“You split hairs, Nicholas.” Leah tried to keep her voice level, but the sensation of Nick’s lips grazing along her neck was infernally distracting.

“How much of a nonvirgin are you?” Nick murmured, switching sides to run his nose over the other side of her neck.

“I am deflowered,” Leah said, but now she did shiver. “Aaron and I both considered that was exactly what Wilton was encouraging.”

“So you’ve had one encounter?” Nick asked, his tongue lapping at the pulse near the base of her throat.

“Th… Three. What are you about, Nicholas?”

“I am making a point,” Nick replied, biting her shoulder gently. “You think I do not suffer attraction to you, but I intend to convince you otherwise. Relax, Leah.”

Suffer attraction to her, like a disease or an excess of drink. “This cannot be a good idea,” Leah said, unsure whether she was trying to convince him or herself.

“It’s a splendid idea,” Nick assured her. “My best idea yet.” He shifted, then scooped her up against his chest and carried her to the bed. Just like that.

She’d known he was strong, but gracious, to be handled like so much eiderdown… Nick sat her on the mattress at the foot of the bed and peeled the covers back, then laid her on the sheets. “The night robe goes, Leah.”

“I am not ready to go to sleep, Nicholas.” Leah tried to sit up but got caught in the curling masses of her hair, and Nick’s hand on her chest gently pushed her back down to the mattress.

“We’re not going to sleep just yet.” Nick pulled his shirt over his head and toed off his house boots. “Not if my arguments are persuasive.” When he was standing beside the bed clad only in his breeches, Leah stared at his naked chest then closed her eyes.

Then opened them again and stared some more.

Ten

Thank you, Jesus, Nick thought, sitting at Leah’s hip and reaching forward to undo the ties of her night robe. He knew when a woman was interested, and Leah Lindsey—soon to be Haddonfield—was far more interested than she wanted to admit, maybe even to herself.

“Nicholas Haddonfield.” Leah’s gaze was glued to his chest. “What are you doing?”

“We’re going to be intimate, Leah Lindsey,” Nick replied as his hands divested her of the night robe. He liked the sound of his own words: he was going to be intimate with her, to give her all manner of pleasure. “But we will not copulate. You have my word on that.”

“And if I want to copulate?” Despite her bravado, Nick knew she’d never said the word aloud before, probably never heard it spoken either.

His countess was a brave woman. Nick left his hand resting on Leah’s abdomen, one thin layer of cotton between his palm and her skin. “I cannot allow it, and I will not ask it of you ere you consent to be my countess, in any case.”

She raised unhappy brown eyes to his face. “You and your allowing. Can’t you see that’s the very thing I object to most strongly?”

His countess was also stubborn. He liked that about her too.

“You do not have enough information on which to base your decision, Leah.” Nick’s hand trailed down, so that his thumb brushed over the crests of her hip bones, then back up, to trace her ribs. “You see us, nodding politely when we pass on the dance floor, and that isn’t how it has to be.”

She watched his hand follow the same pattern, again and again, without pausing. Then, while Leah’s frown had shifted to a look of bewilderment, Nick lifted her against his chest with one hand behind her back. With his free hand, he gathered her hair and collected it to one side, his fingers brushing her neck, her collarbones, and the soft curve of her shoulders.

Oh, yes, they were going to be intimate.

“I have tried to consider how I might be your friend.” Leah got one entire sentence out and fell silent. Nick felt a gratifying sense of progress.

“I would like to be your friend too,” Nick murmured, easing her down to the bed again. “Tell me how to do that.”

“You can’t,” Leah said through clenched teeth. Nick trailed the backs of his fingers down her bare arm, from her shoulder to her wrist and back up again. “You are too cuddly.”

Cuddly. Nobody had accused him of this previously. He rather liked the notion, coming from her. “This is a problem, how?” Nick asked, stroking her arm with deliberation.

“You are always touching people,” Leah said in a rush. “You hug, and pet, and kiss, and clasp hands…”

“I do like to touch.” Nick leaned down and brushed a kiss over Leah’s forehead. He sat back up and smiled down at her in the waning firelight. She looked vaguely puzzled and disoriented. Like she was trying to recall what, exactly, had been coming out of her own mouth. Nick smoothed her hair back from her face and kissed her again, this time on the cheek.

“You smell good,” he murmured. “Like spring.”

“That’s another thing. You always smell delicious, better than a man should, and it isn’t just your shaving soap.”

“No?” She spouted the oddest, most endearing notions when she was flustered.

“No. You are clean about your person and in your habits.”

“And this disqualifies me from friendship?” Nick queried, his lips landing on the unbruised side of her jaw, slowly working their way up to her cheek before he lifted back up to sitting position.

“You smell too good to be just my friend,” Leah informed him desperately. “You kiss too well, your touch is too… too…”

“Yes?” He pressed a chaste kiss to her lips and retreated one half inch. “You were saying?” Lazily, he brushed her hair back again, his gaze following the caress of his fingers.

“Kiss me, Nicholas.”

“What are friends for?” Nick whispered, claiming her lips gently. He plied her with easy, relaxed strokes of his tongue, burrowing his hands under her shoulders and bracing himself on his forearms. He nibbled, he tasted, he teased until Leah’s tongue entered the lists and her fingers winnowed through his hair and her body began to shift on the bed in slow, needy undulations.

“Please, God… Yes, more…”

“Easy, lovey,” Nick crooned, drawing back one half inch again. “We have all the time in the world.”

They did not. If she didn’t stop moving against him like this, if she didn’t stop touching him everywhere he’d exposed his skin, he would soon lose his wits entirely.

