“And sitting in a library without a light seems a bit pointless. Unless you can read in the dark.”
She sighed.
Julius moved closer, slowly, careful not to startle her. She moved around the house like smoke, and he didn’t want her to slip through his fingers. “Can’t you sleep?”
“I’ll leave you be if you wish to be alone.” Her husky voice surrounded him like a thick fog. The rasp that she’d developed in prison had never truly left.
“I didn’t say that.” He held out his hand. “But I would like for you to stop hiding in the dark. Let’s sit by the window.”
He waited, pulse pounding in his ears, until she placed her hand within his own. Satisfaction coursed through him. Amanda shied away from most contact, only stiffly tolerating her sister’s embraces. Her hand was cool, and he chafed it as he led her to the settee.
“What are you doing out of bed at this hour?” he asked.
“Waiting for you.”
Moonlight fell on Amanda’s cheek. A strand of dark hair lay across her neck, and his fingers itched to tuck it back behind her ear. “Was there something you needed? You’ve only to ask. You know I’m here in Marcus’s stead. Anything you would ask of him, you can ask of me.”
A smile ghosted across her lips. “I hope not. There’s something I wish to ask you that I could never ask my brother by marriage. My sister wouldn’t care for it.”
He squeezed her hand, hoping to reassure her. “If it is in my power to deliver, it’s yours.”
Raising her other hand, she laid it atop his so both her hands surrounded his one. Tentatively, she brushed her thumb from his knuckles to his wrist, gently, like he was the one made of porcelain and could be broken.
His skin prickled. The air in the library thickened, grew heavy, and a longing filled him that stole his breath. Its strength had never been matched.
“What I want,” she said. “What I’ve wanted since the moment you moved into this house, is for you to take me to bed and have your way with me.”
Chapter Two
Julius’s eyes flared, but he betrayed no other indication of surprise at her language. And that surprised Amanda. She thought she’d shock him. What man wouldn’t be by such a request?
“Pardon me,” he said. “I must have misheard. What is it you wish?”
Amanda’s stomach twisted, squeezed. It had taken all her courage to ask him the first time. Now he wished her to repeat her scandalous demand?
“You heard me correctly.” She cleared her throat. So much depended upon his answer. The idea had taken root the first week he’d moved into Marcus and Elizabeth’s home. He was the first man in whose presence she felt safe since … forever. Yet she’d had no idea how to implement her desires. How to seduce. Each day she’d watched him leave the house, get swallowed up in the London streets, and leave her behind. Each day she grew more and more desperate.
He narrowed his eyes. They were the first thing she’d noticed about him when he’d saved her those months ago. Not quite brown, not quite green. They’d mesmerized her, given her something to focus on as he’d raced her away from the hangman’s noose.
Gleaming in the moonlight, they didn’t look as warm and reassuring now as they had that day they’d met.
Laying his arm on the back of the settee, he grimaced slightly. Amanda knew that shoulder troubled him. A past injury he didn’t speak of. It usually acted up after a visit to Gentleman Jack’s or a race through the park. Or sometimes after one of his illicit undertakings, which he thought she knew nothing about. On one such occasion he’d favored his right arm for a week. What had he been doing so late tonight to inflame it?
He drummed his fingers on the wood behind her shoulder. “Might I ask why you want me to, as you so quaintly phrased it, have my way with you?”
Amanda smoothed a hand down her skirts. This wasn’t going as planned. Weren’t most men supposed to jump at the chance to lay between a woman’s thighs? Not waste time with interrogations.
“You think men are alone in their needs?” She willed her gaze to remain steady on his face. The dark hid the blush that heated her cheeks. “Much is made of the act. I know my sister enjoys her marital duties. And … bed sport,” she said, tumbling over the words, “is something that all mankind has in common. Nature demands it, regardless of class or race.” She worried the fabric of her gown between her fingers and raised one shoulder. “I’m curious. And I want to feel”—like everyone else—“something. You are a physically attractive man and I hope I am not unpleasing to your eye. As I will never marry, this solution only seems practical.”
“Prettily said, for an act that is far from pretty.” Julius crossed one leg over the other, tugging at the knee of his trouser. “When I fuck, there’s sweating, moaning, the slap of flesh on flesh. You’ll scream from pleasure, but there’s not one damn thing pretty about it.”
She swallowed, her throat thick. Julius had succeeded where she had failed. He’d managed to shock her senses, just as he’d intended, she was sure. She knew all that the act entailed, but she hadn’t thought the earl would put words to the deeds.
It shouldn’t have surprised her. The man was intense. Julius Blackwell, Lord Rothchild, was known throughout England as someone it was best not to aggravate. There were whispers about him. About how his time in the East had damaged his mind. Made him unsound.
She didn’t believe them. Julius had never been anything but kind to her. A steadying presence she relied upon, especially in her sister’s absence. A man she trusted.
She had hoped that the first time she consented to a man touching her, there might be gentleness.
