Page 20 of The Baron Without Blame
The pressure was so much – too much – at once. Martin gasped, his vision going black. He reached blindly to remove her hands.
Lolly kissed him on the lips. “I want to be the barbarian now. I am anxious to have my way with you.”
Even as he kissed her back, he dislodged himself from her grip. He guided her hands to his shoulders. “Why must it be the whole act? Haven’t I already shown you the pleasure I can bring you?”
Lolly smiled in response. “I want to feel you inside me. I want to know how big a cock is inside me. I want to know how different that is from your mouth or your fingers.” Lazily, she drew her own index finger along the ridge of his lips, then dipped it into his mouth.
He couldn’t help but loop his tongue over it.
Her other hand wrapped back around his cock. “Besides, you need release, I can tell. I want to give you the pleasure you’ve already given me.”
He wanted it. Of course, he wanted it. Most of Martin’s being had been superseded by his cock at this point, and it all twitched needily under her touch.
Except for the one part of him that still drifted independently. The part that said he wasn’t ready to cross this line.
He wished he didn’t have to listen to it. He wished that for once, he could be the kind of man who ravished his fiancé when she showed up half-naked in his room at midnight.
Unfortunately, he was himself.
“I don’t want to do this, Lolly.”
She held onto his cock even as she blinked at him in confusion. “What is the difference between what we have already done and what remains to be done?”
“Pregnancy. Virtue. Honor.” Martin tried to remove her hand. He couldn’t think straight – much less be verbal – in her grip. But at his prodding, she only tightened her fingers.
“Hang your honor. I am telling you I want this.”
“And I am telling you that I do not.”
She held onto him for a moment longer. She glared at him. He merely stared back, willing her to let go. He had never feared someone forcing him to come when he did not want to; the strange possibility whistled an alarm in his head until finally, Lolly released him.
She scrambled backwards in the bed, collecting her assorted clothing as if to protect herself from him. “It is not for you to decide the right time for me to have marital relations.”
So they were back to formal language. Martin reached for a pillow to cover his own offending nudity. “It is not for you to decide when I must reevaluate my ethics.”
“Oh, I mustn’t even suggest you could be wrong? Are you planning to wait until the entire House of Lords decides they must reevaluate their ethics on the economy, then? I thought you had a plan to change their minds.”
Martin sighed. He hadn’t meant to offend her. Or make her angry. He had only wanted to listen to his own conscience. “Lolly, I haven’t had any time to think on this. I find you wildly attractive. Were we married, I wouldn’t let you sleep tonight for all the ways I would bring you pleasure. But we are not married. And so I have a choice: break my honor tonight and wake up regretting it, with no recourse to undo my actions; or disappoint you tonight and hope you respect my honor enough to marry me anyway.”
She looked away. The fire was burning low, and Martin could barely even make out her profile.
Her words, however, were clear enough. “So you choose to lose me and keep your precious honor.”
There was perhaps a moment then when, if he had given the proper response, she would have let him touch her again. But Martin didn’t say anything, and Lolly fled the room.
As he watched her go, he fancied he could hear his own heart break.
Chapter Nine
Lolly awoke to a dream – no, a memory – of Martin’s hands drifting up her thighs. For a moment, she believed him in the room with her, saying something she couldn’t quite hear. Something she desperately wanted to hear.
With consciousness came reality. What she heard was not Martin, but the sound of her parents arguing in the other room. Their disagreements were always conducted in hoarse, shouting whispers, as if the only rule they obeyed was to not raise their voices. And yet, as quiet as they tried to be, their words always carried, and Lolly and her sisters made a sport of eavesdropping.
“It is disgraceful. The woman is about to give birth! In the house where he proposes that Rosalind become mistress?” her mother shout-whispered.
“It will be a mark of dignity that they can afford foreign servants,” Papa countered.
“If he had imported them directly! Not picked them off the highway like some common vagabond! Why, they could slit Lolly’s throat at night while she is sleeping and run off with her jewels!” Mama heaved a dramatic sigh. “You must not let it stand, Albie. You cannot.”
