She bent her head with a laugh and he tensed at the way that sound settled him even further. He didn’t want that. Not with her. Not with anyone. If she could give peace, that meant she could take it away. Not a risk he wanted to take, because he knew how badly that could all end.
He folded his arms and hardened his heart and his tone in equal measure. “But I don’t think probing into my personal life or skipping rocks is why you hustled after me this afternoon, angling to get me alone.”
The smile on her face, that first one that hit him in the gut like a sledgehammer, fell away and a flash of hurt replaced it before she hardened herself as he had. The walls between them returned, erected by them both.
“I didn’t angle to get you alone,” she said, her tone sharp again. “You are wrong to suggest otherwise.”
He tilted his head. “You followed me down a hill away from the others. What would you call it?”
Her lips pressed hard together and she shook her head. “I only wanted to speak to you. Don’t you think we must after what happened between us? We will be here together for more than a week. We cannot simply stay in opposite corners, can we? Clearing the air is the…the only option.”
“Not the only one,” he growled. “And not the one you actually came here to pursue.”
“You think you know my mind?” she asked, laughing again but this time with no pleasure. “Do edify me.”
“You followed me here to wave your arms around and preach to me about reputation and propriety. You came to pretend that you didn’t want last night, just as you did immediately after your orgasm faded. You came to order me not to do anything like that ever again, even as you stare across the bowling green at me like I was some sweet treat you wanted to…” He leaned in and took a whiff of her spicy scent. “Lick.”
The wall she had built a moment ago crumbled as he said that. The desire she felt flared high, mixed with that contempt that crossed her face whenever she looked at him. Her breath caught and she shook her head. “You couldn’t be more wrong, Your Grace.”
He lifted his brows. “No. Did you come to rut with me by the lake, then?”
“No,” she said. “Last night Ididtell you what we did could never be repeated. I believed it at the time. But the more I have…” She trailed off with a blush.
“Don’t stop now,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Do continue.”
“The more I pondered what we did, how it made me feel, the more I have wondered if it is something I could experience again. With you. No matter how wrong that desire might be.”
Katherine shifted as Robert stared at her in utter silence. She thought it might beshockedsilence, and that was something she couldn’t help but be proud of. Roseford was jaded, everyone knew that. He practically wore it as a badge of honor. A cloak of protection. But in that moment,shehad shocked him into silence.
He overcame it at last and said, “I want to be clear on this. Are you saying you would consider trysting with me again?”
She drew a long breath. Her mind took her back, to her father, who had cursed what he called her nature. To her husband, who had used that same nature for what he desired, but never given much in return. To her aunt, who had just hours before given her a sort of twisted permission to take what she wanted, just this one blessed time.
And she thought of the ripples of pleasure this man had drawn from her. Almost effortlessly and without demanding she give him something first or in return. Even now that wasn’t what he taunted her with or asked her for.
Her pleasure hadn’t come with a price, despite the bargain she knew he’d made. Or at least it hadn’t yet.
“Yes,” she said, answering his question at last.
He blinked at her and his expression of confusion would have made her smile if she weren’t shaking so hard in pure terror at what she had just admitted. To this man, of all men. Even knowing what he wanted from her, even knowing why.
She still said yes because there was no other word to say.
“What?” he asked.
She placed her hands on her hips. “Of course you would make me spell it out. Very well. Iwantsomething. Something just for me. But I’m not certain you would honor that, nor allow it.”
“Something just for you,” he repeated slowly. “You are talking about your pleasure given without mine taken.”
She nodded, shocked that he would even say those words. “Yes. Something that is all for me. And yet I doubt that I can trust you with that need. You would demand.Take.”
He arched a brow. “You mean like I did last night?”
She flinched at the sarcasm that dripped from his tone. The vulnerability and warmth she had sensed in him when she asked him about his friends was gone. Back was the hard man. A man she realized was pulsing with emotion just beneath the surface.
But that didn’t matter to her. Hecouldn’tmatter.
“Areyousaying you would even consider entering an affair with me that wouldn’t involve…full completion for you?” she asked.
