Dear heaven.
Did his eyes have to be so gorgeous?
His hot look was melting her insides.
It was a good thing, she supposed.
Up until a moment ago, her body had been as cold as a frozen tundra.
“Yes, I wish to assure you that I will take all of the blame. If Allendale calls off the wedding, as I would expect he will if he is innocent of the murder…” She cleared her throat. “He will not get over the fact that the two of us have now spent two nights together. His own betrothed spending two nights with someone other than him…and mere days from the wedding, no less.”
“I don’t care.”
“Because you are not the cuckolded bridegroom. When word gets out to the public – and it will – you might feel compelled to protect my reputation.”
“And marry you because he won’t?”
“Precisely. So, I wish to assure you that I would never be so cruel as to force you to marry me.”
“You think this is what I am worried about? My having to take you on as my wife?”
He was making her head spin with his smoldering gaze.
Had all rakehells perfected that smoldering look?
“I know you are also worried that someone might want to kill me.”
“Might? It is at the top of my list of concerns. You saw something, or heard something, and the killer cannot afford to have you remember it.”
“True, but that still does not rule out the problem we are facing. If I survive, then we will have to deal with my compromised situation. I may be forced to resign my role with the Huntsford Academy. That would hurt worse than being ostracized by the ton. I never cared for those fancy balls and musicales anyway.”
“Gory…”
“You look angry.” He was still leaning close and now scowling at her.
“I am not angry.”
“Then why are you frowning at me?”
“Because you are infuriating.”
“I do not mean to be. I thought I was alleviating your concerns.”
He shook his head and leaned in even closer so that she felt his warm breath tease her lips. “You are not alleviating anything.”
“I’m not? Then why do you find me so irritating? Tell me what I am supposed to do.”
“Close your eyes, for starters,” he said with a raspy rawness to his voice that shot tingles through her.
“Why must I close–”
“Because this,” he said and crushed his lips to hers, giving her the wildest, most insanely passionate and scorching kiss she had ever received in her entire life or would ever receive again in three lifetimes, if one believed in that sort of thing.
The kiss was endless, the pressure on her mouth sheer perfection.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew him closer, encouraging him to deepen the kiss because she was so desperately in need of his touch and his love. Nor was she in any hurry ever to breathe again or ever part from him, especially if she was about to die at the hands of some unknown villain or be accused of villainy herself and sentenced to the gallows.
She did not want to die before experiencing this.
