Page 66 of A Night of Forever
He snorted. “Oh, they might understand, but could they forgive? Or would they look at me differently? I couldn’t bear it.”
Her heart was thudding in her chest. It was happening. They were talking to each other. Really talking. Just as if they were—friends.
“You’ll only find out if you talk with them. They do worry about you. They know you are unhappy, and that in turn worries them.”
Isobel watched a variety of emotions—hope, fear, anger, resignation—flash across his face as he thought over her words. The dim candlelight softened his usually hard jawline, and she read vulnerability in his eyes.
In the cold room with its unlit fire she could not prevent the shiver that shook her body. Attentive as Arend was, he noticed she was cold.Damn.
He pulled her tight into his arms, rubbing her back to warm her up. “I should get you home. You’re cold and most likely tired.”
She snuggled into his warmth. “I know you don’t trust me fully yet, but I would like to think of you as my friend.”
He remained silent, perhaps wondering where she was taking this conversation.
She pushed him. “If you are a friend, would you do me a favor if I asked one of you?”
His expression softened. “If it is in my power to do so, of course.”
Say it. Say it.“Would you let me stay the night with you? Would you finish what you started in the stable and introduce me to passion?”
His mouth firmed, and it made her want to nibble on his upper lip.
“Isobel, if I do what you ask, you will be trapped. We will have to marry.” He pressed a kiss to her head where it was tucked under his chin. “I should not have brought you here. What if someone saw you arrive? Or sees you leaving?”
She’d worried about that when they had first driven up to the house. Now, it didn’t matter to her. “I suspect the damage is already done. No one will believe we are here simply talking.”
“You don’t seem to understand the consequences of coming here. You have no father or brother to protect you—”
She waved his protest away. “You of all people must understand that money covers a multitude of sins.”
She knew immediately that she’d said the wrong thing.
“I don’t want to be one of your sins,” he said.
The hurt in his eyes almost undid her. “I’m so sorry. That’s not what I meant. I just…”
Goodness, being honest was harder than she thought. She’d been sitting here, telling him he needed to find a friend and be more open, and here she was with a man she felt she was falling in love with, and she couldn’t be honest with him.
Hypocrite.
She took a shaky breath. For her sake, but most of all for Arend’s sake, she had to open herself up. Be vulnerable. Show him that opening up could be rewarded.
She took both of Arend’s hands in hers. “I suddenly understand why it’s so hard for you to share your past. I’m feeling slightly sick at the thought of doing so myself.” She moved closer. “I want you to be the man who introduces me to passion. I don’t care if you walk away after all of this, or we go our separate ways. But I do care if I never get the chance to express the feelings you stir in me. I can’t imagine having this response to any other man. What if these feelings I have for you tonight I never feel for another man—ever? It will kill me to know I had a chance to experience real passion with a man who stirs my senses—a man I’m losing a piece of my heart to—and I never took it. Surely my first time making love should be with a man I trust. A man I want. A man, I think, after tonight, I can call my friend.”
—
Did she know, Arend wondered, that her words pierced him to the heart and ripped it open in his chest? He didn’t want to believe her, but the two things he knew categorically about Isobel were that she was an innocent and that she came alive under his hands and mouth.
He could still remember her taste from their night in the stable, and already his body was thrumming with the need to taste her once more.
If she was intending to trap him, she had once again overestimated his honor. He had no scruples about walking away from a woman who used sex to snare a husband. But why would Isobel want to? She could do so much better than to take him for a husband. But could she find a better lover? Probably not.
Her words were true. She was a wealthy, beautiful daughter of an earl. Many men would see her dowry and that would be enough. And her beauty alone, even slightly marred, would have men clamoring to wed her.
“What if I get you with child?” He’d always taken care with his many partners, either insisting on sponges, wearing a sheath, or spilling his seed outside of their bodies. But for some reason, the vision of this woman, her body round with his child, did not bring on his usual sense of being trapped and suffocated.
“Is that likely, given it’s my first time?”