Leah whimpered into his mouth and half rolled to hook her leg over his hips. “What, lovey?” Nick murmured. “Tell me.”

“Come. Here.” Leah’s hands went dodging south, to try to encircle Nick’s waist and drag him over her, but fortunately for his flagging self-restraint, she got distracted on the vast plane of his chest, delineating slabs of muscle, ribs, sternum, and… nipples.

“Easy.” Nick tried to catch one of those hands as it skimmed directly over a nipple, paused, and returned for closer investigation.

Leah left off plundering his mouth long enough to gaze up at him. “Will I hurt you? Here?” Another feathery, shivery brush of her fingers.

“Never. Not ever.” Though she would kill him dead, dead, dead with her innocent explorations. He closed his eyes and waited for her to set her hands loose on him again.

She used both hands, and Nick lifted a few inches to allow her free run of his chest. Kissing paused as the fascination of caressing and being caressed became too absorbing, then too frustrating.

“Nicholas, get in this bed, please.”

He knew a moment’s indecision—did he get under the covers with her? Try for the nightgown now? Shuck his bloody, bedamned, infernally too-tight breeches? No, not that, because the sight of his erect cock would give her the vapors, virgin or not—and do nothing to calm the riot in his body. He stood, lifted the covers, and budged in as Leah obligingly shifted to the center of the bed.

“Better,” Leah muttered, turning her face into his bicep.

“Let me hold you.” Nick smiled at her shyness, having already seen enough—felt enough—to know he could coax her past that and have a wonderful time doing it, too.

“No.” Leah kept her nose pressed to Nick’s arm. “I want you to…”

“You want me to what, lovey?” Nick heard a novel note of tenderness in his own voice, some humor, and a hint of puzzlement.

“Here.” Leah threaded an arm under his neck and pulled at his waistband until she conveyed her general intent. “Over me. Please.”

The last was whispered against Nick’s collarbone, but he heard her, oh yes, he most assuredly did. Slowly, he let her tug, pull, wiggle, and whisper him into position over her, his weight braced on his knees and forearms.

“This is where you want me?” Nick asked, crouched above her. He kissed her forehead again, needing to kiss her somewhere. Anywhere.

“For now,” Leah replied, her tongue running along his jawbone. “Don’t worry that you’ll crush me.”

“I’m tangled in your nightgown,” Nick said, his frustration real. He bunched the cotton in one hand and drew it up to Leah’s hips. “Lift up, Leah, it’s coming off.”

“But then I’ll be naked.”

“You’ll be naked under the covers,” Nick reminded her, not sure how that made things any better. “I can’t see you, and I can’t get tangled in your nightgown.”

She lifted her hips, and the nightgown went sailing to the foot of the bed. Nick’s reward for this bit of swashbuckling was to feel Leah’s naked chest pressed to his, and to feel his control go careening across his mental decks like so many loose cannon.

“Kiss me, Nick,” Leah ordered, her mouth seizing his.

Too late, Nick realized he was in bed with that most voracious and fascinating of creatures, the near-virgin. Leah had lost her reputation when she’d run off with Frommer, but she had by no means had her curiosity appeased. She was already deemed lost to propriety, and she’d been royally cheated of the pleasures such a sacrifice should have gained her. She was bent on making up for lost time, and Nick was the lucky, bedamned man in her bed when her passions slipped the leash.

“Leah.” He lifted up then rested his cheek against her temple, caging her with his body. “We are gobbling up our pleasures. Can’t I savor you for just a bit?”

“This is as much frustration as pleasure,” she said, accusation in her tone, and Nick considered she might not like that she wanted him, but she wasn’t going to lie about it or linger over it.

“You will be more comfortable soon,” he promised, wishing the same could be said for himself as he shifted carefully to his side. “Let me touch you now. Your only job is to enjoy it, or tell me to stop if you don’t like it.”

Leah nodded against the pillows, her expression guarded and impatient.

“Close your eyes.” Nick leaned over to nuzzle her neck. “And keep them closed, the better to focus on my touch.” He ran his nose the length of her collarbone, and God’s unmentionables, she smelled divine. “Your skin is the softest thing I’ve felt in ages. Every inch of you begs to be stroked, handled, nibbled, and caressed. I need more hands, the better to enjoy you.”

He went on like that, half musing to himself, touching her with languid indulgence as he spoke, his tone admiring and his touch purely reverent. She was exquisite, she was passionate, and she was his to pleasure and protect.

Truly, truly, seducing his countess this way was his very best idea ever.

* * *

This is how he does it, Leah thought in some detached portion of her mind. This is how Nick Haddonfield charms his way into any woman’s bed, offering her all the pretty words and pleasurable touches she’s always craved, as if he could read her most secret, unacknowledged thoughts or see into her heart.

He must have sensed the direction of her thoughts, because he chose then—right then—to drift his mouth down over her throat, pausing to push his tongue against the pulse at the side of her neck. He nuzzled the juncture of her neck and shoulder then curled lower against her, so his cheek rested on her sternum.

“Your breasts,” he whispered, “are so lovely, so beautifully, abundantly womanly. I am aroused just looking at them, Leah, and now, you are going to let me touch you, touch your breasts.”

She’d been peeking, watching him in the dim firelight, but when he announced this intention, she closed her eyes and held her breath.

“Or maybe,” Nick mused, “I’ll simply taste you and indulge one of my most fervent wishes.” He let several beats of silence go by, looking at her, no doubt, and then Leah felt a little warm flick against her nipple. The sensation returned, soft, wet, warm, and then cool.