The Heiress Effect

She gave out a soft cry.

“There’s only so much I can do on a horse,” he murmured in her ear. “And perhaps it’s just as well, because if I had you in a bed tonight, I don’t think I could keep my mouth from taking the place of my hands.”

He slid his finger in another circle around her breast.

She swept her hand down his shoulder. Not skimming the fabric. Not even dipping tentatively below the lapels of his coat. Her palm conformed to his chest, seeking out the shape of his muscles, as if the fabric were not even there.

It didn’t matter where they were. What they were doing. That she wore a ball gown, that there were layers of silk and wool separating their skin. He burned for her, burned to kiss every last inch of her. He burned to touch the places he couldn’t reach at this moment.

“God, Jane. God. Tell me not to pull you off this horse.”

She did no such thing. She simply tangled her hand in his coat and pulled him closer.

He was not going to have her in the underbrush at the side of the road. He wasn’t. But God, he wanted it. He wanted her, and he couldn’t even remember why it was a bad idea any longer.

“Oliver.” She said his name on a gasp, and it drove him wild.

“God, I love when you say my name like that.”

She shifted, and her bottom rubbed against his groin as she did. He rolled her nipple between his fingers.

“Oliver,” she moaned, and he kissed her harder. “Oliver. I’m not trying to say your name.”

He pulled back, breathing hard.

“It’s just, that’s the third raindrop I’ve felt.”

“Oh, damnation.” He didn’t want to be interrupted, not for rain, not for thunder, not for a flood sweeping down on them. He didn’t want this to end. Once it did, he wasn’t sure when it would ever start again.

But she was right. It had begun to rain. A cold, wet droplet fell on his nose, followed by another.

He had known their time together was going to end. It was probably just as well that it had. Nothing had changed. She was still…impossible. Utterly impossible. A few heated kisses couldn’t hold the truth at bay, and more would just render this whole thing unsavory.

He wanted more. God, how he wanted more. He wanted it with the strength of four months’ of desperate longing. He forced himself to concentrate on those cold, wet drops. He imagined each one washing away his ardor. Driving away thoughts of her breast under his palm, her legs wrapped around his waist.

The rain really wasn’t helping.

The storm came on faster than their horse would go. One minute, there were a mild drizzle; the next, it felt as if they’d been enveloped in a sheet of water. It poured over them in a cold wave.

So why was he not chilled? Why was he still holding her, caressing her, kissing away the water drops that collected on her ear? Why were his hands exploring her curves?

Light sizzled across the sky in a jagged arc.

It highlighted the silhouettes of buildings, not so far away now. This interlude was already coming to an end. He couldn’t let go of her, though. Couldn’t stop his lips from tasting her neck again and again. Couldn’t take his hands from her thighs—especially not now, with her gown plastered to her skin.

He took her to the inn.

There were a thousand ways that a man and a woman arriving at an inn, drenched, in the middle of the night, might finagle a room together. If he were a different man…

He handed her down. “Go in,” he said. “Tell whoever’s in charge some story about how you…” He really couldn’t think of a story right now. He couldn’t think of anything but her. “Make up something. Whatever you like. I’ll wait half an hour and come in with a different tale. We sent our luggage over by different paths, requested different rooms. There’s no need for her to associate the two of us.”

“Oliver.”

He didn’t look at her. If he saw her eyes, if he looked at her gown, clinging to her wet skin, he’d never let her go.

He swallowed. The next words were harder to say than he had imagined, but he managed to choke them out.

“Sleep well. I’ll see you tomorrow at the train station at seven.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jane could not wait calmly. Time passed, and she watched the door, waiting to see the results of her subterfuge. It took forty-five minutes before Oliver strode in, still wet, but possessed of one of the towels that Jane had asked to be left for him.

“Jane.” His voice was rough.

He ran his hands through his hair, ruffling it into wet, auburn spikes.

She lifted her chin and met his eyes. There was no lamp in the room, just a fire. The dim flicker of flame made his eyes seem dark and dangerous.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he growled.

“You told me to tell the innkeeper a story,” she said, managing to keep her voice calm even when her heart was beating at twice its normal rate. “I did.”

“A story about how you came to be alone and wet and bedraggled to an inn! That’s what I meant. Not a story about—about—”

“About how my lover, a duke’s son, would be coming along shortly?” Jane raised an eyebrow. “About how we would be sharing a chamber?”

He tossed his towel over a chair and advanced on her.

“Yes,” he said, “I want you. Yes, I’ve thought of having you over and over these last few months. Yes, I lost my head out there, Jane. But I didn’t expect you to pay for my help with your body.”

She stood. She’d changed from her sodden gown into a warm chemise with an embroidered robe over it. She could hear the beat of blood in her ears.

“Is that what you think? That I’m offering myself to you in payment for services rendered? Don’t be daft, Oliver.” She took a step toward him. “Do you think you’re the only one who has been wanting these last months? The only one who lies awake, watching the ceiling, wishing for more? Look at me. I’m not a sacrifice.”

Her heart slammed, but she reached up and undid the tie of her robe. He watched that piece of silk slide to the floor, his eyes hungry.

“Look at me,” Jane repeated. She slid the robe off of her shoulders—she could scarcely breathe—and let it flutter down. Her skin prickled in the sudden coolness, but it wasn’t cold she felt. “I’m not a gift,” she said. “Or a prize that you’ve won. I’m a woman, and I want you because it will give me joy.”

He was looking her up and down. She knew how sheer her shift was—translucent enough that he’d be able to see the form of her body silhouetted with the fire behind it.