Never Trust a Rake

‘I find myself regretting ending things between us before I have finished your training,’ he said smoothly. ‘You were proving such an apt pupil, too.’

‘I was not,’ she denied hotly. ‘Anyway, there hasn’t been any training...’

‘Ah, yes, there has. But it has perhaps been too subtle for you to notice. You melted under my kisses like butter left out in the sun, that night,’ he said, leaning in close. ‘Since then, I have taught your body to respond merely to the feel of my breath against the places I laid my mouth. I am arousing you, right now, just by murmuring into your ear. Your breathing has gone shallow. Your nipples have gone hard.’

‘It isn’t true,’ she protested, her shock at the accuracy of his statement making her take such a hasty step back that she cannoned into the chair she’d just been sitting on.

‘Oh, but it is. You want me. You are positively aching for me to kiss you. Really kiss you. On the mouth. I would wager you want my hands on your body, too.’

‘S-stop it!’

‘Oh, there is no need to be angry. I want you, too. Have I not already told you that I want to taste you again?’

‘But you won’t. You cannot. We are ending this, this...’

‘But what better way to end it, than with a farewell kiss? The kiss we have both been waiting for? Panting for?’

‘I am...not. I...panting? No!’

He smiled down at her, mockingly. ‘I did not take you for a coward. Or a liar.’

‘I am neither!’

‘Then prove it. Go out through the doors at the end of the ballroom. You will find yourself on a terrace. Should you walk to your right, you will find a series of French doors. Enter at the fourth set and you will be in a small study, which is rarely used. I shall be waiting for you there, having gone by an entirely different route.’

She glared up at him, not sure just what it was about that outrageous statement that made her the most angry. The accusation that she was panting for him, which was true. But to say so to her face...how dare he? It made her feel so...naked. He knew her so well. The reactions she’d tried so hard to hide. He’d known all about them, all the time.

Then there was the horrid suspicion that to know the layout of the house so well that he could tell her exactly how to reach the spot he’d designated for a secret assignation meant he must have used that room for trysts in the past.

‘You will have a long wait,’ she said, her chest heaving with emotion.

‘Good,’ he murmured, a gleam of appreciation in his eye.

‘What do you mean, good?’ He did not want her after all? He had been just teasing her? Or testing her? Oh, why was the man so hard to understand?

‘I mean that your demeanour now has everyone convinced that the most recent rumour is true. They are all watching us—no, don’t look round. Keep your indignant little face turned towards me. Yes, that’s it. Let them think I am a satyr,’ he said, his mouth curving into a smile so wicked it was almost a leer. ‘Do you think I care?’

Oh. He had not been lying about wanting her, then. She felt almost giddy with relief. For a moment. But then she remembered Lady Carelyon’s nasty suspicions about him.

‘But then your sister will have triumphed. It is not right.’

‘I have not been so fortunate in my siblings as you have been in yours. I have never succeeded in making any of them relinquish the resentments brought about by the injustice they suffered in their childhood, no matter what I do. So to hell with them all.’

His features were still fixed in that satyr look, but she could see what looked like torment burning in the black depths of his eyes.

‘Just grant me one last request before we part,’ he grated. ‘Let me kiss you. Let me taste your innocence, your freshness, your purity. Just once. Is that too much to ask of you?’

Her whole being strained towards him. He was so alone, so unloved. And all so unjustly. The things his siblings had suffered in his childhood were not his fault. Why should he have to pay for them?

And, oh, how she wanted to know what it would be like to kiss him. Just once.

‘Leave now,’ he drawled, lasciviously. ‘Flounce out of the room and go out on to the terrace.’