Page 32 of How the Earl Entices

As if reading her mind, he murmured thoughtfully, “It could be worse.”

She pointed at the bed. “It’s the size of an army cot. How could this possibly be worse?”

“I usually sleep nude.”

For a beat, she froze. Then she slid him a murderous glare, her hands going indignantly to her hips.

The rascal had the nerve to chuckle at her and reached to pull back the covers. “Come to bed, Mrs. Thomas.”

“I believe our marriage just became estranged,” she muttered.

With a laugh, he blew out the candle.

In near total darkness, she slipped beneath the covers. She lay on the edge of the mattress, but even that barely gave them enough room on the narrow bed. So narrow that Ross lay on his side with his back pressed against the wall, yet she could still feel the heat of his tall body radiating all along hers.

His arm slipped around her waist.

She tensed. “What are you doing?”

“Dancing a quadrille,” he answered wryly, then shifted until his chest rested against her back, his legs nestling against the backs of hers. “I’m making more room in the bed.” His warm breath tickled against her nape, and the tingle settled low in her belly. “You don’t mind, do you? Surely, a beautiful woman like you is used to having a man’s arms around her.”

She rolled her eyes at his blatant attempt at flattery. “Yes, because this night rail is so bewitching that they simply can’t resist.”

A deep chuckle rumbled into her back. Oh, that didnothelp! “I like that nightgown.”

“Good, thenyoucan wear it tomorrow night.”

Ignoring that, he languidly brushed his fingers up her arm, from her wrist to her shoulder. Goose bumps sprang up beneath her sleeve everywhere he touched. “All soft cotton, lace, ribbon…”

Oh, how she wished he would stop touching her like that! “And yards of billowing material hanging like draperies.” But her awakening body wished he would touch her even more.

“Which only makes it more alluring.”

She knew she shouldn’t ask, shouldn’t rise to the bait…“How could that possibly make it more alluring?”

“Because it makes a man wonder what’s hiding beneath.”

The tingle in her belly shifted lower between her thighs and turned into a soft ache. Yet she found the resolve to force out a laugh. “Best to keep wondering, then, because I’d hate to disappoint you.”

“Something tells me,” he murmured against the back of her neck, his hand trailing down her body to her hip, “that you wouldn’t disappoint.”

Thatsent the aching tingle shooting through her on a wave of deep longing, followed swiftly on its heels by a cold slap of reality.

For the past ten years, she’d focused only on keeping her son safe, sacrificing her life for his. That meant suffering through long nights alone and denying any urges she had as a woman, never allowing herself to contemplate the possibility of having a man in her life again. It had nothing to do with her husband. Oh, she’d cared for David certainly, but theirs hadn’t been a love match. Not on her part, anyway.

No. She’d not allowed herself the comfort of a man because she didn’t dare risk bringing harm to Ethan. Now that she was so close to gaining back what she’d been forced to surrender all those years ago, so close that she could almost touch it, the very last thing she would do was risk it all for one night of intimacy.

No matter how wonderful it would be.

“I’ve already agreed to help you travel to London.” She removed his hand from her hip. “So you needn’t attempt to seduce me.”

He stiffened against her back. “That wasn’t what I was doing.”

She sniffed in disbelief. “Then seduction has become such second nature to you, Spalding, that you don’t even realize when you’re doing it.”

“Spalding, is it?” He hadn’t shifted away, but she felt a chasm slowly widening between them.Good.Because as large and hard as his body was as he pressed against her, the masculine scent of him filling her senses, it was becoming harder and harder to deny herself the pleasures she knew he was capable of giving.

She’d touched a nerve and was glad for it, if it kept him on his side of this poor excuse for a bed. “That is your title now.”