Lorelie Brown (11 page)

Perhaps she ought to do her best to get him out of his clothes and see for herself.

She tucked her smile away behind her hand and tried to turn away.

“Why do you do that?” His voice was a rumble behind her.

“Do what?”

“Hide your real smiles and show off your false ones.”

Well, that cured her of the smile problem, didn’t it? Her chest clenched on tight, hot fear. She didn’t turn around. Some conversations were easier to have with her back turned. “Let me ask you this: why wouldn’t you see your sister married off to the first man who happens to ask?”

“Why, because I love her.” Confusion colored his tone, and she could imagine the cant of his eyebrows along with his eyes clouding. “I want the best for her.”

That was explicitly what she’d both feared and hoped. Some women had people who looked out for them. Many didn’t, or her school wouldn’t exist. It seemed Etta was luckier than most. Her family, though angry, had hidden her less-than-acceptable marriage and kept her close to their bosom.

Lottie…was forgotten more often than not. “You’re right. I’ve had marriage proposals.”

“I’m unsurprised.”

She turned around finally, because she couldn’t read the tone of his voice, and a scared and frightened part of her trembled whenever she didn’t know how to read a situation. The part that looked for the meanness that said Lottie was exactly as bad as they’d expected considering her mother.

She didn’t find it. He seemed…curious. Like he was listening to her and no more. She hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted that. Needed that.

He leaned against the wall, to the side of the door, with his arms crossed over his chest. Instead of impatience, he had all the time in the world.

“Father never turned any of them down.”

Obvious shock pushed him away from the wall and toward her. He walked like a man with a mission, but that wasn’t right, since he was headed toward her. “That can’t be.”

“Perfectly true.” She curved her mouth into a smug smile and couldn’t help but reach out. Her fingers rested in the center of his chest. Between the plackets of his waistcoat was thin linen heated by his body. “He accepted every one. From penniless Lord Morgan to rich but elderly Viscount Rose. The good viscount has four sons who need a mother. Recently he’s developed a penchant for our country neighbor. He has a parcel of land that Father would like.”

“If that’s true, how can you possibly be here?”

“Here? In an empty bedroom, with you?”

His cheeks hollowed on a moment of annoyance. “The bedroom part is secondary. You know what I’m asking.”

“Secondary by your choice, I’d like to make sure you know.” When feeling reckless, Lottie certainly went all the way. She’d little left to lose now that her mouth was running away with her mind. “He doesn’t actually
care
if I marry any of them. So he accepts, and then I have to go convince them that they don’t truly want me for a wife.”

“And how can you possibly convince them of that so easily?”

Oh, but she did so love that measure of disbelief in his tone. As if he couldn’t imagine what would talk a man out of marrying her. “Usually? I let them meet my mother during one of her…more extreme phases.”

Ian heard what she didn’t say. She looked up at him through the smoky screen of her thick lashes, begging him to hear her. He shouldn’t touch her. He knew that much. But her skin was pure magnetism.

He gave in every time.

They’d had proper teas and visits over the past few days, as they discussed arrangements and she found him this townhouse to rent.

He looked forward to any hours in which he got to speak with Lottie. Her animated conversation lit his days and erased his worries as he got absolutely nowhere in finding Patricia.

But most germane to the conversation was where they commonly had those teas—in her mother’s studio.

“Your mother isn’t that bad,” he lied. A single lock of her hair slipped between his thumb and forefinger like a woman’s sweetest slickness.

Her fingertips rested on his chest with gentle weight. “I do believe that’s one of the kindest deceptions I’ve ever encountered.” Her gaze flicked back up, this time heavy with heat and sparking green. “You deserve a reward.”

Suddenly he was completely aware they stood in a bedroom. His chest clenched. His arms tensed and pulled against the impulse to enfold her and feel her lean, long body against his. Push her down on the bed that loomed to their side. All would be lost then.

He cleared his throat, but he couldn’t make himself look away from her pink-tinged lips. “That can’t have put everyone off. Someone must be strong enough to withstand your mother. After all, she’d be better than some critical, meddling sort of mother-in-law.”

She barked out a short laugh. Her eyes went wide with shock. “I’ve never thought of it that way.”

He shrugged and kept his expression neutral, but really he loved putting that look on her face. Getting taken by surprise was something that likely didn’t happen often to Lottie. She seemed so very tired and world-weary beneath the affected happiness. “Your mother might keep life exciting, but she wouldn’t be choosing your bedroom’s decorations.”

“You’d think.” She led the way out of the room. “It’s possible that I strongly implied Mother’s madness is often inherited by the women of our family.”

“And is that true?”

She paused in the doorway to another room, one hand at shoulder height on the doorjamb. In profile her smile suggested mystery. Her eyes glittered and smoldered at the same time. One of those strange female gifts. “It’s absolutely true. The odds are about one in two that I’ll be insane before I’m five and thirty at the latest. Or it could happen after my first child.”

His feet jolted to a stop at the threshold. That hadn’t been the answer he expected in the least.

The room was another bedroom, though grander. Along the wall was a cherry-wood wardrobe fronted with inlaid decoration. Billowy green curtains draped around the head of the half tester bed. The foot had carved posts to match the armoire.

Lottie stood with an elbow looped loosely around the closest post and her hip leaning against the mattress. “No kind lie to say to that one?”

“You seem perfectly sane to me.”

“I do hope that wasn’t a lie.”

“It wasn’t.” He shouldn’t go closer. Not with the way he couldn’t look away from her mouth. “You’re reckless. Maybe you’re a little wild and entirely too spoiled. But you’re perfectly sane.”

