Out Of Her League, An Erotic Romance (7 page)

“No, though I assume they would if I ordered it.”

“Are you always so confident you’ll get exactly what you want?”

He turned, directly meeting her stare. “Yes. Always.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t get Miss Kittworthy.”

“What makes you think Miss Kittworthy was the woman I wanted?”

“You were betrothed.”

“Nearly betrothed. We no longer are, and that fact is partly your fault.”

Kate drew to an abrupt stop. “My fault?”

“If it hadn’t been for you, I might have fought for her, told myself she was the woman for me. The perfect wife. I likely would have won, and I would have lived with that mistake the rest of my life.” The light, teasing grin he normally wore was gone. In its place was an expression of naked sincerity, an expression that brought a soft ache to the center of her chest.

Her gaze moved over his face, drinking in the chiseled planes of his cheekbones, the rugged line of his jaw, the deep blue of his eyes, the enticing male fullness of his lips.

“I knew I couldn’t touch you again once I was engaged to Miss Kittworthy,” he continued. “So it all came down to one single choice: which was less painful to give up? My engagement to Miss Kittworthy, or touching you? Once I phrased it like that, the answer was ridiculously easy.”

“Was it?” she managed.

“Of course. How could I demand another kiss from you if I was to wed another?”

“Demand?”

“Ask,” he amended. “Very nicely. With very pretty words, if you’d like.” His breath fanned her ear as he stepped closer, drawing his hands over her upper arms. “Aren't you curious? Were you able to stop wondering? I wasn’t. Was that just one single, exceptionally nice kiss? Something to be enjoyed and forgotten? Or was it a prelude to something far richer indeed?”

His words slowly penetrated her wall of resistance. Unable to stop herself, she reached for him, gently trailing her fingers across the solid wall of his chest.

His muscles leapt beneath her touch. He sucked in his breath, then slowly let it out. “I need you, Kate.”

Hadn’t she dreamed of him saying exactly that? But now that he had, she felt frozen, caught completely unawares. A thousand thoughts exploded in her mind, scattering away in tiny fragments too small for her to grasp.

A dalliance, that was all he was offering, she reminded herself. But what more could she expect? Kate took a realistic look at her position. She ranked—perhaps—just above the girl who’d served their luncheon. While James treated her with the utmost courtesy, obviously he had no intention of making her his wife. If her father were still alive, an alliance might have been possible. But not now. Not with the shambles Bertie and George had made of their financial affairs and social standing.

No, the best future she could hope for was a position at St. Thomas, where she might gain a little financial security and independence. If she were lucky, she’d be granted a position as hospital matron.

She would spend the rest of her life in square, sensible shoes, her hair trapped in an ugly bun, her breasts bound together like one massive, unmovable unit, a scowl of permanent displeasure on her face. She would move through the halls of the hospital like a battleship under full steam, always finding fault, chastising nurses, surgeons, physicians, and patients alike.

The future laid out before her filled her with an unbearable sadness. She couldn’t avoid it, but at least she could have this. A memory to carry with her. She would know what desire felt like. She would see a man’s eyes darken with desire, the way James’s did when he looked at her.

They were alone in a nearly empty room. The only item of furniture was a white damask settee. No one would know if she dared reach for him. Kate’s pulse raced.

James watched her in silence. Slowly, as if he feared she were a timid animal who might flee at the slightest provocation, he lowered his head, bringing his mouth a fraction of an inch from her cheek.

“I’m not a man who takes this sort of thing lightly.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Taking you.” He leaned forward, capturing her lips with his own.

Unlike the first time their lips had met, this was no gentle kiss. No soft coaxing, no sweet exploration. His mouth covered hers in a kiss of hard insistence, crushing eagerness. She offered no resistance. Yielding beneath his fiery onslaught, she parted her lips. His tongue swept into her mouth, skimmed her teeth, danced with hers.

She tasted the wine they’d had with their luncheon, dry and crisp. The sugar that had dusted the almonds. Then came a taste she’d come to recognize as uniquely James. A taste she’d already begun to crave.

