She looked up at him. God, he was stunning. He had not elected to wear a costume—their set, he and her brother and Montaigne and Leith, never did to these types of affairs. But Trem did not need one. He looked painfully beautiful in his evening clothes. His skin glimmered with that gold tone over the crisp linen of his cravat. The black of his jacket made his hazel eyes appear as though they contained actual sparks.
And he was looking at her like she was a morsel to be devoured. A sweet tidbit he had stolen from the kitchen and that would taste all the better for being thieved.
“You can’t know how badly I want you,” he said. “Even after today, I have to have you again.”
“I do know,” she returned. “Because I want you just as much.”
“Impossible,” he said, and then dipped down to take her mouth. His kiss began softly but then grew in intensity. He knew how to apply every pressure that she needed, like she was a lock that he was forcing open with skill and brute power. He didn’t have the key to her, the approval and sanction of the world around them, but it didn’t matter. He knew how to open her anyway.
I can’t marry you, she thought, through the haze of her own desire. But the words wouldn’t stay in her mind as he eased her mouth open with his tongue. She leaned into him further, so that her breasts pressed into his evening jacket.
“Don’t make me take you in this shrubbery,” he groaned. “Please. Don’t make me do it.” He said the words low, in her ear, and the startling intimacy of the sound made her sure that that was exactly what she wanted.
She smiled against his cheek. “But you will. You will take me here. If I want it.”
“God, yes. It’s not a very honorable way for me to conduct myself with my future wife—but I can’t resist you.”
Drawing herself back so she could meet his eye once more, she said, “Why do you assume I would marry you?”
He smiled at her, a lazy, wanton grin. If she had been wearing undergarments, she would have felt them dampen. Her dress, however, had been too tricky for undergarments, so she wore none. And perhaps even some wanton part of her had wanted him to find her without them. More than some part, a little voice inside of her protested.
“Because you want to.”
God damn him, she did want to marry him. Of course she did. She just wanted him to love her first.
“We don’t have to be married to enjoy one another.”
She saw fear flicker across his countenance at these words—unmistakable, like a dark bird across a white sky. She hated that she would cause him any kind of pain. But she could feel what was happening between them and she didn’t know how to stop it. She didn’t know how to tell him the truth. That Lady Henrietta Breminster, the girl he thought he had known her whole life, was a lie.
“I would prefer to marry you and enjoy you,” he said, dipping down to kiss her again. She felt her mind clear with the pleasure. Pleasure at the kiss, yes, but his words, too. He sounded quite a bit more convincing than she had imagined he would. She had imagined him mentioning honor and expediency and her angry brother. Instead, they were in their secret bower and he wasn’t saying those words. She hadn’t worked out a plan of how to protest when, on the subject of wanting her, he sounded so very convincing.
She broke the kiss but kept the contact between their bodies.
“You only want to marry me because it is the honorable thing to do.”
“Does that sound like me?”
She scoffed. God, he was arrogant. And had an inflated idea of his own wickedness.
“Your usual mistresses are married women. You’ve never been one to ruin marriageable virgins. And if you did, I know you would want to do the right thing.”
“You forget, my little Artemis, that I didn’t ruin you.”
Henrietta reeled back. From another man, the words might have been a taunt, a threat. But she saw the lightness in his eyes.
And the truth was that she had forgotten. Justin had been wiped from her mind almost completely. Trem had blacked him out like an eclipse. He hadn’t ruined her, it was true. Then, why did it feel so very much like he had?
“What do you mean?” She could hear the sulkiness in her own voice. She couldn’t help disliking him not taking responsibility for her, for her ruination, even though she was the one protesting a marriage between them.
“I didn’t ruin you, so it’s hardly fair to accuse me of only wanting to marry you to save your virtue.”
“You know what I mean,” she glowered. He was teasing—and the intimate words sent decadent spirals of want down through her core—but she still felt a little hurt at his abdication of responsibility. Even though, she knew it didn’t make sense. Damn it, but she wanted him to feel responsible for her. Beholden to her. Even though she knew she couldn’t marry him without—well, his heart.
“I do. You think I only want to marry you because you’re my best friend’s little sister and I’ve violated his trust.” He ground against her in a crude motion, his hard length digging into her pelvis. “Does that feel like contrition and regret?”
“You lust after me now,” she said, her most intimate muscles clenching almost comically in response to his cockstand. “But you’ll tire of me. And then where will we be? It would be a disaster.”
“I’ll never tire of you.” He kissed her again. This time her mind truly went blank. She pressed into him, giving in to the sensation of his closeness.
