The Earl's Pregnant Bride

And then he shifted beside her, moving closer and even wrapping his big arm around her. He pulled her against him.

She sighed in sudden, lovely contentment and leaned her head on his rock of a shoulder. “I think I’ve become hysterical.”

“Must be the hormones.” His wonderful huge hand moved on her bare arm, a tender stroking motion.

This was more like it. She snuggled in closer. “That’s the advantage to being pregnant. Anytime I behave badly, I can just blame it on the hormones.”

“You haven’t.”

“What?”

“Behaved badly.” His lips brushed her hair.

She rubbed her cheek against the hot, smooth flesh of his shoulder and wished it might be like this between them always. “Have you forgotten what happened when we told my parents we’d decided to get married? The way I made you promise not to tell them about the baby—and then went right ahead and blurted out the truth when you were trying so hard to keep the secret for me?”

“That wasn’t behaving badly. That’s just how you are.”

“Unable to stick with a plan of action?”

“No. Not wanting to disappoint your parents—and yet never quite able to hide the truth.”

“I’m honest to the core, am I?”

“Yes.” He said it so firmly, without even having to stop and think about it. His belief in her cheered her.

But then she thought about their marriage, which wouldn’t have happened except for the baby. Now, because of the baby, she had achieved her lifelong dream: to be countess of Hartmore. “But I’m not,” she said miserably. “Not honest at all.”

“Shh.”

She dared to lift her head. “Rafe, I—”

“Shh,” he said again. And then his hand was there, at her throat, caressing, brushing upward to lift her chin. “Gen.” His breath warmed her cheek. She drank in the familiar, exciting scent of him.

And then, light and questioning and heartbreakingly tender, his mouth touched hers.

A real kiss. At last.

She sank into it, parting her lips for him, welcoming him in.

He accepted her invitation, dipping his tongue in, making her whimper low in her throat as he pulled her closer, turning his big body toward her. She moaned in pleasure at the glorious feel of her breasts pressing into his broad, hard chest. Clasping his giant shoulder, she melted into him.

They sank down into the bed, still kissing. She pushed at his shoulder then, urging him over. He gave to her will, stretching out on his back so that she could ease her leg across him.

Her nightgown had slithered up. It was a crumpled knot at her waist. She didn’t care. She was lying on top of him, her body pressed along the length of his.

His big hands were on her hips, pulling her closer. She could feel the hard, wonderful ridge of his arousal through the thin silk of his boxers.

He wanted her.

And she wanted him. Surely they could make things good and right between them, now, tonight, on their wedding night.

She reached up to caress his face and felt the curving, puckered shape of the scar. And she moaned deep in her throat, in excitement. In pleasure. And also in sympathy for all he had suffered.

And then, out of nowhere, he froze. She made a soft, soothing sound. She stroked his shoulder, urging him to relax, to stay with her, to keep kissing her, touching her...

But he only shifted stiffly beneath her, tugging on her nightgown, smoothing it down to cover her. He eased her off him and gained the top position once more.

“Rafe, what—?”

He put a finger against her lips. She stared up at him through the darkness, waiting for him to explain himself, to tell her what had gone wrong.

But he didn’t explain a thing. After a moment, he stretched out beside her, pulling her close again, settling her head on his shoulder. “Let it alone for tonight,” he said quietly. “It will be all right.”

She wanted to believe him. But she didn’t, not really. And that had her thinking of Edward, for some reason.

Edward, slim and tall, with blue eyes and golden-brown hair. Edward was always so elegant, as sophisticated and charming as Rafe was stoic and tender. Edward had been the hero of her earliest fantasies. He used to flirt with her shamelessly. And she had thoroughly enjoyed every teasing glance and clever compliment.

Edward...

Maybe what they needed, she and Rafe, was to talk about the hardest things—like Edward’s death, which he seemed to have a real aversion to discussing. Two months ago, at Villa Santorno, when she’d tried repeatedly to bring it up, he’d only refused over and over to go into it.

She went for it. “Is this about Edward somehow?”

“Go to sleep, Gen.”

“I touched the scar on your cheek...and it all went bad.”

“No.”

“Rafe, I think we really need to talk about it.”

“Leave it alone.”

“No. No, I’m not going to do that. I know what happened that night, the facts of the situation. Eloise told me. She said that you were driving home from a party at Fiona’s.” Fiona Bryce-Pemberton was a longtime friend of Brooke’s; they’d met as children, Brooke and Fiona, at St Anselm’s prep school in nearby Bakewell. At the age of nineteen, Fiona had married a wealthy banker. The banker had bought her Tillworth, a country house not far from Hartmore. “I know that it was two in the morning and Edward was driving. Brooke had stayed the night at Fiona’s. There was only you and Edward in the car when he drove off the road and into an oak tree. Eloise said that the investigation absolved you of any wrongdoing, that it was simply an accident, one of those terrible things that can happen now and then.”

Rafe lay very still. At first. And then, with slow, deliberate care, he eased away from her. They still lay side by side, but their bodies were no longer touching. “So, then. You know what happened. There’s nothing to talk about.”

She sat up, switched on the lamp by her side of the bed and turned back to look in his hooded black eyes. “There’s everything to talk about. There’s how you feel about what happened. How you’re...holding up. And there’s the question of why you won’t let a good plastic surgeon have a look at that scar.”

His eyes flashed dark fire. “I feel like bloody hell about what happened, thank you. I’m in one piece, in good health and I’m now the earl of Hartmore, so I would say that I’m holding up just fine. As to my face, it may not be pretty, but I really don’t give a damn. If you don’t want to look at me, then simply look away.”

“Oh, Rafe, that’s not fair. You can’t just—”

He cut her off by reaching for her, yanking her close and smashing his lips down on hers in a hard, angry kiss.

She shoved at his shoulders until he let her go. “What is the matter with you?”

“Leave. It. Alone.” Each word came out as hard and cold as a stone.