Well, she thought, feeling as if she were physically shriveling. She should know better than to ask questions like that by now. She nodded. “I see. And when did you make this profound discovery? You don’t think you could have done itbeforeI stood up before some of the biggest gossips on theton, not to mention Princess Charlotte, and said vows?”
“While I was walking. When I saw you riding your Macha. I haven’t seen you look that happy since your come-out. You deserve more happiness than I can give you, Pip. We should at least give ourselves the chance to make a different decision than one forced on us by circumstance. We can certainly manage to withstand five days without consummating the marriage in order to offer us that chance. After that we can see what course is available. Because if we do consummate it, then there is no chance in hell we’ll free ourselves.”
Something was off. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but Beau sounded wrong. It
wasn’t that she didn’t believe him. It was that this decision had come much too suddenly.
If only he didn’t sound so certain.
“Five days?” she asked.
“After that we shall need to be in London, and we won’t be sequestered in a small house with nothing else to do.”
“And even after what happened the other night you believe I can safely remain…untouched?”
“Of course. What could compel us to act otherwise?”
* * *
He should have known better.He did, but only after he heard the words leave his mouth. His words weren’t the reassurance he meant them to be. They were a challenge. And damn it if she didn’t tilt her head just so. Damn if her great blue eyes and luscious body wrapped in naught but linen blouse and buckskin breeches, didn’t set his cock to standing upright in response. Dammit if she didn’t see it before he could do anything about it and drop her crop on a chair before stalking toward him. Damn it if she didn’t scowl at him, daring him to deny his reaction, before she reached up, grabbed his lapels, and pulled him right down to her.
And that quickly lightning struck. Again. Whirlwinds, cataclysms, raging rivers of lust and need. Her mouth was open to him and before he could give it a second thought, he ravaged it, tilting his own head to better meet her tongue-to-tongue. And damn if she didn’t participate, if she didn’t all but growl with hunger. She reached her arms up to wrap her fingers in his hair, and he reached down to wrap his hands around her bottom and lift her against the wall. For an eternity he could think of nothing but the cushion of her breasts, the silk of her mouth, the heat of her body where he pressed against it, tormenting himself, tormenting her. Breaking every promise he had ever made just to be able to drop his mouth to her throat and feast on the throb of her pulse at its base. And now he was the one growling.
He pulled one hand away and caught hold of her breast, her small, firm breast that fit so perfectly in his hand. He slipped his fingers beneath her blouse, pulling open a button, just so he could torment himself with the sound of her whimpers as he rolled her nipple between finger and thumb. So, he could imagine it in his mouth where he could torment her with teeth and tongue.
Dear God, she smelled like summer, like a breeze through the trees, like wildflowers and sunlight. She tasted like honey and, he swore, the cinnamon cakes they had served at breakfast. Suddenly he craved cinnamon like air, like, damn it, sunlight after a long night.
He couldn’t stop. She didn’t ask him to. She did her own exploring, small hands pulling at his shirt and climbing his chest, sweeping down to his buttocks and setting off another firestorm. Sweet God, she wrapped her legs around him so that he could feel the close heat of her, so he could imagine himself buried deep inside her. His cock strained towards her, aching with impatience. His heart thundered in his chest, and he knew she could feel that, too.
He ran his hand up the inside of her thigh and hated those breeches, because he couldn’t simply push them up to her waist and open her to his exploration. To his invasion. He came so close to taking her right there against the wall, just like before. He suspected the breeches were the only barrier that protected her from him, even as she scrabbled at his cravat, as he bent to finally take her nipple in his mouth, even through the material. Hungry, so hungry.
It was the sudden noise that abruptly yanked him to the surface. A clatter out in the corridor as if someone had dropped something. As if, he suspected, they did it on purpose to let them know they weren’t alone. He might as well have had a bucket of water dumped over his head. Gasping, he pulled back, set her down as if that alone could resurrect his sanity, both of them panting as if they had run miles.
“So…you think we can…keep safely away…from…each other,” she panted, eyes so wide he swore he could see to the bottom like a lake, glasses perilously askew. Not thinking, he pushed them into place and thought abstractedly that she wouldn’t be Pip without those benighted glasses, and that somehow those were just another thing about her that lit a short fuse.
“I’m—”
“If you say sorry,” she all but growled in a strained little voice, pushing away from him, “I will have your guts for garters.”
He couldn’t move. He couldn’t step away or move closer. His body was still raging for completion. He was shaking with the effort not to pull those breeches off her and finish what they had started. It only made it worse that he could see the same hunger in her eyes. Thank God, then, for the breeches, or he would have ruined everything.
“You cannot say,” she said, still sounding breathless as she blinked up at him, “that we aren’t…attractedto each other.”
He dragged the last of his discipline around him and fought to take even one step away from her. She had drained him of his sense, his focus. His purpose. All he wanted was to lift her back into his arms and shut out the world. Forget Theo, forget the Rakes, forget the danger Pip might be in because she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
“This is not helping,” he said. “This is not the time to let ourselves be overwhelmed.”
She pulled her head back and scowled at him. “Our wedding night?”
Good God, she was right. It was. It seemed they had been caught in this mess for a week. Beau felt as if he would shake apart, but he took a deliberate step back, which only returned him to imminent danger. Deuce take it, she was tousled and soft, her breasts full and her lips plumped from kissing and her hair a tangled mess. No one looking at her could believe she had been doing anything but being pleasured. He needed to get away from her.
He needed to eat the damned dinner the duchess’s staff had cooked.
“Yes,” he said, still struggling to control his breathing. “On our wedding night. I truly am trying to do the best here, for both of us.”
“Then both of us might need to be consulted on the matter,” she retorted.
“You can’t really want this marriage,” he insisted. “Not with me. Not like this.”
