Page 23 of Passions of a Wicked Earl
“What is your obsession with moving my furniture around?”
So he’d noticed the parlor, yet hadn’t said anything. She wondered what else he might not have commented on. “I can barely tolerate the haphazard way it’s arranged.”
“Haphazard?”
“The sitting area in front of the fireplace is cluttered with chairs. Why would anyone entertain so many in a bedchamber?”
He arched a brow at her.
“A lady does not,” she snapped, assuming he had been with women who entertained a good many men at one time in their chambers. “So I decided to make two sitting areas.”
“And it couldn’t wait until morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Then read a book. Something quiet.”
“I’m sorry. Did I wake you?”
Instead of answering her, which seemed to be a nasty habit of his, he strode toward her. She skittered back without thinking, cursed her cowardice, then stepped forward. For a moment, the way his mouth moved, she thought he’d been entertaining the notion of a smile. Bending down, he lifted the chair. “Where do you want it?”
“Oh … by the window.” She stared at the play of muscles over his back, the way his shirt stretched across them, and wondered what it might feel like to run her hands over them. Like touching warm marble perhaps. Silky and smooth.
When he’d set down the chair, she hurried over and angled it in relation to the other—with his help. At his nearness, the first thing she noticed was that he no longer carried the faint fragrance of lilac that had been with him earlier. Instead, his scent was dark and masculine, true to him.
To her surprise, he continued to assist her—carrying over two tables, then rearranging the pieces of furniture that remained near the fireplace. When they were finished, she looked at the room from the doorway. “Oh, yes, that’s so much more pleasant.”
She walked to the foot of the bed and studied one side of the room, then the other. Smiling with satisfaction, she said, “Beth will be happy here.”
“As long as she isn’t so happy she has no desire to leave,” Westcliffe said, standing by one of the windows, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Oh, I’m certain she’ll be as anxious to leave as I am.”
His jaw clenched, and she wished she could take the words back, but surely after the welcome he’d given her and the demands he’d outlined, he couldn’t possibly think she relished being here.
She fought not to tremble as his gaze wandered over her. What was he searching for when he looked at her like that?
He walked forward, and she felt the back of her legs hit the bed. He tucked strands of hair behind her ear. “When your hair is not braided, it must be much longer.”
“Yes.”
“Is it long enough to reach your waist?”
She was having a difficult time drawing in a breath with him so near, still she managed, “Longer.”
“To your hips?”
She nodded.
He dropped his gaze to her hips, then lifted it to her mouth. “Your first kiss. Why didn’t you ask me to give it to you? I was the one you would marry, and well you knew it.”
While his expression was still hard, uncompromising, she sensed no anger there but a dark curiosity. How could he not understand the reasons? How could she explain them?
“I was ten, a child,” she said softly. “You were already a man. I saw you talking with my father and Lynnford and other adults, and you seemed completely comfortable with them, their equals. While the eight years separating us does not seem such a great span of years now, when I was ten I despaired of ever catching up to you. When you were eighteen, would you have wanted to kiss me?”
She could see him considering her words, the realization taking shape that a chasm of years had separated them in their youth. With each passing year, the chasm narrowed, until at last he didn’t seem all that much older.
And then she heard herself say, so boldly that she couldn’t quite believe it was her voice, “I would very much like to know what your kiss is like.”
