Chapter 12 Livy
Livy
Livy quietly shut the door and collapsed against it, sliding to the floor.
Her eyes sank closed, and she sucked in a choppy breath.
Her heart was a racket of chaos in her chest. It had taken every ounce of self-control she possessed not to respond to the Marquess of Dunmore. What was wrong with her?
You love Warren. You want Warren. She didn’t want Lord Dunmore. He was exasperating, honestly. But her body said differently.
She clenched her fists and rocked her head back and forth on the hard oak door.
Her entire body trembled. Was there something inherently wrong with her?
His aggression had awakened something inside of her.
The growling, the thrusting, the imprisoning her with his body…
The fire in her blood threatened to ignite again.
She had feared it would consume her, a blaze of feeling so fierce it had been painful to refuse to give in to it.
Heavens, when he’d bitten her lip? All her muddled brain could manage was I hope he does it so hard I bleed. It had been thrilling, denying him. The challenge.
Winning.
Egads, something was terribly wrong with her.
It was the only explanation. She wasn’t a stranger to lust. The man was attractive, yes, and he had a presence that stole a person’s breath—and wits, but it wasn’t as though every favorably looking gentleman had this effect on her.
It’d never been this heady—this violent.
Warren had always been tender, patient, and almost reverent in their intimacy, never pressuring her, letting her control the pace. She frowned. A little too patient.
Perhaps that was the reason for her reaction? It had to be the strength of his desire for her, the determination to have her. Want. She shivered. Warren had never been on the verge of losing control. She tried to imagine her fair-haired, blue-eyed beau growling. She couldn’t.
But perhaps…perhaps that was to her advantage.
Lord Dunmore’s determination to seduce her was just the tool she needed to keep him motivated to assist her.
He had his clothes back, after all. What was stopping him from reneging?
If she gave in just a little every so often—not because she wanted to, of course—but to give him the impression he was making progress, on the verge of succeeding, she’d keep her leverage over him.
Livy stood on shaky legs. She needed to get back to her aunt.
She pushed off the door, set her shoulders, and walked back to the ballroom, regaining her composure with each step. By the time she reached the ballroom, her polite smile was back in place.
No one would be any the wiser.
No one would know she had just been kissed quite thoroughly.
No one would know she had bargained with Hades himself.
Livy just hoped she could avoid sharing the same fate as Persephone.