Chapter Seven

W est rolled off Helena and slumped facedown in the tangled sheets. He gasped for air. She’d been the answer to a dream—better than a dream. Damn it, he’d come so close to spilling himself inside her. He’d never taken the act right to the edge like that before. Withdrawing had nearly killed him.

The temptation of Helena.

“West?” she asked in a threadbare voice beside him.

“Nggrrr,” he managed. If she expected a sensible conversation after that thunderous ride, she overestimated his stamina.

“West, talk to me.”

God help him, the woman really wanted a chat. When at last he managed to shift, he was surprised he didn’t creak. He’d given her everything he had. He never wanted to move again.

Exhaustion weighted his limbs, but the need to care for her forced him from the bed. He stoked the fire before crossing to the washstand. The water in the jug was still blessedly warm. He cleaned himself off, then splashed fresh water into the bowl, collected a cloth, and returned to the bed.

Helena lay splayed against the pillows like a naked odalisque. In recent years, she’d always been elegant and self-possessed. Seeing her like this, disheveled, flushed with passion, thick black hair spread about her and showing an endearing and previously unnoticed tendency to curl, made him feel she let him in on a wonderful secret.

“Come here.” He piled the pillows behind her and helped her sit up.

When he began to wipe away the sticky mess, she caught his wrist. “Thank you.”

“It’s the least a gentleman can do.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

He met her gaze. She looked tired and replete. “So now you know there’s nothing wrong with you?”

It still boggled the mind that Crewe hadn’t been able to satisfy his wife. She was desire incarnate.

“You know, some people say I have a sharp tongue, and a few brave souls accuse me of intellectual arrogance.”

He wrung out the cloth and stroked between her legs. Her lack of self-consciousness was unexpected and gratifying. “Brave to the point of foolhardy.” His amusement faded. “You’re the kind of woman a man longs for all his life. Passionate. Responsive. Generous. Beautiful.”

“West, you wax poetic.”

The sardonic response didn’t rattle him. The change from sweetness to irony meant she was afraid. Right now, his Helena scrambled to restore damaged defenses.

He’d let her do that. Because no defense could keep him out, not when he’d been deep inside her and touched her soul.

“Don’t I just?” He set the bowl on the floor and slid into bed beside her. “Move over.”

“Are you staying?”

“You said you wanted to talk. And as always, I’m your humble servant.”

“Not so humble.”

How true. They were both proud creatures. If they weren’t, they’d have found their way back to each other before this. “No, not so humble. Shall I stay?”

“Yes, please.” With beguiling eagerness, she curled up beside him.

He pulled the covers up. Now he wasn’t mad to possess this woman within the next minute, the air was cold on his bare skin. Helena had whipped him into a frenzy where nothing else mattered. He could hardly wait for her to do it again.

When she leaned her head on his shoulder, his embrace firmed. Generally he didn’t linger to cuddle and confide. But his gut knotted in denial at the thought of leaving this bed. “Comfortable?”

“Oh, yes.” She tipped her face up. “By the way, I was thanking you for something else entirely.”

He smiled. “Gad, what an obliging fellow I must be, if you have so much to thank me for.”

She arched her eyebrows, but didn’t squash his pretensions. “If you want to corner me into marrying you, a pregnancy is a powerful bargaining chip.”

West shrugged. “I don’t need to cheat to win.”

She tensed without moving away. “So you’re still committed to that nonsensical proposal?”

After what they’d just done, nonsensical was the last thing he’d call making Helena his wife. “We settled on an affair.”

“While we’re here.”

“Until you choose to end it.” He dipped his head to kiss her shoulder. She smelled delectable. Warm, sated woman. “Let’s not quarrel.”

Surprisingly, she didn’t disagree. If what they’d done had changed him—and he was still discovering how much—it seemed to have changed her, too.

She relaxed and rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. The artless, affectionate gesture set his heart stuttering in a way that should worry him. But he was too damned pleased with life to seek out trouble.

“Precautions were unnecessary.”

Some women tracked the weeks to work out the safest times for a tumble. Given Helena hadn’t taken a lover since Crewe, he hadn’t expected her to bother. “I’ve never trusted the counting method.”

She shook her head. “Nothing so complicated. My best guess is I’m barren. There was never any sign that I’d conceived with Crewe.”

“You forbade him your bed.”

“After a year or so. He was attentive at the beginning—however many other women he pursued at the same time.”

“I’d kill him for you if I could.”

Her gaze was puzzled. “You sound like you mean that.”

“Believe me, lovely, I do.”

She stretched up to kiss him. A contact without heat, steeped in friendship. Odd that it should shake him as deeply as those voracious kisses when he’d been inside her.

“Thank you.” With a sigh, she settled back against him. “I’m sorry I spent all these years blaming you. It was childish. My disastrous marriage is my fault.”

West sat up abruptly, dislodging her from his chest. “You were a na?ve girl, just seventeen, and Crewe set out to snare you.”

She looked troubled, lying upon the pillows and staring up at him from fathomless black eyes. “I should have been clever enough to see what he was.”

“At that stage, few people did. In his younger days, he did his best to hide his vices. I’d known him longer than you, and I assumed like most of us, he sowed a few wild oats before settling down. And he could be damned charming when he wanted something. You didn’t stand a chance. You’ve stopped blaming me for what happened. It’s time to stop blaming yourself.”

He watched her consider his statement without accepting it. By God, before they left Woodley, he’d convince her to forgive herself, or die trying. “I have a suspicion about Crewe.”

Her lips twitched. “I had lots of suspicions about Crewe. Most of which unfortunately proved true.”

“For a man who scattered his seed far and wide, I never heard he fathered a bastard.”

“Oh? Perhaps he was careful.”

Not bloody likely. “Perhaps he was sterile.”

A faint line appeared between her marked black brows. “The opium and brandy can’t have helped.”

West shrugged and lay down, sliding his arm around her. “It’s purely a theory. But if you’re embarking on a life of sin, don’t rely too much on past history.”

“A life of sin?”

He smiled at her. “Obviously I’d like you to sin with me alone.”

Her lips flattened in disapproval. “That would be like getting married.”

“Perish the thought.”

A surprisingly peaceful silence fell as she snuggled against him. What a night it had been—and a million miles from what he’d expected. He hadn’t been sure he’d manage to steal a kiss, and now they were lovers.

“Are you tired?” she murmured after a long while. She inched one hand under the sheet and across his belly.

West, who had lapsed into a pleasant reverie, went on instant alert. “Are you?”

Her black eyes sparked with devilry. She looked like the spirited girl, not the self-contained and acerbic widow he’d known in London. “We’re only here another week. Time’s a-wasting.”

With one powerful movement, he rolled over her, staring down into a face alight with laughter and desire. “I’ve acquired an imperious mistress.”

Her hands ran up his chest and linked behind his neck. “Aren’t you lucky?”

“Aren’t I just?” His cock hardened and nudged between her legs. One part of him wasn’t sleepy at all.

She kissed him, her mouth hot and eager. While his tongue swept between her lips, he toyed with her nipple. She tilted her hips in brazen invitation.

Sizzling sensual pleasure beckoned. West wasn’t a man to say no.