She arched a brow, defensiveness rising in her. “Do you want to call me a wanton, then, Derrick? Accuse me of being a whore because I treat my pleasure like a man treats his?”
“No,” he said, quickly and with feeling. “I don’t judge you. Why shouldn’t you have pleasure? Why shouldn’t you treat your body as if it were your own? It is, after all.”
She hesitated.Thatwas not the reaction she had expected. If she told the men on the terrace what she’d just confessed to Derrick, she would wager more than ninety percent of them would call her whore either behind her back or to her face. She would be shunned by the women, ladies all and born and bred to be delicate and chaste and fucking boring. It was, unfortunately, the way of their world. Women were chattel, their virginity a commodity. Their pleasure an afterthought, if a thought at all.
“Oh,” she said softly.
“I was actually reacting to your statement that you’ve been on your own for so long,” he said. “Thatseems a sadder statement than that you’ve had…” He cleared his throat. “…lovers.”
He was pressing for information about her in this. Looking through her like he always did and finding things she had always chosen to hide. She didn’t want that. If he dug too far, he would find the Fox there, too.
So she forced a smile. “Is that jealousy in your voice?” she asked. He lifted his gaze to hers and she saw that very emotion faintly flickering there. “You needn’t be. That was…amazing. Different from anything I’ve ever felt before.”
His lips parted. “Yes,” he said, and nothing more. But the yes was enough. The yes was a triumph. She wanted to move him just as he moved her. She wanted it to mean something…
Even if in the end, it couldn’t mean anything. There was no way for it, no path that could lead them to each other for more than the remaining days they would share here.
“Selina,” he whispered, his voice no longer rough with desire, but soft with something else. She wanted to turn away from that, but he cupped her cheek and it froze her in place, staring up at him. His lips lowered and he kissed her once more.
Only this time, he didn’t devour. He didn’t claim. He wasn’t rough. He tilted her head, deepening the kiss, and for a moment she sank against him, holding tight to the firm reliability of him. She hadn’t had that in her life for a very long time.
Because it was always an illusion.
That reminder yanked her back, and she stepped from his arms and away from the vulnerability he made her feel all the way down to the tips of her toes.
“Don’t worry yourself,” she whispered. “I wanted this. I wanted it exactly as we had it.”
He nodded slowly, tracking her as she backed toward the door.
“And…” She held her breath before she continued. Could she say what was on her lips? Should she? After all, she had leverage now. She didn’t need more.
Except she did.
“And I hope we can do it again,” she whispered.
He arched a brow, and she waited for the inevitable words that would fall from his lips. Admonishment, denial, refusal. Instead, he let out a low chuckle that seemed to cross its way into her blood stream. He smiled at her, possessive and hot and…real. Her heart stuttered even though she knew she shouldn’t let it.
“You are trouble, Selina Oliver,” he said on a laugh.
She couldn’t help the smile that tilted her own lips. “Proudly,” she said, then winked at him as she slipped out the door and left him to think on what they’d done.
And she could have crowed that she had the upper hand, except her hands were shaking as she re-entered the party and circulated back into the crowd.
Chapter 11
“What do you think about Lord Winford?” Derrick asked, keeping his eyes pointedly on the papers in front of him and praying his tone sounded casual.
He heard Barber shuffling papers, and there was a long pause before he answered, “What about him?”
That was a good question. WhataboutWinford? Derrick had been watching the man ever closer since his approach to Selina at the garden party the day before. He was a bastard, that was for sure. But could he be a Fox?
“Huntington?” Barber said, his tone sharp. Derrick jerked his gaze up then and found his friend standing now, his arms folded across his chest, a pointed glare focused squarely on Derrick. “You have not been yourself since yesterday afternoon when you snuck away with Miss Oliver.”
Derrick flinched. Yes, his friend was correct on that assessment. He hadn’t been himself. How could one ever be oneself again after such a powerful encounter with a woman like Selina? The passion of their joining, both given and received, was all he’d thought about since. Both to reprimand himself, and to relive those moments over and over and savor every squeeze of her body, every scent of her desire, every sound of her orgasm.
Even now he could picture each second down to its finest detail.
“Will you ever tell me why you dragged the lady off?” Barber asked.
