Page 54 of Go, Rogue

There’s nothing innocuous about any place on her body. Her pinkie, her little toe, her belly button. Caressing any place upon her person makes him as stiff as a log. Hell, just touching her shoulder makes him tremble with need. And when she presses her lips to his, his control finally snaps.

He tightens his arms around her and makes some kind of noise, a guttural growl from the base of his throat he’s never heard himself make before. And he takes that tentative peck on his lips she’s giving him and turns it into something far more satisfying.

Something better, something new.

A slow, simmering press of his lips. A nip, a tickle, a slide of his tongue inside her mouth until he can feel her become languid and soft.

He kisses her and kisses her and kisses her again, as if he can never have his fill. As if it will never be enough. His hands slide down her back, which is even now arching into him, straining with a desire he understands and cannot, will not, do anything about.

Catherine loses herself in the moment, in that kiss, until the nervous tension that’s pushed her toward him feels as far away as England is. She relishes every nip, every bite, every sensation as it slides down her back and pools in her belly, until she moves instinctively, throwing her leg over his hip.

She wants friction there, between her legs, deep in her core. She’s used her hands before—she knows something of what she’s after—but what she’s done to herself has never felt like this.

He pulls away from her though. As he always does. She wants to pull him back, but she won’t. She won’t push him. She won’t take anything from him that he doesn’t want to give her.

“Let me look at you,” he says, and she knows immediately that’s not why he’s retreated. She can read the evasion in his eyes.

“Andrew,” she reaches her hand up to caress his cheek as he’d earlier caressed her collarbone. “Be truthful with me. Tell me what you want. Not what you think you should do or what you ought to do. Tell me what you want. Please.”

He moves himself further backward, away from her, so that he’s pressed up against the wall and her thigh now falls onto the empty bed sheets between them. For a moment, he’s as still and silent as a Roman marble again.

“Don’t ask me that, Menace,” he says finally, his voice low and strained. She feels her heart break a little as she registers his tone.

He’s turning himself away from her, away from the places she thinks they can go without the gilded cage of the ton closing them in. She knows he cares for her—he’d told her so himself last night.

But perhaps England isn’t so far away after all. Perhaps they carry those cages within them without realizing it.

“Andrew,” she says, “I’ll give it to you, you know, whatever it is you want. If you only tell me what it is.”

“Menace…”

She can hear his voice is near to cracking. But he doesn’t say anything more, only shakes his head, his curly hair disheveled and falling into his forehead.

“Then let me tell you what I want,” she goes on, because he doesn’t answer her. “It’s you.” The truth in its simplest, barest form. “I always have, Andrew. I’ve always just wanted you.”