Page 57 of The Lady Plays with Fire

Lightly, he stroked her mound, easing her past the peak, murmuring against her brow, “That’s my lass.”

My lass. Oh, how could she, who had only ever wanted her independence, thrill to the thought of being possessed by a man? But she could not deny the appeal of hearing Graham call her his.

At long last, she opened her eyes to find him watching her. The room had grown surprisingly dim. “Did I sleep?” She scrambled awkwardly to sit up, making him wince.

“Nay,” he reassured her, glancing toward the window. “There’s a storm approaching.” At just that moment, rain began to lash the glass. “Not exactly curricle weather. I’m sure it’ll blow over after a while.” He dropped his gaze to her face again. “Fortunately, I can think of a few ways to pass the time.”

A moment before, she had felt perfectly sated. Now her pulse leapt. “I’m sure you can.” She studied the sculpted angles of his face from beneath her lashes. “How many of them involve me, er, deepening my acquaintance with the fearfully hard thing that’s been pressing into my backside for the last half an hour?”

A shocked laugh rippled through him, appearing at last on his lips as a sardonic smile. “You’ve seen too many Blackadder plays.” One russet brow arced in a delicious scold. “But as it happens”—scooping his arms beneath her shoulders and knees, he rose with her in one swift motion, making her squeal—“all of them.”

A playwright hadn’t any cause to be so strong. But having observed the deftness with which he had tended the horses and drawn water from the well, she could guess experience and circumstance had made him familiar with labor of the sort that ordinarily did not fall to the lot of earls.

Why, he’d probably even split the logs for the fire!

He carried her up the stairs without showing the least sign of strain, though the delight of being cradled against his broad chest had left her breathless.

At the nudge of his toe, a door swung inward. Once swift glance took in the small, slant-ceilinged room and its contents: a ladder-back chair, a chest of drawers that doubled as a washstand, and a bed. His bed.

Just over the threshold, he lowered her feet to the floor, then slid a finger under her chin to tip her face to his when she would have lowered her gaze. “The, ah, degree of acquaintance is entirely up to you, Julia,” he insisted, searching her eyes with an intensity that made her knees weak. “If you wish to rest for an hour, I’ll leave you in peace. If, however, you have . . . other desires, I can more comfortably fulfill them here.”

An hour.

When that hour was up, no matter what had transpired in this little cottage, in this little room, they would have to return to Clapham. She would once more be a mere lady’s companion, and he the earl. And, for at least a few days more, he would wield the pen of Ransom Blackadder, while she was expected to take up that of Miss on Scene.

She didn’t know how those other stories would end. She could only take charge of the one playing out in the here and now, in which she was Julia and he was . . .

“Graham,” she breathed, closing the slight distance between them to lay her cheek against his breastbone. “Make me yours.”

Slowly, his arms came around her, his embrace both tender and strong. He pressed a kiss to her crown and breathed deep. “A man such as I does no’ deserve such sweetness.”

“That’s wrong. Think what sugar can do for lemons, or a cup of over-steeped tea.” She rose on tiptoe to press her lips to the edge of his jaw, prickly with the day’s growth of beard. “Take what you need.”

She hadn’t been fully prepared for the hunger those words would unleash. He raised his hands to either side of her face, driving his fingers into her hair and scattering her hairpins. Her heavy brown locks tumbled over her shoulders as his mouth crashed over hers, devouring her inhibitions. Against her belly, she could feel the evidence of his arousal.

“I want you bare,” he insisted, as his hands slid down her back to undo her dress.

For answer, she began to fumble with the buttons of his waistcoat. “I want that too.”

In another moment, she stepped out of the puddle of her gown, and a few quick tugs of the laces set her free of her corset. She stood before him in nothing but shift and stockings, having made little progress in her turn, nothing more than pushing his coat askew and disheveling his cravat. A little hiss of frustration escaped her lips.

One corner of his mouth kicked up—half a smile, at least. “Go stand by the bed,” he told her.

Clinging to one bedpost for support, she watched as he shed his coat and waistcoat and laid them over the chair, then picked up her dress from the floor and shook it out before draping it over his clothes.

It both amused her and ratcheted up her frustration. “Are gentlemen always so particular about wrinkles at a time like this?”

“Habit,” he said with a shrug that conveyed something more than indifference. He tugged loose the knot of his cravat, slid it from his collar, and wound it neatly around his hand before laying it aside. “I couldn’t always afford to be careless. But I suppose the truth of the matter is, it was a way of maintaining control when everything around me had gone mad.”

“And now, do you”—she slipped one shoulder from her shift—“do you ever just let yourself go?”

“You may fancy you want me t’ say aye.” He pulled the hems of his shirt from his breeches and dragged the garment over his head in one swift motion, revealing the brawn that she had only before suspected, the size of his arms, the wall of muscle that made up his chest. He’d spoken of shoring up Castle Dunstane—had he hewn stone and laid it with his own hands? Her mouth went dry as he tossed the shirt onto the chair and took another step closer to her. “But best be mindful what you wish for, lass.”

She wasn’t frightened of him. A bit apprehensive, perhaps, as she’d heard that being bedded inevitably involved pain. But nothing about what she’d seen, or what he’d said, made her wish to change her mind.

Pushing away from the bedpost, she walked toward him, grasping the sides of her shift and slowly raising it. When she came within arm’s length of him, he reached out, covered her hands with his, and helped her lift the garment over her head.

He sucked in a breath. “I imagined you thus,” he said darkly, “the very night we met.” With one fingertip, he pushed aside a strand of hair that had fallen over her breast, teasing her nipple with the curl. “But my imagination didn’t do you justice.”