If she hadn’t been clutching her hands together as if seeking purchase, he would have reacted quite a bit more strongly.
Well, he had told himself, he valued honesty. He wondered if it had to be quite so blunt.
“Why?”
She shot him an impatient look, as if trying to decide how to tell him he was an idiot. He probably was, at least aboutthis. Besides, his cock was beginning to make demands again he didn’t want to ignore.
“Why?” he repeated.
“Because our marriage will be difficult enough as it is for a while. Especially if you keep taking these surprise trips. I will need to wade into your world and attempt to assume at least temporary command, comfort and support the little girls, and survive with a reputation as a wife who had been deserted at the altar.”
“It’s not?—”
She gave him a little wave that reminded him again of her father. “You know it and I know it. But believe me when I tell you that society will be more than happy to jump to its own conclusions. Especially since they will also be assiduously counting the months until we have a blessed event. It is a far more choice bit of gossip that I forced you into marriage for my own benefit, than that you did me.”
She was right, of course. He just didn’t want her to be. He wanted her to feel as consumed by her attraction to him as he was becoming to her. He wanted…
“I know ways to prevent it.” He hated the fact that he was sounding just a bit desperate.
That bit of brass earned him a glare that should have shaved two inches off his height. “Thank you, no. I don’t trust you.”
“You don’t trust me, or you don’t trust yourself?”
Her scowl just grew. “I am not the one who trapped another person into marriage.”
It took him a second to answer. Not because she had no reason to make that statement. Because she did.
“Is there a way past?” he finally asked.
Again, she had the courage to look him directly in the eye, allowing him to see the emotions that roiled in hers. “I hope so. Just not now.”
He nodded, wishing she would have given him a pat ‘yes,’ even if it wasn’t true. “Then what do you mean to do?”
She sighed and looked over to where pale purple wisteria seemed to rain off the back wall of the house. “Play the comfortable newlyweds in public and shake hands at our bedroom door. At least for the foreseeable future. I’m still not certain I even want children.”
“I must have an heir.” He couldn’t believe that came out of his mouth.
She gave him another shrug.
He tried again, already feeling ridiculous. “We must consummate the marriage, or it isn’t legal. You know that.”
That earned him more well-deserved disdain. “Don’t be absurd. Consummation or non-consummation is not the issue. Inability is the issue in an annulment. And I have no intention—or need,” she added, casting a quick glance at the evidence of his arousal, “—to call your...capability into question. I assume you wouldn’t want to, either.”
And damned if she wasn’t exciting him by the very act of standing up for herself. Basely he wanted to prove he could convince her otherwise. He wanted to prove that he could overwhelm that reticence with just his mouth and hands. He wanted to know how she knew that bit of law, but knew this wasn’t the time to ask.
Without realizing it, he had moved closer to her again, close enough that he caught that elusive hint of flowers that didn’t exist in that all-too-fragrant garden.
She lifted her face and stood perfectly still.
“We could still kiss,” he suggested, his voice already raspy with lust.
He saw her eyes go dark and her breathing hitch. But she didn’t move as he lowered his face to her, as he touched her lips with his, once, twice, longer, until she leaned in, until hewrapped his arms around her, his hand in her hair, his heart thundering, his brain dissolving into mush.
She was lush in his arms, so warm, so open. Even untutored and new to it, she followed his kisses like a waltz on a dance floor, until her own arms finally came up and wrapped beneath his jacket to set fires along his ribcage and back. His cock was ready to burst, and his lungs had forgotten how to work. His body was too consumed with the naked, surging, primal need to mate. With this woman. Withhiswoman.
It was the mewling sound he heard that brought him back from the edge. He was inches from cupping her luscious breast in his hand when he heard it coming from her, not a sound of participation, but distress. As if she found herself on the very edge of a very tall waterfall and couldn’t think of a way to step back.
Which was when he knew that it was up to him to do it for her. If he ever wanted her to trust him, he needed to earn it now. He needed to stop.
