“What would the Church say?”
“The Lord forgives.”
“Not in my experience.”
“And it would be hypocritical to judge you,” he continues. “When I have—I have sinned. With you.”
I laugh. “Hardly.”
“I have.” He blanches. “It may mean little to you. But it is everything to me.”
He says the words with no trace of consternation or sense of mortification. Dangerous emotion swirls within me.
“You are still a virgin,” I object.
He shakes his head. “Stop.”
His eyes are on me now, looking slightly dazed and very heated. He shifts in his seat. I look down at his trouser front and see that he is hard. I lick my lips. I want his cock. Badly.
“But you won’t be,” I continue, “for much longer.”
He lets out a small sound—not quite a whimper, not a moan, but an acknowledgment that my words are affecting him.
“Very soon, I will force you to fuck me.”
“Miss de Lacey,” he objects.
“Call me Annabelle,” I say before I can think better of it.
“Annabelle,” he echoes back immediately. My Christian name on his lips has me flushing from head to toe.
“How would you like to take me the first time? What scene in your little book do you like best?”
He blushes.
“I wish you wouldn’t speak of that.”
“Why not?”
“It shames me.”
“Don’t worry about that here. Tell me. Which scene do you like best? Which do you return to again and again?”
“I-I-” he stutters. His cock tents the front of his trousers now. “I don’t know. I am at your mercy.”
I bite back a whimper. Somehow, he always says exactly the words that please me. And he says them so earnestly. With such yearning and helplessness in his expression.
Still, he is only a man.
“Everyone has favorites, Alfred. Tell me. Which is yours?”
He still won’t meet my eye.
I decide to help him.
“With the man on top? Or where he takes her from behind? Or where she rides him?”
He groans.
