“You spoke to your sister about me? Aboutus?”
The very idea made her start to wheeze.
“Take a deep breath, pet.”
“I can’t.Wecan’t…”
She couldn’t fight the surge of panic, the sense of impending doom. If Ethan had talked about her with his sister, the future he was referring to could only mean one thing. A permanent, marriage sort of thing. That he thought her worthy of such an honor made her feel a bit weepy…but she could never accept.
I will always find you—and you won’t like it when I do.
Mama had proved those words time and again. But this time, Xenia had more to lose than her freedom. She couldn’t let what had happened to her papa and Mr. Trelawney happen to Ethan.
“Tell me what is going on in that head of yours,” he said keenly.
She wanted to—had never been so tempted to disclose her secrets. With Ethan, she felt safer than she ever had in her whole life. Yet telling him about her past would be the ultimate act of selfishness. She knew the sort of man he was, knew that he would insist on trying to defend her against her mother…like her father had tried to. And Mr. Trelawney.
Look how they had ended up.
I love Ethan.
The realization constricted Xenia’s chest. This was no infatuation. She’d fallen completely and incontrovertibly in love, and she would never, ever allow Ethan’s blood to be shed because of her.
“Xenia? What is it? Tell me.”
He was looking too closely, seeing too much. She needed to buy time to think. To figure out if and how she could be with the man she loved without endangering him.
“I…I want you, Ethan,” she whispered.
It wasatruth, if not the main one burning in her heart. From the flare in his eyes, she’d succeeded in diverting him. To distract him further, she rose on tiptoe and pressed her mouth ardently to his.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
While Ethan suspected that Xenia was employing a Fabian tactic, he didn’t care. In fact, she was welcome to distract him with kisses whenever she wished. She was only delaying the inevitable: he was going to get to the truth about her past sooner or later. Whatever secret she was hiding terrified her, and he could afford to be patient. Especially when she offered such delightful diversions.
After his idiotic behavior with Canning, he probably didn’t deserve the sweetness of her lips against his. Yet Xenia had made his disclosure far less painful than it might have been. She understood him in a way no one had before. He knew that their future would not be without conflict. They would challenge each other and make mistakes, but if it always came back to this—their mouths fused and tongues twined, their bodies pressing to get closer—then he knew everything would be all right.
“I wanted to do this all night.” He nuzzled her ear, inhaling her herbal-fresh scent. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”
“It’s the dress. Thank you for buying it for me, by the way.”
She arched her neck as he kissed his way down the soft column.
“You’re welcome, but you’re wrong. It’s not the dress—it’syou, Xenia.” He caressed her jaw, gazing into her blinking brown eyes. “If I were asked to describe the perfect woman for me, I would describe you.”
He saw that his declaration affected her. She swallowed unsteadily, but her response was teasing.
“Even though I am troublesome?”
“You know very well I like how naughty you are,” he said. “Stop fishing for compliments.”
She pursed her lips, then that saucy twinkle he loved came into her eyes.
“Speaking of naughty, there is something I would like to try again.” She fluttered her lashes at him. “If you don’t mind.”
“As it happens, I’m in the mood to be accommodating,” he drawled. “What do you have in mind?”
His blood simmered when she sank gracefully to her knees. He didn’t know how Xenia managed to tap into his deepest fantasies, but their desire was even more intense because of the way it was shared. In the mellow glow of the stable lamps, he saw the flush of arousal on his siren’s cheeks as she unfastened his trousers. The fact that she fumbled with the fall made her actions even hotter. By the time she managed to free his cock, he was hard and ready, falling with a slap into her waiting palms.
