Follow My Lead (35 page)

Then she came back to him, closed the distance between them, and put herself right back in his arms.

“Now then,” she said, her voice, usually so dry and academic, taking on the sweet alto of seduction, “where were we?”

Where had they been indeed? Let’s see . . . his one hand was here . . . and his other hand was there . . . and his mind had been thinking that this was perhaps not the best idea . . .

Damn it.

Doubt. Just a drop of it, just a grain, but some little ethical part of his brain was still awake and functioning.

“Winn,” he said, cursing every syllable that fell from his tongue. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”

“Why not?” she asked, her lips finding the way to his ear, mimicking his earlier seduction of her. Damn effectively.

“Ah . . . because . . .” His hazy brain tried to focus. “Because . . . we’ve been drinking . . . and we still have a ways to go before we get to Vienna, so this—”

“You’re not frightened, are you?” she replied, her lips moving from his ear to his neck.

“No.” He shook his head, his entire body laughing at the notion. Yet, his brain still froze with hesitation. “But . . . you are not—that is . . . this is new, and . . .”

But his body overruled and effectively shut down his brain when she dipped her fingers beneath the waistband of his trousers, grabbed his ass, and pulled him to her.

“How do I convince you I want this?” she asked, moving her body against his length, seeking warmth . . . seeking pressure . . . “And that I want it with you?”

It was the look in her eyes that did it. Slightly predatory, wholly confident . . . except for the smallest speck of vulnerability, just behind their hazel depths. Well hidden, to be sure. Winn was always careful to hide well what she truly felt, but somehow, Jason always managed to find it.

Vulnerable. Unsure. But wanting. As eager as she was, there was still some part of her that had to be coaxed out of hiding.

“Do you think you can?” He smiled at her with lopsided charm. “Convince me?”

It was his smile that did it. That teasing, playing smile that made everything a game, made it fun. Winn’s pounding heart was full of fear—fear of what they would do, fear that they would stop—but when he teased her, everything felt easy. It felt free.

“Hmm”—she smiled up at him—“let’s see if I can find something convincing . . . how about this?” She pulled at the buttons on his linen shirt, her fingers working far more nimbly than his had managed with hers. The buttons now free their moorings, she slipped her hand beneath his shirt, over the rough hairs on his chest, the hard planes of his muscles.

“That’s . . . nice . . .” he breathed, smiling down at her, the hitch in his voice making her giggle.

“What about . . . this?” she whispered, lowering her head to kiss a line down his chest, playfully mimicking him again, but with her own twist—letting her teeth graze against the sensitive tip of his nipple.

He grabbed her as he felt his knees buckle, and brought her to the ground, to the pile of blankets that Wurtzer had thrown up to the loft for their comfort. He landed on top of her, careful not to crush her with his weight, and looked down into her eyes.

“That’s not fair—I wanted to do that to you first,” he groaned, and then lowered his head to her breast.

She giggled, delirious with her power. Everything except the man on top of her, cradling her head in his arm, had taken on sort of a bleary, hazy tone. Jason was in sharp focus, his red hair in the small fraction of half moonlight that came through the slats of the barn; his nose, which up this close, had the oddest smattering of freckles, the last vestige of his youth to be found on his person. It was as if her eyes had discovered that nothing else in the world mattered beyond him. And in this moment, nothing did.

He sought her mouth then, and took what she had to give. This . . . this was exactly what she had felt when spinning and dancing next to the bonfire. Why did people drink if they had kissing available to them? But then again, not everyone kissed like Jason Cummings.

More buttons came free, a frantic rush of need, of wanting to feel skin against skin. Jason came up on his elbows, to free himself of his shirt, tossing it recklessly aside. He found her eyes again and held for a moment, hesitating.

“This is a bad idea,” Jason warned.

“On the contrary.” Winn leaned up and kissed him with all the passion she had at her disposal. “I think it the best idea I’ve had in a while.”

Oh, fuck it, Jason thought. Let regret come. After all, what is life without a few regrets? Let him have this one moment. This one delirious, swirling moment, lost to ale and to
her
. To Winn. The crazed bluestockingish woman who had infected his blood with her smile and her schemes. And as he dove for her . . . since there was no longer anything to stop them, stop they did not.

Clothes were determined to be wholly unnecessary. Winn, for all her proclivity to cold, was likely to set the dry tinder of Wurtzer’s stables on fire, her skin was all slick heat. Therefore, it was decided her dress simply had to go. His shoes and her stockings, his trousers and her petticoat, all gathered into hapless mixed up piles across the floor of the loft. Each article of clothing shed another inhibition, another fear, and suddenly, there they were, wholly exposed to each other.

“You look like a statue,” she said, awed, with only the barest hint of tipsy laughter.

“A statue?” he asked. Well, he was certainly as stiff as one, that was for damn sure.

“All those Greek and Roman statues in the British Museum collections at Montague House . . . Totty lives remarkably near, I made sure to visit in London when I was there, and you are—mmm . . .”

He kissed her—partially because he wanted to, partially because he didn’t want her rambling herself into awkwardness. But he had to take this slow, he realized, as slow as he could manage.

“And you are so beautiful,” Jason rasped, his gaze raking across every curve, every swell.

She blushed, biting her lip. “I’m too . . . little to be beautiful.”

How odd, how astonishing to find this pinpoint of insecurity in the brash Miss Winnifred Crane, who marched into the Historical Society and demanded an audience. He grinned at her. “Maybe when you were younger,” he countered, kissing her neck, letting his roughened hand dance its way down her body. “But not now! Obviously. You have become very . . . even. Balanced.”

She stared up at him, bemusement on her features. “I said that to you ages ago. You can’t have been thinking of it.”

He shrugged. “It’s been bothering me.”

