Pursuing Lord Pascal (Dashing Widows 4)

“We’re somewhere secret now,” she murmured. “Let’s take advantage of it while we can.”

Chapter Thirteen

Carefully Pascal closed the library door, shutting out the sounds of the crowded ballroom from the other side of the house. The music and chatter from Lady Shelton’s party turned into a distant hum.

Now all he heard was the insistent pump of his blood and the siren call of temptation.

Amy faced him, standing before the large mahogany desk under the curtained windows. She wore crimson, as if their passion found its inevitable color. The melting surrender in her expression sent a jolt of arousal through him.

He leaned his back ag

ainst the door and turned the key in the lock without looking. He was too busy drinking in every detail of this woman he wanted more with every day.

A slow, sensual smile curved her lips. The smile was new and spoke of a woman incandescent with sensual power. Such a change from the lovely, but wary lady he’d first met. Now her beauty blazed like a beacon. Need, bright and burning as lightning, sizzled along his veins.

The luxuriant pile of tawny hair held a tantalizing hint of untidiness, a reminder of how it cascaded free when he hauled her into bed. Her hazel eyes were more gold than green, glittering with brazen interest. Her creamy breasts mounded above the daringly low bodice and rose and fell with her uneven breathing.

“You’re here.” His voice rang with satisfaction.

“Of course I am,” she said with unconcealed excitement. “It’s been three days since we were alone.”

He loved that she didn’t try to hide her need. “We’ve been driving every afternoon.”

Her grimace was charming. “You know what I mean.”

He did indeed. And he’d suffered, as apparently had she. It was a fortnight since those extraordinary hours at the house near Windsor. They’d managed two more meetings there. Both brimming with unforgettable pleasure. Both cruelly short.

For the first time in Pascal’s life, a few snatched moments with a lover weren’t enough. He was tired of sneaking around. He wanted the world to acknowledge Amy Mowbray as his. He wanted a wife.

How the mighty had fallen.

“You’re wearing my bracelet.”

She raised her slender wrist until the stones caught the uncertain light. “I am.”

The memory of the occasion a week ago when she’d accepted the diamonds shuddered through him. She’d sprawled naked across the rumpled sheets at his manor, and the sinking sun had painted her pink and gold.

“And is that a new dress?”

“It is.”

“I approve.”

All night, he’d been unable to look away from the tall woman in red. A woman who danced with every blockhead in the room except Pascal, damn it. He’d reserved his two dances. The supper one—which they now missed—and the final waltz. Every day, the restrictions placed around pursuing a respectable mistress chafed more painfully.

Devil take it, if she married him, he could dance with her all night and let gossip go hang. Hell, they could stay home and forget dancing altogether.

“I’m glad.” Their commonplace words floated on a turbulent sea of unspoken yearning.

The room was dimly lit—Lady Shelton didn’t want her guests skulking in the library when they should be adorning her glittering ballroom. The light fell across Amy from behind and turned her fascinating, changeable eyes to mystery.

“I look forward to stripping it off you.”

With a poignant echo of her old uncertainty, her hand fluttered above her sumptuous bosom. “In the middle of a ball, that might take things a little far.”

“I can dream.”

She reached for him. “I’ve been dreaming of you.”