She rocked back and forth, her hips sliding. Silk caught against the bed’s covers. “You know nothing of the sort.”

“I absolutely do.” He cupped her face, the delicate bones firm under his thumbs. “I know that at this moment you would let me kiss you.”

“And more.”

“You shouldn’t say such things.”

She nudged the tip of her tongue across the edge of her top lip. She looked up at him from under lashes weighted with promise, and it went straight to his cock. His entire body clenched.

She slanted away from him, shifting so she leaned her bottom flat against the bed. “Why ever not?”

“Because someone will eventually take you up on that offer.”

One by one, she walked her fingertips up the center of his chest. “Don’t be intentionally slow.”

He lifted an eyebrow. Their conversations took interesting, odd twists at times, but this had to be the top. “There are businessmen who’ve been ruined for saying similar things to me.”

“I don’t issue invitations to just anyone.” A sharp flash of hurt darkened her eyes. “No matter what some believe.”

“I never said you did.”

She dug her fingertips under the narrow edge of his cravat and set about unknotting it. His blood stuttered, then rushed hot and hard through his veins. He couldn’t breathe. Maybe he
shouldn’t
breathe, because then he’d smell her soft scent.

Her touch delved under his collar and across his neck. He sucked in a hissing breath. “Don’t do that.”

“You still haven’t provided me a reason for restraint. I’m beginning to think one doesn’t exist.”

Ian prided himself on being an average man. He had appetites for womanly attention within the normal realm of a gentleman of his stature, but he had periodically been called upon to restrain himself. His circle of acquaintances was small. There were his sister’s friends, the daughters of his mother’s friends and business acquaintances’ wives. Not the appropriate circle for rousing romps.

Besides, he’d always selected his partners with care. Not from any level of persnicketiness, but because he couldn’t imagine spending a short time with a person if he couldn’t also imagine spending the rest of his life with them. If there wasn’t a spark of chance, he didn’t see wasting the effort.

Damn his parents for raising a romantic.

Because the woman under his hands was every bit of temptation he shouldn’t have. He wasn’t sure he’d be able to resist.

Maybe he shouldn’t have to. Maybe he should take that which she offered.

Her bottom lip plumped out in a soft pout. He traced that tender, damp flesh with a single fingertip. Her tongue darted out and wetted his flesh. His entire body shuddered as he growled. Growled, like some sort of rough animal with no greater sense than to take and rip and shred.

The problem resided in the fact that he didn’t feel particularly
normal
around Lottie. No idle hunger that could be sated with an hour of mutual fun.

He wanted to strip her boundaries, pull down her walls. See what she hid inside that gilded heart of hers. See if she was anything like he thought, pure of soul and more troubled than anything else.

“I’m sure no woman has ever had this much trouble getting herself kissed.” She knew what she was doing. Teasing humor dripped from every word.

“That’s part of the problem.” Her neck was delicate as he cupped one hand around her nape. “You’re expecting a kiss when that’s the least of what you’ll get.”

If he’d expected wild and reckless Lottie to take that as a warning, he’d been a fool. She crackled with excitement. It zinged off her skin like electricity in a summer storm. She’d been toying with the slender strip of his black cravat, but suddenly that wasn’t enough. She pulled it free.

“Maybe you’re the one who should stop making offers you have no intention of following through with.” Her hands were cool against his neck, and his body awoke. Wanted.

Took.

He stole her mouth, claimed her breath. His lips parted over hers. There was no resistance. She melted and sank against him. Lean curves were completely given over.

He held her pinned against his body with one hand at her neck. The other traveled down, down, to her crinoline-and-wool-covered ass. Firm. Pert. His hands filled with her flesh, and there was nothing more he could think of for a long, long spinning moment.

Until she moaned. With a long, slow dip of his tongue, he gathered the sound.

He shouldn’t be doing this. The empty house and the promise of her flesh went to his head. He pulled his mouth away and looked into those glowing eyes. She was hazy again. A tiny, winsome curve adorned her mouth, entirely more real than most of those smiles she flashed like blades.

He kept his hand on her ass, even as he scowled. “Tell me to stop. Tell me, or this will likely go further than you want.”

They passed breaths back and forth as slowly as treacle. By pure determination, he held back the wave that threatened to take him down.

Then she did the unthinkable. She crossed her forearms behind his neck and with a sweet, low pressure dragged herself up his length. Her lips hovered below his, close enough that he felt every word whisper over his skin. “Don’t you dare stop.”

Chapter Nine

Lottie knew this wasn’t wise. She’d always flouted the rules, and she’d been the bane of her governesses, but she understood there was a line. A certain level of behavior that couldn’t be ignored by society. Rules existed for the neat ordering of humankind within the accustomed boundaries.

She intended to leap right over those boundaries.

Here, now, she had the protection of Ian’s arms. A sharp twinge in her chest warned her this closeness would only serve to complicate issues. Eventually she would have to contrast the sure, hard feeling of his arms wrapped around her against the flayed-open effect of losing him.

His kiss swept away the awful fear slithering down her spine. She locked her forearms tighter behind his neck. Held on because that was all she knew how to do.

She wanted more, but she didn’t know how to make
more
happen. Or what it entailed. All she knew was that the way his hands spread over her back made her push up closer. Nearer. The fragment of space between them disappeared.

Closing that distance was the least she could do. Rewards came from pressing her chest along his. Heavy pressure in her lungs counteracted the tempting thrust of her breasts against him. The tight pull of her nipples made her breath catch.

A quiet grumble filling the air was another reward. His hands clenched on her back, then one shifted down to her backside. Soft kneading made her rise on her toes. Lean harder into him.