He expected a smart, cynical response, but just then, his hand slid its way down over her belly, into that sweet valley, and found its goal. Winn sucked in her breath and was lost to speech.

From there on, there were no more teasing words. They let their hands and bodies do what their quips and conversation had been playing at for so long. Touching, pressing, grappling for what would get them closer to what they both wanted. He nudged her legs further open with his knee—and as long as he kept touching her
there
, she would do anything that he directed.

Jason knew, he knew he was being greedy, but he was straining against the effort of holding back and simply taking her, that tight little body that had been sleeping next to him and yet out of his reach for the past week. He let his body tease her, let his hard shaft nudge its way in between her legs, let his hand coax her open, all the while raining kisses down her eyes, her neck, her breasts.

As for Winn, there was something profound, she could sense it, some great discovery, coming just over the rise, just out of her grasp . . .

She clung to him and before she knew it, was urging his hardness into her softness, climbing for what she wanted. And Jason . . . he didn’t have the strength to fight her.

He entered her swiftly—his body winning the war with his mind and unable any longer to move slowly or with any grace.

Of course, that was when it all went to hell.

She stiffened, her entire body reacting to the invasion. To the pain.

“Um,” she squeaked, her body refusing to relax, refusing to unfreeze.

Jason lowered his head to her shoulder, trying like hell to hold still. But she was so
tight
. It took all of his effort to say through gritted teeth, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s just this once, though.”

She closed her eyes, let herself adjust to this new fullness. All the while Jason fought every fiber of his being that was telling him to move, as he held murderously still.

“Can we . . . hold still, for just another moment?” she asked meekly, a blush spreading up her face unlike anything Jason had ever seen before.

Jason kissed her forehead gently. He would do it. He would fight this bloody war against his body and win. He would gain control over it, and he would stay as still as the statue she thought he was until . . .

Until she moved beneath him.

It was the smallest shift, something that would have gone unnoticed if he hadn’t been fortunate to have such an excellent vantage point, but shift she did. Then, trying again, moved with a little more confidence. A slight arch of the back, a raise of her hips . . . motions that every woman knows instinctively, that have bewitched man for millennia. He began moving in time with her . . . these steps, they both knew.

And as they dance higher, both lost to touch and sensation, the most curious thing happened. At least, Winn thought it was curious. That feeling of fullness yet straining, that profound discovery that she reached for, searched for . . . it found her.

It found her pulse, her heartbeats, and pushed them to their absolute limit. It found her core and grew there, the epicenter of waves of pleasure, pulsating out, spreading through her body, through the loft, through the tiny town that danced around a bonfire. And as she touched down with light steps, the newness of her body coming to her in full, Winn held tight to Jason.

He marveled at her, at her utter abandon. His body wanted to take her passion as the invitation it was—to bury himself deep and stay there, spill himself entirely into her tight, welcoming body. But in the war between his body and his mind, his mind had the last shred of strength, and knew he couldn’t. At the crucial moment, he withdrew and spilled himself on the straw beside them.

His heart began to slow down, as his body was consumed in numb, sated pleasure. It was a few moments before he could turn and seek her eyes, but when he did, his heart stopped completely.

She looked at him, confusion filling her features, but completely mute.

I’m a complete heel, Jason thought. Then reaching down to their feet, where one of the unused blankets rested, he pulled it up over her.

“You must be freezing,” he whispered, tucking in the edge of the blanket around them, letting his body warm her side. But still she said nothing.

“Winn . . . you’re scaring me a bit. I don’t think you’ve ever been silent this long before,” Jason said with a small laugh, trying to inject some levity to the moment. But he could not keep the concern out of his voice. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” she finally replied with a small nod. “I’m fine. A little tired, I think.”

Jason had to believe her. After all, what choice was there? So, regardless of his true feelings, and letting his body once again take the reigns over his mind, he wrapped his arms around her and submitted to his dizzying desire to rest.

Winn was tired. But more than that, she was stunned. Stunned by her body’s reaction to him, stunned by how much she liked having his arms around her. Normally she would pounce on this new information, process it into what she knew before, but this . . . this was too big, and her mind was too mixed. Instead, she told herself she would sleep. She had to.

But even as she let herself drift off, the world spinning before her eyes as much from the drink as it was from her bold actions, she settled on one thing with absolute certainty:

She felt too much.

Too much of the cool air on her glistening, hot skin. Too much of his weight on her, too much of his heart beating in time with hers. But it went deeper than the body. It was as if, by invading her person, he had managed to take up residence in some part of her that she had always held close, held safe.

It was her heart.

And that . . . that was not allowed to happen.

That frightened her more than anything.

J
ASON came to with his wits wholly intact. There was no bleary minute or two of closed-eye bliss, thinking he was in a bed, in his home, his cheek resting against the top of the head of a beautiful woman. Only that last part was true.

No, Jason knew exactly where he was, whom he was with, how he got there, and what they had been doing a mere few hours previous. And he knew it had only been a few hours, as the sky was only just lightening to gray, the sun still not yet out of its own bed.

But someone else was, and was rapping furiously on the trap door to the loft.

“Herr Duke!” Wurtzer’s desperate whisper came through the floorboards. “Herr Duke, you must go! Now!”

Jason’s brow furrowed. Go? But it wasn’t even dawn. But Wurtzer’s knocking did not cease, forcing Jason to quickly but gently unwrap himself from around Winn, who was being blearily roused by the noise now, too. Jason found his trousers, hopped into them.

“What’s . . . ?” Winn asked, her voice barely a rasp.

“I don’t know.” Jason shook his head. “Just stay there. I’ll find out.”

He fastened his trousers as he moved briskly barefoot across the splintery, strawed floorboards of the loft. He wrenched open the door, revealing a very worried-looking Wurtzer at the top of the ladder.