Perhaps after he had bedded her? Yes, that was the key. Of course it was. It had always been thus in the past, with the women who had come before her. Why should this one be any different?
This one is very, very different, whispered a cautioning voice from within.
“Were you seen?” he asked, telling the voice to go to the devil, along with all good intentions.
“No,” she responded as the carriage lurched into motion.
Excellent.No irate brothers giving chase this evening. Nothing to distract them from their course.
It occurred to him that unlike the first night, she had no questions.
“You are surprisingly quiet,” he observed. “Tell me, what is that sharp mind of yours thinking?”
“I suppose I was wondering,” she said softly.
He took a moment to study her loveliness more completely, hoping he would find some flaw. All he saw was the tiniest beauty mark on her jaw, near her ear, and far from being an imperfection, the deuced little mark entranced him.
“What were you wondering?” he forced himself to ask, before he went entirely maudlin.
She lowered her head, breaking the connection with his gaze. “Why you want to be the one who completes the list with me. Surely there are any number of ladies in your acquaintance with whom you could…dally. Ladies who are beautiful and experienced. Ladies who do not have to sneak into the mews and lie to their brothers.”
Yes, but none of those ladies would beher.
Decker blinked, wondering where the devil that thought had emerged from. “I already told you, my dear, that I feel responsible for you. You are like a sister to the wife of the man I consider a brother. And I cannot very well throw you to a dog like Quenington and continue living with myself.”
That sounded rather callous, even to his own ears, and he knew a sharp sting of regret, wishing he could call them back. She stiffened, her full lips going taut, and her head shot up. He called himself every sort of cad for the hurt he saw reflected in those honey-brown eyes.
“You need not feel obligated to assist me, Mr. Decker,” she said coolly. “I have been living my life quite well without your intervention.”
She was bold, but he knew he must not forget she was all but a chit fresh from the schoolroom although there was something about her which seemed older than her years. And he was almost ten years her senior and a hundred years more jaded, weathered, and weighed down by sins.
“It is not obligation I feel for you,bijou,” he told her grimly.
Let it be a warning to her. She would not escape this agreement of theirs unscathed or with her maidenhead intact. He meant to make her his in every way. To show her all the myriad facets of pleasure. He meant to ruin her for every damn man who would come after him.
What if she ruined him, too? Decker struck down the notion before it could take root.
“You just said it is. I would sooner be relieved of my promise to you and complete the list as I choose than accept your sympathy,” she said, regal as any queen. “I do not require you, Mr. Decker. I never have.”
Damn it.He had not missed her return to the use ofmisterin his name, and he knew what that signified. He had upset her.
There was only one means by which he could fathom proving to her that what he felt was decidedly not obligation. Only one means by which he could undo the damage he had so foolishly done with his half-arsed response.
He reached for her, settling his hands on her cinched waist and then hauled her into his lap. She was petite, and even with all her luscious curves and the endless trappings a lady hid beneath her gown, she was light. She fit in his lap perfectly.
Her hands went to his chest, as if to push herself away.
“You will complete the list with someone other than me over my cold, dead body, Josephine. Do you understand me?” he demanded, utterly serious.
He had never been more serious about anything in his life. In fact, the urge to beat Quenington and any other man who would dare to touch her rose, uncontainable, within him. He had never felt so possessive about a female before. It was bloody disconcerting, was what it was.
And troubling.
But he was not about to let her go, now that he had her where he wanted her.
“You have no right to order me about,” she argued, squirming suddenly in his lap. “And no one calls me Josephine.”
“Ido,” he said, his hand going to the back of her neck whilst the other remained on her waist. The sensation of her silken skin on his bare hand stirred him. “I call you whatever I wish to call you, because until we complete your list, you are mine. Do you understand? The reason I want to complete your list with you is because I want you. I want to taste you, kiss you, be inside you. I want you in my bed. I want to take your innocence. I want to kiss you breathless. But make no mistake, darling. You are here for the same reasons. You want me every bit as much as I want you.”
