Page 76 of My Rogue, My Ruin
The tension in the room solidified a thousandfold.
“Why are you nervous?” he asked, desire pulling his voice lower in his throat.
Her eyes flashed. She was an innocent when it came to men, but that did not mean she was naive. No, the spots of color on her cheeks told him she knew what emotion gripped him.
Want.
“You should be as well,” she said, a touch breathless.
“I am,” he admitted, though it had nothing to do with Thomson’s inquisitive eyes, his father’s murderer still on the loose, or the threat of being discovered as the Masked Marauder.
He was nervous because he had not wanted a woman with this sort of mindless intensity for a long time. Perhaps ever. The women he had pursued in the past had all given themselves with a willingness he had appreciated—at the time. They were women. They were pleasurable. But it had never been anything more. Never a challenge. Never so damn complicated. Never so inexplicablyexciting.
Archer went around the arm of the sofa toward her, forgetting the newssheet he’d tossed down, and with it, his anger and concern. If his life had taught him anything at all, it was to savor the small things. Beyond this room, there were troubles enough; troubles that had kept him and Briannon from speaking privately all week. Who knew when they would next get a chance to be alone like this.
“What…” she blurted out, following his strides across the small room with alarmed eyes. “What are you nervous about? Mr. Thomson?”
“I don’t wish to think about him. Or speak of him.”
Brynn stood at the desk, her backside leaning against the edge, her palms flat on the desk’s top. She squirmed as he drew closer, but she did not try to dodge him the way she had in the library at Hadley Gardens.
She had not been immune to him, and though she may never admit it, Archer knew she wanted to feel his touch again. He could see it in the darkening shadows of her eyes, and in the accelerated rise and fall of her bosom.
“Then…why are you nervous?” She was more than breathless now, those hazel eyes of hers wide and searching. They matched his steady gaze as he stopped directly before her, so close he could feel the heat of her body and see the throb of her pulse in her neck.
He breathed in and leaned closer. The woman intoxicated him with merely her scent, so clean and perfect and fresh.
“Because I am about to ruin you, Lady Briannon, and this time, none of it will be an act.”
…
Brynn couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move, either, not with Archer’s body practically pressing hers against the desk at her back. He had given her plenty of time to skitter about the study as he’d prowled closer, but she had stayed put. If he intended to intimidate her with his height and those broad shoulders that blocked her sight of the door, well, it would not work.
You’re lying to yourself.
He did intimidate her, but not because of the storm clouds she’d seen in his eyes as he’d stood in the foyer with Braxton. It had nothing to do with his anger over the gossip column or her brother’s wretched behavior from the night before, or even her hasty lie that had started this whole charade in the first place.
He intimidated her because he made her feel things she knew were wrong. Things that were base and wicked. He made her feel weak and ravished and completely and utterly reckless. It was not like her at all.
And yet she liked how it felt. Howhefelt.
She wet her lips and tried to speak in a coherent fashion. “You have already taken liberties, or do you not recall?”
His hands braced the desk on either side of her hips. His forearms brushed along her dress, an item of clothing that began to grow curiously warm.
“I recall,” he said, drawing so close his mouth touched her ear. His breath tickled over her skin. “Fondly and often.”
“Your Grace—”
“My name is Archer.”
“Archer—”
“You feel it, too,” he murmured in her ear. His hands were still on the desk, and not touching any part of her body. “The wanting. I tasted it on your tongue. I felt it on your flesh when I touched you. I heard it when my mouth made you moan. I see it now.”
Brynn took a shaky breath at his purposefully seductive words. The memory of baring herself to him, of her breast filling his palm, was closer than it had been all week. And yes, she had thought of it many,manytimes.
“We are not betrothed,” she whispered, his musky male scent invading her nostrils and threatening to steal away all thought and reason.
