“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 bother. “I’ve never trusted the counting method.”
She shook her head. “Nothing so complicated. My best guess is I’m barren. There was never any sign that I’d conceived with Crewe.”
“You forbade him your bed.”
“After a year or so. He was attentive at the beginning—however many other women he pursued at the same time.”
“I’d kill him for you if I could.”
Her gaze was puzzled. “You sound like you mean that.”
“Believe me, lovely, I do.”
She stretched up to kiss him. A contact without heat, steeped in friendship. Odd that it should shake him as deeply as those voracious kisses when he’d been inside her.