Page 72 of Give Him a Chance

“Lucy.” Bernard’s voice was low, low, and urgent. “If you are asking me what I think you are asking me—”

“I want you,” she said, unable to prevent herself from interrupting him. “You, Bernard. Now.”

There was a growl in his voice as Bernard rose from his seat, throwing his napkin down. “Lucy, you don’t know what you’re asking me.”

“You think I am ignorant? I may be—be inexperienced,” Lucy said boldly, far more boldly than she had thought possible, as she too rose from her chair and followed him. “Bernard, we love each other—”

“But this—this would be the end of your reputation,” he said desperately, turning to her with such passion-filled eyes that Lucy stumbled, her back hitting the wall. “If anyone were to find out…”

“Just being alone with you in this room couldend my reputation. And I don’t care. As far as I am concerned, there is only one way this is heading,” she whispered, looking up into his eyes and embracing the certainty that flowed through her. “Don’t you think so?”

His breathing was somehow ragged, and when he leaned forward and placed his hands on the wall on either side of her head, her own inhale caught in her throat.

“Lucy,” Bernard said in a low voice, his control patently breaking but not yet broken. “Lucy, I want you. I’ll do anything to have you—anything. But—”

“I decided a long time ago—at least, it feels like a long time ago—to give you a chance,” Lucy said quietly, her palms somehow splayed against the man’s chest.Oh, his warmth, it is everything I want. “I’m giving myself to you, Bernard. Don’t you want me?”

Perhaps it was that last question that pushed him over the edge. Maybe it was the fact that his hips had somehow been pressing up against hers for a full minute. Maybe it was the fact they were alone, and unrestrained, and their desire for each other had evidently been building for a long, long time.

Lucy was not quite sure what it was. But it didn’t matter.

What did matter was that Bernard crushed his mouth upon hers hungrily, his passion for her clear, and Lucy eagerly parted her lips and moaned as his tongue sparked heat against hers, pleasure rippling through her body as he possessed her.

Oh, this was what she wanted: Bernard pressed up against her, pinning her against the wall, the power of his passion, the tingling between her legs and a knock on the door—

A knock on the door.

A knock on the door?

“Shall we come in and clear the table, m’lady?” came Cawthorne’s voice through the door.

Bernard broke their kiss. He was shaking.Shaking?

Oh. He was laughing.

Lucy tried not to giggle with him as she called out, in a voice that was most definitely steady and not rocked with the searing heat of a man’s kiss, “N-No thank you, Cawthorne! We… We’re not finished!”

“You’re damn straight we’re not finished,” Bernard murmured as he nuzzled her neck.

Lucy tried to think, which was difficult at the best of times, but was—it turned out—far more difficult with a delicious man between one’s thighs. “Bernard, we need to—”

“I know,” he murmured, pressing a kiss just below her ear.

Shivering with the restrained pleasure roaring through her body, Lucy said, “No, really, we must—”

“Yes, we must,” Bernard muttered as he ground his groin into her hip.

Just for a moment, Lucy closed her eyes. They could… No, they couldn’t do it here, surely! But there was no way to escape into the hall without Cawthorne and the footmen seeing, and it was one thing to dine with a gentleman alone and quite another to march past the servants hand in hand with said man as she took him up upstairs to be thoroughly bedded…

There was only one other option. “Come on,” Lucy said decisively—or at least, as decisively as she could manage.

Bernard looked dazed as he took her hand. “Where are we—”

“Servants’ staircase,” she said lightly, stepping across the room and pulling him with her to the door opposite the one Cawthorne had knocked on. “Come on.”

“But we’ll be seen!”

“All the servants are eating their dinner in the kitchen, and those who aren’t are standing outside that door”—Lucy pointed at the other door as she softly pushed the one before them open—“waiting for us. And that means the servants’ staircase will be empty…and so will the spare bedchamber at the end of the row.”