In another moment, however, she arched under him and opened her gorgeous rosy lips as he thrust and withdrew and thrust again.
When she was panting and he was close to climaxing, Malcolm reached between their bodies and stroked her, pushing her over the edge.
Her cry sent him over with her, and soon, they were back where they started, with him sprawled on top of her, feeling as if he’d just run from one side of Hyde Park to the other, and her looking satisfied as a cat after catching a fat mouse.
“Will you marry me, Miss Elmstead?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Serena wished he wouldstop ruining the luxurious aftermath of such wondrous sensations with that same wretched question.
“I cannot breathe,” she lied so he would roll off of her, although she instantly missed his warmth and his comforting weight.
“I know why you are asking,” she told him, scooting away from him before he could trap her again under his muscular arm.
“And why is that?”
“Because even though you have most certainly behaved like a rake, now that you know I am a baron’s daughter, you feel it is your duty to marry me.”
Surprisingly, he laughed, even as she got out of bed and grabbed for her chemise to cover herself.
“That’s ridiculous,” Malcolm said. “That’s precisely the opposite of what a rake would do. In fact, that’s practically the definition of a rake, ruining a young lady and then callously walking away.”
She drew on her stockings. “Ah, but you are an English nobleman through and through. Just like my father. If I were merely anyone’s daughter, then you would do nothing more than thank me and forget me. Or maybe you would wonder when we could be alone again as you did the last time we behaved badly in your garret. Instead, since my father is a baron, you want to marry me. Maybe for my fortune.”
“Do you have one?” he asked, his tone nothing but amused as he got out of bed and began to dress.
“I suppose,” she confessed, as she adjusted the laces of her stays, not too tightly since her gown was loose. She considered what her mother had said about her dowry making her more desirable than even some of the viscounts’ and earls’ daughters. “I believe I do.”
“Since I didn’t know that,” Malcolm reminded her, “I can hardly be after you for your money, can I? Besides, didn’t your father marry your mother, a vintner’s daughter? Why don’t you think I have good intentions toward a vintner’s granddaughter?”
From the confines of the inside of her gown which she’d yanked over her head, now struggling to find the arm holes, she said, “But my father wasn’t a rake.”
She could hear him laughing, and then, after a moment, she felt his hand slip through the hole to grab hers and draw it out. Then she pushed her other arm out and tugged her gown into place.
“Not that I wish to disparage my future father-in-law,” Malcolm said, “but you have no way of knowing what happened between your father and mother when he came to Paris as a young officer, as was probably the case. I assume you were born on the right side of the blanket, but did your time in the oven beginafteryour parents’ nuptials or before?”
