Free Winning Lord West by Anna Campbell Page B

care for her forced him from the bed. He stoked the fire before
crossing to the washstand. The water in the jug was still blessedly
warm. He cleaned himself off, then splashed fresh water into the
bowl, collected a cloth, and returned to the bed.
    Helena lay splayed against the pillows like a
naked odalisque. In recent years, she’d always been elegant and
self-possessed. Seeing her like this, disheveled, flushed with
passion, thick black hair spread about her and showing an endearing
and previously unnoticed tendency to curl, made him feel she let
him in on a wonderful secret.
    “Come here.” He piled the pillows behind her
and helped her sit up.
    When he began to wipe away the sticky mess,
she caught his wrist. “Thank you.”
    “It’s the least a gentleman can do.”
    “That’s not what I mean.”
    He met her gaze. She looked tired and
replete. “So now you know there’s nothing wrong with you?”
    It still boggled the mind that Crewe hadn’t
been able to satisfy his wife. She was desire incarnate.
    “You know, some people say I have a sharp
tongue, and a few brave souls accuse me of intellectual
arrogance.”
    He wrung out the cloth and stroked between
her legs. Her lack of self-consciousness was unexpected and
gratifying. “Brave to the point of foolhardy.” His amusement faded.
“You’re the kind of woman a man longs for all his life. Passionate.
Responsive. Generous. Beautiful.”
    “West, you wax poetic.”
    The sardonic response didn’t rattle him. The
change from sweetness to irony meant she was afraid. Right now, his
Helena scrambled to restore damaged defenses.
    He’d let her do that. Because no defense
could keep him out, not when he’d been deep inside her and touched
her soul.
    “Don’t I just?” He set the bowl on the floor
and slid into bed beside her. “Move over.”
    “Are you staying?”
    “You said you wanted to talk. And as always,
I’m your humble servant.”
    “Not so humble.”
    How true. They were both proud creatures. If
they weren’t, they’d have found their way back to each other before
this. “No, not so humble. Shall I stay?”
    “Yes, please.” With beguiling eagerness, she
curled up beside him.
    He pulled the covers up. Now he wasn’t mad to
possess this woman within the next minute, the air was cold on his
bare skin. Helena had whipped him into a frenzy where nothing else
mattered. He could hardly wait for her to do it again.
    When she leaned her head on his shoulder, his
embrace firmed. Generally he didn’t linger to cuddle and confide.
But his gut knotted in denial at the thought of leaving this bed.
“Comfortable?”
    “Oh, yes.” She tipped her face up. “By the
way, I was thanking you for something else entirely.”
    He smiled. “Gad, what an obliging fellow I
must be, if you have so much to thank me for.”
    She arched her eyebrows, but didn’t squash
his pretensions. “If you want to corner me into marrying you, a
pregnancy is a powerful bargaining chip.”
    West shrugged. “I don’t need to cheat to
win.”
    She tensed without moving away. “So you’re
still committed to that nonsensical proposal?”
    After what they’d just done, nonsensical was
the last thing he’d call making Helena his wife. “We settled on an
affair.”
    “While we’re here.”
    “Until you choose to end it.” He dipped his
head to kiss her shoulder. She smelled delectable. Warm, sated
woman. “Let’s not quarrel.”
    Surprisingly, she didn’t disagree. If what
they’d done had changed him—and he was still discovering how
much—it seemed to have changed her, too.
    She relaxed and rubbed her cheek against his
shoulder. The artless, affectionate gesture set his heart
stuttering in a way that should worry him. But he was too damned
pleased with life to seek out trouble.
    “Precautions were unnecessary.”
    Some women tracked the weeks to work out the
safest times for a tumble. Given Helena hadn’t taken a lover since
Crewe, he hadn’t expected her to