Page 13 of His Wicked Little Christmas
She opened her eyes to find his gaze fixed on her, a challenge in their hazel depths. “Intimacy, Dex.Attraction. It isn’t as if those typically arrive with the marital contract. You know this. Part of my mission with the society is to prepare women for this deficiency. Create a protected situation within what is nothing more than, yes, a business arrangement, where both parties have enough knowledge to run the business. We don’t talk about passion.” Her unease, her sense of quickly losing her footing, drew her lips down. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a love match represented. Only in fairy tales.”
He moved quietly, deliberately, sliding across the stair until he reached her. One hand framed her face, then the other as he brought her lips to his. Soft, gentle, a whisper when other men shouted. With a silky murmur, their kiss from years ago blended with this one until she was unable to separate them. When she melted into him, her lips parting, tasting mint and wine, he pulled back, this movementnotmeasured.
Embarrassed, she glanced away, wondering if she’d done something wrong. When, obviously, she’d done something wrong. Arthur had said her skills were sadly lacking, and she’d believed him.
That’s why he’d had to resort to other measures.
“Look at me, Georgie,” Dex said in a hard voice, though he didn’t try to touch her again.
After a long, searching moment, she did. His cheeks were flushed, his breath ragged. Had she done that to him? Was it possible he wanted her as much as she wanted him?
“I realize there wasn’t love involved, but did Arthur not pleasure you?”
What to say, her brain screamed? What toadmit?
“He was cruel. I was untried. Amateurish. And then uninterested,” she whispered even as heat began to pool between her thighs. She’d never experienced this warmth before, never imagined its existence. But Dex’s fevered gaze was ripping her apart, bringing all kinds of unwanted sensations. He was ruining her with that look. “I didn’t know, I couldn’t make?—”
He leaned and placed his lips to the base of her throat, blew a warm breath over moist skin. Delicate, like a butterfly’s wings as he moved to a spot below her ear, drawing her skin between his teeth, rougher contact. Her head fell back, her lids drifting low. He charted a gradual course up her spine, his touch imprinted on each peak and hollow, a scalding press ending when he curled his hand around the nape of her neck and tangled his fingers in her hair.
Arousing beyond measure when he’d yet to truly kiss her.
The discreet cough came from the depths of the shadowed entranceway, where Georgiana spotted a footman rocking from side to side and wringing his hands, likely having stumbled on a situation he’d not before encountered, in this house at least. A draft of glacial air had comein with the boy to swirl around their feet. “Countess Winterbourne’s carriage is ready, my lord,” he stammered before slipping out the door into the welcoming winter.
Dex cursed, sliding back to the other side of the step, each point of contact on her body he’d breached alive with a thrumming pulse. “If I admitted you have me trapped in the palm of your hand…” Yanking his through his hair and sending it into further disarray, he blew a scornful breath through his nose. “That you could make a list of what you want to know, what you want todo, how to touch me, how I should touch you, and I’ll eagerly strike off each until this deficiency you feel you have, which was a deficiency on Arthur’s part I must tell you, is a memory of the past, what would you say?”
She stared sightlessly at her feet, leaned to polish a scuff on her boot, his words tumbling like water over a cliff inside her. “I’d say you should remember your Twelfth Night promise to your father.” When Dex reached for her, she rose unsteadily to her feet. “I don’t want to be a duchess,” she whispered in a raw voice. A panicked admission, discourteous and hurtful, one she wished she could recant but it was too late.
Too late for a lot of things.
His gaze when it found hers, because she looked back and let herself be found, was a scorching, emotional blend. “That works because I don’t want to be a bloody duke.” He boosted himself from the step, yanked his coat from the banister, and dropped it to her shoulders with more purpose than care. “I’ll see you out.”
“You’re vexed with me,” she said, tugging the lapels close to her cheek. The deep breath to capture the masculine scent hidden in the woolen folds was unnecessary as it lived in her memory alongside the second kiss in her life he’d gifted her. She would take the last twenty-four hours to her grave, an experience to top all others. Tears pricked her eyes to imagine anything better than being with Dex again, the brief return of her childhood. Only Anthony sharing this time with them could have increased its appeal.
Dex opened the door and waited wearily for her to step through it. “I’m vexed with the world, Georgie. But never fear, I’ll get over it.”
He didn’t try to stop her as she made her way down the stone steps, assisting with a light grip on her elbow to keep her from slipping, histouch restrained, his manner polite but distant. He’d gone back to his island, and she might not see him leave it. She turned as she was climbing into the carriage. “Dex, the other young lady I planned to introduce you to…”
His gaze shot to a window high above them. His father’s bedchamber, she assumed. Stepping back, his hands dove into his trouser pockets as his lips flattened. “Send me a note with the date and time, and I’ll be there. Looking very ducal and pretending to feel happy about this process. No one will have any clue it’syouI want.”
With this astounding statement released to the cosmos, he slapped the roof of the carriage and turned without another word, leaving her staring out into the starlit nightfall, her wishes, her feelings, in utter disarray.
His rash declaration a short hour ago rolled through his mind.
That you could make a list of what you want to know, what you want to do, how to touch me, how I should touch you, and I’ll eagerly strike each off…
He lifted the glass to his lips, certain his decision to dive into a brandy bottle following Georgie’s departure would solve no problems, although it was taking the sting out of the evening’s closure. In the distance, thunder rumbled, and the acrid scent of an approaching storm churned and sizzled. He smelled burning pine and, somehow,her. Which was impossible as he sat on Markham Manor’s stone steps in a puddle of slush that had chilled until he could no longer feel his buttocks.
He wanted to be nothing but part of the night, silent from the roar in his mind, the ache in his heart. He wanted neither dukedom nor love, messy entanglements, childhood affection traps, eyes the color of lapis, the tug of slim fingers through his hair, lips that felt familiar but should not, or the weight of despair over a pledge he should have made years ago and hadn’t the courage to.
He’d mucked up everything.
He’d known Georgie had an attachment to him when they werechildren, though he’d considered it infatuation. Charming, until he started to return the sentiment.
And now…she didn’t want a husband, feared taking a lover.
Did he want to be simply an experience even if he persuaded her? Her teacher in lovemaking but nothing more, which did make his cock twitch to envision, he wasn’t denying.
He shuddered, the glass quaking in his hands. One more minute of this excruciating bliss, then he’d return to the house before he expired from the cold. Check on his father, whisper words of encouragement and promise, lay his hand on an unresponsive brow, and question why he didn’t feel more for the man when the man had never endeavored to feel more for him.