Mr Trent’s eyes sprang wide. “Mr Rowan?”
“The man my parents demanded I marry.” Guilt pushed to the fore. No one wanted to disappoint their kin. A child wanted nothing more than love and acceptance whatever their age.
A flash of pain marred Mr Trent’s handsome features. “You were m-married?”
Verity eased the pressure on the wound for fear that was what caused his mild distress. “Lord, no! My parents locked me in my room and fed me naught but bread for months, refused to let me out unless I agreed to the match.” She leaned forward and whispered, “I can be very stubborn, though I am told it is not a good trait.”
A weak smile touched his lips. “It is a trait I have come to admire.”
The urge to kiss him came upon her again. Instead, she cupped his face and stroked his cheek gently with the pad of her thumb. “You’re the only one who can control my indomitable spirit.” She moistened her lips to let him know her silent thoughts. “I told Mr Rowan I would rather sell my soul to the devil than give myself to any man.”
“You did?” His heated gaze searched her face.
“But that was before I met you,” she mouthed silently.
The atmosphere brimmed with an electrifying energy that sent pleasurable pulses to her most intimate place. The rumbling of the carriage as it came to an abrupt halt intensified the desperate ache in her core.
“I shall rouse Dr Redman.” Mr Cavanagh threw open the carriage door and vaulted to the pavement. “With luck, he will treat your wound here.”
As soon as Mr Cavanagh closed the door and disappeared into the night, Verity’s thoughts turned to kissing. But her mind had no time to dwell on whether it was wise to excite the patient, or whether Mr Trent felt the same burning desire thrumming in his veins, too.
One large masculine arm snaked around her back. The other slipped up to cup her nape. Mr Trent drew her lips to his, paused a mere inch away. “I have spent my life striving to be a man of principle, but everything changed the night I met you.”
“Is that your way of saying you wish to kiss me, Mr Trent?”
The gentleman moistened his lips. “I want to do more than kiss you, Miss Vale.”
With that, he captured her mouth in a searing kiss that curled her toes and sent delicious shivers racing down the length of her spine.
Excitement and lust and something more intense burst to life in her chest. The need to taste this man, to hear his needy groans, to feel the power of his body pressing against her, proved so overwhelming she was the one who teased his mouth open, who dove deep inside the place that felt like home. Like heaven.
It took nothing more than one brush of her tongue for his defences to come crashing down. She sensed the shift as the seducer woke from his slumber.
Deft fingers caressed her nape. His strong arm rocked her back and forth on his lap in a way that heightened the clawing ache within. When he jerked his hips, let her feel the solid bulge of his arousal, she dragged her mouth from his on a gasp.
“That is how much I want you, Miss Vale.” His hands settled on her frilly pantaloons, edged up under her skirts to clasp her buttocks and rock her to a devilish rhythm. “This is how it will always be with us.” Ravenous jade-green eyes settled on her lips. “A desperate need kept at bay by morality’s thinnest thread.”
Even with her lack of experience, she knew it would take little effort for the thread to snap.
“Do you know what you’ve done to me?” he drawled, the slow, almost slurred tone an indication of passion and not the effects of his head injury. “Do you know how my body burns to push inside you? Yearns to make love to you until you shudder beneath me and cry my name?”
Heavens above!
She swallowed hard.
“There, that’s the truth of it,” he added. “Make no mistake. Neither of us will have the strength to stop this thing once it’s started.”
Verity gathered her courage. “What if I don’t want it to stop?” What if she could love this man, gain his love in return? This addiction she had, to his taste, to his touch, was more potent than anything she’d experienced before. “Everything about this feels right. You cannot deny it.”
“Right for two people who crave the affection that such an intimate relationship brings. Not so when I’m forced to consider the fact you’re untouched.” It was as if the last comment awakened him from a blissful dream, and he was suddenly faced with a harsh reality. His full lips thinned. “I’ll have you, Miss Vale, the whole delightful package, in every way a man might have a woman. Else I shall not have you at all.”
It took effort to comprehend his meaning.
Was he speaking of marriage?
She was deciding how best to extract an answer when a knock on the carriage door sent her heart skittering.
Mr Cavanagh coughed lo