“And no amount of money can save your reputation. Before, our names were connected through rumors, a vague insinuation based on a few meetings in Town. Now it’s atruth, Georgiana. A kiss makes all those rumors true. If I do not marry you now, you are ruined.” And he couldn’t allow that because that would be the biggest failure of all, the one his mother would most abhor, the one that would dim the pride in Xavier’s eyes. Did he have time for a wife? Plans for one? Need for one? No. But would he let her ruin herself so soundly?
Hell no.
“You know this, Georgiana,” he growled. “Why the hell am I explaining it?”
She seemed to… shrink. Her shoulders slumped, and the pink drained from her cheeks. The angry gleam in her eyes died, too, and her gaze fluttered away from him. Then she recovered, and she strode up to him as she had in the stable. “I’ll not marry you.”
“You will if Miss Darlington speaks.”
Her jaw ticked, the muscles there, everywhere in her body really, hardening in determination.
“Gee.” He softened his voice, stepped closer, hands raised palms up between them. “It will not be so bad. I will be a rather distracted husband, but I will do my best. And quite obviously we have a… spark between us. Things will be good, particularly in the—”
“We will live in the city?” she asked, her tone of voice more demanding than questioning.
“Of course not. You’d live here. My work is here, and—”
“No.” She stepped closer. He could feel the rise and fall of her breaths, the heat of her breath on his chin. She poked him in the chest. “I do as I please, Josiah Evans, and you’ll not control me. No man will.”
He snapped around, flinging his arms into the air and letting them fall dead as logs at his sides. “I don’t want to control you! I want to… I want to…” He spun back around, the toe of his boot scuffing on the wood floor. He felt wild, desperate, energy coursing through him like a river at flood. She wouldn’t marry him. But she had to. She must. She’d be ruined if she didn’t. And something else. Something simmering he didn’t dare look at. Another reason—his rising panic. After today, she’d never speak to him again, she’d cut him out of her life with a dagger glance. Something she could not do if she wed him.
The loss of her.
The loss of her—her wit, her touch, her soft, hidden heart. The loss of her friendship.
Hell no. He’d just have to convince her. He closed his eyes and rolled his shoulders, willing his muscles to relax, and said once more, “I do not wish to control you. But there are reasons you should not reject me out of hand.” He stepped forward, walking her backward toward her bed until her thighs hit it, and she sat. “Let me show you.” Still, he prowled after her, nestling one knee at a time on the mattress, laying her back on the bed. “Do you know what I wanted to do to you in the stable?”
Her breath caught as he laid his body next to hers, only a sliver of sizzling space between them, and her eyes fogged, the anger draining slowly from her. “You were kissing me, so I assume you wished to be kissing me.”
He nodded. “And more.” He cradled her head with one hand, and with the other, he crushed her skirts in a fist, drawing them up and up until those stockings, those legs, lay open to his gaze. He left her skirts puddled at her waist, and stroked his palm, his fingertips up the length of her leg until she shivered.
“I assure you,” she said, her eyes closing, “you are making me far from miserable.”
What use were words? He grunted, splayed his hand on her upper thigh, and let his finger explore the heated space between her legs. No teasing, no slow seduction. He found what he wanted and took it. She gasped and bit her bottom lip, and he replaced her teeth with his, bit into the sensitive, sweet-tasting flesh.
Using pleasure to convince her how good it would be in their marriage bed. A bit of himself he had shoved deep down, mostly because it sounded rather like Xavier, screamed out that this was not how to woo her. Woo her? Was he doing that? Wooing his friend?
Yes indeed he was. No going back.
He dropped to his knees at the end of the bed, and when she gasped, reached to grab him back to her, he wrapped his hands around her hips and dragged her to the edge of the mattress.
“From our first conversation, sweetheart, I’ve shocked you with my mouth, using it to say things no gentleman says to a lady. You shocked me with your mouth, too. Heaven, what you can do with a cake between your lips, Gee. I could watch you all damn day.” He cupped her knees, pressed them out to make room for his shoulders, loving her hissing intake of breath, her fingers tangling with his hair. “No good man would do what I’m about to do to an innocent. But I’ve a feeling… you’ll like it. Are you ready to be shocked by my mouth once more?” His seeking fingers found her nub and rubbed.
Her hands fisted in the coverlet, balling it, wrinkling it, her knuckles white, her back arching as she pushed her cunny against his hand. “Shock me,” she whispered.
“You’ve pleasured yourself, sweet. I know you have. You’re just the type.”
“Yes.”
“Next time, think of me.”
A breathy chuckle. “Nothing new.”
Damn. Her admission rocked him back on his heels, and he almost fell flat on his arse. “Have you?” His own voice hoarse with a likely unquenchable lust.
“Yes.”
“Yes. Such a biddable word from such a termagant.”
