Patricia Rice (35 page)

The heart-shaped lace bodice scarcely covered her
breasts. The clinging beige silk draped her waist and hips like a second
skin. And her toes... She wiggled them against the carpet and let the
ache of desire flow through her. Mac had even taken indecent liberties
with her toes until she could no longer think of them without blushing.

Mac hadn’t come to her room. Again.

She glanced at the clock on her bedroom mantel as it
chimed midnight. She’d heard the floorboards squeak in the hall an hour
ago. She’d hoped he would wash and disrobe and come to her, but he
hadn’t.

She wouldn’t cry in disappointment. That was
childish. She had to make up her mind what to do about it, and act on
it. She was a grown woman, after all.

What could she do for a man who had just learned he’d married a bankrupt wife who owed a fortune to his worst enemy?

Tell him to sell the estate? That was what he really
wanted, she knew. But then she and all her servants would be homeless.
And if the person who bought the estate was like the earl, the village
would wither away from neglect.

She was just learning the courage to be herself here, and until she learned independence, she’d be lost anywhere else.

She supposed it would be equally difficult for Mac
to be anyone but himself. He belonged on the open sea, or building
railroads, or living in exciting places with people who got things done.

She had no answers to their overwhelming problems.
The only thing she knew with any confidence was that Mac liked having
her in his bed.

Using the suite’s interior doors, wearing only her
gossamer gown, she swept through their joint sitting room and, without
knocking, threw open the door to her husband’s bedchamber.

Mac sat in a chair by the cold grate, reading a book
by the light of a single lamp. He’d removed his boots, coat, and
waistcoat, and thrown off his cravat, creating an image of casual
indolence in his stocking feet and shirtsleeves. But Mac was never
indolent.

He looked up in surprise at Bea’s entrance, and she
thought his jaw dropped just a little as he caught sight of her in the
light of the single candle she carried. He slammed the book closed and
sat up straight. “Is something wrong?” he inquired.

Screaming and flinging things at his obtuseness
seemed an excellent alternative to smiling seductively, but she didn’t
think it would be a constructive one. “I want to be a wife,” she
announced.

“A wife goes where her husband goes,” he said impatiently. “You don’t want to be a wife. You want to be a student.”

Well, that was true. Bea bit her lip and sought a
different approach. “Well, then, don’t men have women that they don’t
marry? Mistresses? Could I be yours?”

He rubbed his forehead and shook his head, but she
thought she caught just a bit of a gleam in his eye as he absorbed the
impact of her gown.

“You’re a lady. I can’t treat you that way. Your father would come back to haunt me. Your servants would poison me.”

“It’s essentially what you wanted when we agreed to
this marriage.” She thought. She wasn’t entirely certain of anything,
but her tongue had come unleashed.

Crossing his hands over his chest, Mac sprawled his
legs across the carpet and studied her with an intensity that heated her
blood.

“Men don’t marry mistresses. I wanted a wife. I
didn’t know that you were averse to ever leaving this damned place. I
thought we’d have children together, work together. You are the one who
doesn’t wish to be married.” He grimaced. “Not to me, at least.”

“That’s not true,” she protested. “You are the only man I would ever consider marrying.”

He wanted her. She could see it by the way his hands
tightened, and the place behind his trouser buttons swelled, and his
gaze couldn’t tear away from her. He’d granted her the power of being a
woman. She need only learn to wield it. She held the candle steady as
she waited for his reply.

“Maybe so, but we’re in no position to act on it now. Go back to bed, Bea. We’ll work this out somehow, but not now.”

She’d spent twenty-eight years of her life waiting.
She refused to wait any longer. Slamming the candle down on his bedside
table, she swung around and locked the key in the door. Then, with a
smile, she dropped it to the floor and kicked it under the door, into
the sitting room.

Before Mac could quite grasp what she had done, she
repeated the action with the hall door, locking them in. Turning
triumphantly as he fell back into his chair, cursing, she tugged her
nightgown up. “I won’t let you sleep in the chair, you know,” she said
much more calmly than she felt as the gown slipped over her head and
tumbled to the floor.

