The Countess Page 0,58

Daniel was the first to speak. His eyes moving to Richard he asked,

"Should I . . . ?" He shifted his gaze over his shoulder in a silent question she didn't understand.

"No. That's al right. Go ahead," Richard said quietly. Apparently he understood the question. Frowning, Christiana peered in the direction Daniel had glanced, but didn't see anything but the bed. It looked quite lumpy, but then Grace had said it had been ruined by the soaking from the melting ice. The other servants were apparently speculating on how the bed had come to be soaked as it was, but she doubted they'd ever come up with the truth. Christiana, her sisters and Grace themselves had gone out to fetch back the ice to avoid involving the other servants.

"Christiana?"

She blinked her thoughts away to realize that while she'd been wool gathering, Daniel had exited through the door she'd left open and Dicky - Richard

- was now standing directly in front of her. His expression was questioning, but she couldn't help noticing that his eyes were locked on her mouth and darkening with a heat she recal ed from the night before. It brought an answering heat to life inside her.

"You must be terribly uncomfortable with your hair pul ed so tight," he murmured suddenly and reached up to begin removing hairpins.

"It's the way you insisted I wear it," Christiana reminded him, irritation slipping in to nudge aside a bit of the awakening heat.

"Then I was an idiot," he said simply as he finished freeing her hair and al owed the now loose strands to fal around her face. He smiled with approval.

"Much better."

It felt much better too, she acknowledged with a sigh as the pressure was released from her scalp, but her eyes widened as he now caught her face between his hands and lifted it so their gazes met. They widened even further when he asked, "No kiss of greeting for your husband?"

Before she could respond, his mouth was on hers, coaxing that greeting from her. Christiana remained completely and utterly stil at first, confusion rampant inside her head as memories from this last year of life with this man col ided with the new reality. She wanted to push him away and demand some explanation for everything, for how he could have treated her as he had this last year, for how he could now treat her so differently. Unfortunately, her body had memories of its own from last night and didn't appear to care much about the worries her mind had. It urged her to just kiss the man. After al a good wife would, surely?

When his tongue traced a line across her closed lips and then tried to snake between them, Christiana gave in with a sigh and opened to him . . . and was lost.

Suddenly, her body was on fire, her back arching, hips pressing forward to grind herself against his growing hardness, and her arms went up to al ow her fingers to run through his hair.

When she then clutched at the strands to urge him to deepen the kiss even further, Richard's response was to release what sounded almost like a growl into her mouth. Christiana shivered in response and then moaned as his hands dropped away from her face to begin traveling over her body. One hand dropped to her bottom, urging her more tightly against him. The other slid to her breast, squeezing her through her gown and she gasped and twisted in his hold, pressing her breast more firmly into his touch and rubbing against his lower body with unfettered desire. This was not the reaction she'd feared on meeting him, but it was stil a damned good thing she'd met him in private, Christiana decided as the hand at her breast began to tug impatiently at the neckline of her gown to free her breast. Had they met in the parlor with everyone there, she wouldn't have been able to reach down between them and squeeze his now rock hard manhood through his trousers as she now did. Richard's reaction to the touch was startling. Tearing his mouth from hers on a curse, he muttered, "I have to be inside you. Now."

Despite her confusion over the state of her marriage and identity of her husband, Christiana panted a breathless "Yes," and then gasped and clutched at him as he picked her up by the waist, carried her to the bed and tumbled them both onto it.

Richard was