chairs. She’d sat in one for much of the previous morning, reading and enjoying its subtle hint of Nick’s scent—and feeling utterly dwarfed by its dimensions.
“Ethan has behaved?”
“Your brother was slow to warm up,” Leah said, watching Nick as he paced the room, “but he has proven to be charming company.”
“Good.” Nick stalked over and seated himself beside her, taking her hand in his. His hands were warm and callused across the palms and pads of his fingers. Not exactly a gentleman’s hands, but capable of tenderness.
“I want you to hear me out,” he said, glancing at her then at their hands. “I have a proposition for you—a proposal, really—but it won’t be what you want or what you deserve.”
She wanted to pace as he’d been pacing. “I’m listening.”
“I know.” Nick ran his free hand through his hair. “Christ’s blessed, hairy…” He dropped her hand and rose again, tramping the length of the room like a stall-bound horse.
Leah rose and stood in front of him where he’d paused at the window. “Whatever it is, just say it. I know you have many responsibilities, and I am just a passing obligation you’ve taken on out of the goodness of your heart. I will always be grateful to you.”
“Grateful. God’s holy… drawers.”
Leah raised herself up on her toes and brushed her lips over his. “Grateful,” she repeated with soft insistence.
“Oh, hell and the devil,” Nick muttered, his arms going around her, pulling her snugly into his body. Leah felt something in him ease, or possibly give up as his chin came to rest on her crown. “Lovey—Leah, Lady Leah—we need to have a somewhat awkward discussion.”
What she needed was to remain right where she was, wrapped in his embrace, breathing in the scent of him, reveling in his warmth and the way their bodies fit so wonderfully together. Nick’s physical power was only part of what made him attractive, she thought, as his hand stroked down her back. He also exuded a sense of masculine competence that revived Leah’s flagging spirits like all of her brothers’ long-suffering devotion had not.
And yet, they were to discuss something awkward. Leah burrowed closer. “I’m listening.”
She felt his lips brush against her temple. “I’ll have you know, my lady, I had no intention of worrying about you. You were safe, I knew that, and yet—”
Another soft brush of lips and nose, this time against her brow.
And yet, he’d appeared at Clover Down a day earlier than planned. Leah began to hope that in Nicholas Haddonfield’s lexicon, a proposal of marriage was an awkward topic.
“I missed you too, Nicholas.” She kissed him for emphasis, right on the mouth. He’d consumed a quantity of ginger cake at breakfast, and Leah could taste the spice and sweetness on him. “And that wasn’t in my plans either.”
He growled and wrapped her closer. “We should not—”
Leah arched into him, finding evidence of his arousal rising against her belly. Rather than listen to his infernal, misguided, male should-nots, she resumed kissing him.
She had been the object of a passionate young man’s fancy and had concluded with some puzzlement that while marital intimacies had the potential to be pleasant, the poets (being male) were given to exaggerations and flights regarding the whole business.
Nick Haddonfield in a kissing mood was not pleasant. Whereas Leah’s earlier experiences had been accompanied by hesitance, shyness, and a quality of reverence, Nick’s approach to intimate matters approximated the arrival of a gale-force wind, knocking Leah’s sensibilities end over end. His tongue swept over her lips, bringing heat and spice, and igniting a conflagration of wanting beneath the pit of Leah’s stomach.
She got a hand wrapped in his hair and drew her slippered foot up the back of his riding boot, as if she’d climb straight up him. “Nicholas, I want—” You. She could not quite say that, not yet.
“I want you too, lovey, but we mustn’t—”
We mustn’t was worse than we shouldn’t, and Leah might have spared some concern over whatever was troubling Nick, except she had missed him, missed not only the pleasant gentleman and handsome escort, but the lusty, sexually astute, desirable man who made Leah feel, for the first time in her life, that being a woman was a lovely, wonderful thing.
A gift.
“Hold me,” Nick coaxed, startling a squeak out of her as he hoisted her raised leg even higher, up around his hip. “Hold tight.”
His strength was such that he could easily take her weight with his arms, and he hiked her up, so