“About this morning. . .”
Her eyes pleaded with him. “Please, I wish to forget.”
Her words stung. “I will never forget.”
Her lips parted and brows knit together with worry. He needed to erase the concern. Preston took a step forward. She lifted a hand to stop him.
“Please, Althea, let me kiss you.”
“It isn’t right.”
“There you are wrong. It is the most right thing in the world.”
She took a step back.
He followed. “Can you deny your desire for me? I can’t deny mine for you.”
She took another step. If she kept going, she would end up in the tub. He needed to make her understand. “I have wanted to kiss you, touch you since London.”
Althea stopped. “London?”
He smiled. “I know that I didn’t make much of an impression then, but I thought of you often, yearned for and desired you.”
“Yet you said nothing when you called.”
“Your hair shimmered in the candlelight, did you know that?” He reached up and plucked a pin and a curl dropped to her shoulder. “I was afraid I couldn’t compete with all of those dandies.” He removed two more and the curls fell.
“Thosedandies,as you put it, barely held my attention.” She tilted her head to look at him. “If you wanted to do those things in London, why didn’t you speak to me then?”
Preston’s face heated. “I was nothing like those who courted you. I couldn’t offer flowery words, poetry, and the like.”
“It would have been a relief not to listen to such prattle for a change.”
Preston could have kicked himself a dozen times over for holding back and simply observing and listening, of taking his time in courting her. But none of that mattered now. He was in her room, she was in a robe, and they were very much alone with no chance of interruption. The bed was but two steps away.
“It is a mistake I will not make again,” he muttered before he reached out and pulled her to him.
“That doesn’t mean. . . “
He silenced her with a kiss. They’d talked enough already. Certainly, she understood his intentions.
Althea pushed at his chest.
“Please, don’t deny me,” he begged. “I’ve dreamed of holding you, of being with you as men and women were designed.”
Althea knew she should push him away, send him from her room, but any will to do so quickly evaporated the moment his lips touched hers. What would be so wrong with sharing one night with him? She already knew any employment options were over. She also knew that she couldn’t remain in Willanton. And, as she still had no desire to ever return to London for a Season, the likelihood of her marrying one day was nil. Did she want to enter spinsterhood having never experienced what occurred between a man and a woman?
It didn’t mean that she’d lower herself to become his mistress, or be that to any gentleman, but why couldn’t she have the same freedom and take a lover just this once?
Besides, her uncle could still force her to marry his friend. If she were ruined, it would be out of the question. If he didn’t care, she would at least know what it was like to be loved by someone she loved.
Althea gave up the will to fight and allowed him to pull her into his arms. Her hands snaked around his neck, and she opened to him, mating her tongue with his. Why did she ever fight this in the first place?
His hands slid down her back and lifted her buttocks and pulled her against him. The rigid outline of his manhood pressed against her stomach. Her nipples tightened and tingled as her private region ached.
His mouth left hers and trailed down her neck. He paused at the mark he had left earlier and gently placed a kiss there. “Sorry.”
Althea was robbed of words. She hoped he didn’t stop because of that mark. Not now. Not when she was willing to surrender everything to him.
