Chapter Four
Colin pulled his shirt over his head and stared down at his sleeping wife as he carefully rebuttoned it and shoved the tails into the waist of his trousers. Jane had slipped into sleep not long after they made love, and now she was sprawled naked across his bed, blonde hair tangled around her back and shoulders, a small smile on her beautiful face.
He wanted nothing more than to slide back into bed with her, curl his body around her and make love to her until she woke.
But passions had cooled. Reason had returned. And so had memory. Claiming Jane was one thing. Slipping into any kind of foolish belief that making love could fix all that was broken between them was quite another. He knew Jane’s character, after all. He couldn’t forget that fact.
He frowned as he pulled his jacket on. Jane was untrue, and yet her body had felt tight as a virgin’s. Almost as if she had not had a man inside of her since he last took her on the afternoon of their wedding. Of course, none of his spies in Applegate had ever told him she had a lover, but he’d never believed that meant she didn’t. Only that she was smart enough not to get caught at it.
He pinched his lips and grabbed for a blanket that rested on the back of a chair in his chamber. Gently he pulled it up over her, took one last look at her sleeping frame, and left the room.
It was foolish to muse too much on these things. Like he was looking for a way to absolve her of her past sins. Like he was searching for something that would make their marriage whole again.
That something didn’t exist. Passions might, and there was a place for them, as well as for her presence in his home to stop any gossip that might arise from her being back in London. But beyond that…
“There is no going back,” he murmured as he walked down the hallway to his office. “And I must never forget that ever again.”
Jane opened her eyes, and for a moment she had no idea where she was. Early evening light was filtering through the windows of the chamber where she lay on a comfortable bed, but it wasn’t her room in Applegate or at her sister’s. It was…
It came back to her in a rush, and she sat up. She was in Colin’s room. Colin’s bed. Because Colin had taken her there.
But Colin was gone.
She frowned. Slowly, she rose and saw the evidence of the passion between them in the way her clothing was still strewn about his otherwise spotless room. His clothing was gone.
So he had abandoned her. Again.
She caught her chemise and pulled it over her head before she rang the bell at the door. The servant who answered told Jane she would fetch her maid, and Jane laid out her things on his bed as she waited for help.
Soon enough, Laura arrived. The girl seemed surprised to find Jane in the viscount’s chamber, but she said nothing as she helped her dress and fixed her hair from its tangled reminder of Colin’s fingers raking through the locks.
Once Laura had gone, Jane looked at herself in the mirror. She looked the same as she had that morning. And yet she felt so very different. Because Colin had claimed her, with a desperate, heated passion she’d long ago convinced herself didn’t exist.
But if it still did, perhaps other things also existed. She sighed and smoothed her gown before she left the room and went downstairs to find her husband. A footman was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and she smiled at him.
“Do you know where Lord Wharton is?”
The man shifted. “His office, I believe, my lady. But he doesn’t like to be disturbed before supper.”
She waved off his admonishment and moved down the hall. She’d never had a chance to truly call this house a home, and that fact became stark when she could not find the study. In the end, it was the light coming from under the door that led her there. She stood for a moment to calm herself before she entered the chamber.
He was bent over his desk when she stepped inside, scribbling furiously. He didn’t look up, but his face scrunched into a scowl. “Is my order not to be disturbed so very hard to follow?” he snapped.
She arched a brow as she shut the door. “I wasn’t certain if it applied to me.”
His gaze jerked up and his hand stilled in its writing. He stared at her, almost as if he had forgotten she resided in his house, then slowly rose.
“It applies to everyone. The time before supper is when I get my best work done,” he said, but there was no cruelty to his tone.
“And what are you working on?” she asked. She knew from the past that he took his position in the House of Lords very seriously. More seriously than any gentleman she’d ever known. His passionate dedication to his place there had been one of the many things that drew her to him what seemed like a lifetime ago.
His mouth pinched and the walls came down between them. “Nothing you would be interested in, I’m sure,” he said. “Is there something you need?”
She flinched at his suddenly icy demeanor. It seemed nothing had changed after all, and she felt herself filled with disappointment at the jab of that pointed truth.
But she also felt something else. Anger.
She folded her arms. “Yes, I suppose there is,” she said. “I want you to tell me what it is you want from me, Colin.”
He took a step toward her, his nostrils flaring slightly. He looked hard as stone in that moment. Not like the man who had passionately made love to her, but a different man. One who viewed her with nothing but contempt.
“I want nothing, Jane,” he said through clenched teeth.
She shook her head. Letters hadn’t changed him, time hadn’t, even making love to her hadn’t softened him in the slightest. Perhaps she was an idiot to believe she could ever break past all he threw between them.
Perhaps she should stop trying.
“If you want nothing,” she said, wishing her voice didn’t tremble, “then I suppose the best thing I could do is return to my sister’s home so I will no longer be in your way.”
She turned to step away, but his voice cut through the air between them. “No!”
She halted at his sharp tone and turned back. “No?”
