Page 53 of The Countess Caper

Tessa did not know what to do with herself.

Sleep refused to find her. She paced through her room, picked at a splinter in the window frame, rubbed a spot of paint on the edge of the fireplace. Holly was right. That weasel was a menace. He’d made off with her left stocking ribbon. She spent an hour searching for it, to no avail. She played the lullaby from her father’s pocket watch, but even that didn’t work.

Roarke was in the room right next to hers.

She might not know what to do with herself, but she knew perfectly well what she wanted to do. With him. To him.

Everything below her neck, from her collarbones to the tickle behind her belly and her thighs, right down to the backs of her knees and ankles, which she had never even considered before, wanted to creep into Roarke’s room and then launch herself right at him. Wherever he was—chair, balcony, bed. She wanted to climb him like a magnificent tree. Naked.

Her head, that traitor, was too busy listing all of the reasons why it was a very bad idea.

She was not permanent in any way, thus her appeal. She was too unconventional. Too much.

Even if he seemed to like it.

He was probably being polite.

But they were married, her hips reminded her brain. It was perfectly proper. Expected, even.

None of the things she wanted to do to him were proper in any way.

Only married on paper anyway, her brain insisted.

Maybe that was enough, her breasts argued.

They missed his mouth. His tongue.

Honestly, he had a lot to answer for. One night, weeks ago, should not befuddle her so. She honestly did not know who would win the battle. Brain, heart, or the hot, anticipatory thrum between her legs.

She did know, in some secret part of herself, that Roarke was somehow the only one who could quiet her racing thoughts. When he was touching her, there was no room for anything else. She’d never known that before. Certainly not with someone else. When she was running through the field or scraping old paint from the ceiling or swimming in the pond until her lungs ached, she felt at home. Quiet within herself.

When Roarke’s body moved against hers, nothing was quiet. But everything was quiet.

It was all very bewildering.

Irritating.

Yes, that must be it. She was irritated.

Not at all yearning for a giant of a man who barely spoke to want her as desperately as she wanted him. She had left him, after all. He might be sore about it. He’d even brought it up. She couldn’t expect him to come to her room in the hour before dawn. He was probably asleep. Reasonable people were asleep.

She had not slept a wink.

And she wouldn’t. She knew that much.

Her feet, suddenly part of her internal battle, took her out into the hall and plunked her in front of Roarke’s door. There was a connecting door between their rooms that had long ago stuck shut. Her breath was loud in her ear. She was expecting Mrs. Pompadour, Fergus on his rounds, a weasel. Even if this was her house. Her husband.

Her husband.

It did things to her, that fragment of a sentence.

She knocked softly, probably too softly for him to hear. But if he was asleep and she woke him up, she would simply disintegrate from embarrassment. But if he was awake? If he was thinking of her, even a little? Wasn’t it worth the risk?

It wasn’t as if her ego was not accustomed to a certain amount of contempt.

She pushed the door open, just barely. Just enough. “Roarke?”

His room was mostly dark, with moonlight flooding through the window to silver the edges of a chair, the bed, the shape of him. The strength of him, the whorl of hair on his bare chest.