After she lefthis chamber, Malcolm had lasted five minutes.
All his life, he had striven to be honorable.He had never wanted to be like his father, a man who used all of his charms, his powers of mind, to hurt and destroy.
But Scarlett Perkins had made clear that she did not want more from him than this collection of summer nights.He had been prepared after that first night to marry her—he would have done it and gladly.But she was not interested in matrimony.
He had never imagined finding himself in such a circumstance.
Must he really be expected to refuse when the woman herself wanted nothing else?
Truthfully, it was too much.Too much deprivation.He realized now that he had neverreallybeen tempted before.Not like this.This was beyond temptation.It was beyond anything he had ever expected.
She didn’t want him forever.She only wanted him for tonight.And maybe a few nights after.Was he really going to never know what it was like to bed her?Just so that he could keep his sense of pride, his principles?
So he had gone to her.And now he was in her bed, having just made her climax, and he knew he had made the right decision.
Because being with her, like this, felt so deeply correct.
He looked down at his fingers, which were stained red.She had her courses.She had thought that would stop him.Ridiculous.Not after he had come this far.
“Heavens,” she said, looking down at his fingers.“One moment.”
She stood and took a handkerchief from the bureau.Then she walked to the basin and dipped the cloth in the water jug.She brought it back to him, running it over his fingers.
“There,” she said.
“I don’t mind,” he clarified.“It is nothing to me.”
She sat on the bed and, without thinking, he pulled her toward him, so that her head rested on his chest.
For a mortifying second, he wondered if she did not want to be this close to him, despite what they had just been doing together.But when she seemed to settle in, he figured it must be fine with her.
His cock was still hard, and he still wanted her keenly.But he wasn’t going to find release until he was inside her.He wanted to save himself for that.Now that he had made the decision to ruin her, as she had requested, he felt calmer.
“I hope being here doesn’t complicate your plans,” she said, her voice soft.
He only remembered, then, what she had said to him.That he must love another and hope to marry her.
“I have no plans.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I feel much the way you do about matrimony,” he said carefully.“I plan to never marry.”
“Oh.”She took her head off his chest and repositioned herself so she could see his face.“But I thought—”
“No.There is no one else.”
“Then why did you—why did you refuse me?”
He couldn’t tell her the truth.He knew that.He couldn’t say,Because I can’t bear to be nothing to you but a convenience.He couldn’t say,Because I might have fallen in love with you.
Because he was here, after all.The truth was that he could bear to be a convenience.He could bear to be nothing to her but a cock and then, afterward, a memory.He didn’t have dignity or principles or scruples.He was desperate, pathetic even, and it had taken him all of five minutes to realize it.
Of course, he couldn’t say such a thing.
Demurring was the only scrap of pride he had left.“I know it is not honorable of me to accept your offer.I might not be a gentleman by birth, but I do have honor.Or I thought I did.”
It wasn’t untrue.It just wasn’t the full truth.
