Marrying Winterborne

He groaned and lost control, quaking violently just as she had, and she realized that he was experiencing his own release. Feeling curiously protective of him, she tightened her arms across his back. After a long moment, Rhys withdrew with a groan and eased to his side to keep from crushing her.

As the invasion slid away, there was a hot, disconcerting trickle between her thighs. Her flesh was sore and smarting, closing oddly on emptiness. But she felt sated, her body agreeably tumbled and lazy, and it was exquisite to feel the roughness and strength and smoothness of him all around her. With the last of her strength, she turned to her side and nestled into the crook of his shoulder.

Her thoughts were dissolving before she could fully grasp them. It was daytime, even though it felt like deepest night. Soon she would have to dress herself, and go out into the bright, cold light, when all she wanted was to stay in this safe warm darkness and sleep, and sleep.

Rhys sought to arrange the covers, pausing to tug at something caught half-beneath her. A remnant of her chemise. Helen knew she ought to feel concerned—how could she return home without a chemise?—but in her exhaustion, it didn’t seem to matter nearly as much as it should have.

“I meant to respect your possessions,” he said ruefully.

“You were distracted,” she managed to whisper.

Rhys made a faint sound of amusement. “‘Unhinged’ would be the word.” After using the torn garment to blot the wetness between her thighs, he tossed it aside and shaped his hand over her skull in a brief, comforting gesture. “Sleep, cariad. I’ll wake you now in a minute.”

Now in a minute . . . a Welsh phrase she’d heard him say before. Later, it seemed to mean, with no particular urgency.

Her body quivered with relief as she let herself succumb, sinking into the inviting darkness. And she fell asleep in a man’s arms for the first time in her life.

FOR MORE THAN an hour, Rhys did nothing but hold her. He felt drugged with satisfaction, drunk on it.

No matter how long he stared at Helen, he couldn’t have his fill. Every detail of her struck fresh notes of pleasure in him: the supple lines of her body, the pretty curves of her breasts. The white-blonde hair that spilled and streamed over his forearm, catching light as if it were liquid. And most of all her face, innocent in sleep, bereft of its usual composed mask. The wistful softness of her mouth went straight to his heart. How was it that he could hold her so close and still want more of her?

Helen was not a placid sleeper. At times her lashes trembled and her lips parted with an anxious breath, and her fingers and toes twitched involuntarily. Whenever she became restless, he caressed and cradled her more closely. Without even trying, she pulled something from him, a tenderness he’d never shown to anyone. He had pleasured women, taken them in every conceivable way. But he’d never made love to anyone the way he just had, as if his fingers were drinking sensation from her skin.

Beneath the covers, her slender thigh hitched higher on his leg as she turned more fully on her side. His cock answered vigorously. He wanted her again, now, even before she had healed from the first time, before he’d washed the virgin’s blood and his seed from her. Somehow in yielding to him so completely, she had gained a mysterious advantage, something he couldn’t yet identify.

He had to steel himself from rolling over her and thrusting into her defenseless body. Instead he savored the feel of her tucked against his side.

A log snapped in the hearth, the implosion of flame sending ruddy light through the room. He relished the way it gilded Helen’s skin, a sheen of gold over ivory. Very softly he touched the perfect curve of her shoulder. How strange it was to lie here so utterly contented, when he usually couldn’t abide inactivity. He could lie here for hours, even now at the middle of the day, just holding her.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been abed at this hour, save for those three weeks at Eversby Priory while he’d recovered from the train accident.

Before that experience, he’d never been sick in his life. And the thing he had always feared most was to be at someone else’s mercy. But somewhere in the miasma of heat and pain, he had become aware of a young woman’s cool hands and lulling voice. She had wiped his face and neck with iced cloths, and given him sips of sweetened tea. Everything about her had soothed him: the delicacy of her, the vanilla sweetness of her scent, the gentle way she had spoken to him.

For the most blissful few minutes of Rhys’s life, she had cradled his feverish head and told him stories about mythology and orchids. Until his last day on earth, that memory was the one he would return to most often. It was the first time he hadn’t envied a single man on earth, because for once he had felt something close to happiness. And it hadn’t been something he’d had to hunt down and devour in dog-hungry gulps . . . it had been gently, patiently spooned to him. Kindness that had asked for nothing in return. He had craved it . . . craved her . . . ever since.

A delicate blond tendril dangled over Helen’s nose, fluttering with each soft exhalation. Rhys stroked back the glinting strands and let his thumb trace over a slender dark brow.

He still didn’t understand why Helen had come to him. He had believed that his wealth was the attraction, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Obviously she wasn’t drawn to his scholarly turn of mind or his distinguished lineage, since he possessed neither of those things.

She’d said she wanted adventure. But adventures had a way of becoming tiresome, and then it was time to return to everything that was safe and familiar. What would happen when she wanted to go back and realized her life could never be what it was?