“One of each, my lady,” he said, turning the knob behind his back. “And of my choosing.”
Looking at her flushed face and her body that trembled with need and desire from just a kiss and a caress, he would gamble his fortune comfortably that she would return to his bed many, many times.
Day. Night.
Morning. Evening.
Bed. Floor. Chair.
Wall.
“How will—”
“I will send you the reports, on those I mentioned and the others your father discussed. And an invitation,” he explained, his body betraying his own arousal now. His blood ran hot and runnels of sweat trickled down his back at the thought of her in his hands. “If you open the envelope, then you accept the invitation. If you change your mind or think better of accepting my offer, return them both to me.”
He left quickly then, not his smoothest retreat but he needed to get away before he did something very indiscreet. Grabbing a glass of... something from the servant standing by the door as he entered the drawing room, Iain approached the earl.
“A good night’s work then, my lord?” he asked as he downed the contents of the glass. Whisky. A very good, very smooth one.
“Promising.” The earl summoned the servant with the tray. “Did my daughter give you any indication of favoring any of them?” the earl asked. “I saw you talking to her.”
“Actually, my lord, the lady expressed in all candor that she has no wish to remarry.” He studied Heath’s face as he spoke.
“She was a headstrong, stubborn thing, always believing she knew better than me. She will come around to my thinking.”
“Will she?” Iain was goading the man, plain and simple, but he wanted to have a fuller understanding of the earl and his plans since they were connected, and might oppose, his own.
“My daughter exposed her weakness by approaching me for a reconciliation. It’s easier to break someone’s resolve when they have given you free rein.”
Something dark and foreboding swirled deep inside Iain at the threat implicit in the earl’s words. Break her? Oh, aye, she had approached her father in some emotional if not foolish attempt to reconnect with him. Women did emotional things all the time, but he could think of not a single other woman who was as strong and intelligent and practical and....
He liked her. He truly liked her.
And he disliked being part of her father’s plan to change her. Worse, the desire to protect her was getting stronger with each encounter or memory or thought of the lady and that was highly inconvenient. Iain had conducted his business in a straight-line strategy of his overall plan—see, want, plan, get, move on to next.
Lady Clare was changing that process to: see, want, plan, pursue, have, need, want, get, keep.
And that was dangerous in so many ways. Like this one when he was considering delaying getting the agreed-to information to the earl to slow down his plans for Clare. So knowing the danger in wanting her more than any other woman, Iain would...
“I think you should hold off, my lord,” he said, his brain stunned at what his mouth had uttered. “But I will send over the information as soon as my man compiles it.”
A hush fell over the chamber as Lady Clare entered. Was it his imagination or were her lips swollen from just his one kiss? Gazing at the exposed skin of her neck and the tops of her breasts as they pushed against the cloth of her gown, Iain saw the exact spot that he would mark with his teeth when he took her.
When she turned to accept a glass of wine from a little lordling, he decided he would mark her shoulder where it met the muscles of her neck. He would take her hard and fast from behind and bite that spot making her scream as he slid his fingers around to pleasure between her legs. One hand wrapped in her loosened hair, one thrust deep in the heated folds, his mouth and teeth on that sensitive spot, and his cock buried to the hilt in her channel—exactly where he wanted to be.
The glass in his hand stood no chance against his tightened fist and it cracked into pieces in his hand.
“Buchanan?”
The earl’s butler was there before anyone could call him. Scooping up the broken crystal and taking the rest from his hand, the man removed all the bits as though it was a usual thing. Somehow Iain had not cut his hand badly. He tugged a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wrapped it around his palm.
“All is well,” he said, nodding his respects to the earl and making his escape.
He was disgusted with his lack of control over her. He knew how to deal with obsessions—give in to them and they controlled you. Got you killed. The other was to find a way to get them out of your system. Or dissipate their power over you. The lady was one he wanted to work out of his system—one time, one night and one day.
Lucky for him, he had one other good hand and once he was in his carriage, he used it to ease the raging need for her. It was only as he entered his house that he realized he’d never even considered going to Tess as he usually did for such relief.
He had the envelope delivered into her hands at her house the next morning and then waited all day for it to be returned unopened. Every sweep of the clock’s second hand seemed to take a year but, finally, he was ready to leave the office and nothing had arrived from her.
