“I think we should return to the inn,” he said gruffly, but as he moved away one of the whiplike stems of the thorny dog rose caught across his sleeve and the
back of his jacket. He tried to shrug himself free but the thorns were too sharp and too tenacious; he was effectively their prisoner.
Marissa, seeing his dilemma, tried to pry the thorns loose, only to stop with a cry as one of the hooks dug deep into the pad of her thumb, despite her glove.
“Let me see.”
Valentine reached for her hand, his fingers closing around hers, just as he remembered he shouldn’t risk touching her. But it was too late. Slowly, like someone unwrapping a forbidden birthday treat, he unfastened the single delicate button at her wrist and gently drew off her glove. Her hand was soft and her skin unblemished apart from a smear of blood on her thumb. He bent to examine the wound, playing for time. The bead of red swelled against her white flesh where the thorn had dug deep.
“I—I don’t think the thorn broke off,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Valentine?”
The veins on her wrist were visible through her pale skin, and he could feel the beat of her pulse beneath his fingers. He felt dizzy, as if he’d drunk too much, but it wasn’t alcohol making his head spin. It was her, Marissa Rotherhild.
Before he considered consequences—indeed his brain had little to do with it—he lifted her hand to his mouth and ran his tongue delicately across the injury, the taste of her blood clean and salty.
His eyes met hers and the intense eroticism of the moment held them spellbound.
Her lashes swept down to hide whatever she was feeling, but he felt the involuntary trembling of her fingers in his, and knew she was as affected as he. “You will think me—” she began, but didn’t finish.
“What will I think you?” he murmured, his voice deep and husky. She was closer than a moment ago, the scent of her filling his senses. Although her dark hair was pinned up beneath her hat, he could see some curls ready to tumble down. He wanted to tug them loose and bury his face in their warm darkness.
Gently she withdrew her hand from his. She took a step back, stumbling, putting space between them.
Was he frightening her? Valentine felt a wave of doubt crash over him. Could he have misread her? Was what he’d thought of as an intense attraction actually terror and disgust, the same emotions Vanessa had felt whenever he came close to her? The old poison seeped stealthily into his heart and mind and certainty turned to doubt.
You are no better than a beast, Valentine. I cannot bear your touch or your kisses.
No amount of patience or declarations of love had changed her opinion, and in the end they were bitter strangers living underneath the one roof. But always in the depths of his heart he’d wondered if perhaps Vanessa was right and he was beastly. A man beyond love.
“The rose thorns will tear your jacket,” Marissa said. Her voice saved him from further memories of the past. “You’d better take it off.”
He gave a grateful nod. It was only as he reached to flick open the buttons and shrug himself out of the garment that he recalled he was no longer wearing his shirt.
He stood, uncertain whether to proceed. “Miss Rotherhild,” he said, uncomfortably, “I am naked. You may wish to turn your back.”
She blinked at him, but there was no disgust in her face. Her expression was gentle, a little dazed, and the smile that curled her lips teased his senses in a way that was exceedingly dangerous.
“Oh, I—I don’t think that will be necessary, Lord Kent.”
A ripple of lust curled in his stomach. There it was in her face, that same sense of a storm brewing that he’d seen outside the church. Slowly Valentine slipped one arm out of his jacket. Her gaze widened and her hand went involuntarily to her lips. She stood perfectly still as he began to remove his other arm from its sleeve.
In other circumstances he may have found it amusing, ridiculous, this deliberate disrobing in front of an innocent young lady. But there was nothing funny about what he was feeling. And Marissa…well, if he could believe what he was reading in her face she found his actions utterly compelling.
Valentine knew he was no Adonis, and yet the way she was eating him up with her eyes made him feel like a god. A master of sensuality. In a heartbeat he’d been released from the misery of his marriage to Vanessa, his shackles broken.
She took a step toward him, reaching out her hand, only to pause uncertainly. “I have a great need to…That is, may I touch you?” she spoke earnestly.
“Yes,” he growled, aching for her fingers on his nakedness.
She pressed her palm to his chest, waiting a beat, and then slid it down and over his breast bone. He shivered. She put her other hand on him, then remembering her glove, quickly unbuttoned it and drew it off, before replacing her hands—her skin against his. His chest was rising and falling heavily with his breath as she stroked her palms over his shoulders and down the muscles of his arms, then back again. Once more he had to resort to squeezing his hands into fists to stop himself from grabbing hold of her. She brushed her fingertip over his rigid nipples and examined the wiry strands of hair growing around them. She leaned closer, as if she was a botanist examining some rare specimen, and her warm breath teased his flesh. An image flashed into his mind of her mouth closing over his cock.
“Marissa,” he groaned, the sound of a man in great pain. It had been so long since he had a woman, any woman, and this woman was exceptional.
Her eyes flew to his, dark and aglow. Her cheeks were flushed. She gave a shaken smile. “Valentine?”
Doubts still flickered at the edges of his senses, but he could no longer mistake what he saw in her face. Desire. She wanted him almost as much as he wanted her.
What would it be like to kiss her lips? When he was a younger man he’d had a strong lusty streak. There’d been ladies, lots of them, and he’d taken his fill. And then he’d married Vanessa and all that had changed—he’d changed. He wanted to be that young and lusty man again.