“You sound surprised.” He didn’t appreciate the doubt coloring her voice. Just what did this woman think about him? That he was a wastrel like the rest of them? He’d damned well set her straight. “What was this?” Rising to lean against the headboard, a piece he’d nearly torn off its mounting during their second session, he gestured to the erotic destruction around them. “I’d love to hear your version of the events.”
Clutching silk to her bosom, she sat up, facing him. “You snuck in my home demanding one night, and I concurred. Enthusiastically. Two adults in agreement. Heavens, you made the rules. Now, here we are, dawn lighting the sky, four scores of pleasure between us. Our time at an end. If I’m not mistaken, there was an expiration date attached to this encounter.”
When he continued to stare at her without comment, she punched the pillow in frustration. “You’re the expert, Cort. Isn’t this the way it works?”
“Five scores, actually, as your count totals three. Don’t you remember my head situated between your thighs, where I stayed until you nearly yanked my hair from my scalp? Which I adored, I might add. You taste like bloody ambrosia.” Stretching his leg, he grunted, his ankle beginning to throb, as well as a stinging ache that had settled around the wound on his brow. He was botching this, he knew he was, but he couldn’t stop himself from destroying the most wonderful night of his life. For protection, perhaps. Damn his fearful hide. “For the record, sweetness, I’ve never once made rules with you that I’ve been able to keep. Not since I was ten years old.”
She squirmed, a flush crawling down her neck and beneath silk he wanted to tear apart with his bare hands. “Are we going to argue because you got what you wanted?”
“You got what you wanted, you mean.”
Wrenching the sheet free and wrapping it around her body, she scrambled from the bed. “This is so like a man. Typically arrogant and short-sighted!” Striding across the chamber, she plucked her nightgown from the floor and struggled into it. Cort sighed when the crumpled satin slipped over the pale curve of her bottom, and his erection withered like a bloom torn off its stem. “The moment women seize a measure of sovereignty men have been seizing for all time, there’s anarchy. Meeting as equals is promised before relations but not greatly welcomed after. If I say, yes, I wanted you for one night, too, but nothing more, I’m the villain.”
Circling the room, she gathered his clothing, tossing his shirt and drawers at him with a delightfully feminine effort, everything landing far afield of its projected target. When she got to his cape—for some reason this garment made her angrier—she gathered it up and shook it at him with a clenched fist. “I’ll take a thousand lovers if I like!” She flung his cape and watched it flutter atop the settee. “I’ll proposition every handsome man in London if I elect to. Men closer to my age. Or older even!” She gestured to the wrecked sheets, the chamber, them. “Now that I know.”
“No, you bloody won’t.” Cort clenched his teeth and climbed gingerly from the bed. He had a bum ankle, if she’d take a moment to recall. And he’d worked extremely hard to not let his injury interfere with her pleasure.
Lastly, she was only five years older than him, not a hundred.
“Do you think a minor infatuation when we were children means you have dominion over me? When I’ve finally been given a measure of freedom and found the courage to exercise it? When part of me wants to give you control. Tup you until we’re both unable to walk, then do it all again.” Running out of steam, she collapsed to the sofa, her chin in her hand. The movement jiggled her breasts beneath the slip of satin, which did nothing to improve his mood. “This affair business is easier there”—she pointed to the bed—“than it is outside it.”
Cort stilled, one leg jammed in his trousers, his drawers tucked in a wad beneath his armpit, his shirt hanging open, the ends fluttering at his hip. What was he doing? He didn’t want marriage. He wasn’t even certain he wanted children. He’d imagined being alone, possibly, for the rest of his life until he’d stumbled upon her again. He didn’t have plans. Knox wanted a family with such fervor Cort feared he’d marry the wrong woman to gain it.
Cort had best be happy with what had occurred this evening. His reckoning. Finding out that reality was, during the rare one-in-a-million attempt, better than any fantasy.
A headache brewing, he closed his eyes and leaned his shoulder unsteadily against the bedpost. When he opened them, Alex was staring at him with as much confusion and muted hunger as he guessed was gracing his face. “The past gives me no authority over you, sweetness. Honestly, it hampers anything we might try beyond this night because…”
“Because?”
He blew out a fierce breath and limped into his trousers, his eyes on his task, away from her. “It wasn’t a minor infatuation, despite my age and immaturity. Sorrowfully, I believe I’m”—he tapped his temple—“muddled up about it still. I thought this night might overpower the dream of you when it’s only made the pulse in my head stronger.”
“Oh,” she whispered. “Oh.”
“Although, I have a proposal. For both of us.”
She smiled winsomely, her chin still caught in her fist. It was a flirtatious look, crisped at the edges with a hot heat that curled in his own belly. “Do you, now.”
He held tight to the bedpost to keep from crossing to her. What he suspected was love was coursing through him, a blazing fire in his chest. A new set of emotions unrelated to the old, he believed, if he had a chance to untangle them. A moment to think without the scent of her clinging to his skin and taking up every inch of space in his lungs. Without the vision of her, gorgeous and rumpled from his devotion, running rampant over him.
Because if Alexandra Mountbatten came to him, ever truly came to him, nothing to do with the past, he needed to know it was forever.
Or she’d ruin him in a more devastating way than Waterloo had.
“Out with it, Dewitt,” she murmured, courageous to the end.
“I have to be back in London in two weeks. Until then, I’m going to shut myself in my father’s study and finish my designs. I’m meeting with investors in eight days.” He buttoned his shirt, trying to ignore the way her gaze tracked his every move, her bottom lip caught hard between her teeth. She wanted him, if nothing else.
He was mad to deny her, to be sure, but he desired more this time, from this woman. Scratching his jaw, he blocked a laugh. What a fix he’d gotten himself in with this chit. “I promised Knox I’d attend another pointless ball. He has a prior engagement and can’t. My brother has a thousand prior engagements a day, nothing new there. I’m tempted to tell everyone I’m him and see if they notice. Our old trick from Eton, which could possibly make the evening interesting.”
“The Earl of Rodham’s annual spring celebration. And they’ll notice, Cort. I can tell you apart and have always been able to. It’s ridiculous that people confuse the two of you.”
Cort glanced up, something in her smile easing the emotional load on his shoulders. “You’d know me anywhere, is that it?”
Alex shrugged a slender shoulder, her teeth working her lip in a way that made him want very badly to do wicked things to her. Have her do wicked things in return, as she’d proven she could. “I’ve been invited as well, although I don’t usually, that is, I never go to those things. Not since my first season. Ballrooms make me itchy, like I have a rash. I was only invited because I may do something scandalous the ton finds horrid but noteworthy. Widows are often the pinnacle of entertainment.”
Cort snorted, his heart giving a quick thump. He suspected he loved this girl, to the bottom of his soul and back. “If you attend, despite the allergic reaction, find me, and I’ll know. It won’t be because of the lingering effects of my touch coursing through your body, my scent on your fingertips, my sweat on your skin.”
“You’re leaving this to me.”
