philippa to trust him before this, she’d never failed him. Let her trust him now.

  He’d never imagined that introducing his wife to pleasure could carry such importance. Dear God, let him do this right. Let him show this innocent, gallant girl bliss. As he rose above her and stared into her brilliant eyes, his desire for his wife burgeoned into an emotion strong enough to shake kingdoms.

  He sucked in a shaky breath. Her scent filled his senses. Lemon and flowers. Arousal. A trace of sweat. The mixture was as intoxicating as brandy.

  “Yes,” she said simply, and relief struck him like a blow.

  “I’ll be gentle,” he promised, praying that it was true.

  His hand drifted down from her face, lingering to test the kick of her pulse at her collarbone. She had a beautiful body, small and slender and graceful with high, round breasts that fit his hands as if created for the purpose.

  “Oh,” she gasped as he kissed a particularly sensitive place on her neck. “I like that.”

  He loved the taste of her skin. Clean and fresh and warm with life. Tonight he awoke the sensuality that he’d always suspected lurked inside her. He loved watching her amazed wonder at every new experience. He loved watching her confidence build with every sizzling moment.

  “Good,” he whispered, fighting the urge to rush to fulfillment. Patience now would reap untold rewards. “I hope you like everything else I’ve got planned.”

  To his delighted surprise, she giggled. He’d never heard his serious little bride giggle before. He nuzzled his way across the slope of her breast, drawing in her scent, so much warmer and richer there. “You’re quite delicious, you know.”

  “You sound like a hungry lion,” she responded breathlessly, curling her fingers over his shoulders.

  At her touch, heat blasted him. “This lion wants to eat you,” he growled.

  He came down over her, balancing on flattened hands, and bent to kiss her. She met him readily, darting her tongue into his mouth with a daring that set his blood swirling with need.

  The craving to slide into her tight velvety passage was overwhelming, but still he reined in his impulses. He wanted her so drunk with arousal when he took her that any pain became merely a fleeting distraction on the road to rapture.

  “Can you feel how much I want you?” He brought her hand down. Excitement shuddered through him as she closed her fingers around him.

  “I…I want you, too,” she admitted, caressing him as she raised glittering eyes to his. He saw right to the pure depths of her soul. Through a wave of unfamiliar emotion, he offered up a prayer of gratitude to whatever powers had decreed this union.

  Her hand flexed, setting off an explosion behind his eyes. For endless excruciating minutes, he bore her ministrations, gritting his teeth to stop himself from driving to culmination. He relished the intense concentration she devoted to his enjoyment, but he was only human and this tentative, searing torment approached the limit of his endurance.

  He caught her hand and glanced a kiss across her knuckles. She was breathtakingly lovely with her creamy skin and drifting
cascades of hair. His nostrils flared as he took in her hot scent. Her body told him it wanted him. “It’s my turn to please you, my darling.”

  Erskine wasn’t by nature prone to endearments, but something about Philippa made him want to call her every silly fond name he knew. He became completely starry-eyed over his young wife.

  “You do,” she admitted in a choked voice.

  Deep emotion shone in her eyes. He wasn’t alone in tipping over the edge of physical pleasure into something more profound. He’d had no idea what he’d invited the day he’d offered to marry this woman.

  “I will.” He spoke with the same decisive tone that he’d used for his wedding vows. “Let me show you what you’ve got in store for the next fifty years, sweetheart.”

  He palmed one round breast, bending his head to take the other nipple between his lips. As he sucked at the beaded peak, she whimpered and slid her hand up his chest. When she sank her nails into his skin, he groaned at the stinging mixture of pleasure and pain.

  He raised his head and stared at her. “If you touch me, I’ll lose control and I need to make sure you enjoy this, darling.”

  Her brief uncertainty melted into a smile. “Can I touch you later?”

  “Over and over and over.”

  “That’s a promise?”

  “Yes, it is.” Paradise hovered so close. “Now, lie back and enjoy yourself. You vowed to obey me today.”

  “In hindsight, that seems a little rash.”

  He smiled, captivated. “Too late, sweeting.”

  He caressed and kissed her breasts until she bucked beneath him. Her every wriggle released more alluring scent into the air until he drowned in his wife’s sweetness. She was so sensitive, she was close to shattering, but some selfish element in him wanted to share that final joy.

  When she trembled beneath him, hot and feverish, he finally, finally ran his hand across her belly and touched her between her legs. Triumph thundered through him when he found her slick and ready.

  Carefully he slid one long finger into her, testing the silky heat, the tight muscles clenching around him. Another finger, gently stretching. She breathed in humid little gasps that fired his need.