Page 60 of The Counterfeit Scoundrel
She detected a bit of sarcasm in his tone. “You think it’s just an innocent late-night visit?”
“I think she’s a woman who suffered a terrible jolt when she discovered her husband. It had to be a gruesome sight. She was wary of me from the beginning, fearful of everything, so perhaps her inclination was to think I’d done it in order to save her. She may have even still been in shock when she spoke with Swindler and didn’t choose her words carefully. Or she is prone to exaggeration.”
“Perhaps. But I’m not going to wait about to see how long she stays. I’ll gather more information tomorrow.”
He knocked twice briskly on the ceiling and the coach increased in speed. “I don’t know why you think the worst of her. You can’t be jealous of her, because I didn’t use her to tease you.”
“Oh? Is that what you were doing with Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Bowles? Teasing me?”
After giving her that smile that captured her breath, he peered out the window. She supposed she was acting like a bit of a shrew.
“What time do you want the carriage brought round to you tomorrow?”
“It’s not necess—”
He pinned her with a pointed glare that might as well have been a rapier through her larynx as it stopped her ability to speak. “We’ve been through this already.”
“Ten,” she said, after finally regaining her voice.
“See how much easier it is when you cooperate?”
“I thought you liked working with people who didn’t always do as you said.”
“What of you? Do you like working with people who don’t always follow your rules?”
“My rules serve a purpose to keep things professional between us.”
“All business as I recall.”
“Precisely.”
He crossed over until he was sitting beside her, his thigh brushing against hers, sending heat spiraling through her. “Do you know what I saw to this afternoon?”
She wasn’t certain she wanted to know. His eyes held a touch of humor and something more, something dangerous.Hunger.She felt like a poor creature caught in a web with the inability to move and no chance of escape, all the while knowing it was facing peril. Somehow, she managed to unlock her muscles and shake her head. “No.”
“I visited my solicitor. You should have witnessed the absolute shock on his face when I touched his cheek.”
Before she could laugh at the absurdity, his warm palm was cradling her face, his gaze intense as his eyes held hers. “That was your objection to my touching you, was it not? That I hadn’t touched him?”
Had she objected? She could hardly think when it felt as though his fingers were growing all the warmer, as though where their skin touched a tiny fire had been lit and was beginning to spread, to consume. She had little doubt that eventually it would reach her toes. “Did you kiss your solicitor as well?”
A flash of white teeth just before he lowered hishead, and his luscious mouth was brushing against the swirls of her ear. “Should I have?” he rasped, and flames of desire began licking along her flesh where his breath wafted over it. She would probably combust if his breath and fingers ever came together against any part of her person.
Yes, yes, yeswas the answer she wanted to provide to his question, but she knew if she lowered the drawbridge, she would essentially be doing away with the third condition. That once she was no longer standing her ground in defense of it, nothing would stop him from swimming the moat and scaling the walls of the castle she’d erected in which to take shelter from all the wicked things she wished to experience with him.
She was aware of the absolute stillness of his body as he awaited her response. He wasn’t going to push her into it, force her to make a hurried decision. Blackguard Blackwood thetonhad labeled him, and it was such an inappropriate moniker for this man. “As your lips are so near to mine, I suppose it would be a waste not to close the distance between them.”
She felt the spread of his smile against the sensitive skin just below her ear. His mouth, heated and moist, filled with triumph and promises.
He lifted his head, captured, and held her gaze. One heartbeat. Two. “I can’t abide waste,” he growled, just before sweeping in to possess what he probably didn’t realize he already owned.
She had intended not to welcome him too eagerly, but as with everything where he was concerned, her intentions seldom reflected reality. It would have been foolish, really, not to make the most of this moment when his mouth slashed over hers before gentling ona sigh and a soft moan, as if now that she’d given him his freedom to possess, he wanted to luxuriate in the taking of her. His tongue traced the outline of her lips, before pressing along the seam of her mouth, urging her to open for him. And she did. Wanting—needing—to taste him fully, to have their tongues circling, roaming, withdrawing. Only to come together again.
She stroked her hands over his broad shoulders. Traced her fingers over the firm muscles of his back. She knew the strength she detected in those powerful muscles was the result of a young boy striving to develop the means to defend his mother. As a man, still he worked to protect women.
She was presently the beneficiary of all that effort. And she gloried in it.
The manner in which he pressed his large, strong hands along her back, over her sides. The way it felt to be caged in by those sturdy arms.
