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She froze and looked up. “Stop?” He cursed silently. Don’t ask me twice. “Stop.”
Not to mention, she was a vicar’s daughter. He’d always dreamed of debauching a vicar’s daughter.
He sighed with annoyance. “I am a duke. I’m not asking you to marry me. I am offering to marry you. It’s a different thing entirely.”
She felt stripped down—not to her skin, but to the raw elements that composed her being.
“Miss Gladstone.” He inclined his head in the slightest possible nod. “I told you we’d meet again.”
“Well?” he prompted. “I’m waiting.”
Teach her a lesson or two. Leave her breathless. Rattle her to her bones.
He stroked a callus on the tip of her second finger. It made him angry. A gentleman’s daughter should have soft hands, but life had hardened her in these small
ways.
“The answer is yes,” he said. “I am serious. Really, truly, honestly, earnestly, properly. And I mean to have you, completely.”
Instead, he gripped tighter and guided her around the cart, maneuvering his body between her and a passing carriage.
He’d be damned if he’d let her get away now.
No, no. Charming? Had he just thought that word? He wasn’t charmed. He was never charmed. Bah.
“If it helps,” he said, “the entire staff is pulling for the former.”
But as long as his lips touched hers, she could delay that dreaded reckoning. If only this kiss could last forever.
What the kiss ended up being, however, was the fastest way to unravel him completely.
Everything was wrong. Everything was right. Everything was possible.
It was entirely my pleasure, he thought. And I shall never forgive you for it.
“I am no one’s darling.” He batted the shuttlecock with a fierce backhand swat.
Stop, he silently pleaded. Don’t do that. Don’t come any closer, don’t ask about my wounds, don’t prod at them. Don’t care.
She wanted to feel his touch again, quite desperately. Not only his touch, but his tenderness.
“Tonight, this will be all business,” he announced. “In. Out. Done.” Possibly the least seductive words imaginable, but Emma was apparently a madwoman, because they excited her all the same.
