Page 59 of The Heir

“None of that.” He smiled and nuzzled at her neck, then slipped lower, going up on his knees to take a nipple into his mouth. Anna merely cradled his head against her and sighed again.

“Next time,” he murmured, resting against her sternum, “I will know where to start. You have sensitive breasts, my dear. Inspiringly so.”

“None of that.”

“None of what?” He raised his face to regard her in puzzlement.

“None of that next-time talk,” Anna clarified. “This was a lapse.”

Westhaven hung above her, considering, even as he ignored the considering being done by his cock. “We need to discuss this, and for that, you will have to be decently covered.”

“I will?”

His took his weight and warmth away from her and fortified himself with the disappointment in her voice.

“You will.” He sat at her hip and began to straighten her clothing, but paused to brush his thumb over her pubic curls. “When this next time comes around, that we are not going talk about, I will put my mouth on you here.” He closed his fingers over her sex. “You will enjoy it, but not half so much as I.”

She looked surprised then intrigued as he closed her buttons and bows, and the earl concluded she was a virgin to oral sex as well as orgasms. Mr. Seaton, God rest his lazy, inconsiderate, bumbling, unimaginative, selfish soul, had much to answer for.

“Up you go.” He tugged Anna to a sitting position then settled down beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Her head rested against his chest, and her hand stole onto his bare stomach.

He yawned sleepily. “I should put on a shirt if we’re to have a meaningful discussion.”

“You needn’t,” Anna assured him. “It won’t take long at all to tell you this sort of thing has to stop.”

“Going back on your word, Anna?” Westhaven leaned over to kiss her temple and to again inhale the fragrance of her hair.

“I agreed not to seek another position until the end of summer,” she reminded him. The glow in Westhaven’s body faded a tad with each clipped syllable. “I did not agree to become your light-skirt.”

“Were you a virgin, you would still be considered chaste.”

“But I wouldn’t be for much longer if this keeps up.”

Westhaven knew some genuine puzzlement. “I will not force you, Anna.”

“You won’t have to,” she bit back. “I will spread my legs for you just as eagerly as I did tonight.”

“With results just as pleasurable, one hopes, but we’re talking past each other, Anna. Why won’t you let yourself enjoy my advances? That’s the real issue. If you have a reason of any substance—a husband somewhere, a mortal fear of intercourse, something besides your silly conviction earls don’t marry housekeepers—then I will consider desisting.” He punctuated his comment with a soft kiss to her neck.

“Keep your lips off me, please.” Anna straightened away from him but didn’t move off the couch. “I cannot think. I do not even know right from wrong when you start with your kisses and your wandering hands. You don’t mean to do it, but you leave me helpless and lost and… You have no clue what I mean, do you?”

“In truth,” the earl said, urging her head back down to his shoulder, “I do. You would be astonished, Anna, at how surprised I am at the way matters have progressed between us, and I am not often surprised.”

“Well, then,” Anna huffed, “all the more reason to give up this courting you seem so bent on.”

“Can’t say I agree with you.” His lips grazed her temple again, completely without conscious thought on his part. “And you have yet to name me a single reason why you could not wed me. Have you taken holy orders?”

“I have not.”

“Have you a mortal fear of copulating with me?”

She buried her nose against his shoulder and mumbled something.

“I will take that for a no. Are you married?”

“I am not.” And because he heard what he wanted to hear and insisted on hearing, the earl missed the slight hesitance in her answer.

“So why, Anna?” He bit her earlobe gently. “Those were my teeth, not my lips, mind you. We’ve gone only so far as lovers, and already you must know we would bring each other pleasure upon pleasure. So why do you play this game?”