Chapter 12 #2
“You have known Aaron for a day,” Rowan said, the restraint in his voice thinning. “You cannot understand what I am protecting him from.”
“From siblings?”
“From chaos.”
“Children are not chaos.”
“No,” he said, his voice low. “But they can be born into it.”
“I know they are not mistakes to be prevented because a man fears feeling anything he cannot command.”
His face darkened.
She stepped closer before the fear could stop her.
The movement brought her within the heat of him, and all at once the argument shifted.
The air between them filled with awareness so thick it nearly drowned the anger.
She saw the way his gaze dropped again, this time to the loosened neckline of her nightgown, to the small bow resting at the top of her breasts.
His control strained so visibly that her pulse leapt.
“Do not come closer,” he said, yet it sounded like a warning to himself.
Emmeline’s breath caught. Something reckless stirred inside her, a need to know whether his refusal was truly stronger than the hunger darkening his eyes.
“Why?” she asked.
His gaze lifted to hers. “Because I am trying to be honorable.”
“Honorable?” The word trembled with disbelief. “You think it honorable to reject your wife on her wedding night without tenderness?”
His hands curled slowly into fists at his sides. “You are angry.”
“I am humiliated.”
His face tightened. “I did not intend that.”
“But you did it.”
His throat moved. “Yes.”
The single admission struck her strangely. It was the first honest thing he had given her since she entered the room.
Emmeline swallowed hard, and because she was hurt, because she was angry, because she had never learned how to stop wanting impossible things, she stepped closer still.
Now only a hand’s breadth separated them.
Rowan went utterly still.
She could see the pulse beating in his throat.
She could see the way his breath had changed, slower and deeper, each inhale dragging against the linen of his shirt.
He looked as if touching her would destroy some vital part of his discipline, and the sight sent a hot, dangerous thrill through her body even as her heart remained bruised.
“You speak of honor,” she whispered, “but you looked at me in the dining room as though you had already imagined this door opening.”
His eyes flared. “Yes.”
Emmeline’s breath caught.
Rowan’s jaw tightened, but he did not look away. “Yes, I want you. I have wanted you for longer than is wise, and that is precisely the problem.”
Heat rushed through her so quickly that she nearly swayed.
Her fingers tightened in her skirts, but it did nothing to steady her. He was still looking at her with those hard, hungry eyes, and now she knew what it meant.
He wanted her.
The knowledge found the softest, most foolish part of her, the part that had wanted to be chosen even when she knew better. For one breath, she hated him for giving that part of her something to cling to.
“Why is it a problem?” she asked, stepping closer.
Rowan’s gaze dropped to her mouth.
She felt it as surely as a touch. The room seemed to narrow to that look, to the dangerous stillness of him, to the way his breath dragged once through his chest as her teeth caught her lower lip.
His voice came lower. Rougher. “Do not do that.”
“Do what?” she whispered, though she knew.
His eyes lifted to hers, dark with warning. “You keep biting your lip like that, and I promise you, I will find a far better use for your mouth.”
The words went through her like fire.
She should have stepped back. She should have remembered every reason this was unwise, every bruise he had left on her pride, every danger in wanting a man who made control feel like something thin and breakable.
Instead, her teeth pressed into her lip again. She saw a hard snap behind his eyes, a sudden surrender of the restraint he had been holding so tightly.
Rowan moved.
His hand came to the back of her neck, fingers sliding into her loose hair, his other arm banding around her waist and hauling her against him with such force that her breath left her in a broken gasp.
Then his mouth was on hers.
His lips crushed hers, and Emmeline froze for one stunned heartbeat before her entire body answered him.
Her hands flew to his shirt, clutching at the linen over his chest. Beneath her palms, he was hard and hot, his body a wall of strength pressing her backward until her spine met the carved edge of the bedpost. He followed her there, crowding her against it, his mouth never leaving hers.
His beard scraped lightly against her skin, the roughness sending sparks through her, and when his tongue pushed past her parted lips, a soft, helpless sound escaped her throat.
He heard it. He groaned.
His hand tightened at her waist, fingers splaying over the thin fabric of her nightgown, and the heat of his palm seemed to brand straight through to her skin.
She had never been touched like this. Every careful thought she had carried into the room scattered beneath the force of his mouth, leaving only sensation. The hard press of his chest. The rough drag of his breath. The aching, molten pull low in her belly that made her knees weaken.
She clung to him.
His mouth moved from hers to the corner of her jaw, then lower, dragging a hot path down the side of her throat.
Her head fell back, exposing her neck without thought, and his lips found the frantic pulse there.
He kissed it once, then again, harder, open-mouthed, as if he could feel the wild beat of her heart and wanted to claim that too.
“Say my name,” he ordered.
“Rowan,” she whispered instantly.
His whole body shuddered.
For one dizzying second, she thought he might lift her. Lay her down. Make the night exactly what she had feared and wanted and not dared to name.
His hand slid to her hip. Her body arched toward him.
Then he stopped.
The loss was so abrupt that she nearly stumbled.
Rowan tore himself away, breathing hard, his face unreadable except for the stark, savage strain carved into every line of it. He stepped back, putting space between them like a man dragging himself from the edge of a cliff.
Emmeline stood against the bedpost, lips swollen, hair loosened around her shoulders, her nightgown twisted beneath one strap where his hand had gripped her. She could still feel his mouth on her throat. Her body was trembling so violently she could hardly draw a full breath.
He looked at her. For a moment, the hunger in his eyes nearly brought him back.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I wasn’t supposed to…” Then he shut it down. “Go to bed, Duchess.”
Emmeline stared at him, unable to comprehend that a man could kiss her like that, could make her body burn until she scarcely recognized herself, and then send her away as if she were a mistake he had nearly made.
Something inside her recoiled. Her lips parted, but if she spoke, she feared the hurt would come out too plainly. She would not give him that. Not after he had already seen too much.
“Of course,” she said. Her voice was thin, but steady enough.
Rowan’s jaw flexed. “Emmeline—”
“No.” She looked at him then, letting him see only the part of her that could still stand. “You have been quite clear, Your Grace.”
He flinched at the title.
She turned before that small victory could undo her.