Chapter 21
The mattress dipped as Perry climbed up, dumping her closer.
Dear God, she was so beautiful. “Perry—”
She kissed him, stopping his words.
He eased her onto his lap again. She slipped a hand round his neck, and let the other trail down his center.
“No.” He lifted her hand from his trouser placket.
“I want—”
Flipping her onto the bed, he clamped a leg over hers, kissing her, teasing her, stroking her, making her writhe.
“Please,” she said. “Plea—”
She shattered again and went limp.
He rolled her over and pulled her against him, gritting his teeth, willing his cock into submission. She was a dream—willing, responsive, beautiful.
And he couldn’t have her. He could never have her that way.
“Fox,” she said, and he heard tears in her voice. “Fox, why…why not? I care for you, and I know you care for me.”
Why not? She is here. She is willing. You’re here at this cottage with only a servant and MacEwen.
A cottage that had belonged to her mother. They were, in fact, in her mother’s bed. “And it’s because I care for you, I won’t dishonor you.”
She lifted his hand away and rolled toward him, wincing.
And then there was the matter of her injuries. “You’re hurt.”
She pressed a hand to his cheek. “This is not dishonor, Fox. This is love.”
The lamp cast shadows across her face and chest but the dark of the bruising stood out.
She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut.
Oh, hell.
Tears glistened in the light. He swept a finger through them.
“Perry, I have nothing to offer you but this…physical pleasure. Beyond that, it would be a life lived in shabby rooms on the fringe of society, wife to the season’s interesting painter. And in the long run it won’t be enough.”
She raised up on one elbow and her face lit in a smile. “Marriage has crossed your mind also? Oh, Fox. My dowry will come to me, no matter who I marry.”
He closed his eyes.
He shouldn’t have alluded to marriage. “Turning over your fortune to a husband would never satisfy you.”
In his younger days, he had upon occasion, lived off a patroness he might like but didn’t love. True, besides the bed sport, he’d produced portraits for his commission, but it had all become loathsome. There was no honor in those arrangements, neither for the woman nor for the man. He’d rather starve.
Over her silence, the open window let in the sound of waves crashing, rhythmically.
He should be listening for other sounds—voices, the soft rustle of a horse’s hooves on the gravelly path, movement downstairs.
He smoothed back the hair from her face. She looked pink, breathless, and completely undone. No one could look at her and not know what they’d been doing.