Her passion sparked as fiery flames of desire coiled through her belly. She wanted more. Her appetite for the man could not be satiated. Instead, the deeper their kiss, the more her hunger grew. She locked her arms around his neck and returned his embrace with a ravenous ardor all her own.

She pressed her body against his, expressing without words the primitive need to meld their bodies into one. She flattened her breasts against his chest, slid her thigh between his.

James stumbled slightly, alerting them both to the precariousness of their position. Kate instinctively tried to draw back but he wouldn’t allow it. He gave a frustrated groan and shoved his crutches aside. They landed on the marble floor with a sharp clatter. James wrapped his arm around her waist and edged backward, pulling her along with him.

They fell together, collapsing clumsily on the damask settee. Kate straddled his lap, her body braced on top of his, her skirts bunched up around her knees.

Before she could adjust her position, he lifted her as if she weighed no more than a child and settled her sideways onto his lap. Lifted her with an ease that forced her to take a new reckoning of the man. In his injured state, she had fused James with previous weakened patients for whom she had cared.

She realized now the absurdity of her error. True, he needed help regaining the strength in his leg, but that was healing quickly. In focusing only on his injury, she had underestimated his innate strength.

James Lancaster was a tall, powerfully built man, so opposite in every way to her own feminine form. As that fact impressed itself upon her brain, a shiver of excitement coursed through her. The sheer maleness of his body thrilled her in a way she’d never anticipated. She was possessed of a sudden, urgent need to explore every inch of him.

The cool linen of his shirt, so lovely just seconds earlier, became an annoyance not to be borne. She reached for the collar. Clumsy with haste, she slipped the stays free and tugged the offending garment from his chest and arms, giving her unrestrained access to his skin.

She couldn’t stop moving her hands over his broad chest, tracing the rippled lines of his flat stomach, his brawny forearms, his steel biceps. His muscles quivered and bunched beneath her touch. His reaction gave her a heady, intoxicating sense of power, emboldening her to continue her daring explorations.

His body was darker than hers, a rich masculine hue, pale cocoa to her own soft cream. He was hotter as well, as though his inner core burned a few degrees warmer. His skin felt like rough velvet to her touch. A light smattering of chest hair tickled her fingertips. The wound at his shoulder was a jagged pink line, still slightly puckered and swollen. She pressed her lips to the injury, then moved on, drinking in every subtle nuance of his body.

He threw back his head to give her greater access to his skin. She trailed light kisses down the column of his throat and across his collarbone.

Wondering if he would derive the same pleasure as she had, she flicked her tongue lightly against his masculine nipple—a nipple so unlike her own, so broad and flat and dark. Yet the nub stiffened slightly when she teased her tongue over it. Seized by a kittenish impulse she couldn’t restrain, she brought it between her teeth and gave a gentle bite.

James emitted a hoarse sound that fell somewhere between a laugh and a moan. “Oh, God,” he rasped out. “You’ll ruin me, Kate.”

“Ruin you? Why?”

“Because it’s even better with you than I imagined it would be.”

She pulled back slightly and searched his face, thrilled by his admission. “You thought about me?”

He gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Yes, Kate. I thought about you. Far more than what is decent. More than any man should think about a woman.”

Her heart raced. “What did you think about?”

His eyes burned with a faraway fire. “I fear I would shock you if I admitted it all. Let us start here, with something I’ve wanted to do from the moment I first laid eyes on you.”

James reached for her. She drew in a breath, expecting him to loosen the buttons of her gown. Instead, he removed the pins that secured her white nurse’s cap and lifted it from her head. “If there were a fire in that grate,” he said, nodding toward the cold hearth, “I would be delighted to set this hideous thing burning.”

“No, you would not. It’s part of my uniform.”

“It’s ugly.”

“It’s proper.”

He ignored her words, his attention fixed instead on removing the heavy clips and combs that bound her hair, releasing it from the thick knot at the base of her scalp. Kate’s hair tumbled down her shoulders in rich golden waves, nearly reaching the small of her back.

“Now this,” he said, his voice low and husky as he gently combed his fingers through the thick blond mass, “this is beautiful. Such a shame to keep it hidden. You should wear it like this always.”

