“I definitely want you,” he said as he bent to grab her chemise.
She tugged it over her head and took the gown he offered to do the same. “But you aren’t trying to, er…”
He laughed. “For a lady who told me in no uncertain terms that she would never open her body to me, you are quite passionately trying to convince me to make the attempt.”
She smoothed her gown and went to work on her buttons. At least the action allowed her to glance away from him as she said, “I suppose I was only expecting you to press your case more. Make demands.”
He shook his head. “I told you a dozen times tonight, you can always say no and I’ll respect it. But if we do this again, I do not think I’ll be able to resist asking you very sweetly if I could show you that a man’s body joining with yours can be as pleasurable as his mouth or his fingers.”
She swallowed hard as she pictured just that. She wanted to see him, to touch him as intimately as she had been touched, to feel his weight over her as he slid home into her body. To look into his eyes as he lost control.
She shivered. “If that’s what you want, then why haven’t you asked for more?”
“Because no matter what happens next,” he said as she took her stockings and stepped barefoot into her slippers, “I want you to know that you are owed nothing less than pleasure, Katherine. And if anyone ever suggests otherwise, then he is a fool who is not fit to shine your boots, let alone touch you.”
She stared at him, shocked by his words, shocked more by the tingle of tears those words created in her eyes. What he was describing was a gift. One given without thought of what he’d get in return.
And as he led her to his door and pressed one last kiss to her lips, the power of that gift made her knees tremble. She stepped into the hallway and looked back at him. “G-Goodnight,” she whispered.
“Goodnight,” he said, and then he shut the door, leaving her to ponder not just the passion he had shared with her, but the meaning of it all.
Chapter Fourteen
Robert stepped from the house and squinted at the morning sun. God’s teeth, but one had to be mad to regularly get up this early. Normally he didn’t. But today he’d been awake at dawn, restless and troubled about what he and Katherine had shared.
It hadn’t been the plan. The plan was to give her pleasure, to be certain, but then to seduce. To convince her to give herself to him completely. That was how he’dwin his wager.Only he hadn’t recalled that little detail until she was long gone and he was alone with a rock-hard cock that needed tending to.
He pushed out his breath in a huffy sigh and started across the garden. He needed to clear his head. It was too full of memories of Katherine’s soft confessions about her awful marriage. Full of real empathy for what she’d been through.
He didn’t want empathy for her. That was not how he operated.
He turned a corner into the maze of the garden and came to a full stop. Of course she was there. She would be. That was fate, it seemed, to find her standing there, autumn leaves fluttering in the air around her.
She fit there, amidst the reds and oranges and yellows. They were colors of fire and she was fire. Even her gown matched, for it was a sunny yellow with a fall of stitched butterflies along the skirt. She clutched a shawl around her shoulders, a rich red color.
She hadn’t noticed him yet. She was too busy examining a pretty bush with bright red berries that was filled with chirping birds. He had time to turn tail. To escape her and all the very odd things being around her made him feel.
Only he didn’t. He stood there, dumbfounded, locked into place as he tracked her like a fox might track a rabbit in the woods. Only he didn’t feel like the predator. Around her, he was as much prey as she was.
Another odd feeling for a man who had never been in anything less than full control.
She froze in her examination of the bush, and then she turned. She caught her breath at the sight of him a few feet away. Her expression was unguarded and, since she wore no hat, unimpeded. She lit up, and for a brief fraction of a moment, it was clear she was happy to see him. Worse, he felt the same joy in his own chest. Felt himself smile without hesitation.
Then she caught herself and the walls came crashing down once more. That was his impetus to move and he came toward her, a sailor lured by a siren. At this rate he would be lost.
“Good morning, Katherine,” he said.
She swallowed hard. “Good morning, Your Grace.”
He arched a brow at her formality. Normally she called him Roseford, if she called him anything at all. But somehow he’d expected a little more freedom since they’d shared so many intimacies. He found himself longing for her to say his name. His given name, not the one that was related to his title or his family or his position in life.
“Is that where we are?” he asked softly. “After the last two nights, am I still Your Grace when we’re alone?”
She blushed and dropped her gaze away from his. “Robert,” she whispered.
The sound almost didn’t carry on the breeze. yet it hit him like a rifle blast to the chest, nearly knocking him back. He shut his eyes briefly, reveling in the way his name sounded coming from her lips. Wanting to hear it more, in all kinds of scenarios. He wanted her to say it warmly, gently, he wanted her to use it when she was angry with him, through tears. When she was shaking with pleasure.
“Robert?” she repeated, this time as a question.
