His Spanish Bride by Teresa Grant Page B

head back. The candlelight sparkled in her eyes. Talk about teaching torches to burn bright. “ ‘Let lips do what hands do,’ ” she whispered. The next thing he knew his arms were round her and her mouth was pressed to his own.
    It was less awkward than their first kiss. Less awkward and more intense. Champagne spattered over both of them and the coverlet. He set the bottle down with shaking fingers and cradled her face between his hands. He brushed his lips over her temple, the hollow of her jaw, the corner of her mouth. Gentle, featherlight kisses that teased but left it up to her how far it would go. Because for all her strength he knew what she’d been through. What she was trusting him with.
    She curled her fingers behind his neck and pulled him closer. He groaned and sank his fingers into her hair.
    “I’m sorry.” He lifted his head, his voice ragged. “I didn’t—”
    “No, I—” She pulled him closer. “Don’t stop.”
    One wrong breath and his control would snap. He scooped her into his arms, cradling her against him. She looped an arm round his neck and pressed a kiss against his throat. He drew a breath and carried his wife to their bed.
     
     
    The sheets rustled. They smelled of starch and English lavender. The linen was cool, his hands were warm. He was patient and tender, testing, exploring, waiting for her response before he went further. “If you wish to stop you need only ask,” he murmured against her hair, his fingers finding the ties at the neck of her nightdress.
    “Stopping’s the last thing on my mind,” she said, her lips against his throat.
    And it was true. She’d never craved gentleness. Quite the opposite in fact. But there was a compelling honesty in the touch of his lips, the brush of his hands. To respond required no artifice. The challenge was to hold her own response in check. Not to give way to passion more quickly than a woman who had known only violence, slowly learning another sort of communication. To slip into the skin of the character she was playing was part of the challenge of lovemaking. Normally that had its own sort of spice. This should be no different. Yet tonight the meeting of lips, the twining of hands, the press of flesh against flesh, touched something real inside her. As though that elusive core beneath the layers of pretense, a core she sometimes thought no longer existed, had come back to life. Never had she thought to find such honesty in the midst of such artifice.
    And then she forgot. Forgot to pretend, forgot her mission, forgot the line between her persona and what might laughably be called herself. Touch spoke directly to touch, sensation echoed sensation, response kindled response. When she murmured his name, she scarcely recognized the sound of her own voice.
     
     
    Dear God. It was her first coherent thought afterward, as she lay with her head pillowed on his chest. Had she betrayed herself? She felt naked in a way that had nothing to do with bare flesh.
    The brush of his fingers over her hair and his lips against her brow told her that he still believed she was the woman he had taken to bed. Which should have been reassuring. Save that she had never felt so unsure of who she was herself.
    “Thank you.” It seemed the right thing for her character to say. It also mirrored what she was feeling.
    His fingers stilled in her hair. “You should never have to offer thanks for something so mutual.”
    “I’m glad we didn’t wait.” Though a part of her now thought it would have been much safer to do so.
    “I can’t tell you how much I agree with you, mo chridh .”
    She lifted her head to look at him. “What did you call me?”
    “ Mo chridh . It means—it’s Gaelic. I grew up in Scotland and Ireland as much as England.”
    She swallowed. The words held a shock of reality, where a more conventional endearment would have felt like a courtesy. She let her head fall back against his chest and focused on the sound of his heartbeat