Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Where a Recalcitrant Viscount Broods
“Why are you so grouchy?”
Chance bit into an apple he’d pilfered from the kitchen during his foray for food and art supplies an hour ago, chewing slowly.
He was trying to come to grips with the sentiments swirling through him—and the effort was affecting his mood.
He’d never been much for Christmas, and here it was, dawn of a new one.
And his emotions were tangled in knots. “Is that the American term for vexed? Who says I’m grouchy? ”
Franny smiled, a winsome, knowing curve of her lips and licked her thumb, then swiped it across a stroke she’d drawn on the page.
Chance’s belly quivered, his fingers curling around the fruit.
Discomfited, he glanced to the window. They had at least two hours before daybreak, when she’d need to return to her chamber.
Katherine would be up soon after, excited about the holiday, and her governess couldn’t be found sketching the master of the house in his drawers.
The artist in a ripped chemise and nothing else.
Her hair untamed, flowing down her shoulders and back in a crimson-threaded bounty.
Her nipples, which he’d found were the shade of a dusky sunset, straining against silk and calling to him to suck them.
The bed behind them an utter disaster. The room smelling marvelously of carnal delight.
He’d bottle the scent if he could. Lifting his hand to his nose, he drew her— them —in.
“You should be happy,” she said cheerfully and drew a swift set of lines, glancing at him once to make sure she was capturing him correctly.
“I did what you asked. Now you do what I ask. Getting you on paper is why I ended up here, you know. This was the deal. Consider this my Christmas present. I want to capture that little crook on your nose. The scar on your lip. That lank of hair that juts out no matter how hard you try to contain it.”
He sank back against the settee, vanquished.
Trying very diligently to avoid looking at the dark thatch of hair between her thighs.
Flattered to his soul that she’d studied him so well.
And feeling a bit clever that he had her a true present shoved in his cupboard across the way.
She had done what he asked. The second time.
When he’d awoken to find her circling his nipple with her fingernail.
Climbed atop him without a hint of apprehension, in fact.
Worked his shaft inside her with only the slightest clumsiness.
How his thumb had ended up between her lips, he couldn’t say.
Just the tip, a gentle suck and nip. He’d about come then and there.
Since when did he like that ?
Breasts bouncing, calling him Remy in that breathy voice. In crisis mode, he’d flipped her over and resorted to some fancy finger work to make sure she came before he did.
“Quit fidgeting, my lord.”
“I said I would pose. I’m posing.”
Pose . Bloody hell, was he in deep trouble with this chit.
Her gaze flicked up, taking him in. She was resting against an armchair enough of a distance away to keep him from easily touching her.
With his toe if he stretched perhaps. Her eyes were a painfully vivid shade of gold.
Her cheeks ruddy from stubble-burn, lips plump from abuse.
He let his attention meander down her body.
Amazing breasts, slender, graceful feet—and everything in between made for pleasure.
Made for him . She really was unfairly endowed .
Duly appreciative, he wanted her with an intensity he’d never imagined. Not since his boyhood had he been less in control.
With her soft smiles and tender touches, she made his world shrink until it was merely them filling it. When he’d always occupied the largest, loneliest of worlds.
The difference between lust and love circled, bringing a leaden ache to his chest. A tightness to his breathing. A clamminess to his skin.
How to tell , he wondered? How to tell?
Because he feared this was happiness he was suffering from, or more confusing, contentment. Of that, he was fairly bloody sure. Bits of the wall he’d built around his heart tumbled when she was near, the barricade getting lower and lower. Like she’d taken a pickax to it.
“Are you still planning to marry him?” he asked without strategy.
The thought of her with another man made him want to put his fist through a wall.
His emotions were under siege, like he was preparing for a round at Gentleman Jackson’s.
Seconds from being punched in the face. Or the gut.
When he’d never been covetous of a woman.
Never trotted himself out like that, vulnerable and unsure.
And there had been many women. An unwarranted number he couldn’t now recall.
