“Not this afternoon. I’ll approach your brother and help him find a chaperone if he doesn’t want to come with us.” He chuckled. “Just between you and me, your brother hates picture-gazing so I am sure he has had his fill for the next five years just going with you once.”
He could see her fists clenching by her side.
“No.”
“No to the exhibition?” He gulped and ran his hand through his hair. “Or no to me?”
She looked hunted, her worried eyes darting around the room as if seeking an escape.
“Please, Caro, don’t say no so quickly. I promise I won’t do this again. I won’t ask you to kiss me. I won’t try to get you alone. I will do everything as it should be done. I promise.”
She shook her head, angry or frustrated, he could not tell. The dog nudged at Phineas’ leg with its nose. He looked down and petted the dog’s head, wishing he were touching Caro instead.
He looked back up at his future wife. “I’ll be good, I promise, darling.”
That caught her. She stared at him. She stepped closer to him and put both of her hands on his chest.
Oh, yes. She was putting her hands on his chest just as she had when she had told him she wanted to bed him. Him, in particular. Of course, at that time, he had thought she was a serving girl who had only set eyes on him for the first time that day. He didn’t know he had met her over a dozen years ago. Had she wanted him all that time? Unlikely, but how glorious if it were true.
To have been the object of her desire for so long.
She spoke. He watched her lips, saw her tongue.
“I don’t want . . . you to b-be good.”
She dragged both her hands down his waistcoat and gave a quick, brutal stroke over and then back up his fall-covered shaft, using both of her palms. As he was still choking over that unexpected fondling, she fled the room, the dog following her.
Phineas knew the butler was in the hall and must have seen Caroline leave the drawing room. Still, he needed a good ten minutes to calm himself before he could make his way to the front hall to tell the butler he would not wait for the Marquess of Sudbury any longer.
And then he was in a hurry. He needed to get home. He needed to get to a private place and finish what Caro had started.
She was incredible. Incredibly beautiful. Incredibly arousing.
And she didn’t want him to be good. Could anything be more ideal? Because Phineas Edge was very good at being bad.
Twelve
She had been so weak. But when Phineas called herdarling, she had trouble remembering why she shouldn’t kiss him. And he had promised a little kiss. But that little kiss had been just as perilous as being in a bed with him. Because it had led to another dangerous little kiss and then another kiss with his tongue in her mouth, sparking her desire to have him inside of her again.
Hellfire, the man knew how to kiss.
Of course, he did. Hadn’t he practiced enough?
She had been mere seconds away from lifting her skirts in the drawing room and taking his hand and putting it on her sex.
Thank God he had jolted her out of her lustful daze with the revolting notion that she might find herself stuttering and lisping in the Pall Mall gallery as he cringed away from her, his full lips curled in disgust, seeing hisdarlingtransformed into a grotesque.
She knew then she had to end this. With an absolute finality. He needed to satisfy his appetites with his other women, his viscountesses. He needed to give up whatever silly ideas he had about future social occasions and intimacies.
She had to make her wishes known to him, but she couldn’t saystoporstay away. At last, she managed to find the words to reject him. Words that did not contain a singleess.
Although, in retrospect, she shouldn’t have touched his cock. But he had made her so wild, so unreasonable, and she had wanted to feel that evidence of his desire for her one more time.
The morning after she had made it clear to Phineas that he was to leave her alone forever, her brother called her into the drawing room and introduced her to a very pretty woman. She was plump with dark, curly hair, round pink cheeks, and dark eyes.
“Caro, Lady Lutton will be your chaperone in case there is anything you want to do, and I’m busy.”
She curtsied to Lady Lutton who could not be more than a few years older than she was herself.
