Chapter Nine
Harry stared atLady Alexandra Danvers.
She did not look mad.
Neither did she appear soused.
Which thoroughly dispelled the only two explanations for what he had just heard her say. Unless…he supposed it possible. His great-uncle Xavier had been as deaf as a snuff box. Surely he was beginning to lose his sense of hearing at an inordinately early age.
Either that, or the gorgeous, eccentric, lush woman before him had just invited him to bed her. Without benefit of marriage. Good God.
Perhaps he was not her first lover. There was yet another solid explanation for the words that had just fallen from her pink, soft lips. Lips he suddenly envisioned circling his cock. If she was not an innocent, that certainly changed matters. He couldn’t lie. The possibilities such a thing brought to mind were as delightful as they were depraved.
The breath hissed from his lungs as the erection of the century sprang to rigid life in his trousers. Damnation. What could he do?
“I beg your pardon,” he said with great difficulty, for all the blood in his body seemed to have rushed to his groin. “What did you just say, my lady?”
Lady Alexandra held his gaze. Blue, copper-lash-studded eyes stared into his, unblinking. “I said that I will marry you if you bed me. I should have added one caveat, however. I consider this to be a scientific experiment, you see. If you bed me, and I am provided with ample proof that we are compatible, I will wed you.”
Holy hell. Of its own accord, his hand slid lower until the lush, heavy weight of her corseted breast filled it. He could not help himself. The urge to play along with her game, to take what she offered, supplanted all else. “And if I bed you but you do not find us compatible, what then?”
Which would never, ever happen.
If he bedded her, she would be ruined for all other men just as he would be ruined for all other women. He would make certain of it.
She remained calm and poised, as though they discussed something as simple as the snowfall or Christmas pudding. “If we are not compatible, then naturally neither of us would wish to wed the other.”
“A novel concept.” He squeezed her breast gently, wishing he could feel her hard nipple kissing his palm. “But if I take your innocence, your brother will have my hide.Iwould have my own hide, for that matter. No gentleman would bed a lady without first giving her his protection.”
“My body is mine alone to give.” Her chin rose, her stubbornness on display. Damn if it didn’t make him want her more. “It is not for you, for my brother, or for anyone else to decide what I choose to do with it. If I am to be bound to a man for the rest of my life, then I need to be sure he is the man I want.”
Harry considered Alexandra, drinking in the impressive sight of her. With her copper locks confined in a series of coils and twists and her elegant gown, she looked every inch the part of the lady she was. But she was not the average cossetted miss, and the way she did not shrink from his hand claiming her breast coupled with the boldness of her suggestion confirmed that.
His thumb traced circles over the curve of her breast where he knew her nipple hid. Damn the thickness of her corset for robbing him of the pleasure of torturing it as he longed. But as much as he yearned to take what she offered, he could not find it within him to do so. “I cannot bed you, my lady. It would be wrong.”
“It would not be wrong if I wished it,” she argued, her tone serious. “If you wished it as well. Society’s rules need not define us. I do not know about you, my lord, but I wish for a happy life. Why consign ourselves to a lifetime of misery if it can be avoided?”
She was an innocent. Of that much he was certain now. Only a virgin would assume that one round of fucking could determine whether or not a man and woman were compatible forever. “I do not wish to discourage you from your current path as it would please me more than you know, but one bedding is not enough to determine a lifetime’s worth of compatibility.”
But Lady Alexandra did not waver in her determination. “It may not be foolproof, but it is what I require. What do you say, Lord Harry? Will you conduct this experiment with me, or do I need to find a substitute?”
The very notion of another man touching her made him want to commit murder. He would tear any other poor sod who got within a foot of her to bloody pieces. He was not a particularly violent man, but everything in him said that he would not share Lady Alexandra Danvers.
“No one else will touch you,” he growled, his fingers tightening over her breast as if to stake his claim. For that was how he felt about her, he realized in a moment of stark, shocking realization. Somehow, she had become his. And he would be hers. “I alone will conduct this and all future experiments with you. Is that clear, Alexandra?”
She pursed her lips, considering him in a fashion that could not help but to make him feel as if she saw far more than he would have preferred. “If I desire it.”
“Oh you will desire it, my lady.” He would make certain of that.
His brother may have snared the lady he had once wished to wed, but Harry was more than competent at seduction. Besides, he had already become convinced that Spencer and Bo were perfect for each other.
Perhaps, whispered a voice inside him before he could stifle its unwanted insight,Lady Alexandra is perfect for you in the same fashion.
“You have yet to complete the first experiment,” she pointed out then. “How can you be so confident?”
Devil take it. He was left with no other choice. The saucy wench had provoked him, had taken it too far. There was nothing to do but lower his mouth to hers and kiss her as he’d been longing to do from the moment he’d entered the chamber.
Her lips opened in a soft exhalation of surprise, and he took the opportunity to taste her once again as he had in the carriage, sliding his tongue inside the warm cavern of her mouth. This time, she tasted of mulled cider and Christmas and spicy, delicious woman. Her tongue slid against his, tentatively at first but then with greater urgency, her lips clinging to his. She had learned how to kiss him back, what he liked.
