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  ‘We aren’t going.’ She felt him begin to climb. ‘Decima, stop it or I’ll make love to you here and now on the stairs!’

  ‘Mmm,’ she murmured encouragingly. Under her lips she could feel the pulse in his neck, hammering.

  ‘Witch.’ It was a chuckle, albeit a breathless one. He shouldered open a door, took a few more strides and she found herself laid down on a bed. Reluctantly Decima opened her eyes. She was in a bedroom, but unlike the rooms downstairs that were occupied by only a few items of dust-sheeted furniture, this room was fully furnished with damask drapes at the windows and new candles in the sconces. Adam struck a spark from his tinderbox and set a taper to the fire, which stood ready-made in the grate.

  ‘You see my arrogance exposed,’ he said, coming towards her, shrugging out of his coat in a way that dried her mouth with desire. ‘I had this room prepared, right down to the fire.’

  ‘Not arrogance,’ she managed to say. ‘Hope.’

  Adam sat on the side of the bed beside her, watching her with eyes that were tender, patient. ‘If you want to go back to London now, wait until we are married, then you only have to say.’ He clasped his hands together as though to show he was not going to touch her without her consent. ‘But if you wish to stay, no one will expect you back.’

  ‘It seems a very long time since that snowy New Year’s day,’ Decima said slowly. ‘You started something I think we should finish.’ She smiled at herself. ‘I find I am no longer very good at being patient.’

  ‘You will have to be.’ Adam began to tug off his neckcloth. ‘I have all those freckles to count.’ He tossed the crumpled muslin onto the floor and began on his shirt buttons. ‘Of course, I could always make love to you while I count…’

  ‘That would save time,’ Decima agreed solemnly, reaching for his shirt placket to help with the buttons. At last, skin. She slid her hands through the opening in the fine linen, sighing with satisfaction as her palms slid over smooth muscle.

  ‘Hmm.’ Adam pulled her close. ‘Now then, how does this gown unfasten?’ It seemed to be a rhetorical question, for he was managing very well with the tiny buttons and the row of hooks. And then it was sliding from her shoulders and somehow her chemise was going with it.

  Decima found herself on her back on the bed, everything but her stockings and garters gone. She gave a little gasp of alarm and tried to cover herself with her hands, only to find them captured and kissed. ‘Let me look at you, sweetheart.’

  Adam ran his hands gently over her body, down the length of her, his touch a caress, his expression tender. ‘You are so beautiful. No, don’t shake your head at me. Look at you, so long, so smooth, so rounded.’ His palm stroked lightly over the curve of her belly, cupped her hip lightly, dipped into her waist and up to her breasts. ‘Oh, yes, now these freckles. I cannot just count, I must kiss.’

  He bent his head and began to touch her skin with his lips, down, along her collar bone, down to the swell of her breasts. Decima shifted restlessly under the relentlessly soft caress, then his lips captured one nipple and she arched up in shock. ‘Adam!’

  ‘Not so impatient.’ His breath teased across to the other breast, the other nipple, rousing an ache that filled her body. He nipped suddenly, gently, with his teeth, then, as she was writhing against his mouth, he released her and she sensed him moving away.

  It was momentary. Adam’s weight came down on the bed beside her and she felt the whole length of him, naked against her side. His arm went across her body, holding her as she shivered in reaction. Tentatively Decima opened her eyes and found him watching her.

  ‘I love you,’ he murmured and his hand moved, slid downwards, cupped for a moment against the tangle of hair and then, as she moaned, unable to take her eyes from his, one finger slid into the secret place that was aching so insistently.

  The flood of sensation was overwhelming, shameful, pleasurable, beyond her dreams. Decima closed her eyes and turned into Adam’s body, instinctively trying to hide her nakedness against his. He turned and she found herself beneath him, his knee gently urging her thighs to part.

  ‘Trust me, sweetheart.’ She nodded, gasped his name, hardly able to think rationally as her body took over, reacted to his hands and his body. She shifted, cradling him between her thighs, restless until his weight came down and she could arch beneath him, secure, held, throbbing with need for him.

