Page 47

It took her a moment to remember what he was talking about.

Then he took her hand and sucked on her fingers. “A different savor, perhaps, but definitely you. But could you tell me why I thought we were in a barn?”

Her trembling legs almost betrayed her, but she stiffened her knees. “A barn?”

“I was making love and looked up, and you were above me, giving me such delight…”

He looked up at her. She looked down at him. He’d confused the memories, but somehow he’d placed them in her head. She remembered now—the heat, the scents, the motion, the excitement. She remembered something that had never happened.

“You made me a happy man,” he said. “You gave me a taste of yourself, and with that taste, you told me what life could be. You saved my life, and I owe you for that. And Lady Edlyn”—his hands had been resting on the back of her thighs, but no longer—“I always repay my debts.”

His finger entered her from behind. His tongue lashed her from the front. She didn’t want to be the first one to make a spectacle of herself as she climaxed, but his finger deliberately coasted in and out while his tongue, in a counterpoint of rhythm, touched and withdrew.

She couldn’t stand up. She had to tell him. But she bleated, “I can’t…”

“You can.” He widened her legs. His finger plunged in her.

Too intimate. Too shameful. Too good.

She spasmed and cried out, and he pressed her with his open mouth, using his lips and tongue to prolong the exquisite sensuality.

When he had extracted every shudder, every moan, he removed his finger. He kissed each of her thighs and held her up with one hand on either cheek. He nestled his face against her stomach and waited, patiently, for the shaking to stop. And when it had, he asked, “Can you stand alone now?”

She couldn’t. Right now, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to stand alone again. But pride stiffened her spine. She clenched her teeth and nodded.

“Good,” he whispered. “Good. I would hate to think I had wearied you before the night had truly begun.”

What should she say to that?

Briskly, he untied her garters. “I have been a fool for you, Lady Edlyn.” The wet hose clung to her legs, and he worked the material down each calf. “Step out,” he instructed.

She had to rest a hand on his shoulder to balance on one leg, but he didn’t seem to mind.

In contrast to the care with which the hose had been chosen, Hugh tossed them aside. “You saved my life. I have paid you back and will continue to do so all our days. But no woman makes me a laughingstock before my men and gets away with it.”

“I don’t understand.”

Standing, he grabbed a folded square of cloth off the table, shook it out, then twisted it around her hair. “Dry it.”

A simple command, but she didn’t want to raise her arms before him.

“Dry it,” he said again, and shaking out another square, he went to work on her body. He rubbed it hard, without a shred of ardor, returning the circulation to her skin.

That common sense approach freed her to tend to her hair, and when she had dried most of it, he handed her another towel.

“Now, dry me.”

Her body still rang with the results of his seduction, and if she touched him, it would all begin again. As he no doubt knew, the wretched knave. “You’re already dry.”

“Not all of me.”

She wouldn’t look.

“Dry me,” he said. “It will delay your fate a little longer.”

He had that note of warning in his voice again, and she placed the cloth on his pectorals. Only his pectorals, but if she dried lower, her towel would become entangled, she would be trapped by curiosity, and she’d see what she’d scarcely glanced at.

So she dried his chest, then his arms, with slow sweeps of the cloth. “I didn’t make a fool of you.”