Page 47 of The Baronet’s Bartered Bride

Joseph, with his scent and his sweetness and his heady heat, wrapped around her, holding her at last. She had wanted this so desperately. She loved him so much. A throbbing began down below, where their bodies met, fed by the exquisite ache of his mouth on her breasts, and she didn’t know if it were a climax or something else because she still craved him with an intensity close to pain.

He went perfectly still.

She opened her eyes. His were dark and wide, with slivers of molten gold.

“Inez,” he whispered. “You’re so beautiful.”

“Touch me,” she murmured. “Please.”

She was a wanton and she was not ashamed. She would beg on her knees if she had to. She would crawl after him, if she must, because there was this between them, and now that she knew it she could not turn away. She was trapped like an ant in honey.

“Inez,” he whispered again. “Did you⁠—?”

“Did I what?” She slid her hand to the back of his neck, tugging him back to her breasts, wanting his hands to move instead of resting so carefully at her sides, holding her like fragile china.

His brows knit, as if the concept were foreign. “Find…pleasure.”

“Yes. And there can be more. Let me touch you.” She shifted her hips and reached between them toward the flaps of his breeches, but he caught her wrist and held her firmly.

His words were a sharp rasp between them. “No.”

She blinked. The wave still carried her, tilted her end over end. She could not find the ceiling, or her feet. “No?”

“We cannot do this.” With both hands, carefully, he slid her to the floor, set her on her feet. Her knees threatened not to hold her.

“We can,” she said stubbornly. She reached for his coat, for the band of his breeches. “There is nothing to stop us.”

He shied away from her touch, rising from the chair. The distance between them was cold and terrible. There was something like despair in his eyes.

“I cannot,” he said.

“Will not,” she cried. “But why? Do you not desire me?”

Reason had left her long ago, with the first touch of his lips to her breasts. She didn’t think about what she was doing, the wisdom of it, the danger. She only knew she wanted that control to snap. She wanted him in her arms, in her hands, convulsing, helpless. Surrendered to his want. To her.

“Do you not desire me?” Her bodice was already open; she flung it off and threw it to the floor. A yank of the string freed her petticoat, and she kicked it aside. Her stays took a moment longer, and she fumbled with the laces.

“Inez.” He sounded like a man who was dying of thirst, throat dry as a bone. He held out his hand, palm up in denial. “Do not.”

“Do not what? Do not want you? It is too late for that.”

With a fierce yank she shed her stays. It took only a moment to lift her shift from her head. She wanted to goad him. She wanted him to break. She stood before him in all her naked glory, shivering with rage and cool air and a frustration that made her want to howl to the heavens.

“I am yours,” she said, tears welling in her throat with her anger. “Take me.”

He stepped backward. The brute. The callous, unfeeling cad. She stood trembling before him, stripped to her essence, and any other man would have been on her in an instant, falling over himself to thrust his member inside her and find release. There could be no more blatant invitation.

And Joseph looked at her as if she had sunk a knife into his bowels.

“We…I…” He fumbled, squeezed his eyes shut like a man upon the rack. Then he did her the kindness of looking her straight in the eye as he sank in the knife. “I cannot.”

Her mind went back to another embrace, when she had held his cock in his hand and he had shuddered and spent at her touch. She had thought it a victory. She had thought it a sign of want.

“Have you never been with a woman?” she demanded. “Do you not know what to do?”

That was cruel, and she knew it, and yet there was still satisfaction as the accusing words flew from her mouth and landed. Suddenly, everything made sense.

Joseph did not visit places like Dark Lane. He did not boast of his conquests. He did not approach women on the streets, nor bring them to his house. When he had come to her in her bed and spilled in her hand, his look of astonishment had not simply been because she was so potent. It might have been the first time a woman touched him and he understood the pleasure it could bring.