Griffin was not as certain that the Duke of Arden could be induced to reason. It was why he had absconded with Lady Violet, intent upon making her his bride. It was also why he intended to do everything in his power to bring Arden down as the leader of the League. But he said nothing of his true intentions aloud to the lovely woman he was using as a pawn in his game of chess.
“I wish I possessed your confidence, my lady, but then, you know your brother better than I do.”
Guilt pricked at him as he added approximate measures of milk and flour to the boiling onions, shaking in some salt and pepper afterward. He must not lose sight of his purpose. Nor could he allow this false intimacy between them, this brief respite in their journey and travails, to affect him.
He had to remain immovable.
Just then, the scent of roses, delicate and floral and delicious and so thoroughly Lady Violet, permeated the smell of his boiling soup. She had come nearer, drifting from her chair in her stockinged feet. Within touching distance.
And he was instantly anything but immovable.
Rather, he was hard. His cock went as rigid as marble, rising full and heavy and thick to press against the placket of his trousers.
Her skirts came into sight then, dark-purple silk, great bunches of it wrinkled from the time they had spent within the confines of the carriage that had brought them here. Nearer she came, hem swaying in dangerous proximity to the fire he had so recently stoked.
“I want to help you, Strathmore,” she said, laying a hand upon his forearm as he stirred the soup. “What shall I do? Only tell me, and it is done. I do not prefer to sit idly by while others do my work for me.”
There was no other woman like this one, and he knew it. A lady who thought nothing of throwing her reputation upon a funeral pyre for his sake. Who chose to help him, despite her love for her brother, and when she ought not to trust him in the slightest. Who offered to help him cook dinner and did not so much as blink when he told her his mother had been a servant, that his blood was not as pure and true and aristocratic as every other duke’s in England.
He kept his gaze averted from her, lest he do something foolish, and thank Christ he did, for when her skirts swayed once more, they nearly swayed straight into the hearth. He stopped stirring, caught her waist in his hands, and spun her away from danger.
“Take care, my lady.” His grip on her tightened when he fell into her eyes and noted the obsidian orbs in their centers dilating wide. “You ventured too close to the fire and nearly set yourself aflame.”
Her hands had fluttered to his shoulders as she sought purchase during his abrupt shifting of her. Fingertips tightened, digging into his shoulders. Far from pain, he was instead lanced by a hazy, almost euphoric pleasure, the sort he had only previously felt before when he had poured too many spirits down his worthless gullet in an effort to drown his past.
“I believe I have already stepped into the fire, Your Grace,” she whispered, those thick-lash-studded eyes searching his, finding him when he did not want her to, bringing him, vulnerable and bleeding, to the surface for her inspection. “And I am currently aflame.”
Damnation.
She certainly felt as if she were aflame. Her heat radiated through the layers of undergarments and silk keeping his fingers from creamy bare skin. Keeping his body from claiming hers. Keeping him from doing what he so desperately wanted to do to her.
All the women in the world he could have found to bed, in an England rife with beauties of all shapes and sizes, yet somehow, he only wanted this one. What a perverse bastard he was.
“Is this the decorum you spoke of?” he asked, reminding her as much as he reminded himself.
She was temptation, and he was greedy and sinful and guileless, and he would take everything she offered and more. But first he wanted her to make the decision to become his duchess. He wanted her to stand before him and speak vows, so that later, afterward, she could not claim he had misled her. Somehow, this was important to him. More important than the aching in his ballocks and the state of his cock.
Her cheeks went predictably pink. She swallowed, and he watched, fascinated by the subtle movement of her pale throat. God, how he wanted to set his lips there. To feed upon her as if he required her to survive.
“No,” she said at last. “Forgive me, Strathmore. Aunt Hortense would be quite appalled by my behavior.”
Aunt Horrible could go hang for all he cared. But something else was bothering him. Something he needed to rectify at once.
“Griffin, spitfire,” he said gently, setting her away from him and releasing her waist with the greatest of difficulty. “I have heard you refer to Flowerpot as his given name at least two dozen times by now. If we are to wed, it stands to reason you may call me by my Christian name as well.”
He did not miss the flare of some deeper emotion in her eyes, the darkening of her irises. But she passed her palms over her skirts in an elegant show of smoothing them.
“Must you insist upon referring to Charles as Flowerpot?”
He growled. Yes, he did. He could not help the sound that emerged from him, primitive and wild, born of the deep-rooted sense of possession he felt toward this woman. “Let us establish a deal, if you like, my lady. I will cease calling the arsehole in question Flowerpot, and you will stop calling him Charles. The only man’s name I want on your lips from this moment forward is mine, preferably being screamed in ecstasy. Are we in accord?”
Her luscious lower lip dropped.
He supposed he could have been more subtle, but Lady Violet West inspired all manner of feelings within him, and not a single goddamn one of them could be classified as subtle.
“Violet?” he prodded when she did not answer, taking this liberty for himself.
Now they had put sufficient time and distance between themselves and Lark House, what was about to unfold seemed real for the first time. She was going to be his in every way. He would know how she felt beneath him, how her body clenched around his cock, the way she tasted, the sounds she made when she spent. Everything. All of it, all ofher, would be his. And he too would be hers.
