Lord of Scoundrels - Loretta Chase [74]
Her fist shot out. His head went back, reflexively, and she missed…but only by a hairs-breadth.
He laughed— and something struck his ear. He eyed her narrowly. She was smiling, and twin glints of mischief lit her grey eyes. "Did I hurt you, Dain?" she asked with patently false concern.
"Hurt me?" he echoed. "Do you actually believe you can hurt me with that?"
He grabbed the offending hand.
She lost her balance and stumbled forward and caught hold of his shoulder.
Her mouth was inches from his.
He closed the distance and kissed her, fiercely, while he let go of her hand to wrap his arm around her waist.
The morning sun beat down warmly, but she tasted like rain, like a summer storm, and the thunder he heard was his own need, his blood pounding in his ears, his heart drumming the same unsteady beat.
He deepened the kiss, thirstily plundering the sweet heat of her mouth, and instantly intoxicated when she answered in kind, her tongue curling over his in a teasing dance that made him dizzy. Her slender arms wound about his neck and tightened. Her firm, round breasts pressed against his chest, sending whorls of heat down, to throb in his loins. He slid his hand down, cupping her small, deliciously rounded derriere.
Mine, he thought. She was light and slender and curved to sweet perfection…and she was his. His very own wife, ravishing him with her innocently wanton mouth and tongue, clinging to him with intoxicating possessiveness. As though she wanted him, as though she felt what he did, the same mindless, hammering need.
His mouth still locked with hers, he swept her down from her stony pedestal and would have swept her onto the hard ground as well…but a raucous cry from above jolted him back to reality.
He broke away from her mouth and looked up.
A carrion crow fearlessly alit on one of the smaller bluestones, and offered a beaky profile from which one glinting eye appeared to regard Dain with mocking avian amusement.
Big Beak, Ainswood had called him last night. One of the old Eton epithets— along with "Earwig," "Black Buzzard," and a host of other endearments.
His face burning, he turned away from his wife. "Come along," he said, his voice sharp with bitterness. "We can't dawdle here all day."
* * *
Jessica heard the bitterness and discerned the flush under his olive skin. For a few moments, she fretted that she'd done something to offend or disgust him. But halfway down the incline, he slowed to let her catch up with him. And when she took his hand— the crippled one— and squeezed it, he glanced at her, and said, "I hate crows. Noisy, filthy things."
She supposed that was as close to an explanation or apology as he could come. She glanced back at the ancient temple. "I collect it's because you're a high-strung thoroughbred. He was merely part of the atmosphere to me. I thought it all very romantic."
He gave a short laugh. "You mean 'gothic,' I think."
"No, I don't," she said. "There was I in the arms of a dark, dangerous hero, amid the ruins of Stonehenge, an ancient place of mystery. Byron himself could not have painted a more romantic scene. I'm sure you believe there isn't a romantic bone in your body," she added with a sidelong glance. "If you found one, you'd break it. But you needn't worry. I shouldn't dream of declaring otherwise to anyone else."
"I'm not romantic," he said tightly. "And I most certainly am not high-strung. As to thorough-breds— you know very well I'm half-Italian."
"The Italian half is blue-blooded, too," she said. "The Duc d'Abonville told me your mother's line is very old Florentine nobility. That, apparently, reconciled him to our marriage."
He uttered a series of words she couldn't understand, but guessed were curses in his mother's tongue.
"He means to marry Genevieve," she said mollifyingly. "That's what made him so overprotective of me. But there are benefits to the attachment. He's taken Bertie in hand, which means you won't be bothered with my brother's financial difficulties in future."
Dain brooded silently until they'd reentered the carriage. Then, releasing a