“That is moreyour brother’sforte than mine, I am afraid,” he drawled. “In that aspect, I pale in comparison to the much-esteemed Baron Hawthorne.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Exactly what you think I meant by it.”
Arguing with a woman should have cooled his blood by now, not engorged his cock to the point of agony. But Miss Hawthorne, with her slightly parted lips and her flushed and heaving chest, was doing the most ungodly things to his control.
“You had best leave this place right now, my sweet,” he warned her. “I might not be so keen on an involvement with another Hawthorne, but others would not have the same disgust toward the lot of you.”
She reeled back. “Disgust?” she sneered. “I could say the same thing for your most odious self,Your Grace.”
“Odious?” He did not know why that rankled so much more than it should have.
“Yes!” she flung back. “Odious. Insufferable. Despicable. Need I go on?”
Liar, he wanted to taunt her. Just earlier, he had her melting in his arms, begging him to do unspeakable things to her. Things a proper young lady would never dream of asking. Things he would never consider doing to a Hawthorne.
He grinned knowingly at her. “Oh, do carry on, my dear. I believe you were just getting started.”
“Uncouth. Rogue. Bounder!”
My, she certainly did not disappoint, but it was nothing that Cassian had not heard in his prolific career as… well, as all those things she had accused him of.
He was a rake—he had no qualms admitting to that fact—but he was not so low as to force himself upon an unwilling woman. Or one who was the sister of the man he despised the most.
“And what doyouknow about me, Your Grace?” she continued. “What if I do like coming to such places? What do you know about what I want?”
“Oh?” He took a step toward her. Saw her eyes widen briefly, her pupils expanding as she let out a soft exhale. “Have you forgotten that I had you in my arms just a handful of moments ago? The way you melted into my touch. So soft. So responsive…”
He had her pressed against the wall this time. The faint fragrance of violets twined around him. Unlike him, his cock did not seem to discriminate against her—Hawthorne or not—and rose to greet her with an eagerness that was almost mortifying.
“Only someone so untried could be that sensitive,” he murmured against the softness of her neck. “But perhaps youdowant us to carry on where we left off…” He gave a low chuckle. “I must warn you, though, that I will not go easy on you.”
He heard her sharp intake of breath. Sensed the fire leaping to her eyes before he saw it.
“I would never give in to you,” she said, her voice dripping with feminine rage. “Even if you were the last man on earth. I would rather die by the vilest means available!”
As you very well should.
Cassian pressed his lips into a thin line, his carnal appetite cooled, though most unfortunately not sated. There were ways she might be persuaded to surrender to him, but he found them all distasteful at the moment.
His hesitation was all she needed to slip away from his embrace. Her luscious lips were a thinner, angrier line where they had been soft and eager earlier.
“Stay away from me and my brother, Your Grace,” she told him in a low voice. “I shall not warn you again.”
She furiously put her mask back on, picked up her skirts, and left the room, slamming the door behind her in a glorious display of female pique.
Cassian sighed and raked his hand through his hair. He should have found it a blessed relief that she had stormed off. That there would be little to no hope of another encounter with the maddening young miss who set his blood boiling, whether in potent desire or sheer outrage.
She was trouble of the highest order, just like her pestilential brother. He would do well to never cross paths with any member of that accursed bloodline again.
He waited a few more moments to collect his thoughts before stalking out of the room. He was certainlynothoping that Juliana had long vacated the premises. Nor was he worried about her. Her business was her own, as she had told him, and he wanted no part in it.
What hedidwant was the feel of her soft flesh, warm and willing and all too womanly in his hands. Appallingly so.
He shuddered, shaking the unwarranted thoughts from his head, from his very bones—except for a very insistent part of his anatomy, which begged to differ.
He stomped down a hallway, the unmistakably indecent sound of fornication floating even through closed doors. The Arrangement was a little cavern of sinful pleasures, where the aristocracy and the demimonde moved together, without the usual social and material barriers between them.
