Page 26 of My Lord Rogue

She looked away, staring into the flames, feeling the locket burn cold against her throat.

“You could expose me,” she said. “Tell them all the truth.”

He considered this, then smiled, wicked and sly. “But where would be the fun in that?”

She watched him, uncertain.

He stood, crossing the small gap between their chairs in two steps. He kneeled, balancing on the balls of his feet, so that their faces were nearly level. The lamp behind him cast half his face in shadow, but his eyes glittered with an energy that made her shiver.

“Let’s continue the game,” he said. “You play the besotted widow. I’ll play the dangerous rake. We’ll give them exactly what they expect.”

She could not breathe for a moment. “And then what?”

He shrugged again, but this time there was something predatory in the motion. “We see who blinks first.”

Her hand flattened across her chest. “What’s in it for you?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

He leaned in, his face so close she could smell the brandy on his breath. “Isn’t it obvious? I get to be your Teddy. The most enviable post in England, I should think.”

Her cheeks burned. She tried to pull away, but his hand found her wrist—gentle, but inescapable.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, his tone suddenly very serious.

She should have said yes. She should have left, right then, before the game became real, before the line between fiction and truth disappeared entirely.

But she did not say yes.

Instead, she let her hand relax in his. She closed her eyes and let the heat of the fire and the press of his fingers drown out the cold, the guilt, the fear.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

He released her then, but the imprint of his touch remained, a phantom sensation that traveled up her arm and settled in the pit of her stomach.

“Let’s find out,” he said, softer than ever.

She stood, as did he, and she braced herself on the arm of the chair. For a moment they simply looked at each other, the past and the future suspended in the air between them.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she said.

He smiled, slow and devastating. “You’re more, not less. That’s what frightens you.”

She laughed, a sound that surprised her with its lack of bitterness. “You are a dangerous man, Baron Teddington.”

“And you are the most dangerous woman I’ve ever met.”

Josiah waspast the point of playing games. He reached for her. Not the gentle touch of the drawing room, not the careful clasp of waltz partners, but the grip of a man who had been denied too long. His hands found her hips, fingers digging into the silk, pulling her against him with a force that bordered on violence. She gasped, the sound half protest, half plea, and clutched at his arms.

He his head—not for her lips, but for the line of her throat, the exposed arc of her collarbone. He bit her there, gently at first, then harder, marking her as his. She made a sound, muffled and feral, and arched into him.

He moved lower, his mouth tracing the edge of her gown, tongue flicking against the pulse at her neck. He wanted to consume her, to strip away every layer until there was nothing left but the raw, unprotected fact of her.

Her hands found his hair, fisting in the thick waves, dragging him closer. She smelled of flowers, of something sweet and ruined. He let his teeth graze her skin, felt her shiver.

She pushed him back—not to escape, but to see his face. Her eyes were wide, fevered. “I should hate you for making me want this.”

He smiled, or tried to. His face felt like it might shatter. “You don’t hate me. You hate that I know what you want.”

She said nothing, but her nails scored his shoulders, the pain blooming exquisite in his flesh.