Page 33 of Crying Wolfe
“Your lines. I noticed the crow’s feet branching from your eyes, and the brackets around your mouth that deepen when you’re angry or amused. I think they’re dignified.” She set her brush on the dressing tabletop. “I find I enjoy the character they lend your features more than the smooth faces of boys. You’re more striking to look at.”
Striking to look at. He’d been called worse things. Almost sounded like a compliment. He was at least glad he didn’t disgust her.
“And you look…” Every word that crowded in his mouth refused to be released. He’d not the most impressive vocabulary in the world, but damned if every word for pretty he ever learned didn’t occur to him all at once. “You look too fancy for sleeping.”
Shit, had he really just said that out loud?
Eli’d been a wealthy man for eight years, and filthy rich for just longer than four. He was more or less used to luxury now. He sometimes spent his money on accommodating women or expensive accommodations. On food and travel, et cetera. But his wife…she was something else.
Refinement, sophistication,andintellect. That old bastard Crompton had been right; money couldn’t purchase what she possessed, the innate elegance that dripped from every smooth, soft, graceful inch of her.
She was an extravagance for a man like him. An unobtainable dream.
And he was nothing but a stone-skinned ogre who’d never learned what to do in the moments he wasn’t working.
Looking down, he catalogued the calluses on every crease of his thick fingers, on the pads of his palms. The scars on his knuckles.
Was he really going to put these hands on her?
Rosaline stood and turned to face him, allowing her wrapper to slide from her shoulders.
His heartbeat stumbled, causing the subsequent ones to collide into each other, abandoning all semblance of rhythm.
The high neck of the nightgown was diabolically deceptive, as the filmy fabric flowed down over her body in a gossamer whisp of nothing.
He’d planned to undress her slowly tonight, to get used to one part before discovering the next.
Butthatfucking thing revealed it all. The pucker of her pert, peach nipples in the November chill, the long line of her tiny waist, the little dark shadow between her legs.
Every scruple he ever had immediately disintegrated in the inferno that scored through his blood and landed in his loins. Retreating to the bed to put it between them, he steadied himself on the post until the wave of vertigo abated. There was no denying it now. Goddammit, neither of them would sleep tonight until his hands had corrupted every innocent inch of her.
“Where the fuck did you get that gown?” he croaked.
“The seamstress asked if I wanted anything alluring for the wedding night, and when she found this, I couldn’t seem to help myself.” She plucked at where it draped against her hip, fluffing it like a new ballgown. “Do you like it?”
“Honey. I like it so much I need to stay over here a while.”
She tilted her head. “Why?”
Because that godforsaken garment was little thicker than a moonbeam, and illuminated everything that drove him out of his goddamned mind. “I’m reminding certain parts of myself that they need to behave.”
“Which parts?” She took a step toward him.
“Oh, you’ll know which parts here in a bit.”
“You are notrequiredto behave with your wife,” she reminded him, an unholy mischief glimmering in her eyes.
His hand tightened so hard on the wooden bedpost, he feared it might snap off in his grip. “Don’t go saying shit like that to me, woman,” he warned. “Not right now.”
Regarding him quizzically, she gave him a thorough examination. “You’ve come to bed without visiting your valet first. You’re still fully dressed?”
“Good thing, too, or I’d have frightened that maid of yours.”
Tilting her head back, she gave a little giggle that jostled her breasts in a way that emptied his mouth of all moisture. “Hildie doesn’t frighten easily, but I’ll admit I appreciate that she hasn’t seen more of you.”
His eyes snapped back up to her face, searching it. “That almost sounds possessive.”
She shifted, threading her fingers through her hair in a nervous gesture. “I…almost feel possessive. I didn’t like those women talking about what they wanted you to do to them. I am very much hopeful that you were in earnest when you claimed not to want a mistress.”
