The Sherbrooke Bride - Catherine Coulter [82]
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice raw and low. “I frightened you. I’m sorry.” Then he laughed at himself. “You won’t believe this, Alexandra,” he said, grasping her arms and stroking them, up and down and up and down because he had to touch her, just have contact with her. “Never, please believe me, never have I felt so frantic before, so damned urgent. It’s true and it shocks me that I could lose my control. I don’t like it a bit. It isn’t at all like me. You’re just a woman, truth be told, like any other woman, despite the fact that you’re my wife. I’m not lying to you, Alexandra. No, don’t look at me as if I’m a monster. I am not rejecting you, never that. That other time I was a fool and I want to make it up to you tonight. I don’t want to hurt you, to frighten you. God, your breasts are lovely.”
He was breathing hard, as if he’d just run to Northcliffe’s north field and back. His sex was thrusting outward still. Alexandra pressed her palm against his heart. Fast pounding. He wanted her.
And she’d acted like a stupid ninny, freezing up on him. “Please, Douglas, I’m sorry I’m afraid. I won’t act like a virgin again.”
He laughed and it hurt. “You are a virgin.” Yet he marveled at her unquestioned acceptance. She still looked wary, but also she was eager and he was more than eager to teach her.
“Come here.”
She took the three steps until she was standing directly in front of him.
“As you can see, I still want you very much. As I told you, I can’t control my reaction. Do you want to stay here or come with me into my bedchamber?”
“I want to go with you.”
Without another word, Douglas picked her up and held her tightly against him. Her breath was warm on his cheek and then she kissed him, a light kiss, one with her lips closed, a virgin’s kiss, an innocent kiss a girl would give her uncle, and it pleased him and drove him mad with lust. He dropped her to her feet and took her hand, dragging her into his bedchamber. Once there, he turned to face her and pulled her up against him. She kissed him again, this time on his ear and then she lightly bit his earlobe.
He ran the last few feet to his bed. He was breathing hard, and it was going to be touch and go. “Now, listen to me,” he said, forcing himself not to touch her, just to look down at her, sprawled in the middle of his bed. “I don’t want you to touch me or kiss me again. I don’t know what the matter with me is, but I can’t take it, Alexandra. Do you understand?”
Even as he spoke the words, he remembered again Ryder telling him he was a cold fish. Cold, ha!
Her eyes were large with astonishment as she stared up at him.
“I know you don’t understand, dammit, just tell me that you do, all right?”
“I understand, Douglas,” she said, and reached up to clasp her arms around his neck, drawing him down. He fell atop her, his mouth was on hers, and he was kissing her again and again, whispering for her to part her lips, and when she did, he groaned into her mouth, and didn’t stop. “Alexandra.” He said her name over and over, and he didn’t want to stop kissing her, not until he had no more breath, not until he was dead, and then he’d stop, maybe. He managed to jerk off his dressing gown, but the touch of her flesh against his sent him over the edge. He was on top of her, hard against her belly and he wanted to fit himself between her legs. He reared back and pushed her legs wide apart. He fell on her again and his sex was pushing against her and he thought he would die if he couldn’t come into her this instant, this