AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He loomed over her, and her honey eyes gave in to the temptation to rove over the tall, solid man, from dark hair to dark finery, to the dark shadows flickering in his stance. Goosebumps awoke at the avalanche of virility that enveloped her. Every single one of her nerve endings responded to the sight of so much impressive manliness. In the back of her mind, she nearly regretted having just pecked him on the lips, when she had had the chance to do more. A lot more.
Never had she wanted to extricate a memory out of her head more than at this minute. Surgically, even.
His rugged features crumpled in a scowl. “My conscience has nothing to do with this.” His utterance resonated as a growl.
She did not deign to answer to that. “Go back to London and leave me alone.” The brittle tone denounced her fast skittering control.
“And give you the chance to play the Lady of the Manor for how long?”
The low blow hit her where it hurt most. There would be no way to predict the length of time it would take to find a position. This was his property. If he did not consent to her stay, she counted two options. Go with him, or leave with an uncertain destination. She owned no money and had no relations. Not even friends who would be worth the name. She had been living out in the country since her aunt passed. Around here, she listed acquaintances, none close enough to offer her shelter for an undefined period.
Her hands bracketed her waist. “You are despicable.”
His dark eyes dropped to her waist, then narrowed on her and made her quiver, evoking a predator ready to pounce. “I am offering you a choice.”
As if marriage on these terms was a choice. As if marriage was the only choice a woman should ever consider.
“No, you are not,” she countered. “You are just imposing on me what is your concept of a choice.”
“Think whatever you wish.” He seemed to have come closer, invading her personal space with arrogance and overbearingness. “We are leaving for London in a few days.”
The heat of him hit her like a punch. Hard and masculine with that undefinable hint of clove essence that must be his alone; earthen, musky. It filtered through her senses, plunging her lucidity into a muddy condition where clear head faltered. A sudden lack of oxygen registered in her lungs, and she corrected the flaw by drawing as much of it as she could.
It took several seconds until she produced an answer. “I want to go nowhere with you,” she spat lividly.
The entire room vibrated with the tension emanating from them. A strong impetus to punch his handsome person invaded her. She must clench all her muscles not to give in to it. Violence would get her nowhere. She understood it. But by Jove, it would afford her relief from the pressure building inside her. And it would add to the satisfaction of getting that perfect handsomeness of his a little bruised.
First, she had thought of kissing him. Now, this. It gave the measure for which he unbalanced her. And she did not have the luxury of falling out of her rational resources. She had done it once and look where it brought her.
“Why, Otilia?” he taunted, disdain smothering his chiselled stance. “You would have gone anywhere with me back in the day.”
“That was when I had not realised the snobbish, arrogant scoundrel you are.” Her words flew like fireballs.
The grimace he directed at her could not be more demeaning if it tried. “Ah, you are pricked because I did not fall into your honey trap.”
Honey trap? He considered her naïve, innocent, misguided declaration of girlish infatuation had been that?
“Yes, a girl of eighteen barely out of the schoolroom owned the knowledge and the experience for such things.” She needed to steady her stance not to guffaw at him openly.
“It comes with the territory.” Coldness coated his reply as much as his expression.
She sealed her mouth to prevent a bitter snigger to release itself in the air. “You must be twisted if you believed this of a country girl.”
Both stood in the middle of the room, three feet from each other, in silent combat. His proximity made her insides heat with much more than indignation. Her breathing came in short, quick puffs, her skin flushed, and her eyes bulged, as though there was a cauldron in her boiling with anger and contempt. And that other elemental, base streak she would not label for the life of her. Not labelling it did not make it go away though. Everything swirled in crashing waves, throwing her in countless directions.
That sombre eyes of his lowered to zero on her lips and literally traced inch by tingling inch of them to burn the rosy skin with a fatal yearning she could not stifle. “With a mouth like yours, you could rule the world drawing just a pout.” He drawled in that nutmeg, syrupy rasp of his, towering over her with male magnetism and strength that she had tried too hard to ignore until this moment.
The rasp and the words swamped her with intense vermillion and a scalding wash cutting down her stomach to lodge in incontrovertible places.
With extreme difficulty, she managed to produce a scornful sound. “With a mouth like yours, you can go hang.” It came low, but sure, before she swung and left the study.
A
Who said he would not? Hang that is. He glared at the closed door with enough intensity to will her back, the impossible siren.
It had been hell to look at her lips and not take them. Open. Hungry. Lost. Not that he had not been a hairbreadth from doing exactly so. He must summon a herculean will power to avoid his own downfall. Delectable and pleasurable as it would surely be.
Those lips had haunted him for many years. The memory of their fullness in hot contact with his skin held the force to make him fall on his knees with the effect they produced.
