Chapter 5 #2
His nostrils flared. “Don’t pretend you don’t know exactly what it’s like in my arms.’”
“Precisely.”
Holding his gaze, she nodded.
Her nod confused him. That word had even more.
My God, she was not hinting at anything, nor was she suggesting it; she was saying she felt nothing in his arms.
Logic dictated every aspect of Kerr’s carefully ordered existence, which was precisely why he knew laughter was the most rational response to such a claim.
Yet, as a man whose prowess had just been publicly doubted, his blood rebelled.
He sat suspended between two equally base impulses—beating his chest or turning her over his knee—and executed neither.
It had nothing to do with gallantry. Even Lord Liverpool himself would not have swallowed such an insult in silence.
He took the rogue’s path.
Kerr spread his knees slightly and rested his palms flat on his legs. “Your body told a completely different story on Ermine Street.”
She made a choked sound.
The spitfire wanted to claw his eyes out.
Instead, she did the next worst thing. She ranted at him—about him.
She heaped insults upon insults. A mish-mash between sailor-speak and the manner of faradiddles and fudge only proper ladies breathed.
One moment his paternity was up for debate.
The next, his intelligence—or lack thereof was questioned.
It was the most entertained he had been all night—and for many nights before.
She was putting on quite a performance. Her hair combs had failed her completely, hitting the floor with a sharp plink.
The longer she fumed, the more he noticed things he shouldn’t.
Details he’d only taken casual note of before: the ripple of untamed reddish-brown tresses cascading about her.
Those heavy curls set off a fragile, porcelain face that drove painters mad for their canvases.
Right where her smile usually broke, a single brown freckle acted as a deliberate crosshair for a dangerous, full mouth—as if any man foolish enough to look needed help finding where the gold was buried.
His body responded.
In his mind while her lips lectured, he pressed his tongue to that speck. He tasted the warm, generous seam of her lips. He pulled her close, tasted all of her.
“You have an inflated sense of your own skills with women,” Andromena chastened.
Blood flooded his ears.
My God, she went too far!
Kerr locked his monster hands around her soft arms. “I am done listening to you,” he shouted. “I did not try to seduce you that day. I meant to abduct you. If I had truly kissed you, you would have done whatever I wanted. Whatever I wanted.”
Her eyes grew wide and her lips trembled.
Kerr deserved a whipping for acting like a brute. Yet none of it mattered the second his fingers stole under her cloak, grazed her bare shoulders or her breath hitched. His own became unsteady.
“You blasted scold!” He shook her slightly. “Pourquoi est-ce que je te veux?” Why do I want you? He yanked her onto his lap, grabbed her jaw, and crushed his mouth to hers.
Andromena went rigid, her hands braced to shove him off and strike his face.
No, he was wrong. Thank God.
The passionate chit curled her fingers into his lapels and pressed her full weight against him, a sudden shock before he realized she was kissing him back.
This was nothing like the tame, careful parting they had shared on Ermine Street.
The rough, demanding hunger of his kiss dragged small, breathless moans from her throat.
She matched him stroke for stroke, her gloved fingers tangling, pulling, and clutching desperately at his hair.
His hands locked at her waist as she surged upward, curling her fingers into his lapels and slamming her full weight against him.
The fierce, sudden friction scrambled his thoughts before he realized she was kissing him back.
This wild surrender burned away the memory of that tame, careful parting on Ermine Street; the rough, demanding hunger in his own blood answered the breathless moans caught in her throat.
He drove into the kiss, tasting her heat.
His cock begged for a role in the wicked dance he did with Andromena.
Her spirit would be a boon to the man who tamed her. But taming required marriage and marriage required a lifetime with the chit.
That should douse his ardor. It should. But it didn’t…which was why, it took a moment to register how still she’d become.
Kerr drew away first. Let Miss Andromena Smith express her doubts now; he had left no room for question. The lady’s flushed cheeks and bruised lips bearing the quiet, undeniable proof of his mastery.
Her untamed corkscrew curls framed her flushed cheeks.
He let out a low, rough breath, fighting the fierce, heavy drag of arousal burning through him. Kerr stroked the small of her back, a possessive brand to remind her, as much as himself, exactly who held the power and control between them.
He pulled his lips into a smug, triumphant grin. “Well?”
With a soft—he narrowed his eyes—regretful-sounding sigh, she slipped gracefully from his lap and found her seat.
“That was an improvement.” Andromena’s analytical gaze fixed him like a pinned insect under a scientist’s lens.
Kerr’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
“But I still don’t see i-it,” she said.
That slight falter made her a liar. He heard every trembling note of it. After a lifetime of desperate beauties begging for his bed, he knew down to his bones that she wanted more, but her dismissiveness made his jaw lock. A dull ache throbbed behind his eyes.
His military drilled discipline failed.
“Like hell you don’t,” he boomed, a heavy weight of anger bounced off the tight carriage walls.
The conveyance rocked to a halt.
Andromena gave a toss of her head as big as her disappointment. “As much as it pains me to rob you of the fight you’re clearly spoiling for, our time together is fortunately at an end.”
He’d been spoiling for something with her; the kind of wicked things that would have left her with her voluminous skirts and chemises rucked like a white cloud around her, as he took her even higher.
His revenge was swift, small, but immensely satisfying.
Andromena caught sight of the Earl and Countess of Culross’s moonlit courtyard and groaned. “You would burden my sister.”
“Lest you forget, Miss Smith, you were the one playing in St. Giles,” he testily reminded her.
“I was not playing.”
This again. Kerr pushed the curtain aside.
He scoured the brick-enclosed stable quadrangle.
His gaze found the clock tower at the center.
Forty-seven bloody minutes past three o’clock.
“If you wish to avoid causing distress to your family, govern your behavior accordingly.” Where in hell was Culross?
His blasted friend—very swift approaching former friend—would have gotten the word he’d paid a fortune to send.
“The operative words being ‘govern my behavior’, Edgar. If I want to dance bare around the Rookeries, I’ll do so without permission; yours or anyone’s.”
A fresh jolt of lust streaked through him. Enraged with himself, he let drop the curtain. “Listen well and good, you harridan. As long as you put yourself in harm’s way in front of me, I’m honor-bound to deliver you—”
“I am not some parcel, you dolt.”
“To Culross.”
“You’re being impossible,” said an exasperated Andromena.
“No, what would be impossible is if I delivered you—”
“For the last time, I’m not a package.”
“To your birdbrain mother and got myself trapped into marrying you.”
Fire exploded on the bold, slashes of her cheekbones. “You smug thing. As if you are a grand catch. Nothing could bring me to wed you. Why, I’d rather marry…marry…”
This he had to hear. “Yes? Which horrid fiend would you choose over me?” Unfortunately, this also happened to be another one of those rare times where the lady forgot her words.
Worse yet, for the second time, her trembling mouth ruined it. This was the mouth he had sworn he wasn’t obsessing over—dangerous, full, bruised by his own kiss. Fine. He had obsessed a little. But the real disaster was the fresh, unmanageable tear she fought so hard to hide.
“Based on the way you linger, Andromena, the lady doth protest marriage to me, too much, methinks.”
His jibe worked. The woman’s eyes narrowed into angry slits, turning her soft look into a fierce glare.
He edged the curtain back.
Finally. Culross put in an appearance. Louis the Large, one of their more seasoned crewmen who stood in as guard and servant when they were on land, met his employer at the door.
Louis jabbed a finger back towards Kerr and Andromena’s hackney.