Instead, she asked teasingly, “So, you liked the dress?”
His response, “It’s obvious you think this is incredibly amusing but allow me to educate you. Men do not like to be teased.”
He was lying on his back and had pressed her against his side and she’d laid her head on his shoulder.
“I gathered that,” Julia mumbled, his hand drifted to her bottom and he may have been about to give her a smack but she didn’t feel it because the intensity of her cl**ax suddenly stole over her and she drifted to sleep.
Now, she was awake and she needed the bathroom, she needed a moment to herself, she needed a moment to think.
She shifted slightly and his arms tightened.
“Douglas,” she whispered, not knowing if he was awake or asleep, “I need to use your bathroom.”
Apparently he was awake for his arms loosened. She slid out of them and rolled off the bed.
Not entirely comfortable with ambling around his still-lit bedroom completely nude with him half-asleep, or not (she’d learned that lesson the night of the gunshot wound), she grabbed the closest thing at hand, which was his shirt. She shrugged it on, avoiding looking at him and scurried to one of the two doors she could see, hoping it led to the bathroom.
Thankfully, it did.
As with his bedroom, it was decorated in deep chocolate browns, dusky blues and sharp chartreuses. She quickly went about her business and, at the basin, after washing her hands, she stared at herself in the mirror.
She nearly laughed out loud.
Her hair hadn’t moved. It was still twisted in its elegant coils as if she hadn’t just been thoroughly satisfied by a rapacious baron.
She’d just lifted her hands to begin to release her hair from its pins when the door flew open.
She jumped.
“What are you doing?” Julia demanded, staring in the mirror at Douglas standing behind her in his glorious nakedness, his lean, muscled body nonchalantly exposed to her eyes, which were shining in disbelief at his intrusion. Her arms were lifted and her hands were stilled in the process of taking the hairpins out of her the hair at the back of her head.
He looked at her, also through the mirror. “You were taking a long time.”
“What? Did you think I was going to crawl out the window?”
He walked forward and stopped. She felt the heat of his na**d body against her back, his eyes still on hers in the mirror and his hands settled on her waist.
“Honestly?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
She couldn’t help herself, she burst out laughing.
When she finished, she noticed he was still watching her in the mirror, no amusement in his eyes.
She was wearing his shirt which was unbuttoned and only partially gaping, exposing very little except the winking emerald that still lay against her chest and a one inch expanse of skin from chest, between br**sts, down her midriff and belly to below. His eyes dropped to follow the opening as her hands began to pull out the pins.
“I need to take down my hair,” she explained her delay as his deep blue eyes rose to meet hers in the mirror.
Douglas surprised her when his hands lifted and pushed hers aside. He then further stunned her by working his fingers into her hair, gently seeking out hairpins and pulling them free, tossing them heedlessly in the sink.
Her arms fell and she grabbed the edge of the sink in an effort not to relax against him, which was what she desperately wanted to do. Her chin dropped to give him better access and she spied the emerald at her neck.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“Know what?” His deep voice rumbled behind her, causing her to shiver.
“About the emerald, how did you know it would be perfect?” Her voice was quiet.
His reply came immediately. “I asked Charlotte. She told me the colour you intended to wear and about the emeralds your mother gave you. So I found something to match.”
At the pronouncement of that bit of thoughtfulness, her fingers tightened spasmodically against the edge of the basin as something stole through her, starting at her belly and this time, heading north, straight to her heart.
She was falling in love with him.
Dear God, she was falling in love with Douglas Ashton.
In fact, Julia thought hysterically, she may have started falling in love with him the moment she met him.
But what she knew for certain was that she was falling deeply, madly, stupidly in love with him now.
She was falling in love with how good he was with the children and the reason he watched over them (and her) because of his heretofore unknown bond with his sister.
She was falling in love with how he warned off her father and how he protected her against Monique.
She was falling in love with the way he helped her learn snooker, didn’t make her feel a fool when she’d seen The Mistress and sat with her in her room until she fell asleep.
And she was falling in love with the way he made her feel when he looked at her (and was already in love with the way he made her feel with his mouth and hands and body).
His fingers worked carefully in her hair but her body stiffened against the knowledge stealing into her heart.
For the second time she was going to marry a man she loved. This time, she knew in advance the heartbreak it would bring. This time she knew that there would be a day when his eye would wander, when he’d grow tired of what they shared earlier that evening even though she’d live for it.
Her father had left her mother. Sean’s behaviour had forced Julia to leave him. And Douglas, Douglas would be no different. He was just Douglas. A man of means who got what he wanted, when he wanted it and, when he was satisfied, he’d be gone.
And it was then she realised she couldn’t do it. She’d agreed to it but she couldn’t go through with it.
He finished finding pins and his fingers slid against her scalp, running gently through her hair to it ends, then they dropped, stealing around her waist until he was holding her loosely there. She lifted her eyes to the mirror, first to look at herself (worrying that her hair would be a crazed, Medusa-styled mess but instead it was just a mass of curls) then to catch his eyes.
“Better?” His eyes warm, he asked his question softly, that one quiet word fastening like a silken shroud around her heart, and she nodded, not trusting her own voice. Not trusting what she might say. Not wanting him to know, ever, how she felt. And lastly, not wanting this moment to end because, she knew, it would be their last.
“Good,” he said, “come to bed.”
She nodded again, too undone with her new knowledge to bristle against his order.