His hands slid from her elbows to her upper arms, gripping, but not with enough pressure to hurt her. Rather, it felt as if he was not sure if he wanted to set her away from him or bring her closer still. “It is easy for you to say so, when you have been treated with respect all your life. You are your father’s rightful daughter. You are a lady. No one will ever look upon you with disgust, as if you are a shameful secret that should have been locked away.”
He was right. She had never experienced what he must have endured, and she could not fathom the pain he must know, being treated as if he were less worthy than anyone else by mere virtue of his birth.
“You make me happy,” she whispered, stroking him tentatively at first. Just a swipe of her right palm over the indent of his lower back. Then higher, up the rigid curve of his spine where corded muscles flexed beneath her touch. And then her other hand could not resist moving as well, following the same path, not halting until she reached his powerful shoulders.
So much strength contained in one man.
His arms and his large, lean frame dwarfed her. But she had never felt more safe or alive.
“I cannot make you happy.” His voice rumbled against her ear, mingling with the steady, reassuring throbs of his heartbeat. “I cannot bring anyone happiness. I am a curse.”
But his hands too had shifted, one cupping her shoulder, the other curling about her nape. He did not wear gloves, and his bare skin upon hers sent a shiver of something wonderfully sinful tremoring all the way to her toes and then back up her body once more, settling between her thighs.
Thedespicable thinghad returned.
“You’re wrong,” she told him, daring to tilt her head back and look up at him. “You bring me happiness, Clay.”
Their gazes clashed, his dark and angry and fraught with a host of emotions she could not begin to read. He was so handsome, so beloved, and she ached just looking upon him.
He caught his full lower lip in his teeth, worrying it, and how she longed to kiss him there. To set her lips upon the flesh he tortured. To soothe it. To take away his every pain.
Clay let out a low groan. “Do not look at me in such a fashion, I beg of you, my lady.”
“In what fashion?” she asked innocently, allowing her gaze to stray once more—quite intentionally—to his mouth, for it had seemed to provoke him.
His tongue replaced his teeth, flicking over his lip. He blew out a gusty sigh. His fingers had begun to slide upward, settling in her carefully pinned coiffure. “You are an innocent, damn it, and you have not the slightest inkling of how I could destroy you. I am not someone you should know, Lady Ara.”
But he could never destroy her. She did not believe it possible. And neither could she resist him. He was Clayton Ludlow, and he was temptation, and she knew without a doubt he was the only man she would ever love. The realization settled in her heart, and she welcomed it.
“I do not care if you are a lord,” she told him, her voice firm, nary a trace of doubt shadowing her words. “I do not care about anything other than that you are Clay,myClay. Seeing you fills me with warmth. Thinking of you makes me smile. I spend all the time I am not in your presence wishing myself back in it until I am here again, with you.”
“Damn it, Ara, do not do this.” His chocolate eyes begged. “I am trying to be a gentleman, to send you away from me with your innocence and your reputation intact. I cannot be the man for you.”
She did not want her innocence.
Did not want for him to be a gentleman.
Nor did she care for her reputation.
Nothing and no one mattered but the man in her arms, the man who was looking down upon her as if she were the most perfect and revered thing he had ever seen.
Her life had been lonely and empty before him, her future prospects an abysmal marriage like her parents shared—a match made in reason and not in love, doomed to make both parties miserable. She did not want to spend the rest of her life hiding in her chamber, feigning megrims because she could not bear to face what she had become. Now she had found something different. Something right. And she was not going to allow it to slip through her fingers.
She hooked her arms around his neck, rocked onto her toes, and fitted her lips to his. With a low sound of need his mouth took hers, claiming and hungry and seeking. Shocking. Unlike any other forbidden peck she had ever received from a previous suitor.
His tongue swept past her lips, delving into her mouth. Decadent and absolutely delicious. It madethe despicable thingquiver and burn inside her.
But just as quickly as he had branded her with his kiss, he dragged his lips from hers and set her away from him. A vicious curse rent the air. He stared down at her, his chest heaving, his eyes darker than obsidian.
“I am no good for you, Lady Araminta,” he said finally. “Do not come looking for me tomorrow, as I will not return. It is for the best. For your own good.”
And then he spun and stalked away into the forest, disappearing as if he had never been there at all. She stared, unseeing, holding two fingers to her lips.
Chapter Five
“Mama!”
Ara bent, arms open, as her beloved son hurtled toward her. His long arms wrapped around her, and he nestled his face into the smooth silk of her mourning bodice. She caught him, burying her face in his head of dark, unruly curls and inhaling. He was growing taller every day, and soon she would no longer need to bend at the waist to embrace him at all.
