Page 25 of Crying Wolfe
He had to stay away from her. At least until the wedding. Once they had that disaster done, he’d figure out where to put her. Wherever she wanted to be, of course. With whatever she wanted.
So long as what she wanted wasn’t his time or his heart.
Because he had neither to give.
CHAPTER6
Five men.
Rosaline could count the males with whom she’d had a relationship—or an entire conversation—on one hand.
Her indifferent father. Her damaged brother. Her vicious uncle. Doddering old Doctor Pritchard back in Hampshire. And the endlessly decent Sir Carlton. She’d three more brothers-in-law, but Titus Conleith was a new father and busy preeminent surgeon, and the other two had been abroad practically since they’d been introduced. This didn’t leave them very much time to become closely acquainted.
Five men.
And now…she had a husband.
A husband she couldn’t stop staring at.
A husband she’d barely had a glimpse of in two weeks.
A husband who refused to spare her more than a passing glance the entirety of their wedding day.
After a profoundly mediocre ceremony sealed with a perfunctory kiss on the corner of her mouth, Mr. Wolfe—Eli—had abandoned her to preparations for the ball they were throwing in lieu of a honeymoon.
Another wedding was to be had not a month hereafter, and it was explained that Elijah and Rosaline Wolfe would not disembark until the young Baron, Emmett, and his bride, Lucy, were well on their way to wedded bliss.
Rather than enjoying one of the few balls she’d been invited to attend, one that had been thrown in her own honor, Rosaline retreated to a shadowy nook above the grand staircase at the first opportunity to indulge in a bit of panic and self-pity.
She gazed down through the ornate banner to the resplendent scene below. From her vantage, she could only see the swirling hems of glittering gowns as they waltzed across a dance floor she’d not been invited to.
Her husband didn’t dance, apparently.
The fortnight since she’d enjoyed her first kiss was now a haze of chaos. Her fiancé didn’t visit but once, and that was to commiserate with Morley, who explained that Eli was seeing to some business interests before their wedding.
Though she’d been disappointed, Rosaline had believed Morley.
She’d had to.
Because the alternative was that with one kiss, he’d changed his mind about the entire thing. Or, with one kiss, the pleasant evening they’d spent had been wiped from his mind, replaced with revulsion.
Could she have done it wrong, the kissing?
To her, it’d felt so extraordinarily right. In fact, after his impassioned tirade, admitting he found her desirable, she’d abandoned a very instinctual fear of intimacy of any kind, and leapt into the kiss with all of herself.
Perhapshe’dwanted to be the one in control of the kiss. Maybe he’d disliked that she used her tongue in the same fashion he had done.
That she’d taken a taste for herself.
Men, as she understood it, liked it when women were submissive, silent, and still. She’d been neither during their interlude, becoming this unrecognizable creature of sensation driven by a heady instinct born of need.
It occurred to her thatthiswas why people in his realmdidn’tkiss. Because of how distracting it was. Indeed, she’d thought of little else since.
At night, she’d lie in bed and imagine that the taste of him still lingered on her lips. Warm skin spiced with all things masculine and mysterious.
There in the dark, she’d dream his hands were on her again, large and strong and careful. She’d conjure the press of his lips to her mind, running her fingers along her mouth in a pale attempt to capture the same sensation.
In her heart, she secretly wished he did the same. Perhaps not so frivolously as she, as he was a stern sort of man without the leisure of romantic idealism. But she hoped he thought of her in a few idle moments of his busy days and smiled. That he looked forward to their next kiss. And more.
