Page 48 of Wicked Exile

The right side of his mouth lifted in a grin. “When he sees this scar on your arm and asks you about it, you’ll have to tell him of your fake betrothal.”

She chuckled. “This will be the least offensive part of my past that my future husband will have to come to terms with.”

He set in place the edge of the linen and started to rewrap her arm. “You don’t intend to ever lie about your past?”

She stared at his downward tilted face as his look stayed on her arm. He had a peculiar pull of his lips to the left side whenever he was concentrating on being gentle with her. “Like you, I don’t intend to ever marry, thus negating any need for lying. But no. I won’t lie about it. My life is what it is and it’s who I am.”

His eyes but not his face lifted to her. “You are the most assured woman I have ever known.”

“I find I have to be, though I feel as though I am losing myself here at Whetland.”

“How so?”

“I find this place lonely. At first, I liked the peace of it. And I like when the cousins are banging about the place. And I like when I am naked in your bed.”

A carnal smile cut across his face as he tied off the wrapping on her arm.

“But when it is quiet, as it is tonight, and you are not to be found and Ness is resting, it is a lonely place. Nothing but my breath echoing off the stone walls. I am accustomed to mayhem all around me all the time.”

“Lonely?” He stood straight but kept his gaze on her. “I suppose it can be.”

“You feel it too?”

“I do, at times. I’ve been told that the castle was always bustling with life when my grandfather and grandmother were young. Comings and goings, along with political alliances and intrigue. It was a different age.”

“I will have to get him to tell me about it, as it sounds like an exciting time.”

“Or scary. And the end of a way of life. And ever since these northern lands have turned to sheep grazing land, grandfather has kept as many families in the area as he could convince to stay, but so many young people left for better opportunities elsewhere. The clearings that have happened on adjoining lands scared far too many into leaving, even though my grandfather never would have uprooted families that have been on our lands for hundreds of years.”

“The world changes, whether we want it to or not.” This was the sadness she’d seen in so many men, stability sifting through fingers, the world breaking apart and reordering without any sense of control. She didn’t care to see the shadows of that sadness in Evan’s eyes.

“Exactly.” He exhaled a long sigh. “So I get to deal with this.” His hand swept out over the papers cluttering the billiard table. “Managing a lonely estate.”

She looked around her, her eyes pausing on the closed door to the room for a long moment. Her gaze shifted to him. “It is lonely, which makes it so curious, how you would not want a wife—to take away the barrenness of these halls.”

She moved away from him to the sideboard and picked up the decanter on the far left. Whisky was always on the far left here at Whetland. She poured a glass and turned around to return to him. “I would think the sound of children in these corridors would be so welcome. So why not want that?”

She pressed the glass into his hand, her eyes, her face open to him, willing him to answer. Staring up at him, she realized how desperate she was to have the honest answer, how much it would mean to her. She squashed down on the thought. She didn’t care to explore the reasons for that at the moment.

Evan’s eyes narrowed at her as he took a sip of the whisky. “Juliet, drop it. I told you, I’ll not discuss it with you.”

Her lips pursed for a second and she nodded in acceptance. “Then let us do other things.”

With practiced ease, her hands lifted, going to the cut of his waistcoat and flipping free the top onyx button, then working downward. Slowly, her wanton eyes on his face the whole time.

With one last sip of the whisky, he set the tumbler down onto the billiard table and his hands were on her in the next breath. Running up and down the sides of her body as she pushed free his waistcoat.

She went onto her toes as he leaned down, their lips meeting. Instant flames between them and she had the fleeting curiosity of why that was always the case.

Something in the way he moved, smelled, talked—that made him water to her tongue. Never enough.

His waistcoat gone, she pulled upward on his lawn shirt and he broke away for only a second to let her rip it past his head.

His lips caught hers again and he lifted her, spinning her around and setting her on the edge of the billiard table. He moved his body inward, spreading her legs wide on either side of his thighs.

Perfect.

Dragging her lips from his kiss, she trailed her tongue downward along his body. Onto his hard chest, the ridges that ran like cliffs along his abdomen, inward to the top of the swath of hair that disappeared under his trousers.

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