She bent down to remove her shoes and hose, and then she stood before him in nothing but a chemise. The thin linen left preciously little to the imagination. He could see the high pink tips of her breasts, the heavy roundness of their substantial weight, the slender curve of her waist and hips, the long length of her limbs. With a few tugs at pins in her hair, the luxuriant long blond tresses fell into sensual waves around her shoulders.
She looked like a goddess. Like a creature from his dreams. Like every sexual fantasy he’d ever had. He wanted to scoop her up in his arms, lay her back against the table, wrap her legs around his waist, and sink into her inch by inch.
He forced his hands to his sides, fighting against the urge to touch her. He was a damned fool. He wasn’t going to do this. Not again, damn it. Maybe the first time she’d rejected him he could say that she hadn’t been aware of what she was doing, but he couldn’t say the same this time.
He tore his eyes away. “Get out of here, Elizabeth. You are only shaming yourself.”
For a moment, he thought he’d convinced her. Hell, he almost convinced himself.
She was too quiet. But when he glanced back at her, she shook her head. “No. You still love me, I know you do.” She stared at him defiantly—but with enough uncertainty and embarrassment to remind him of her current vulnerability. To remind him that she was an innocent maid who was acting on instinct, not practice, and how hard this must be for her. To remind him that she was doing this for him.
“I made a mistake.”
Was she right? Was his heart so hard that he couldn’t forgive? Was it pride that was keeping him from pulling her into his arms?
No, damn it. It was the image of her standing before a room of people binding herself to another man.
The fact that she could still get to him, that she thought he could be so easily won over by a naked body and naughty proposition—and that she could make him vacillate, even for an instant—infuriated him. “Think whatever the hell you want. I don’t give a shite.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said with an impressive amount of confidence in the face of his rejection. He might have admired her tenacity if it wasn’t about to test the very limits of his restraint.
Before he could stop her—he was sure he would have—she crossed her arms, clutched the folds of linen in her fists, and pulled her chemise over her head. An instant later it landed on the floor at her feet.
26
EVERYTHING SEEMED TOstop: his heart, his lungs, movement, time. For a moment Thom forgot the anger, forgot the hurt, forgot the betrayal, forgot that he didn’t love her anymore. All he could see, all that mattered, was the beautiful woman standing before him naked. The beautifulwoman who’d held his heart since childhood. Thebeautiful womanhe never thought could be his. The beautiful woman who was now offering herself to him like the proverbial virgin to the sacrifice because she wanted tomarry him.
Christ, she was gorgeous. His fantasies hadn’t done her justice. The dimensions had all been right, but the creamy flawlessness of her skin, the berry pink of her nipples, the height and firmness of her breasts, the dark blond of the triangle between her legs... he’d gotten those all wrong. But the details would be etched in his mind forever. Every incredible inch of her.
The pink blush on her cheeks darkened with each passing moment of silence. She started to shift, and he knew it was taking everything she had not to cover herself as he continued to stare.
But God almighty, he couldn’t have turned away if the first Edward of England had risen from the grave and was breaking down the door. And he sure as hell couldn’t think of anything to say, not when his mind was filled with erotic images of what he wanted todo. And not when his cock was throbbing so hard he had to concentrate on not embarrassing himself.
It was only when he noticed what was on her wrist that he jolted back to reality. She was wearing it again—his bracelet—and somehow the sight of the brass band was like salt being ground into a wound. She wasn’t his. She’d never been his. He’d only been fooling himself.
He forced his gaze away from her nakedness and turned away. He wasn’t going to let her do this to him. He wasn’t going to be manipulated by desire.
He started walking toward the door.
“Thommy...?” He heard the panic in her voice as she rushed toward him. “Wait!” She grabbed hold of his arm to stop him. “You can’t go.” He couldn’t look at her face because he was scared what it would do to him. Scared that her fear would find a way to penetrate the ice around his heart. “Are you going to say anything?”
His fists clenched; the effort not to take what she offered had turned every muscle in his body as rigid as stone. “What do you want me to say? That you are exquisite? That I’ve never seen anything more beautiful or desirable?”
Her expression fell; apparently compliments weren’t what she wanted to hear. “I hoped you might say that you forgive me. That you love me, and still want to marry me.”
Hearing the words that he was fighting so hard to deny slip so easily from her lips snapped the last threads of his control. He hauled her up against him. “What did you think, Elizabeth? That two perfectly formed, lush, and pink-tipped breasts were going to make me forget having my insides torn out as you promised yourself to another man? That a tight, curvy bottom and long sleek legs were going to repair the heart that you shredded apart when I had to watch you kiss him? That taking off your clothes was going to make me love you again?”
Her eyes had widened at his outburst of rage, and her cheeks burned with shame. “No... Yes.” She looked up at him pleadingly. “I didn’t know what else to do. You weren’t listening to me, and I wanted to prove how much I loved you. To lay myself bare.” She took a deep breath. “I know I hurt you when I rejected your proposal, and I just thought that if somehow...”
She looked at him helplessly.
“You put yourself in the same position we would be even?” he finished. “But I bet you never thought I would reject you, did you? You thought I’d be so overcome with wanting you I’d fall to my knees in gratitude.”
She appeared genuinely taken aback and hurt by the accusation. “I didn’t think that at all. I thought you would see how much you mean to me, and how much I want to be with you.”
He ignored her. “Well, sorry to disappoint you. But it’s not that easy, Elizabeth. I’m not just going to forget everything that happened because you strip naked and tell me you want to suck my cock.”
No matter how incredible that sounded, or how the sight of all that velvety soft nakedness tempted him. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her that.
