Page 65 of Noble Scoundrel

His hand tightened around the back of her neck, sending waves of awareness through her body. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation to feel herself at his mercy even in that small way.

Then the corner of his mouth twisted upward. “We’re back to arguing, then?”

“Did we ever truly stop?”

In an instant, his expression shifted back to sensual as he leaned close enough for her to feel the breath of his whispered words against her cheek. “Yes, we did.”

Straightening, he stepped back while releasing his hand from her nape. With his gaze holding hers, he grasped her hips in his hands and lifted her from the table to set her on her feet. Something unreadable glittered in his eyes as his lips tilted in a familiar smirk. “Tomorrow morning, then. Eleven o’clock.” His gaze swept over her again from head to toe. “Wear something you can move around in.”

Her legs shook as he turned away and strode across the room. The muscles in his back bunched and released with every step until he reached his shirt where he’d tossed it to the floor. Lifting the garment over his head, he shrugged it back on.

Smoothing her skirts over her legs, she turned away from the sight of him and left the ballroom with trembling knees and a tense jaw. Her body still pulsed and tingled with the sensations he’d aroused in her. The aching in her core was a longing for something she was afraid to fully name. She wasn’t sure if she’d done the right thing by diverting his focus from lovemaking to fighting. All she’d known was that if he continued to kiss her and touch her, she would have given herself to him completely.

While he would have held himself back.

Not in the act, perhaps, but in himself. And she wasn’t sure she could accept that.

Chapter Twenty-one

Mason stood with his shoulders resting against the wall next to the enormous fireplace in the ballroom. His arms were crossed over his chest and one leg was bent with his bare foot planted against the polished mahogany wainscoting. Though there was an unsettled feeling in his gut, his gaze was hard and focused on the open double doors on the far end of the room as he waited for Lady Katherine’s arrival.

He’d finished with Frederick and then the others more than an hour ago. After that, he’d gone back to his room for a bath and change of clothes. He wasn’t going to touch Lady Katherine with the sweat of other men on his skin.

There was a good chance the woman wouldn’t even show up.

Rolling his shoulders, he tried to dispense the tension that gathered every time he recalled last night’s conversation. And the kissing.

Just thinking of how she’d felt in his arms, her thighs parted around his hips, her mouth tender and sweet beneath his, sent a rush of throbbing heat to his aching groin.

He’d known from the start that the obvious physical attraction between them would eventually have to be dealt with. He’d looked forward to it.

He’d also completely underestimated it.

When he’d finished his training regimen last night to find her staring at him with those dark, fathomless eyes, her lips parted and glistening, her lovely breasts rising and falling with weighted breaths—he’d simply lost all restraint.

The feel of her eyes on him all hot and intense made him desperate for her hands. Nothing could’ve stopped him from approaching her. Just as nothing could’ve kept him from taking her soft, pink mouth when she’d dared him to prove just what a brute he could be.

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