“Look at me, Caro.”
She turned her gaze to his face, watching the hazy movement of pleasure across it.
“That’s right,” he crooned, his palm still over her mouth, her gasps and cries stifled. His breath was short, choppy. “Keep your eyes on me.”
They were still fully clothed, her skirts bunching between them. The door behind her rattled, and he rested his elbow against it. His breath was hot on her cheek. They were bathed in darkness.
“I want to be the only man you take as a lover,” he said as he thrust into her again. “No one else.”
The proprietorial nature of his demand added to the heat inside her. Time and time again, she had reminded herself that it was dangerous to grow attached, especially to a man on the huntfor a wife, but it was as though she had spent the last five weeks underwater and now she could at least breathe again.
There was just one last thing to settle.
“I am expensive to keep,” she said.
Surprise flashed in his eyes, there and gone again, and she wondered if this was an insult he would not bear. But his teeth closed around her ear, and the flash of pain shuddered through her like a climax. “Name your price,” he said against her neck, and moved to sink his teeth into her shoulder. She thought distantly she would have to cover the marks until they faded. “I’m a rich man.”
Oh she was playing with fire. But she did so like the way it crisped her skin.
His hands sank into the softness of her waist, and he made another gruff noise of appreciation. “Tell me you accept. Be mine, Caroline. Only mine.”
She was too practical a woman to be taken in merely by the hoarse note in a man’s voice as he neared release. Or even the feel of him inside her, guiding her closer to her own peak. But then his thumb found the sensitive nub between her slick folds, and she exhaled sharply. This was cheating, playing her body like a harp, as though he were a master plucking her every string and compelling her every pleasure. Drugged, dazed, lost to the feel of his hands and his mouth and his body, she struggled to hold on to her last modicum of reason.
“Tell me.” His other hand closed around her throat, just hard enough that she could feel the blood pound and the scrape of air. Her climax loomed, alarmingly close. “Tell me you will not take another man to be your lover so long as I am.”
“Yes,” she said as she tipped over the edge. Pleasure bloomed through her and her legs trembled. “Yes.”
He groaned, as though the words alone had brought him close, and he removed himself from her, turning away and spending himself in a handkerchief he had produced for the purpose.
Caroline closed her eyes and listened to the last strains of the aria, wondering how she, a woman of sense, could be about to make the same mistake for the second time in her life.
Chapter Five
Of all the places in London, Hatchards was one of George’s favourites. If left to his own devices, he would spend hours there, flicking through the books and inhaling the scent of paper and fresh ink. The action calmed him, even if he merely replaced the books on the shelves and moved on. There was a difference between the crispness of newly printed books and those of his personal library, which were often far older. He prized both.
As he stepped inside, his eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim lighting. As always, it was a hub for ladies to meet, and gentlemen to meet ladies, and perhaps to buy the latest book of poetry. He sidestepped them, heading for the stairs to the second floor, which was often quieter. The wooden floorboards creaked underfoot, and he entered the first aisle, running his fingers along the embossed leather spines.
Relief spread through him, easing the tension of the past few days. Coming here, he felt like a boy discovering poetry for the first time—verse written by hot-headed men about what it meant to be alive.
It was familiar magic, and he had just opened a collection of Wordsworth’s—many of the poems he already knew, but it was the action not the reveal he enjoyed—when he heard light footsteps.
He often encountered members of thetonhere, but although he had not been granted many opportunities to hear her footsteps, he knew how she sounded.
Placing the book back on the shelf, he left his aisle and came to the mouth of another, staring at a familiar blonde head tipped towards a book in her hands. Curls fell down her neck to a thin golden necklace, and her dress was deceptively simple, a daisy-patterned muslin that might have made her look like a debutante in her first Season if he was not so familiar with the wickedness of her smile.
After their tryst the night prior, he had taken her home and she had granted him permission to see her tonight. This visit to Hatchards was a half-hearted attempt at distraction, but fate had delivered her to him on a silver platter.
“Good morning,” he said as he strolled forwards. “I see I am not the only one to appreciate the finer things in life.”
She snapped the book shut. “George. What are you doing here?”
“The same as you, I presume.” He nodded at the book in her hand. “To err is human, to forgive divine.”
The challenge left her eyes, and she tilted her head, amused once again. “You know Alexander Pope?”
“Does not every man?”
“You may be surprised to hear it, but I rarely speak about literature when conversing with men.”
