“I was wondering just the exact same thing about your chest,” Harry said, his hands twitching on the blue and gold counterpane. “Am I allowed to touch you yet?”
“Not yet. Soon. But not yet.”
Harry groaned, and started to protest when Plum took him into her hands. His hips arched upward, the groan strangling in his throat.
“You’re very aroused. I like that about you. You’re also a bit longer than I expected, but I trust that won’t be the cause of any diffi culty.”
Harry gasped in great quantities of air, and clutched the counterpane with both hands. “I trust not.”
She explored the hard, hot length of velvety soft flesh that moved like silk over steel, enjoying the way his eyes rolled up in his head. Sweat broke out on his brow as his chest heaved, desperately attempting to bring enough air into his lungs. Plum allowed her hands to roam, to touch and tease the surrounding skin, then leaned over and nipped at his adorable little belly.
His stomach tightened as he yelped her name. Plum just grinned at him and kissed a path upward even as her hand slid lower. He smelled so good, like lemon soap and aroused male and something else, something a little spicy, something uniquely Harry.
“You have a very nice chest,” she whispered as his light dusting of chest hair tickled her nose. She wanted more than anything to take his adorable little nipples into her mouth, teasing them with teeth and tongue until he pleaded for mercy, but she remembered in time that she was supposed to be innocent of such knowledge, and contented herself with pressing a kiss to each nipple before nibbling a path up his neck and around to his ear.
Harry shuddered and groaned again, his body quivering nonstop, sweat bedewing his chest as Plum nibbled his earlobe. She paused and frowned at the gold wire tucked behind his ear. “Do you need your spectacles?”
“Only to see.”
“Oh.” She plucked them gently from his face, setting them on the table next to the bed before returning to his ear, laving the outer edge of it with her tongue as she said softly, “Your turn.”
She was on her back before the second word left her mouth, Harry braced above her, squinting ever so slightly in order to bring her into focus. Her legs moved restlessly against his, the pressure inside of her increased until it was spiked with pain, a pleasurable pain of emptiness that need to be filled, a pain that only he could ease. His mouth hovered over her breasts, his hot breath steaming her flesh, her back arching of its own accord as his mouth — so hot, it would surely scorch her skin — burned a brand down her breastbone. Her hands slid up the muscles of his arms, her fingers catching in his hair as he kissed a trail of fire over to one heavy, aching breast, a breast that hungered for him, a breast that cried out for him, a breast that demanded that he take it into his mouth right at that very moment or else it would die. “Harry!” she shrieked as his mouth suddenly veered south, burning kisses pressed below her breast.
“What?” he mumbled into her soft flesh, his tongue flickering out to taste her. Plum’s back arched even more as she tried to pull his head up to where her breast clamored for it.
“If you don’t stop teasing me right this very second, my breast is going to explode, and then I’ll have only one, and that will make me lopsided!”
His hair brushed against her sensitive nipple, sending streaks of pain and pleasure through Plum. He grinned at her, then nibbled a feather light circle around her nipple. “What do you want me to do, Plum? Perhaps this?”
He rubbed his cheek, slightly abrasive from his evening’s growth of whiskers, against the side of her breast. Her legs moved against him as she twisted, trying to position her breast against his mouth. He pulled back, frustrating her attempt.
“Harry!”
“Or perhaps,” he licked with long, sweeping strokes of his tongue around the perimeter of her breast, tracing along the point where her chest ended, and her breast began. “You want this?”
“HARRY!” she demanded, past being able to form her need into words. She tugged at his head again, not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to make him pay attention.
“Ah, I begin to see. You want me to do this…” His mouth closed over the aching tip, his mouth hot and wet as he suckled her. Plum bucked beneath him as his teeth scraped gently over her flesh, the fires within her now a roaring inferno that swept her from toes to crown.
“I’m burning up,” she cried, reveling in her fiery death. “You’re going to kill me!”
“Sweetheart, I haven’t even begun to make you burn,” Harry swore against her breast, and just as Plum was sending heartfelt prayers to her maker to allow her to survive her husband’s attention, her world fell apart.
“Harry?” Plum blinked, wondering why he had left her, why his warm, delicious, hard body had pulled away from hers, then she realized that the pounding of her heart, so loud in her ears as to deafen her to everything but its frantic beat, was really a pounding on the door. “Harry?”
He snatched up his dressing gown, pulling the bed curtains closed to shield her from view. Plum, still trying to gather her wits, finally realized that someone was at the door. She slid over and peeked through the bed curtains.
“—and Mama tried barley water, but he won’t keep that down as well. ‘Tis the truth, it’s coming out of both ends. Mama thought you’d want to know.”
“Now?” Harry asked, his voice tight and rough about the edges. Plum understood completely — she felt like a bowstring pulled tight, trembling on the edge of release. “He had to be sick now? It couldn’t have waited until later, it has to be now?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I don’t think he planned this, not as sick as the poor little lamb is.”
Harry banged his forehead on the doorframe a couple of times. Plum winced in sympathy. It had to have hurt. “Now?”
Plum reached through the curtains and snared her night rail, pulling it on before leaving the bed. “Who is ill?” she asked him.
He stopped abusing his forehead and set the candle he’d snatched up onto a tall bureau. “McTavish has some sort of a stomach complaint.”
“Mama thinks it’s more than that, ma’am,” George said, the golden hair tumbling down from under an old-fashioned nightcap tangled in the ties of her night rail as she wrung her hands in worry.
“Mama?” Plum asked, confused.
“Gertie is George’s mother,” Harry said as he slid his feet into a pair of blue velvet slippers. “Go back to bed, love. I’ll see to McTavish. I’m sure it’s just the usual complaint. Too many green apples, most likely.”
Plum toyed for a second with the thought of doing what Harry suggested, but only for a second. “I’ll come with you.” When Harry paused in the doorway to cast her a questioning glance, she added, “I’m his mother now. He needs me.”
“Yes,” Harry agreed, much to her surprise…and delight. “He does need you.”
She brushed past him, following George up the dark stairs to the nursery, not at all aware that Harry finished his sentence with a soft, “And so do I.”
CHAPTER Eight
“How is he this morning?” Temple asked.
Harry staggered a few feet before the words sank into his sleep-deprived brain. “Better. Kept some broth down. Sleeping now. Thom’s with him. Sent Plum to bed.”
Temple took the liberty of guiding his employer to the nearest chair, onto which Harry collapsed with a grateful sigh. “You should get some rest too, sir. It’s been three days, and I doubt if you’ve had more than an hour or two of sleep at night.”