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He closed his lips around her nipple and sucked.
With a gasp, she arched against him. Her fingers at the back of his head clutched at his hair in encouragement as he took turns laving with his tongue and sucking with his lips. A glorious sensation of feminine need spilled through her.
“Come to the country with me, Nora,” he cajoled as he continued to worship at her breast. “We’ll have time and space to get to know each other.”
“I think—” She gasped with pleasure when he suckled at her, each pull taking her deep within his mouth. “I think we know each other pretty well now.”
He grinned against her bare flesh. “Not nearly as much as I’d like.”
In wanton promise, his hand at her bottom slipped down to caress her through her skirt from behind. His fingers glided into the crease below her buttocks and stroked against her throbbing core. She wanted exactly what he was offering, but that could never happen. If she surrendered to him, her heart would never be hers again.
“I want to show you my home.” His hands returned to her waist, and he pulled back just far enough to stare down at her in the shadows. To brush the pad of his thumb across her bottom lip that even now throbbed heatedly from his kisses. “I want to know what you think of it, if you like it.” His thumb stilled against her lip. “If you think you’d like living there.”
An electric jolt shot through her. She knew what he meant, what he was really asking…If I’d like a future with him. In his typical Mason way, he was proposing.
And breaking her heart.
She couldn’t bear to look at him as she pulled her bodice back into place and slipped out of his arms. Instantly, she missed the warmth and strength of his embrace and fought to keep herself from rushing back to him, to agreeing to whatever he wanted just so she would never be apart from him. And with that, to condemn herself to a life that wasn’t hers to control.
“I like you, Mason,” she whispered, unable to speak any louder. “A great deal.”
He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, to place a kiss to her palm. Her fingers curled of their own volition to caress their tips against his warm cheek. “Then come with me. A fortnight in the country will do all of us good.”
“Not a fortnight,” she rasped out and blinked rapidly against the stinging in her eyes. “You mean a lifetime.”
“I suppose I do.” He lowered her hand and enfolded it in both of his. “Would that be so bad? You and me and Emmeline…perhaps children of our own. All of us living in the country, coming to London only when we have to.” He grinned. “And Brutus. With him around, we won’t need a nanny.”
A soft laugh escaped her despite her gathering tears. That was why she’d come to care for him so much. Only Mason could tease her like that at such a serious moment.
“But I’ve been married,” she breathed out, hoping he would understand. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him! “It didn’t go well.”
“I’m not Davenport.” He lifted her hand to his lips to kiss it again. “For one, I actually love you.”
Her lips parted in anguish, those soft words shattering what was left of her heart. “Mason, please—”
A loud, high-pitched shriek from inside the house broke the quiet darkness that cocooned them, followed by fierce barking and a screeching feline wail. Suddenly, a streak of gray fur darted out the front door, running for its life across the courtyard and toward the avenue. On the cat’s heels came Brutus in hot chase. And behind him—
“Emmeline!”
The little girl didn’t pause when her feet hit the ground at the bottom of the wide front steps, dashing across the courtyard after the dog who’d run out into the street in pursuit of the cat. Not stopping when she reached the street. Not seeing the carriage that raced toward her.
Nora watched in horror as Mason sprinted after her, hurled himself at Emmeline, and shoved her out of the way just as the carriage bore down upon him.