Her charcoal skidded across her sheet, but she didn’t look up. “Are you offering another solution?”
He took a vicious bite of the apple, his gaze roving to the ceiling.
Spiderwebs and cracks. Faded wallpaper. Leaky roof.
Rose Hill was tumbling down around him. He needed funds.
Franny Shaw was wealthy. She understood his vision, was becoming a helpmate.
He’d never met a woman who shared his passion for design or one who even had a passion outside him.
She was an artist, talented and incredible.
And bloody hell , did he want her. Insanely. Criminally.
But he’d promised himself long, long ago. Promised that boy. No marriage without love.
“I didn’t think so,” she murmured.
“I don’t have all the answers, you know.”
She hummed a raw, jittery sound. “You don’t seem to have any.”
He dropped his head back to the settee with a sigh.
“I knew this was going to happen if I touched you. But I couldn’t not touch you.
And you didn’t say no when you bloody well could have!
I would have gone crawling back to my bedchamber and pleasured myself all night while thinking about you, yes, but at least we’d be safe. ”
She rose, crouching before him in that diaphanous chemise that provided absolutely no protection against his hunger. He glanced at the sketchpad, his chest tightening. A reflection of a man in the midst of indecision stared back at him. How honestly she saw him took his breath away.
“There was a man. In Philadelphia. A family friend. He didn’t force me.
I don’t want you to think it was any choice but my own.
My mistake, the way I term it. A mistake that became known because he let it be known, necessitating my leaving America.
Anyway, he was cruel after. And during, now that I have…
” Her smile was splendid despite the conversation.
“Now that I have another experience to compare. He made me feel no one else would want me, so I took his offer. I was na?ve, and he was heartless. It happens to women every day. I realize my foolishness isn’t novel. ”
Chance cradled her jaw, drawing her lips to his. She went willingly. The kiss was tender and much less than he wanted to share. And much more. “He was a fool . You’re my fantasy, my dream. I wish I’d been your first everything.”
Touching her brow to his, she whispered, “I could help you with your designs more easily if you talked to me. This passing notes back-and-forth nonsense isn’t aiding the process.”
Chance dusted his lips beneath her ear. “Our current state of undress is why I resorted to this nonsense.”
Sitting back, she drew a languid circle on his belly with her charcoal.
He grabbed the pencil and tossed it aside, rolling her over on the carpet. Where they kissed, touched, moaned. Grappled for control before submitting.
He was going to make her come again before dawn.
Then she laughed, belly-deep and authentic, and he hesitated, startled.
He’d never laughed in bed. Teased. Talked.
He felt as if he’d plunged into a lake with no bottom.
Braced on his arms over her, he stared into her face, questioning the thoughts circling his mind, his heart.
She had a tiny birthmark on her temple he’d never noticed.
Freckles on her nose. Flecks of amber in her eyes.
His fingers trembled where he held her. “If I asked, would you say yes?”
Her cheeks paled, her hand falling from the nape of his neck to the floor. “But you said, you told me… you won’t marry without love. Does that mean, are you saying?—”
He popped his palm over her mouth before she could finish the question. A question he wasn’t prepared to answer.
She sat up, breaking his hold. Her dejected expression breaking his heart. “No, then. I’d say no.”
“Hillsdale? He gets a yes? When I get a no?” He gestured to the room they’d torn up in their passion, knowing he was being a jackass but unable to help himself. The fate of millions of asinine fools before him.
Franny scrambled to her feet, a woman on a rampage.
Chance’s lips parted on a sigh. He’d never seen her angry—not truly—and a depraved part of him was aroused.
Cheeks flushed, glorious breasts rising and falling beneath that twist of rumpled silk.
Hips perfect for his hands to mold as he brought her against his body.
God , he wanted to sink into her, make them forget about all this life shite.
Couldn’t they simply get back to the basics?
“I can marry him knowing my father’s money is all he’s after. It’s business. But not you, Remy.”