Page 13 of Courting Trouble
His lip quirked, but not in the direction she thought it would. “Don’t play coy. Not with me. If we’re to be married, then everything is permissible.” His step toward her felt like an advance, and she retreated in kind, bumping into the wall behind her.
“Are we not supposed to see each other four more times than this?” she reminded him, feeling very cornered. She glanced to the side, meaning to slip away from the wall and dash back inside where they might find someone lingering in the hall if they were lucky. “We’ve only just met.”
He leaned in to brace one hand next to her head, cutting off her path of escape. “I’ve danced with you twice. Our engagement is all but announced.”
Her thoughts began to race, pinging about like a trapped bird looking for escape but doing nothing but crashing into walls. “But I—wouldn’t it do to wait until—?”
He didn’t kiss her so much as he smashed his mouth to hers with such force, their teeth met. As she opened her lips to protest, his tongue punched past them, filling her entire mouth and causing her to gag.
His lips were wet and salty, still flavored of the fish they’d had at the banquet, which caused her own meal to rise up her esophagus in revolt.
She broke the kiss by wrenching her head to the side, and he followed her, pressing his mouth to her cheek, breathing hot air against her flesh as he sought to reclaim the kiss.
His weight was crushing, and it seemed as if all the air available to her in the world was his moist, fetid inescapable breath.
“I don’t think we should,” she said weakly.
“Who gives a damn about should?” he said against her skin, his hands resting on her hips. “This moment is ours, Nora. You’re the most beautiful catch of the season and you’remine.”
Shehatedthe way he said that word. The possession in it disgusted her, and still she did her best to remain calm. She’d actually been taught in finishing school how to possibly discourage such advances. What had they said? When men are ruled by their baser natures, appeal to their higher intellect. Remind them they are better.
“We’re not engaged, Michael,” she said in a beseeching whisper. “If I were caught like this, I’d be ruined.”
He scoffed. “I’d still marry you. My father needs your dowry for his estate. Make me a happy man now, and I’ll make you a marchioness.”
“Please,” she whispered. “Don’t—”
His mouth caught hers again, cutting off her words. His tongue invaded as tears sprung to her eyes. Hands roamed up and down her waist, his hips pressing her to the side, forcing her against the banister until it bit into her thigh.
Panic gripped her, clawing at her skin. What were her options? To allow him to do this to her or to make a reputation-shredding scene. He was going to be her husband… but how far did he expect to go tonight?
Was this what intimacy was going to be like with him?
Forever?
A soft, low growl emanated from the shadows.
And then Michael was gone.
In the time it took for her to gasp a breath into her starving lungs, Titus Conleith had thrown the future Marquess of Blandbury onto the ground and imprisoned him there by grinding his heel against the man’s jaw.
In different circumstances, Nora might have found the sight of the boy’s cheek squished between Titus’s shoe and the ground rather humorous as his body flopped about.
But at the moment, she was too distressed and astonished to ever imagine laughing again.
“Miss Goode said no,” Titus informed him with a lethal calm she found more terrifying than if he’d snarled or roared.
“All right. All right, man. Let me up!” Blandbury’s voice cracked when Titus’s heel ground his face further into the flagstone. His golden eyes glittered with a dangerous intent, as if he considered popping the man’s entire head like a ripe melon.
“No.” Nora rushed forward and took his arm. “Please don’t. Not tonight; it would ruin everything.”
His features became still as stone, but a conflagration blazed in those tiger eyes.
It could have blistered her skin if he stared at her for long.
However, at her behest, he took his shoe off the boy’s jaw and even lifted Blandbury to his feet, going so far as to brush a smudge off his dinner jacket.
The lord’s features mottled with rage. “You’re only afootman? You dare to put your hands on me?”
