Brazen and the Beast (The Bareknuckle Bastards 2)

He kissed her neck. The line of her jaw. Her lips. “My Hattie. My beautiful Hattie.”

And she believed it, meeting a long stroke with a tilt of her hips, and sending a jolt of pleasure through them both. Their gazes met. “I liked that,” she said, shy and teasing.

“Mmm. Let’s see if we can find it again.”

They did, the thrum of desire fading into laughter. Was this what it was like for everyone? Was it always so bright? Like the sun had risen and cleared out all the darkness?

“Hattie,” he whispered. Her gaze snapped to his. “Tell me again.”

You shall lose your heart.

He rocked into her. “Please.”

Her heart was already gone. “I love you.”

He thrust into her. “Again.”

“I love you.” She clung to him, and he reached between them, finding the straining bud just above where they were joined. “Yes. Whit.”

“I can’t wait much longer, love. I’m desperate to come in you.”

“Don’t wait,” she said, his touch winding her tighter and tighter, sending her higher and higher. “Please, love. Please, don’t wait.”

“Again,” he whispered. “Just once more.”

“I love you.” She gave him the words a heartbeat before she was lost to the pleasure, flying apart beneath him and the London sky, and she was crying his name and clinging to him as he worked her in a beautiful, undeniable rhythm, carrying her through one release, and then another, before he gave up his own with a low, loud groan, the most delicious sound she’d ever heard.

When they returned to the moment, their breath in harsh symphony, the river tide lapping against the side of the ship, Whit pulled her tight against him, turning to put his back to the deck and cover them with his greatcoat. He pressed a kiss to her temple and exhaled, long and lovely. “Beauty.”

The word sent warmth through her, and she cuddled nearer to him.

He pressed a kiss to her shoulder. “I do not deserve you.”

She smiled at the words. “I think you can agree that I am almost as much trouble as I am delight.”

He did not reply, his broad, rough fingertips painting designs across her bare shoulder, soft and sure and mesmerizing enough to make Hattie forget where they were, and who they were, and all the reasons they could not be together. She tracked those movements, the slow slide of his fingers and the feel of his breath in her hair, slow and even, until her eyes became heavy, and she wondered what might happen if she fell asleep here, in his arms, on the riverfront.

And just as she decided that she didn’t much care what would happen if she did just that, because he didn’t seem to be interested in moving, either, he spoke, the words a soft rumble beneath her ear.

“Marry me.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Of course he was going to marry her.

He’d been planning to marry her from the moment he stepped onto the damn ship and saw her standing on the raised prow, looking every inch a warrior, waiting to do battle. His warrior, waiting to take him as spoil.

As though he wouldn’t go willingly into her arms. Especially after she’d told him she’d like to murder both his father and his brother. And capped the whole thing off perfectly by telling him she loved him.

She loved him.

If Whit never heard it again, he would remember that moment forever. When he took his last breath, it would be with Hattie’s indignant fury in his memories, and the man I love in his ears.

She loved him, and that changed everything; it made her his, unquestionably.

And then she’d tied him to the mast and made him hers, after making him wild with desire and filling him with pleasure and satisfaction and calm certainty. For the first time in his life, Whit hadn’t doubted. He’d known.

He was going to marry Henrietta Sedley.

Nothing had changed, and somehow everything had.

So it was unfortunate but expected that, when he suggested the idea, it was less of a question and more of a command, but he certainly hadn’t expected what came next. He hadn’t expected her to go still against him, as though the words had been a blow. And he hadn’t expected her to lift her head slowly, moving the way one might around a rabid dog.

And he certainly hadn’t expected her to say, simply, as though he’d asked her if she would like tea, “No.”

What in hell?

“Why not?”

“Because I love you.”

His breath caught at the words, the ones he’d wanted so desperately earlier, but he could not bask in the pleasure of them. He was too concerned about the rest. “Dammit, that’s a reason to marry me, Hattie.”

“Not if you can’t love me back.” She paused. “Not if you can’t love me as your equal. Can you?”

Yes. No.

Not the way she wanted.

Goddammit.

Fear spread through him, hot and unpleasant. He knew what she meant by equal. He’d heard her proposal of partnership.

But if they were partners, he couldn’t keep her safe—not from Ewan, and not from anything else.

If he loved her, he’d lose her.

She sat up in his silence, reaching for her clothes, and he hated that they were here again—her dressing and him feeling like he’d been smacked over the head with a tea service in a blow he absolutely deserved.

Coming to her knees, she tugged her skirts over her full hips and pulled the bodice around her before saying, quietly, “I don’t wish to force the issue. I don’t wish to be the person you maybe love. The one it takes thought to know you love.” She paused. “I wish to be the answer that pours from your lips—no matter how stoic you are. I wish to be the person you cannot save for high days and holidays, because you want me by your side on all the other days.”

She was too precious for the other days.

“I deserve that. Partnership. Equality. You taught me that.” She gave him a little smile. “I know that’s impossible. And so, no . . . I won’t marry you.”

There was such emotion in the words, sadness and resignation and honesty, as though she’d known these words long before she’d had cause to speak them. As though she’d been prepared for them. God, he hated the idea that she’d been prepared for them.

“Hattie.” He stood, pulling his trousers up and finding his shirt, pulling it on over his head. “You don’t understand.”

She sighed and said, “I don’t wish to be rivals. I wish to be . . .” She shook her head, and he loathed it. “I shall release the men tomorrow.” She waved in the direction of his pocket. “I assume you have a watch to confirm it, but I imagine it is too late to bring all the hooks back to work tonight.”

He extracted a watch, barely registering the warm metal that backed it as he read the time. “It’s six minutes to ten.”

She looked up from tightening the lacing of her bodice to look down the dock to the ship sitting lower in the water than all the others. “You should be half done with your unloading—all that ice on wagons trundling through the city.”

“Not half. But you’re not far off. Hattie—”

She cut him off. “I’ll release them tomorrow,” she said again.

“How did you do it? Lock them down?”