AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Thank you; 'twas a gift from Syntlo.”
“I wasn't referring to the sapphire.”
When she ignored the innuendo, he bent close. “You could be wearing diamonds and emeralds, my beauty, if you'd let me buy them for you.”
She glanced up at him with a challenge in her black eyes. “How about the infamous Talbot pearls?”
Shrewsbury threw back his dark head and laughed. “You are the most audacious woman I've ever known, and it attracts me like a lodestone.”
“Men always want what they cannot have,” she said lightly.
“Apparently women are the same, or why would you covet the pearls?”
Bess was well aware that the only way a woman could get the pearls was by becoming the Countess of Shrewsbury, yet when he alluded to the fact that she could never have them, it rankled her. “Shrew, you keep your pearls and I'll keep my virtue.”
She felt the muscles in his arms bulge, hard as iron, as he lifted her high in the galliard, and she felt weak with longing. She watched his pupils turn black with desire as her jade silk undergarments were revealed, and in that moment she knew she wanted him desperately. To talk and touch in the crowded room was sheer torture.
He whispered intensely, “You're starving for it. Why do you deny me, deny yourself?”
She looked up into his eyes. “Do you want the truth? It's because we are both married; that's the only reason I deny you.”
“Syntlo cannot possibly satisfy you. He was an old man when you married him, but now he's a frail shadow of his former self.”
“All the more reason why I cannot betray him.”
“So you'll live like a nun just to honor an empty marriage vow you should never have made in the first place.”
“You once thought me rather fetching in a nun's habit.”
They were level with the ballroom doors, and he pulled her through them before she knew what he intended. “No, Shrew!” She tried to release her hand from his, but his powerful grip tightened and he almost dragged her along the gallery that led out to the gardens. “Christ, I won't ravish you!” he growled.
Damn, if only you would, how simple it would make everything.
They ran through the night-scented gardens, across manicured lawns, passing a fountain of dancing waters, to the seclusion of a giant yew walk that had sheltered lovers and their secrets for over a century. Bess made no outcry, knowing the scandal would be horrendous with the nobility for witness.
He took hold of her other hand and looked down at her face outlined by moonlight. “You've invited everyone to Chatsworth save me,” he accused.
“I'm entertaining Her Majesty, for God's sake. I can't be distracted by you.”
“Then you admit I distract you?” His arms closed about her and he pulled her close against his long, hard body.
“You are well-aware of what you do to me, you black devil. You are like Lucifer, tempting me to sin.”
“Loving is no sin, Bess.”
“Damn you, it isn't love, it's lust!”
“We are two passionate soulmates who have found each other.”
“We are two oversexed people who can't keep their hands off each other!”
“You don't seem to have any trouble resisting me.”
“Shrew, if I dared to let down my defenses, I'd devour you!”
He groaned, and his mouth came down on hers with a hunger he had never known before. With his lips still against hers, he demanded, “Do you know what it did to me, watching you dance with all those other men, knowing their hot hands were on you, their eyes devouring your luscious breasts, hoping for a glimpse of nipple?”
“Shrew, for God's sake, don't kiss me again. You know we can't stop.” For answer his mouth took hers and ravaged it.
