Page 41 of What a Scot Wants
“Ye only have to ask and I will.”
“No, I don’t want it,” she replied in a shaky voice. “Or you.”
But she was lying. They both knew it.
“As ye wish,darling.” Ronan smiled, lifting her gloved hand and pressing his lips to her knuckles, nipping his teeth over her flesh as he’d once done. Her suffocated moan as she snatched her hand away nearly broke them both.
God help him with this new version of her…and surviving the next few hours.
Chapter Eleven
It took hours to reach intermission. At least, that’s what it felt like to Imogen as she sat beside Ronan in their private box, each of them pretending to watch the opera below on the stage. Such an obvious farce. The air practically vibrated with tension, and every rustle of his clothing, every shift of his body, every breath ricocheted along Imogen’s shredded nerves.
God, those sinful words he’d whispered to her. The wicked things he wanted todoto her. She couldn’t get them out of her mind. The juncture of her thighs ached, and the points of her breasts were overly sensitive. Ronan had described setting his mouth to their tips, and curse the man, now she couldn’t go a handful of seconds without returning to the image of his head at her bosom, his teeth and tongue working her.
As the actors carried on, the first act unfolding without Imogen paying the least bit of attention, she gave her own desires free rein. Ronan had only said those things to agitate her, but she didn’t believe they were false. He was aman, and, thanks to the women at Haven, she was all too familiar with the wants of men. He wanted her in every way he described, and in the safe privacy of her own mind, she waded into the dangerous thoughts of whatshewanted. What she would do to him, if she truly wished to seduce him.
Imogen would start at his lean hips. She’d felt his strength the day at Haven when he’d pinned her against him and kissed her until she’d nearly burst into flame, but she wanted to put her hands on his bare skin and feel his muscles harden under her touch. She wanted to cup her palms over his buttocks, which she was almost certain would feel like two granite boulders. And most of all, she wanted to touch the manly length of him between his legs. They had traded barbs about hisswordbefore, but she wanted to explore it thoroughly, make his stormy eyes darken with mindless pleasure.
Imogen’s cheeks were flush with both shock and breathless desire when at long last the actors departed the stage and intermission began. Her chest felt full and hot.
“Imogen?” Ronan rasped, looking concerned, though pinched around the eyes and mouth as if he, too, had been plagued by indecent imaginings.
She stood up, the desire to flee almost as powerful as the one she’d just experienced regarding Ronan’s…sword. She cringed. What a coward she was! She couldn’t even think the wordcockwithout another sweaty flash of heat along the nape of her neck. The women at the shelter had been more than willing to share their lessons, anatomy and vocabulary included. However, despite what she couldn’t remember from that awful night with Silas, she was still very much an innocent in mind, if not in body.
“Excuse me, I need a bit of air,” she mumbled, turning and nearly stumbling for the box door.
Ronan stood as well. “Yer no’ ill again, I hope?”
“No, not at all. It’s just a little too…closein here.”
Something like triumph flickered in his eyes as his lips formed a smug little grin. Impossible man! He’d tally her skittering away as a win, no doubt. But Imogen could not have stayed. She didn’t trust herself around Ronan, especially with this lustful yearning for him smoldering away in the pit of her stomach.
Imogen was alert as she hurried through the corridors. Her encounter with Silas at the Bradburne ball had shaken her. The man was here tonight; she’d seen him as she’d arrived, his figure looming overhead at the balustrade as she’d walked in.
The sight of him had been like a punch to the gut. Head high, she’d pointedly ignored him until she’d found Ronan. And even then, it had taken every ounce of skill she possessed to not falter in her role for the evening, one designed not just for Silas but for her fiancé as well. Not to mention for the woman who’d been hanging on to Ronan’s side.
The gown Imogen had chosen for tonight had been a part of the ploy. The daring dress would, she hoped, serve to make a statement and to make Silas see she wasn’t the same girl he knew. That she was different. Older and wiser.Stronger.
The corridors throughout the opera house were crowded, and Imogen kept herself alert. She had not spied Silas in the audience. It was also entirely possible he had left in a fit of ire after having seen her with the duke. While she hoped for the latter, she wouldn’t count on it.
She took in every face she passed, the knot in her belly loosening when she didn’t see him. A glass of punch in the refreshments room helped cool her, but when she saw Ronan’s head of glossy black hair in the crowd, her pulse picked up again with anxiety of a different kind.
Good Lord, she didn’t know what to do from here with the duke. Ronan believed she was trying to seduce him…and in truth, that’s exactly what she wanted it to look like. ForSilas’ssake. But this seductive act wasn’t conducive to her original goal: to make her betrothed run for the hills. Then again, if she could drive him mad with desire, and if he was determined not to marry her, perhaps his honorable side would do the decision making for him. If he bedded her, he would have to wed her.
And that was the last thinghewanted.
It was the last thing she wanted, too. The wedding, that was. The bedding…well, a part of her—an ever-increasing, utterly shameless part of her—couldn’t quite decide if that would be so terrible after all. It frightened her, the intensity of her desire. Imogen hadn’t felt attraction for any man in more than a decade, almost to the point that she’d felt as though her body was broken in some essential way. But now…now, every bloody pulse point felt itall.
Imogen darted behind a tall and rather rotund man as Ronan’s eyes coasted toward her location near the punch table. She continued to move toward the exit, unseen in much the same fashion, using people and other objects as shields. It wasn’t that she was running from the duke; she just needed a little space to calm. To stave off this base, almost primal urge to know him. She took the corridor and stairs back up toward the private box, thinking to close herself inside and wait for the second act to begin.
She passed a shadowed recess under the stairwell that twisted and climbed to the next floor, and she felt something bump her in the arm. Too late, she realized it was a hand, and it had already closed around her elbow. With a hard tug, her feet tangled together, and she careened into the alcove. She smelled Silas’s cologne, and her stomach instantly turned.
“Release me,” she bit out, her heart fluttering and her throat cinching tight.No. Not again.In the Bradburne ballroom she’d frozen with fear. She’d chastised herself the last few days, vowing that she wouldn’t react the same way if she crossed paths with him again.
“Someone must stop you from humiliating yourself even further,” he replied. Gone was his placating, almost meek tone. The one he used to trick people into trusting him, thinking him harmless.
With a small cry, Imogen wrested her elbow free. The alcove was anything but private, and once people began to return to their boxes they would easily be seen. Imogen pushed away the swell of worry and forced herself to focus.
