The Redemption of a Dissolute Earl by Julie Johnstone

was not as if she had never been
intimate with Drew before. Still, it had been so long since they
had been together, shyness swarmed her, almost as if this was her
very first time.
    She turned to Drew, not sure how to voice
her concern and afraid he would think her a complete ninny, but
when she looked at him her breath caught in her throat and lodged
her words there. He had taken off his coat and cravat and loosened
his shirt so that she could see the top of his chest. Her fingers
tingled in remembrance of running her hands over his muscles. “I
see you’re not wasting any time,” she said, her nerves making her
flippant.
    “This year taught me many things and one of
them was to never waste one precious moment I’ve been granted with
you.”
    His words eased her nerves a bit, and her
shoulders relaxed. Drew came towards her, and as he walked he
pulled off his shirt and discarded it on the floor.
    His skin glistened like brushed gold in the
candlelight. She had thought perhaps he might be softer knowing he
had spent his year with a bottle firmly gripped in his hand, but
his muscles rippled as he walked and the desire he had always
sparked in her filled her and pushed away a little more of her
nervousness. “I see being a wastrel for the last year did not
diminish your physique.”
    “I drank too much to forget the horrible
coward I had been, but I also boxed every day in hopes that someone
would pound me to death and put me out of my misery.”
    “I’m glad they didn’t,” she said, reaching
out and brushing her fingertips near his right eye where a small
white scar she did not remember coursed a one inch jagged line down
his face. “Is this from one of your matches?”
    “Yes,” he said, reaching behind her head and
slowly pulling out the pins that held her hair high on the crown of
her head. She stood still wanting to savor the luxurious feel of
his fingertips running through her hair and tracing lightly over
her scalp.
    She closed her eyes on a shiver as his hands
trailed back and forth in her hair.
    “God, Char,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve dreamed
a thousand times of touching you just once more like this. I could
die now a happy man.”
    She snapped her eyes open at his
pronouncement. “That would make me a most unhappy wife.”
    His hands ceased tracing and suddenly
gripped the back of her head. He lowered his face towards hers and
brushed a kiss across her forehead. “Charlotte,” he whispered,
trailing kisses down the bridge of her nose to end at her lips. “I
love you so bloody damn much it hurts here.” He grasped her hand
and pressed it to his chest.
    His heart beat a fast tattoo under her
fingertips. She swallowed, no longer nervous, only wanting to
reassure him she loved him just as much, and she understood
perfectly what he meant. Just seeing him―what she thought she had
lost―filled her with such happiness her heart seemed to ache.
“Drew, I―”
    He set his fingertip over her lips. “Shh.
Let me say something.”
    She nodded, understanding by the urgency in
his eyes he would not be satisfied until he had told her what was
on his mind.
    “I grew up pompous and spoiled and it took
me too bloody long to notice you, though you were right under my
nose most of my life.”
    “I wasn’t exactly a prize,” she inserted,
remembering with a wince the gangly, awkward child and young lady
she had been with uncomely freckles and a head full of flaming red
hair. Thank goodness, she had aged into being passably pretty.
    “Don’t speak,” he admonished, giving her a
long lingering kiss that made her toes curl. “You were a prize, but
I had been conditioned to believe as my father did that we stood on
a level above everyone else. I was a complete fool, and thankfully
you fell into my arms one day―remember the ladder?”
    “How could I forget? If I had never climbed
that ladder and fallen, and you had not been walking by and caught
me, we may have never had a future.”
    Drew looked