Page 49 of Bound By her Earl

Oh,no. He thought she meant wait as stop, andgoodness, she didn’t want that either.

“No,” she said, interrupting, her words coming out as gasps. “Not—I just meant—hallway.”

It was the best she could do when her mind only wanted to conjure words likeyesandmoreandsurrender.

Benedict—and she liked the way his name sounded on her tongue, the way it felt in her mind, now that she was growing used to it—blinked like he was coming out of a trance. He looked at the hallway like it was he, not she, who was new to this house.

“Hallway,” he echoed. “Fuck.”

The combination of his startled tone and the profanity on the lips of her eternally stern husband shocked a laugh out of Emily. When he turned from staring bemusedly at their surroundings to staring bemusedly at her, she realized it was the first time he’d ever made her laugh. The thought made her want to laugh again, and she nearly did, except Benedict took that moment to glance at the hallway again and step back, releasing her.

The loss of his grasp, of the way he pressed against her, was like a shock of cold water.

He grabbed her again in an instant, his hold coming firm about her wrist as he dragged her into one of the bedrooms—she wasn’t paying good enough attention and lacked sufficiently familiarity with the house to know if it was her bedchamber or his—before he grasped her again, bringing her face back to his with both hands.

And it was a good kiss. Itwas. She felt it course through her veins like little sparks, making her hot and dizzy.

It just…wasn’t the same.

She wasn’t the puddle she’d been outside, wasn’t feeling her bones turn to mush within her. She kept being distracted by the cool air at her back and that annoying little internal voice, the one she’d been trying to silence before, was now gone. She did not, she found, care for it. Not one bit.

She pushed up on her toes, pushed closer and closer andcloserto Benedict, hoping to find that this was the thing that let her dissolve again. But it wasn’t. It didn’t. She remained firm—rigid, even.

Benedict noticed. He pulled back, frowning.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded and for once, Emily was certain that his clear irritation wasn’t at her. “Are you—Emily, wecanwait?—”

She shook her head sharply, cutting him off. She didn’t want less, didn’t want to stop. She wanted more.

She just didn’t know how to get it.

She glanced at the nothingness over her shoulder like this would provide some answer.

“I just—” she said, breaking off. She justwhat? “Can we—” She caught a glimpse of the armchairs sitting before the fire and thought of the kisses in the parlor, thought of the settee. Perhaps that might…?

She nodded in that direction. “Can we stand over there?” she asked, praying he didn’t command her to explain herself. Shecouldn’texplain herself.

But maybe, she realized as her husband’s eyes tracked over her in careful, assessing motion, intelligence glinting in his gaze—maybe Benedictcouldexplain.

Slowly, achingly slowly, his hand came up again, an echo of the path it had followed in the hallway. Only this time, his fingers didn’t make contact with her skin, didn’t touch her at all, in fact.

Not until they entered her hair with a firm, controlling,claiminggrasp.

Yes.The voice was back.Yes, yes.

Her breath left her like a sigh.

A smile threatened at the edges of Benedict’s mouth. “Do you like this, wife?” he asked. There was no doubt what he meant—no hiding from it, not when there was only this one point of contact between them.

But Emily couldn’t lie.

“Yes,” she whispered, certain, somehow, that she should feel ashamed of this.

But she didn’t. She didn’t feel an ounce of shame and in fact, felt a warm glow of pride when Benedict let out a strangled groan.

“Oh yes,” he murmured, voice throaty of approval. “You are a very good girl, aren’t you?”

Emily’s cheeks blazed and a whimper escaped her lips. But even so, she nodded, the movement causing his grip in her hair to tighten and loosen just a smidgen.

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