Yes, he reckoned he could be that as well.
Her breath was on his lips, laced with wine and hot and sweet. “And the man who is going to marry you,” he said with finality.
Another scant inch, and their mouths met.
The man who loves you, he thought.
But he didn’t say that aloud. Because he’d obviously consumed far too much wine during the first course, and all the blood had rushed to his achingly hard cock just now. Yes, that had to be the reason for such maudlin sentiment invading his mind.
Surely.
It had to be.
He couldn’t have fallen in love with this maddening, bewitching, intelligent, stubborn, vexing, fiery, beautiful bane of his existence. Could he have?
Saint’s teeth.
Logan Sutton had been right, damn his eyes. Trevorwasin love with Lady Virtue Walcot, soon to be the Duchess of Ridgely.
Hiswife.
He deepened the kiss, too lost in her for further ruminations.
* * *
He was kissing her again.Trevor, Ridgely,him. The man she could not seem to resist regardless of how infuriated she was with him over his highhanded treatment of her.
He took your books, she reminded herself faintly as his tongue swept over the seam of her lips.He barred you from the library. He sold Greycote Abbey.
But he had apologized, she also thought in his defense as she opened for him, her arms twining around his neck of their own accord. He recited Shakespeare to her. He said silly things likeit is the east, and Virtue is the sun. He kissed her and touched her as if he could not have enough of her.
And she knew the feeling.
Because she was nothing but a confused jumble of emotions, but when she was in his arms, she felt inexplicably as if all the jagged pieces inside herself had fit into place. And when his lips slanted over hers, she never wanted his mouth to leave hers. In him, she felt the same sense of belonging she’d felt at Greycote Abbey, a rightness to her very bones, to the marrow, to the deepest, darkest spaces inside her heart.
How could it be?
His lips dragged along her jaw, down her throat. “You’re mine.” He caught her fichu in his long fingers and tugged it away, tossing it over his shoulder where the garment landed with an indecorous plop in thepoisà la française. “You know it, Virtue.”
She did.
But curse him. He had to earn her. To make amends for his arrogance. To work harder for her hand, if she was to surrender it.
No, what was she thinking, surrendering? Agreeing to this madcap proposal of his? Binding herself to him forever?
“My fichu,” she protested instead of giving him what he wanted.
Concentrating was increasingly difficult as his hot mouth traveled down her throat. “Horrid little thing,” he murmured against her skin. “Keeping me from what I wanted most.”
“It landed in the…” He nipped the sensitive cord of her neck and she gasped. “Peas.”
His hands settled on her waist, and then he was lifting her onto the long, elegant table, where no place settings had been laid. “I don’t give a damn about the peas.”
He was seducing her. That was what he was doing. And she was powerless to stop him. No, that wasn’t right. Because she wasn’t powerless. Trevor himself had shown her just how much power she had over him.
She just didn’twanthim to stop. That was the problem. Her body and her mind were at daggers drawn. One yearned for him with a desperation that set her teeth on edge and her body aflame. The other warned her to cling to her reservations and remember all the reasons why she must never agree to be this man’s wife.
“Mine,” he said into her ear before nipping her earlobe. “I’ve known it from the moment I first saw you, but I didn’t want to believe that I could ever find myself so thoroughly at the mercy of any woman.”
