Chapter Twenty-One
Amarriage proposal should come before this. No, a wedding ceremony. Isabella knew that. Other things she knew: Rowan wanted her but did not think he should have her, and this plan could likely fail.
But Mrs. Garrison had said to fight, and Isabella had no intention of surrender.
So, she curled her hands into Rowan’s cravat, held on tight, and kissed him hard. He did not retreat. Oh, no. He spun her around and pressed her against the wall, kissed her back with just as much abandon. But kissing was, all things considered, tame. Kissing made no promises. She wanted more. Needed him to give her more.
His hand on her breast, his lips on her neck, his knee sliding between her legs, parting them—all could be taken back, forgotten.
Only one thing could not be. Only one thing meant forever. And she would let him take her there. If he decided to. Rowan would stop if he could not promise forever. But her heart would die a little.
No use grieving for it now. Not when he touched her everywhere, when his breath hitched at her touch, when the bedchamber was so close, and her imagination—fueled by years ofnaughty books—so fertile.
Besides, she needed to know. Shehatednot knowing.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and jumped, wrapped her legs around his waist. He caught her and held her tight, his strong, corded forearms the perfect seat for her backside.
He pinned her against the wall with his body, knocking the breath out of her, knocking thought and logic and any tenuous hold she still had on good decision-making right out of her.
Her brain became a tumult of skin and tongue and teeth, of heat and need andhim. She clawed at the cravat she’d tied so neatly that morning. There—the cravat fluttering to the floor, his neck bare and strong.
She kissed it, licked it, felt her entire body flush because she’d done so. The low growl in his throat said he loved it, though, so she did it again, dared to nip at his earlobe and taste the hollow behind his ear. Sweat and Rowan and what a potent aphrodisiac that was.
She was moving now, and she hung on tight as he carried her into his bedchamber. A hard boot to the door slammed it shut, and he sat on the bed, holding her, kissing her, tugging the shoulder of her gown down.
Good. The gown was too heavy, too tight, too itchy. Too everything horrid, and oh—she groaned. “I wish it were gone.”
“What gone? Tell me.”
“The gown. Horrid thing.”
He stopped kissing her, touching her, and he pushed distance between them to look down at her. “Hell, Isabella.”
She bracketed his face with her hands. “Will you abandon me? Will you tell me this is you pretending to be a husband, then tell the Barlows that your wife died, then put me from you forever?”
“I can’t do that.” How could he say those words as if it were a hell pitched black with flame and pain?
“No, you can’t, and it is not the end of the world. I do not want that. I want this, what is between us.”
“What is between us is an ocean of difference.”
“What is between us, Rowan Trent, is too many layers of clothes. Will you end this ruse we’ve carried on? Will you begin something new with me? Something real?”
His eyes slammed closed like iron gates, his jaw clenching tight as the chains holding a struggling prisoner. Then he stood and set her on her feet.
That was that. She would not cry. She’d done enough of that. She would not give up, either. If he needed more time, she would give it to him. For her, there would never be anyone but Rowan.
“Very well,” she said through a tight throat. “I’ll return after you’ve had some time to think.”
One step toward the door, but he caught her wrist, tugged her back to him. “The pretend ends now.”
Her heart bloomed back to life.
“And the real begins.” He drew a line over her shoulder and down her arm. “Make sure you understand that before I peel every article of clothing off your body. Make sure you agree to marry an orphan whose parents had nothing before I bare myself entirely before you.”
“Yes.” She rested a fist against her heart. “Poor man, that you ever had a doubt.”
“You will not soon have cause to pity me. I intend to strip you and take you.” He rounded her, bending low to whisper in her ear with heated lethargy. “In every single way there is for a man to take a woman.” He disappeared, but his hands at her back announced his presence there, his intentions. She expected him to undress her slowly, to draw her desire out to the begging point.
