Page 27 of Loving a Beast of a Marquess
But then he slid a finger inside her, and all her protestations fell away. There was nothing but this sharp, blinding pleasure. It overtook her like sunlight through a cloud, both hot and bright, filling her body with tension that was tightening, tightening, tightening.
His breath, too, caught as she writhed under his caresses, bucking her hips against him as though she could somehow beckon forward the oncoming conflagration. That rod pressed against her legs again, both hot and silky. He groaned, and the sound of it sent another rush of heat to her core.
She was close now. Close to what, she wasn’t sure, but her body was caught like a harp string that only wanted plucking.
And Zachary, whose fingers coaxed such pleasure, such noises from her that she could never have imagined in a thousand years, caught her mouth in another blazing kiss.
He moved his fingers, crooking them against her walls, and she shattered. Each individual piece of her scattered in the face of the heated wave that rolled through her body. Zachary’s mouth absorbed her low moan even as her body shuddered under his, again and again as the pleasure rocked through her.
Until finally she stilled, and her soul descended back into her body, bringing with it awareness of the length pressing now against her side, the way it twitched impatiently against her skirts. The Marquess’ fingers withdrew from her. Shame rushed through her with the same rushing force as the pleasure had. She had allowed the Marquess to—
Oh heavens. Oh no.
She sat up, abruptly enough that her forehead almost collided with his. “I should not be here,” she said. He blinked, his gaze hazy with lust, but she saw the exact moment he processed what she said; his brows lowered over his eyes, and his mouth turned down. He slid off her and away, covering his body with the robe.
Evangeline tried very hard not to look down to where histhingpushed the material of the robe out.
“You’re right,” he said, each word stiff. All the euphoria from the previous moment had fully drained away, leaving them only with this strained silence. The sharp, painful awareness that she had let them get carried away.
He had suggested they stop. She had requested they continue. Her body still ached with the ghost of pleasure.
“I’m so sorry, I—” She pressed a hand to her cheek, and the flush that was growing until it encompassed her entire body. “I’m sorry, Zachary. This was a mistake.”
“You should go,” he said. That was it. He said nothing more to apologize, to ask her to stay, or even to beg her to return to calling him ‘My Lord’ or ‘Marquess’. All he did was watch her leave with a grimness around his mouth that had not been there when they were kissing; and when she had finally left, her dress once more in its proper place around her body, she hurried straight to her rooms.
If only she could not still remember in intimate, explicit detail what it was to be touched by him. By Zachary. TheMarquessof all people—someone she was convinced she loathed—was the first man to have explored her body, and she had—
Oh goodness, she had enjoyed it. She had craved it, and she had loved it, and even now there was an emptiness inside her that wanted more. She closed her bedroom door and leaned against it, pressing her head against the room. Emily could not know of this. No one could know of her disgrace.
But although she did hate him—she did—there was a vulnerability to him she had not experienced before. He hated his body and had been afraid she might hate him, too. Despite the way his body had responded to her, he had been cautious. More cautious, she chastised herself, than she had been.
What a mess.
She curled on her window seat and gazed out across the rooftops of London wondering how her life could have come to this and what on earth she was going to do about it.
* * *
Zachary’s bath was cold. Perhaps that might have been a good thing—his body still raged for Evangeline—but he had no wish for a bath now. The only thing he had wished for…
But that was foolish. She had no love for him, and if he allowed her in, to see all of him as he truly was, it would only end in disaster. Better he push her away and cut her off now than to engage in this foolishness for longer.
Even if he could still feel her softness under him. Just the memory of her threatened to send him wild with want. He had never experienced desire like this before for something so close yet so far.
This has been a mistake. Of course, she would think that, and she would be right to. He’d known it was a mistake right from the very beginning, but when she had appeared to want him as much as he wanted her…
No. That route only led to misery. No woman could love him; he had been twenty-six years in the world without anyone but his parents loving him, and Evangeline, with her passion, her beauty and herscorn, would not be the woman to change that. Letting her in, even for a second, had been a mistake.
He groaned and let his head drop into his hands. A mistake he really, really wanted to make again.
ChapterTwelve
Evangeline spent a sleepless night tossing and turning. Her only conclusion when she awoke the next morning was that she would be unable to look the Marquess in the eye when she did see him.
Not much bolstered by that thought, and with nothing else to do, she descended late, having missed breakfast entirely, only to discover her family were not alone in the drawing room. A rather tall and distinguished gentleman, who appeared to be visiting, sat beside the Dowager Marchioness of Harley, Zachary’s mother.
He turned when she entered, and she was confronted with a becoming gentleman with blond hair swept back from his face and kindly, twinkling blue eyes. As gentlemen went, he was handsome enough, although a little too thin for her tastes; she preferred gentlemen who made it clear they sparred or boxed. This gentleman appeared to do neither.
The Marquess had a rather more muscular build. She flushed and forced the image from her head.