  ‘Decima, open your eyes, look at me.’ She tried to obey, dragged her lids apart, gazed into the hot, grey-green depths of his and saw desire and need and love and a kind of worship. ‘Trust me.’ And he thrust, filling her as her body bowed up under his, then withdrawing, returning, while the sudden sharp pain vanished to be replaced by a building, driving need. She cried out, her arms tight around him, letting him sweep her along. It seemed she must die—no one could withstand this. Hazily she remembered thinking she was strong, that she could follow him where he led her.

  ‘Adam!’ She cried his name, words of love, gasps that were not words, and something happened, something crested and burst and the black behind her eyes vanished in a blaze of light and she was sinking down, back into a velvet, throbbing darkness.

  She came to herself to find she was held against a bare chest. Tentatively she moved her legs and found that Adam was stretched full length beside her. Her body was heavy with the memory of pleasure, relaxed beyond anything she could ever recall. Opening her eyes was hard, but she wanted to see him, wanted to see what expression his eyes would hold.

  He was watching her, waiting for her. Their eyes met and words did not seem necessary. His hands began to drift, then his lips found hers again and Decima discovered that it was possible for perfection to become better.

  How much later it was when she woke she had no idea. This time Adam was out of bed, padding round the room in bare feet, his long frame clad in one of his gorgeous Oriental dressing gowns as he touched a taper to the candles.

  He turned as he heard her stir and came across, bent and took her mouth with an intensity that had her reaching up for him. ‘I love you,’ she murmured.

  ‘I love you, too, and, if we don’t soon have something to eat, neither of us is going to have the strength to prove it all over again,’ he teased.

  ‘We have to cook?’ Decima stretched. Her muscles felt oiled and sleek.

  ‘No. Look.’ Adam opened a door. Decima got out of bed, blushed all over when she remembered she was naked, and caught a sheet around her. The next chamber was a dressing room and in the middle of it stood a tub, full of steaming water. The dressing table was set out with her brushes and little silver pots and hanging from the doors of the press were dresses and petticoats.

  ‘Pru?’

  ‘And Bates.’ Adam pulled aside a curtain. Through the trees Decima could see lights twinkling. ‘There’s a snug gardener’s cottage. We won’t see them, but the horses are stabled, there will be food on the table shortly and for two days we can run away from the world.’

  ‘But Pru and Bates aren’t…I mean, I shouldn’t countenance…’ Decima followed Adam’s gaze to where the big bed stood, the sheets a rumpled testimony to an afternoon of lovemaking. ‘Oh.’ She could feel the blush mounting her cheeks and hid her confusion by burying her face in the thick silk of Adam’s dressing gown.

  ‘I do love you, Decima Ross,’ Adam murmured into her tousled hair. ‘And if you could think clearly after I’ve made love to you I would not take that as much of a compliment. Now, come and let me soap you all over while we congratulate ourselves on our excellent matchmaking skills.’

  Decima let him peel away the sheet and slid into the warm, scented water with a soft sigh of pleasure. ‘But everyone must get married soon,’ she said firmly, trying to resist a whimper of delight as Adam squeezed a soapy sponge over her.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he agreed seriously. ‘I cannot speak for Bates, or Freshford for that matter, but I have every intention of applying for a licence at the earliest possible opportunity. Meanwhile…’ he bent to nibb
le her earlobe ‘…meanwhile, I intend practising making love to you as often as I can.’

  ‘Yes, Adam,’ Decima agreed meekly. ‘It is regrettable that it appears to make us late for meals, but I cannot help but feel it is my duty to practise as much as possible to please you.’ She rather spoilt this pious wifely hope by turning to curl wet arms around his shoulders. ‘I do love you, Adam.’

  ‘And I love you.’ He got to his feet and pulled off the dressing gown. ‘Do you think this bathtub will hold both of us? Because I fully intend being very late for dinner.’

  Downstairs in the kitchen Pru shut the oven door firmly on a beef casserole, set the bread and butter on the table and smiled at Jethro Bates. ‘There, that won’t spoil, never mind how late they are. Now, what shall we have for dinner?’

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4829-2

  THE VISCOUNT’S BETROTHAL

  Copyright © 2006 by Louise Allen

  First North American Publication 2010

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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