dare come closer, didn’t dare stray into the light where she could see his feelings for her on his face. “I ran away to keep from killing that bastard.”
“I don’t mean the fight.”
His heart jolted against his ribs. He knew what she meant, and the truth of it rubbed at him like a raw wound.
“I did run away,” he admitted quietly, “but not from Willow Wood. I ran away from you, Francesca.”
She remained still and silent, like one of those carved statues of angels in Westminster Abbey. Those weeping angels, frozen in stone, in time and place. Unearthly. Wholly unobtainable.
“I had to leave, don’t you understand? For the same reason I had to leave tonight. If I’d stayed, everyone would know how I feel about you.” He raked his hand through his hair to keep from reaching for her. “If I’d stayed at Willow Wood, I would have taken your innocence. You would have been ruined, I would have lost my position—God help us if your father had learned of what we’d already done.”
“Did you care about me?” she whispered. The tears in her eyes shone in the moonlight.
So much more than you’ll ever know. Instead, he confessed hoarsely, “I cared enough about you to leave.”
With a pained gasp, her lips parted delicately, and a tear slipped slowly down her cheek. “I was devastated that next morning when I’d learned that you’d gone without even saying goodbye.”
A bubble of formed in his chest. “I couldn’t tell you that I was leaving.” No, she would have tried to entice him to stay, and he wouldn’t have had the strength to refuse her.
“I wanted to marry you.” Her voice was so soft that it was almost lost beneath the sounds of the horses growing restless in their stalls. “I loved you.”
With that, the bubble burst inside him, and he flinched at the brutal pain of it. “You were never meant for me.”
“I was always meant for you, Jack.” She reached behind her back and unfastened the short row of buttons on her bodice. The dress fell loose around her bosom, and she slowly pushed it down, off her shoulders and arms, to fall to the floor in a puddle around her feet. “I still am.”
His eyes trailed over her. The cotton shift was so thin that the moonlight shined through it, silhouetting her waist, hips, and legs. The temptation of what she was offering burned low in his gut, and his blood hummed with desire. He’d seen her in just her undergarments before, that night at Willow Wood when she’d also removed her dress, when she’d whispered against his lips that she wanted to make love. When he knew he had to leave her.
But that was years ago, and the sight of her now took his breath away. The lovely nineteen-year-old she’d been had transformed into a breathtaking woman. Confident, determined, so very tantalizing…When she reached up slowly to untie her corset, his pulse spiked, and each hard and fast beat pounded with a deafening roar in his ears and with a throbbing ache along the length of his hardening cock.
The stays fell away to join the dress at her feet and left her in nothing but her shift and stockings. Her breasts pressed full and unfettered against the thin material, revealing the dark points of her aroused nipples beneath the silvery white cotton.
“Let me have you, Jack,” she whispered, the soft sound echoing faintly through the barn around them, still and silent except for the mulling horses and the fierce tattoo of his heartbeat. “The way I have always wanted you.”
With a groan of surrender, he charged forward to scoop her into his arms and carried her into the tack room. He kicked the door shut behind them.
Chapter Six
Frankie clung to Shaw as he placed her sideways onto one of the leather saddles slung over the short row of sawhorses. Her heart pounded. Tonight, finally, he would be hers.
He leaned in to kiss her heatedly as his hands caressed up her legs and pushed the hem of her chemise along with them, slowly up her thighs to her waist. The cool evening air brushed against the warmth of her bare flesh, and a wave of goosebumps raced across her skin.
Not breaking contact as his mouth possessed hers, he gently nudged her legs apart. His breeches scraped against her inner thighs as he stepped between them, and a heated longing flared at her core in response.
He tore his mouth away from hers