A Most Sinful Proposal (The Husband Hunters Club 2)

“I trust you,” she whispered.

“Well, you shouldn’t,” he growled, and showed her why.

She was hot, her skin on fire, as if the passion he’d lit was burning through her from the inside. She was struggling for breath, probably because of her corset and other fiendish feminine devices. He cupped her breast through the dress, feeling her soft flesh, the hard nub of her nipple butting against his palm and seeming to beg for his mouth. He wanted to oblige. He wanted to take her now, on the Turkish rug. His body was begging him to give it release after so long without a woman.

But Valentine knew he wasn’t going to do that. This was neither the time nor the place, and he was not the man to initiate Marissa into such pleasures, although no doubt she would argue about that as she did everything else.

“Please,” she gasped, “can you do what you did before? Can you touch me…?”

For a moment his head went fuzzy. His hand even moved toward her skirts, but he stopped himself. If he touched her then it would only be a short step to taking her on the rug.

With grim purpose he set her away from him.

For a moment she sat among the folds of her rose red dress. A lock of her hair had fallen over one eye, her cheeks were flushed and her mouth was swollen from his. At first she looked at him expectantly, and then, when he made no move to join her, in bewilderment. Her gaze dropped to the bulge in his pants.

“You want me, Valentine,” she said huskily. “I have learned that much already.”

“Oh yes,” he growled, “I want you, you minx. I don’t deny it.”

“Then why…?” she wailed.

“Because I have no intention of taking a virgin on the salon floor.”

She turned her face away. “I suppose that is a reasonable answer,” she said quietly. Then, with a sideways glance and a little smile, “Is there somewhere else you prefer?”

“This isn’t a joke, Marissa! Despite your wild and passionate behavior, you are an innocent and if I took advantage of that for my own pleasure I would be the worse sort of rake.”

She looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, and then sighed and pushed her hair out of her eyes. She climbed to her feet, slowly, despondently, and shook her skirts to straighten them. When she looked at him again he saw, with genuine horror, that there were tears sparkling in her eyes.

“I wish you wouldn’t treat me like a silly child,” she said. “I do know my own mind. I am twenty-three years of age and have been an independent woman for a great many of those years now—I’ve had to be.”

Valentine hardened his heart; it was the only way to withstand her. “If you want an affaire, Marissa, there must be a great many men in London willing to oblige you. Why come all the way to Abbey Thorne Manor and pick on me? Or were you planning to ask George?”

She gave him one of her direct looks. “George,” she repeated, and sighed. “George was my first choice…is still my first choice. Are you going to tell him about—about this?”

“Of course,” he mocked. Then, at her gasp of dismay, “No, I’m not going to tell George! I’m not such a beast as that.”

But you are a beast, Valentine.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “You know that neither of us planned this thing that is happening between us. Neither of us is able to control it.”

“Speak for yourself,” he said in a hard voice. “I am perfectly able to control myself.”

She wrinkled her brow irritably. “Oh?”

He ignored her. “I agree we are laboring under a strong physical attraction, but it will soon fade and then you will be amazed you ever considered me a candidate for something so precious as your virginity.”

She was watching him, listening to his words, but if he’d exp

ected her to argue or pout and stamp her foot like a child, he was wrong. Marissa was no child. She replied in a way that was honest and touching, though he refused to allow himself to be swayed.

“I have never felt this—this…I don’t even know what to call it. Mating attraction? I want to understand it; I want to wallow in it—take a deep breath and dive in. I am a little out of control, I think, and for someone like me, who is always in control, that is terrifying. And exhilarating. Both at the same time.”

Valentine made another effort to warn her of the perils of her behavior. “You make conversation like a Bohemian. Beware of what you say and who you say it to.”

Her chin was up and she looked as regal as a queen…only far more touchable. “My grandmother is a Bohemian so I learned at an early age to say what I mean.”

“Tell me you are not intending to follow your grandmother’s way of life?” he said. “Your father would never allow it, surely?”