“I command you to stay,” he ground out.
She arched a brow. “You command me,” she repeated, her ire raising, her frustration.
“It is my right,” he said. “I’m your husband.”
She caught her breath at the arrogance of that statement and the absolute falsehood of it. Without thinking, she took a long step toward him, fists clenched at her sides.
“My husband? Oh, no, you are not, Colin. You are a man who married me, then banished me without explanation. You do not deserve to be called husband. You are nothing but a cruel coward.”
She saw that the barb hit its mark, for he recoiled ever so slightly. His eyes were wide as he looked her up and down.
“I am the coward, am I?” he asked at last, his voice dangerously low. “I could say worse about you, Jane.”
She threw up her hands. “Then say it. For God’s sake, Colin, say anything.”
Colin turned away. She was a fine actress, he would give her that. He almost believed she actually cared that they were estranged. That she actually wanted to bridge the gap between them and start again.
But when he thought of her on a terrace on their wedding day, letting some other man kiss her, his stomach turned and his heart hardened to her.
He would not give her his pain. He would not give her his emotions. She didn’t deserve that.
“You said I wasn’t your husband,” he said, hardly managing to grind the words out as he slowly faced her. “That hasn’t escaped the notice of others. So you ask me what I want.”
She nodded, but her gaze swept over him. The desire hidden beneath her anger took him by surprise, just as it had in his bedroom not so very long ago. And it made him want her. It made him feel other things that he pushed aside with violence.
“You will stay here with me for the duration of your time in London,” he explained. “And you will be my wife in public, until you go home.”
She lifted her chin, defiance brightening her face. Making her look like a warrior. It was strangely erotic to see her like that. Certain of herself, challenging him.
“Only a wife in public?” she asked.
His eyes fluttered shut at the bold question. So she would try to use her body against him now. That was her best move yet, for it was the one thing he knew would be impossible to resist. Now that he’d touched her again, he couldn’t have her under his roof and not do it again and again.
He would just have to be careful he didn’t allow himself to be entangled in other ways. More dangerous ways. More impossible ways.
“You are trying to toy with me,” he said softly, but found himself moving toward her.
She cocked her head, defiance in her stare, drawing him in even if it should have repelled him. “I think that’s what you want, Colin,” she murmured. “Or will you deny you desire me?”
He reached out and caught her hand, keeping his gaze locked with hers as he gently placed it on the placard of his trousers. His cock, which had been hard against his clothes since the moment she marched into his office, twitched at the pressure of her palm.
“Does it seem like I’m denying it?” he asked.
For a moment, he thought she might back away. Refuse them both this madness. But then she shook her head, almost as if she were as lost as he was, and leaned up into his chest. Her lips brushed his, and he ground out a curse as he cupped her backside and lifted her against him.
She made a garbled sound of pleasure as he turned around and backed her toward the desk. He set her up on the edge and slid his hands into her soft hair while he ground his mouth against her. She returned the passion of the kiss, the fever, arching into him again and again, teasing him with the drag of her body on his.
He was frantic as he shoved the skirt of her dress up her long legs, shifting so she could unfasten his trousers at the same time. His cock came free and she stroked him while their tongues tangled, warred, and he slid her forward on the desk so he could angle himself against her. The hot slide of her sex welcomed him, and their mouths parted as both of them let out a low groan.
This was madness, but it was a beautiful kind of madness. She was heat and slickness and home. He didn’t want her to be home. He didn’t want to need her. Yet he did, like he needed breath or food or water.
And he had her now so he took her, gripping her hips to thrust into her again and again. She lifted to meet him, mewling out pleasure as her fingers dug into his shoulders and her head tilted back in surrender.
He dropped his mouth to her exposed throat, sucking there. His thrusts increased and he loved how her pulse jumped beneath his lips and her grinding quickened until she stiffened, her body pulsing with release around him. He thrust through it, reveling in her soft cries, the grip of her fluttering body, the out-of-control way she jerked against him. His cock felt full and heavy, his balls tightened, and then he came with her, pumping hot into her as he moaned out her name.
For a long time they stayed that way, bodies intertwined on the edge of his desk, a desk he’d never look at again without remembering this heated and unexpected joining.
At last, she slid away, his body coming free from hers. He tucked himself back into place as she smoothed her skirts around her hips. Then she surprised him by reaching out her hand to him.
He stared at the offering and then looked up into her face in confusion.
She smiled. “Come upstairs, Colin. Come to bed with me.”
He swallowed at the easy way she offered that temptation. At the way he wanted so much to take it.
“It isn’t even supper time,” he said softly.
She shrugged. “I don’t care. And I don’t think you do either. Come upstairs with me. If I’m going to play your wife, I want to be your wife. And I think you want that, too.”
He hesitated, but then he found himself reaching out to the hand she offered, folding his fingers around hers, letting her guide him from the room. Up the stairs. Into his chamber. Into his bed.
And with every step, he tried desperately to remind himself that all he could give this woman was his body. Tried and failed.