“I published the next three under a false name,” she said, “to protect his reputation. His career. But I still... told him about them. I still—I kept hoping—” She broke off to wipe furiously at her face. “I don’t understand what’s wrong with me that I can’t stophoping. Even this—even coming here—I thought things would be different. I thoughtIwould be different. And I’m not.”
“Ruby,” he murmured.
“I would change, if I could,” she said, low and fierce. “I’ve been trying. If I could, I would be as sweet and pleasing as my sister Cassandra. But I can’t. I don’t”—her voice cracked again—“want to wait here for the princess to arrive, only to discover once again that I am not suited for the role.”
“Ruby.” He set his hands to her shoulders. She was soft beneath the heavy smock; the blue paint on her cheek had run in a faint trail down to the corner of her mouth. “You don’t need to be anyone other than who you are.”
Her lips twisted down. She said wryly, “Pretty words, Captain Archer. But I have not found them to be true.”
“You don’t.” He shook her, just a little. He wanted her to listen. He wanted to push the words into her skin. “You don’t have to make yourself small just to—” He thought of Gravesmuir’s dinner party, the marquess’s angry face. Her father, whispering furiously into her ear. “Just to please a pack of fools who cannot recognize what’s right in front of their eyes.”
If men like that sought to silence her, it was only because she was more earnest and clever than they had any hope to be. For all their words of superiority, the only thing wanting was in themselves.
Ruby didn’t say anything back, only looked him full in the face. Sharp-edged and defiant. Disbelieving.
So he pushed closer. Slid one hand down to her waist and the other up to cup her cheek. Her skin was warm and paint-streaked, and touching herhurt, like a clenched fist of want in his belly. “There’s not one thing about you I would change.”
Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. “Pretty words.”
Goddamn it, she was the most obstinate—the most difficult—
He yanked her up against him. “I’m not trying to flatter you,” he snapped. “You know I’m not.”
Her lips parted, as if to argue.
Archer kissed her instead. He plunged madly into it, leapt toward the dark ocean of her and let gravity and desire pull him down. He was angry and resentful and fevered with want, and oh, hell, it was relief and torment in one to feel her. To press himself into the lush shape of her body, feel against his chest the stiff smock and the crush of her breasts beneath it.
She was still with shock at first, and then—
She came up on tiptoe and shoved her fingers into his hair. Her mouth opened beneath his, and she kissed him back, hungrily.
His brain went blurred. He could feel his heartbeat in his cock. He wanted and wanted andwanted—
Half desperately, he pulled back. He was breathing hard, his whole body alight with yearning.
“Nothing,” he said, and his voice was as rough and hot as his need for her. As barely checked. “There isnothingabout you I would wish to be different. No possible way you could be more desirable to me. If I wanted you any more, Ruby Ballimore, I’d die of it.”
Her lips were wet. Peach-ripe. Her smock clung heroically to the very tips of her breasts. “I thought you said this would not happen again.”
He had one lock of her hair between his fingers. He’d wound it around his thumb as he’d kissed her.
He bent his head again and let his mouth hover just above hers. Breathed in turpentine and oil, and beneath it the amber scent of her skin. “Ah pet,” he muttered. “I lied.”
Chapter 17
This time, she kissed him first. She shoved her fingers into his hair, brought their mouths together in a clumsy clash, and parted her lips to let him taste her.
Archer shuddered at the sensation of her mouth beneath his, at the eagerness of her sweet curvy body pushing up and into his own. She made a hungry sound at the back of her throat when his tongue came into her mouth, and so he put his hand to her lower back and dragged her closer.
He wanted to make her sound that way again. The knowledge of her desire aroused him further, faster—his cock throbbed as he found her neck with his mouth, the edge of her smock with his thumb.
“Do you believe me now?” he murmured. He swept his thumb along the smock’s stiff seam, tracing the inside curve of her breast. Her skin was damp from perspiration and oil paint, and touching her—even with the side of his thumb—felt like an electrical shock. A charged pulse that flickered through his body.
He grazed her neck with his teeth, just the tiniest bit, to see if she would whimper or moan.
But she did neither. Instead she pulled at his hair, bringing his mouth back toward hers. “I am not quite convinced,” she gasped. “But do feel free to keep trying.”
And so he was smiling, again, as he kissed her.
