Chapter 15 #2
He turned. “You are correct. I do prefer my bedmates knowledgeable in what they are doing, and typically, an inexperienced virgin such as yourself makes me cold. But I have always held the lingering belief that you have passion inside you... and then some.”
His masculine appraisal sent a quiver all the way down to her toes. No one had ever gazed at her with this level of… intensity. “When you are ready, knock thrice.”
Mercifully, he slipped into the adjoining room, taking his clothes with him, but then she heard a deadbolt slide in place.
As if it is he who needs the lock to protect his decency! She almost scoffed. The petulance of the man.
In spite of that, she found herself smothering a smile.
She changed out of her sodden clothes, dried quickly, and dressed in his garments.
They were vastly sizable on her, but at least they were dry, and she didn’t risk illness much longer.
After wringing the Thames from her hair and blotting it as dry as she could manage, she let the damp locks fall around her shoulders and went to knock on the door.
Vincent stepped out, dressed in simple, tight-fitting breeches and a white linen shirt that was partially unlaced at the neck. Against the snowy linen of his shirt, his throat was strong and bronze, the open collar offering a tantalizing glimpse of his muscled, hair-dusted chest.
His eyes roamed over her with a sensual perusal, and Emma bit back the question wedged in her throat. Striding to the window, he pointed out, “We’re almost at the port. Do you want to get to your home or mine?”
“My home,” Emma replied, suddenly exhausted. “I must explain this kerfuffle before it is plastered over the Times.”
“You won’t have to,” he reassured. “I’ll deal with the fallout.”
She took a seat. “What—how is this marriage going to be? Did you ever want to marry?”
“No,” he spoke bluntly. “You may not take stock in my honor, but I do, and I’m going to do what is right. Do not mistake me. We will be wed in the eyes of the law, but it is not a marriage.”
“It’s not?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he muttered. “What we have will strictly be an arrangement. We shall marry to save your reputation, but you’ll have your own way, and I will have mine.
The marriage will be the perfect cover in which I can recompense you for all that I took from your father, as with my promise to look after your brother.
We’ll annul the marriage after a time; you will go your way and I will mine. ”
“I… I suppose that will work,” she murmured.
“Wonderful,” he nodded. “We have an arrangement then.”
Resigned, Emma nodded. “I suppose we do.”
“One more thing.” Vincent stood, and with a swift tug, yanked her into his arms and slanted his mouth over hers.
Emma’s gasp of shock was swallowed by the heat of him. His kiss was bruising, possessive, his hand already fisting the loose linen at her back, bunching the oversized shirt until the fabric pulled taut across her breasts. She wore nothing beneath it. They both knew it.
His palm flattened against her bare lower back where the shirt had ridden up, and the contact of skin on skin tore through her like a whip crack.
She arched into him, and he groaned against her mouth, dragging her hips against his until the hard length of him ground into her stomach through the thin barrier of his breeches.
He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, and her legs wrapped around him on instinct.
The borrowed breeches had slipped low on her hips, and when he pressed her into the cabin wall, there was barely a whisper of fabric between his body and hers.
His hips rolled forward, the thick ridge of him dragging slow and deliberate against her center, and the pressure sent a shock of pleasure so acute her vision blurred.
“Oh god—” The words fell out wrecked and breathless.
His mouth left hers to close over the exposed curve of her neck, teeth and tongue dragging, and his hand slid beneath the front of her shirt.
Callused fingers traced up the flat of her stomach, unhurried, and when his palm finally covered her bare breast, she cried out.
He squeezed, rolled, pinched the taut peak between his fingers, and each tug pulled a thread of sensation straight down to where she was slick and aching against him.
He rocked into her again, harder, and her hips answered, grinding against the rigid heat of him in a rhythm her body understood even if her mind did not.
Every roll sent sparks scattering behind her eyelids, and she could hear herself making sounds she would be mortified by later, small, desperate, pleading sounds that seemed to drive him wilder.
His free hand gripped the waistband of her borrowed breeches and tugged them lower on her hip, his thumb stroking the bare crease where her thigh met her body. So close to where she was throbbing. So close that she could feel the heat of his hand like a brand.
“Tell me to stop,” he rasped against her throat, his breath ragged. His thumb traced closer and closer to where she needed him most. “Emma. Tell me.”
She couldn’t. Every nerve in her body was screaming for his hand to move those last two inches, and she hated herself for it, hated how badly she wanted something she couldn’t even name, hated that it was him pulling this from her…
“Stop,” she choked out. “Please—stop.”
He released her instantly. She slid down the wall on boneless legs, the borrowed shirt hanging off one shoulder, the breeches barely clinging to her hips, her chest heaving.
He stepped back, jaw clenched, his hands balled into fists at his sides, and the rigid evidence of his restraint strained visibly against his breeches.
“I—I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that,” he panted roughly.
“No…” she whispered, tugging the shirt down properly with shaking fingers, “you shouldn’t have.”
The yacht was docking, and Vincent tried again, “Pet—”
She barely made it up. “Do not—” she took in a lungful, “—do you know how much you’ve had me questioning everything in my life?
For years, I was comfortable hating you as a nameless, compassionless face, but now that you’ve decided to upend my life, derail me off a path I should be on, and…
damn well seduce me… No, you shouldn’t have. ”
To his credit, he stepped away, and Emma hoped he understood that she had to be feeling overwhelmed. A lady’s currency in the ton was her reputation, and surely hers had been hit, nearly decimated if Vincent had not declared their marriage.
Now, she needed time to fully grasp the situation she was in and how rough the next couple of days were going to be.
“Pull the carriage up as close as possible,” Vincent ordered a footman from the doorway of the cabin.
As the man marched off, Emma turned back to him and swallowed her pride. “Thank you.”
His lips were flat. “For what?”
“For not leaving me to the mercies of the sharks and saving my reputation,” she whispered. “I can give you that at least.”
He rolled his neck, “I aim to give you more reasons to trust me.” The carriage pulled up mere steps from the gangway, and Vincent nodded to her, “Now, shall we?”