Heather and Velvet Read Online Free PDF Page A

supple swell of her breast with infinite tenderness. His fingers were both subtle and deft, and for a hazy moment Prudence was unaware of the source of this new and drunken pleasure. Her chemise had dried stiffly, but his searching fingertips easily found the taut peak of her breast beneath the crisp linen. He teased the aching bud between two fingers, sending tingling waves of sensation to every inch of her body. The shock was as great as if he had touched her bare skin.
    Shame flooded her cheeks with a fresh heat. What wasshe doing? He would think her as brazen a hussy as Devony Blake. Guilt and panic smothered her pleasure.
    She turned her mouth away from his and shoved against his chest. “Please, stop. I beg you.”
    He lifted his head. His fingers froze in their tantalizing motion, but his hand still lightly held her breast. She listened to his ragged breathing for a long moment before she found the courage to face him. Even in the poor light, she could sense the tightness of his jaw, the steeliness of his assessing gaze. If he decided she was teasing him, they both knew she was lost.
    “You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” she whispered…
    His lips brushed her throat, touched her ear lobe. “Does this hurt?” His thumb grazed the peak of her breast. “Or this?”
    She arched her neck, helpless to disguise her shiver of pleasure. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I just want you to stop.”
    He blew gently into her ear. “Why did you come here with me?”
    “Not for this.”
    “Are you so sure?”
    Prudence’s mind was so addled she wasn’t sure of her own name. “I came because you needed help.” It sounded unconvincing even to her.
    He shook his head with maddening certainty. “You came because you were bored. Because it had been too long since anything exciting happened in your life. I saw your face in the rain. I saw the hunger in your eyes.”
    The highwayman had lied, she thought. He was hurting her. The bald truth of her life cut her like a blade.
    She tried to turn away, but he caught her chin in his hand. “It doesn’t take long,” he said, “for a woman like you to tire of fops in velvet and lace, with their soft hands and powdered wigs. They write poetry in your name, but they’re too timid to kiss you as you want to be kissed.”
    Prudence felt like crying with relief. She had been wrong. He knew nothing of her life.
    Sebastian drew back as he felt her shudder. At first he feared he had made her cry.
    A soft hiccup of laughter escaped her lips instead. She sighed and stretched out a regal arm. “ ‘But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Prudence is the sun.’ ” She collapsed in giggles.
    The girl was babbling, Sebastian thought, and he wasn’t a man tolerant of babbling. But he would have gladly listened to her babble as he eased her petticoat down her slim hips and pulled her chemise over her head. He buried his face in the soft, shiny mass of her hair at the tempting vision. Her hair smelled sweet and clean, like lilacs in the rain.
    “You don’t need poetry, Prudence. You are poetry.”
    She lay very still beneath him. Her hands lightly clasped his shoulders, neither drawing him nearer nor pushing him away. Sebastian knew he had a decision to make. A broken ankle would not stop him from taking this charming girl if he so chose. At this point, he wasn’t sure a broken neck would. Still, the urgency of his need for her warred with the lethargic stirrings of his jaded conscience.
    He had promised not to hurt her. And he was wise enough to know that for some women seduction could hold as much pain as rape. If he sent her home to her aunt filled with the shame of wanton surrender to a stranger, the price of her fling with the stormy night might be too great. Then there was always the risk of a child. A bastard. Like himself. Sebastian knew of ways to lessen that risk, but his hunger for this girl was so strong, he did not trust himself to use them.
    He