She laughed at the scandalous suggestion. “I couldn’t possibly.”

A strange light entered his eyes as he stroked her hair, absently toying with it. “Yes, you’re right. That’s the way it should be. I’m the only man allowed see you with your hair down. The only man who can touch you like this.”

James’s possessive words sent an unexpected surge of pleasure through her. Another woman might have seized the opportunity to strike a jealous chord and suggest there were others vying for her hand, but that was not the sort of game Kate was interested in playing. Her surrender to James was absolute. “Yes,” she said. “Only you. You’re the only one.”

“Yes. My Kate.”

His fingers worked the buttons of her gown. She wore a serviceable brown wool. It was her least favorite gown, and she’d hated putting it on earlier that morning. She’d only done so because her other gowns had recently been laundered and the persistent wet weather left them soggy and damp. But as James peeled away the drab garment, allowing it to pool at her waist, Kate wondered if the selection hadn’t been perfect. She felt like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

She wore a corset of shimmering gold silk edged with soft ivory lace. The garment had been fabricated with sturdy stays, designed to lift her lush breasts and thrust them upward. An engineering marvel. No fabric hid her breasts, no netting or silk. The creamy globes of flesh were fully exposed, her tight pink nipples tilted skyward. All laid out before him like a banquet, inviting his mouth and tongue.

James drew in his breath, then let it out with a long exhale. His eyes grew dark. “Right,” he murmured, as though her body was the answer to some long-held, unformed question. “That’s exactly right.”

He studied her the way an artist would frame a model, his gaze raking over every detail as though posing her for a formal portrait. He arranged her hair, letting it spill past her shoulders and tumble down her back. A single strand drooped off her shoulder. She reached for it but James stopped her. He shook his head. “Don’t move. Let me just look at you they way you are.”

Then, after he drank in his fill of her, he swept his tongue into her mouth. It was a kiss of fire and heat and yearning. A kiss that left her gasping and panting for more. She dug her nails into his shoulders, pressed herself against his chest, writhed in his lap.

James tore his lips away from hers and trailed a line of kisses down her throat. When he reached her breasts, he drew one luscious nipple into his mouth, laving it with his tongue. He traced tight circles around the rosy peak until shivers ran down her spine and heat built between her legs. Then he paid the same loving attention to her other breast.

Her breathing rough and uneven, Kate dragged her fingers through his dark hair, arched her back, and thrust her breasts in his face.

More. She wanted—needed—more.

James shifted her on his lap. Grasping her hips, he turned her until she was facing away from him, looking forward and straddling his thigh. He kissed the tops of her shoulders, then went to work loosening the deep gold ribbons that laced up her spine. The corset fell away, leaving her naked from the waist up.

His large hands neatly encircled her waist. James brought his palms up, softly skimming her ribcage, then placed one hand on her spine and gently positioned her in a forward-tilted angle, so that she sat with her her skirts splayed over his rock-solid thigh, her toes lightly brushing the rug.

Once he’d satisfactorily positioned her, he reached forward and cupped her breasts in his hands, pulling her back against him.

Kate heard herself moan with pleasure. She’d developed early, blossoming into womanhood at a younger age than most of her friends. For years she’d harbored a secret embarrassment at the size of her breasts, considering them too large and unseemly, yet they fit perfectly into James’s hands.

His hands were unlike the smooth hands of most of the English gentry she’d nursed. His hands were slightly rough, almost coarse—calloused from his soldiering days, perhaps? The delectable friction of his palms scraping against the her nipples, kneading and massaging her breasts, nearly drove her wild.

He shifted his knee upward and she slid back a bit, coming to rest against his groin. Kate felt his erection stiffen against her ass, his trousers bulging against the bunched fabric of her skirts. He moved slowly, rocking his knee up and down as he massaged her breasts.

She arched her back, absorbing his steady gait, happily riding him astride. His thigh felt hot, hard between her legs. Her thigh muscles tightened around him as a steady, rhythmic pressure built at the juncture of her sex. She drew up her arms and locked her hands around James’s neck.