And mayhap, in a sense, it did. But her body had been most responsive to his earlier. Her mind may be convinced he was a heartless devil, but her body could easily be persuaded otherwise. He knew the feeling—after all, he loathed Lady Calliope Manning. Yet kissing her and touching her and waking with his prick nestled against her feminine curves had given him a cockstand just the same.
“Only until my heir is secured,” he told her. “After I have my heir and spare, I will never return to your bed.”
Her lips compressed. “Do you swear it?”
He raised a brow. “Madam, I have no wish to share a bed with a conniving jade. If it were not for your dowry, I would ruin you in the blink of an eye. I need your funds, and I need an heir. You can give me both, and then you can go to the devil for all I care.”
Her stomach growled once more, reminding him she had yet to eat.
On a sigh, he rose and dragged his chair nearer to hers.
She stiffened, eyes going wide. “What are you doing, my lord?”
“Plotting your murder,” he told her wryly.
Her expression said she believed him.
“Bloody hell,” he swore, snatching a strawberry from her plate and holding it to her lush lips. “I am feeding you before you perish from starvation, you wrongheaded virago. Take a bite.”
She rolled her lips inward and shook her head.
He shoved the strawberry into her mouth with less finesse than he would have liked. But he nevertheless achieved the desired goal—there was food in her mouth.
“Chew,” he told her as if she were a child.
Her countenance was mulish as ever, but she chewed slowly, then swallowed.
“Good.” He held the half-eaten fruit to her lips once more. “Another bite.”
This time, instead of attempting to seal her lips, she opened her mouth. He slid the strawberry inside and the bloody harridan bit him. Pain shot up his arm as those pretty teeth of hers clamped on the fleshy pad of his thumb before releasing him.
He ground his molars to stave off an exclamation of pain. He would not allow her even a moment of triumph. “That was not very nice, my dear. Or particularly wise.”
“I was obeying your orders.” She blinked at him, her expression one of contrived innocence.
He brought his throbbing thumb to his own lips and sucked, easing the sting. “Fair warning, princess. Next time you bite me, I will bite you back.”
He would start by nibbling on her creamy throat. Then catching her lower lip between his teeth. Then, he would work his way lower. Bite those pretty nipples he had felt through her chemise…
Damnation.
Desire pounded through him, reminding him it had been far too long since he had last bedded a woman. That was the only reason he was attracted to the woman he had spent the last few weeks despising and plotting against.
“Forgive me,” she said, her voice radiating with insincerity.
Never, he vowed inwardly. Forgiveness was for fools. Lady Calliope Manning would be his enemy forever. He had learned that particular lesson thanks to his former countess, and it was one that would serve him well in the next loveless union he faced. If there was one source of solace he could find in this hellacious mess, it was that this time, he was too wise to fancy himself in love with his wife.
It would be a marriage of convenience in the truest sense.
No danger to his heart. No betrayal. No pain. No lies.
“Eat your breakfast, beloved betrothed,” he told her. “The sooner we can get back to London and you are my wife, the better.”
After all, he did not just have himself to fret over.
Chapter Seven
My rapacious hunger for conquests became a dangerous obsession, dear reader. The more I reveled in the depths of my depravity, the more I sought it, like a true satyr. Imagine, if you will, a chamber filled with dozens of men and women, all of them nude, writhing in their shared, forbidden passions…