He stared at her nakedness in the candlelight. She was so entranced by her power to captivate him that she forgot to blush.

“How will you stop me?” he asked, his gaze not lifting from what she’d revealed.

“Like this.” Bea crossed the carpet and, with a determination she’d never known, straddled his lap.

“Bea,” he groaned in what very much sounded like anguish as she began unfastening his shirt buttons.

She wouldn’t look at him looking at her, but at the
buttons she poked through their holes, one by one. “I am a very good
student,” she said firmly. “Do you wish to see if I can pass the final
exam?”

“Bea, we can’t do this,” Mac muttered, but already
the reason why was fading into the red haze of lust. He’d never stared
directly at the most voluptuous bosom a man could ever hope to see, and
watch as rosebud crests puckered and all but begged to be ravished right
before his eyes.

And then there were all the other temptations
distracting him. His fingers clenched chair arms a hand’s breadth from
the firm curve of ivory waist and hips, and there, on the gentle slope
in between, beckoned the most beguiling navel he’d ever longed to sip
from.

He tried to freeze in place, to control his instant
response to the pressure of heat and woman over his crotch, but that was
one part of him over which he had never possessed any restraint. The
swelling strained his trouser buttons, threatening to pop their last
thread if Bea so much as moved.

“Bea, get in bed.” He aimed for an authoritative tone.

“No,” she said, spreading his shirt open and rubbing
her hands over his chest. Waves of glorious hair spilled forward,
covering some of the temptation, but then he watched the fullness of her
parted lips, and every bone in his body weakened.

No? His timid, shy Bea had told him
no
? For the second time. He must be dreaming. Mac groaned and nearly bucked out of the chair when she tweaked his nipples.

He was definitely dreaming. She lowered herself more
securely until only his clothes prevented penetration. He raised his
hips in a desperate bid to dislodge her, or to seek the tight inner cave
she offered him. He was beyond telling which.

“I want to show you I can learn. How am I progressing so far?”‘

She pressed that lovely mouth to his. Mac gasped at
the sudden ecstasy of her naked breasts firing his skin, and she took
advantage by thrusting her tongue between his lips. As her hands and
breasts teased his chest, she rotated in an erotic circle on his lap
until he rose straight out of the chair.

She immediately wrapped her long legs around his
waist and wouldn’t let go. Clutching her soft bottom, Mac dropped her
back on the bed. He would not be taken for a ride like some green lad.
He was the master here, the one who dictated—

Bea popped his trouser buttons through their
buttonholes as he pressed her down. Her legs held him trapped, but Mac
was beyond noticing as the buttons fell free, and he leaned forward to
take advantage of the rosy crests he’d denied himself earlier.

Her squeal of delight as she melted beneath him only
increased his ardor. Seizing one tight petal with his teeth, he
caressed the other until she was the one bucking for a closer
connection.

Mac knew in the back of his mind that he’d lost the
battle. He’d had some purpose in resisting that had dissipated with his
uncontrollable lust, but the only thing that mattered now was removing
the placket of material preventing him from having what he wanted.

Bea’s determined fingers took care of the problem
for him. Stepping out of the constraint of his trousers, Mac nibbled her
lip and thrust his tongue between her teeth. Then, catching her thighs,
he splayed them wide, and held them pinned until she wriggled and
moaned her need and desperately tried to tilt her hips to meet his
arousal.

He hadn’t removed his shirt, and it hung open, tenting Bea in its folds as he forced her to look up at him, to
see
him, to know this wasn’t just some mindless game they played. Perhaps
this was all he’d had on his mind when he married her, but they had gone
far beyond that since then.

“Mac?” she asked uncertainly as he finally released her mouth.

“You are my
wife
, not my
student.” He had no clear idea of the source of this declaration, but he
thought it was something they needed to clarify. “If I’m making babies
inside you, then I have some say in how those babies are raised.”

“You
want
to help raise them?” she asked in disbelief.

