He chuckled nervously. “But, darling, I know you know that already because of how we met last year when I did not know who you were, and I hope it doesn’t make you hate me because I want you to know I feel entirely differently about you. I mean, not entirely differently, you know that, I feel the same, but I mean I would want to treat you quite as you should be treated, as Lady Caroline and as the sister of my friend. I would want to,” he gulped, “court you. Unless you really did mean you wanted me to be bad, but I would much prefer to court you and be bad at the same time, if that makes sense. Or whatever you want.”
She kept her face averted from him and moved toward the door of the library.
He caught her long, slender arm, and held her in place easily as she pulled against him, her head down.
“Perhaps, you might look at me once, darling, and just give me a nod or a shake of your head so Phin might know if he stands any chance with you.”
From her profile, he could tell she was furious. She raised her head and he prepared himself for a vehement tug of her arm, a slap, a river of venomous words. But perhaps a river of venom adorned with a lisp?
Instead, she gasped.
The rage on her face melted and he saw the same look in her eyes he had seen when he had first nuzzled her tidbit with his cock in Sudbury. What was that look? Some kind of wonderment, he supposed. Perhaps a thrill? He could only hope.
But what had made her abruptly change course? Could it be his looks? She had thought him handsome when she was seventeen. And she had liked his silver at his temples and it had only spread since then. He himself loathed the gray, thinking it made him look fifty from a distance when he was still a strapping youngish man of thirty-five. But she had written she liked it.
But she had seen it already. That and more.
What had made her melt?
She reached out with her free hand and he was so prepared for a slap that he flinched. Her hand went to his face and touched his spectacles.
Damn it. He had forgotten he still had the spectacles on, pushed down to the end of his nose, and he had been looking at her over them this whole time, quite like some harassed and underpaid clerk.
He reached up to take them off, but she pushed his hand roughly away and stepped toward him, her eyes on his.
“You . . . w-wear thpectacleth,” she choked out.
Her pink tongue flashed to the front of her mouth, behind her teeth, as she saidspectacles. His cock turned to iron in his breeches.
He didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly she was on him. He could swear he had made no move toward her. It was all Caro. Her hands were in his hair and she used the base of her palms to force his face up to hers and her tongue was in his mouth and she was groaning into him so loudly he felt his uvula vibrate.
The spectacles she had mentioned in her diary thirteen years ago. She had a very strong response to them. A very positive, very strong response.
He was glad he had the diary safe in his pocket. He would have to make a study of what else she wanted in a husband. If the spectacles did this, just think if he learned to become bookish and told her to call him Phin instead of Phineas.
It was too bad he couldn’t manage to grow a few more inches.
Oh, her extraordinary excitement and her pink tongue in his mouth, licking him up. He had never had a woman attack him this way. Exhibit her unbridled desire first, with no care for his own reaction or his feelings.
He was about to show his appreciation, to move his arms from his sides and pull her even closer if possible, to squeeze her bottom, to grab at one of her haunches and lift her leg and curl it around his waist so she might rub herself through her skirt against his throbbing cock in his breeches.
He was about to do all that—and more—when the door to the library opened.
“What the hell is going on?” thundered his friend and her brother as Caro’s tongue continued to maraud Phineas’ mouth.
Seventeen
No. No.
The appalling shame that all she wanted to do was to keep kissing Phineas but also have his cock inside her as her brother shouted at her. She knew it was all over now. She would be sent back to Sudbury Manor in disgrace. These were her last kisses ever and she was going to take them. So she was still kissing Phineas as her brother pulled her away.
“What are you doing, Caro?”
Edmund’s eyebrows were fierce like Father’s. He turned to Phineas and raised a fist. “You viper—”
Caroline grabbed her brother’s arm. He tried to throw her off, but she clung to him.
“Me!” she screamed.
