She shook her head.“Everyone is down by the pond or in the hall.The maid won’t be back for an hour at least.We’re all alone.”
“Damn you.”
She raised her brows.“Do you mean that?”
She had no idea where her confidence came from.She had never been one to speak boldly to men.She supposed, however, it was because she felt he already knew her intimately.And so, after all, he did.
“No.You are just making it very difficult to be honorable.”
“I think we lefthonorableandpropersomewhere around the time you spilt between my thighs in your sleep.”
He swore, harshly and indecently.
And then he was kissing her, pushing her back onto the bed.She kissed him back, showing him how much she wanted him to be doing exactlythis.She realized that his clothes were wet, too, and that he must be cold.But her expression of worry for his health couldn’t make it to her lips.He groaned into her mouth, and she felt his hardness through his trousers.
And yet, they did not do more than kiss.They just let the heat between them build, savoring the pleasure of exploring.When she let her tongue skirt to his lower lip, he growled, and then met it with his own.Which elicited another groan and an attendant increase in wetness between her thighs.
Finally, when she could take it no more, she reached down and touched his cock through his trousers.
He jerked back.“Scarlett.”
“You’ve touched me—can I not do the same for you?”
To her disappointment, he moved away from her.“I do not—I do not know what you want.”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.”
“I want you to ruin me.”
She had not put it to herself that way until this moment.But it was true.It was what she wanted.
“I can’t do that.”
Disappointment threaded through her.“I would expect nothing of you.After.You must know that now.”
“That is not why I cannot.”
“You don’t want to?”
“Christ, Scarlett, I want to.”
“Then what is your objection?”
“It is not honorable—”
“I thought we had dispensed with honor.”
“That is not the only reason.”
“Then what is the other reason?”
God, he was handsome.He looked made for sin and sinning.She had never been particularly ardent in her religious feelings.But she understood that all the sermons she had heard in her lifetime about temptation and chastity and a woman’s virtue had been warning her about a man who made her feelthisabandoned.
“You say you want me to ruin you.That suggests that you haven’t-you have never-bedded a man before.”
She frowned.“Of course not.”