“Not only want, but will. I’ll not have namby-pamby
Percys and browbeaten Pamelas or holy terrors who know naught of their
father.” That much he did know.

“All right,” she said, watching his expression at first but distracted as he drew his thumbs up her thighs.

He loved the way her eyes widened in surprise at
each new sensation. “My children will go wherever I go,” he warned. He
didn’t remember thinking about that. It was one of those emotional
eruptions that took over his tongue without warning, and it seemed to
make sense. He wouldn’t neglect any child of his as Simmons had.

“That’s absurd.” She gasped as his thumb reached the apex of her thighs and brushed aside tight curls. “You can’t possibly—”

She emitted a shaky little cry as his finger penetrated her. “Mac—”

“You started this.” He leaned over again, running
his hands beneath her curved buttocks, teasing her mouth with his kisses
as he positioned his erection at the point of no return. “Now you must
reap what you have sown.”

She cried out in dismay and eagerness as he cupped and lifted her, then drove so deeply he felt huge enough to batter walls.

He should have stopped and apologized right there,
when she whimpered and drew herself higher to ease his entrance, but
then she wrapped her legs around his thighs and pulled him closer, and
he lost thought of anything at all but the muscles clenching sensitive
parts of his anatomy and the release he needed.

She clamped her legs, rolled her hips, and before he
knew how she’d done it, his timid wife sat astride him, riding him so
hard and fast Mac could only grab her hips, drive higher, and, with no
control whatsoever, erupt with a force that would shatter a volcano.

Her muscles held him deep while the spasms of her
release rocked through them, dissipating whatever barrier had kept them
separate. Mac felt the dissolution as a physical thing, a melting and
merging of their flesh until their blood flowed as one, and he was as
much a part of her as she was of him.

Frightening in its immensity, their joining shook
his soul as little else had. Gently rolling Bea back to the bed and
resting his weight on his elbows, Mac stayed within her.

Bea gazed back at him in wonder. “I think we rocked the world.”

“My world, of a certainty,” he agreed, too shaken to
find logic. “And should anyone ever dare call you timid again, I’ll
laugh until my sides ache.”

He wanted her again. After all that, he was still
partially erect and growing. He could tell by the way her eyes widened
that she knew it, too. He wasn’t precisely a small man, and she was
still tight as a virgin. Reluctantly he slid away and helped her to slip
beneath the covers.

“It’s only with you that I’m not timid,” she murmured as he took her in his arms and ran slow kisses down her throat.

“And with the children,” he reminded her. “Life
changes us. You haven’t experienced life yet, but soon you may have more
life than your own.” He stroked her belly to prove his point. Many more
nights like this, and he would catch her with his child, if he hadn’t
already.

“I can do it,” she said bravely, although her lip
trembled at his frown. “I want you to think of me with eagerness, so
you’ll come back soon. I don’t want some dainty little female to
distract you.”

How could he answer that? He wanted her in his bed every night of his life, and she still thought he wouldn’t return.

He saw no sense in arguing. Suckling her nipple and
teasing her to readiness with his fingers, he eased his anxiety in the
only manner they had learned together.

Tomorrow he would make her understand. Tonight he
had a delectable tigress in his bed, and he intended to train her to do
his bidding.

The future wasn’t always clear, but he’d stake anything that his had a wanton tigress in it.

***

Awakening to late-morning sunshine, Mac smiled
sleepily at the spill of dazzling russet hair before his eyes and
reached to snuggle his wife against his morning arousal. She purred deep
in her throat, nestled into his embrace, and promptly fell asleep
again.

Gradually becoming more aware of the sounds that had
awoken him, Mac lay still. Voices. In the sitting room between his
chamber and Bea’s. Childish voices.

Frowning, he eased away from Bea, but his movement
woke her. She looked at him questioningly; then she, too, heard the
children, followed by a tap at the hall door.

“Wanta see Unca Mac!” a small voice demanded from the sitting room door.

“Mr. MacTavish, sir,” a male voice called from the hall. Some urgency seemed attached to the inquiry.