Chapter 20 #2
“That is my wish, and it should be yours as well.” Cassie jerked back at his harsh rejoinder. “I lost control for just one moment, and now the only thing in my mind is the memory of what you taste like. Damn it, I can’t look at a glass of whisky without thinking about your tongue.”
The air thickened in her throat. She shouldn’t have doubted her instinct. He had been affected. Grant turned away and released her from his stare. She took a half breath, but it wasn’t enough. She was still lightheaded.
“You regret the kiss because you…liked it?”
He looked askance at her. The firelight cut through the thin linen weave of his shirt, revealing the silhouette of his chest and stomach. “You thought I didn’t?”
“I didn’t know what to think when you began acting like a stranger.”
“To keep you at arm’s length.” He let out a gruff laugh and gestured to the room. “Apparently, it didn’t work. Cassie, if you’re found here, you won’t be able to cry off. You need to go. Now.”
She knew he was right. But his confession had emboldened her. It had made her certain about what she wanted, especially before this charade of a courtship was over.
“I will,” she said with a shaky breath. “After you make love to me.”
She held still, air trapped in her lungs as delayed comprehension dawned on Grant’s face. His lips parted, and a furious, mystified stare drilled into her, sealing her feet to the carpet. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I do. I’m not a simpleton, Grant. I’m also not a virgin.”
He clenched his jaw and emitted a soft growl, stepping back and to the side as if her comment had been the glance of a fist. “I do not want to think of you with him.”
The strain of jealousy gave her wings, but she pretended otherwise. “My point is, I cannot be ruined twice.”
Grant scrubbed a hand over his chin, then hitched it on his hip. He breathed hard. “Why are you doing this?”
“The other night, the way you kissed me…” She hesitated. But so far, she’d been utterly honest with him. She’d made herself vulnerable. It frightened her as much as it exhilarated her. “It did something to me, in a way nothing else ever has.”
Though he’d turned to granite, his chest rose and fell with rapid breaths. “It was just a kiss.”
He was still trying to keep her at arm’s length. She could see through it this time.
“I know you felt it too.” She then reconsidered. “Maybe with all your mistresses, you’ve felt it before, but I haven’t. And I want to.”
He cocked his head. “All my mistresses?”
“I hear you have several, not just Miss Devereaux.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, and what is one more, for just one night?”
Grant shook his head and raked his fingers through his hair as he strode away from her. “Do not push me, Cassie. I might be a gentleman, but I am no saint.” He faced her, looking undone. “Are you trying to drive me mad? Is this revenge for bullying you into a courtship?”
“No!” That hadn’t even gone through her mind. Though perhaps it should have. “I want—” She cut herself off, suddenly unsure. She’d hoped that once in his room, once she’d presented herself, he would accept her without challenge. But challenge was all he’d been doing.
“Tell me,” he said softly, his green eyes now glimmering jet. “Tell me what you want.”
Cassie’s voice shook with nervousness, but she forced out the words. “I want to know what it feels like to be with a man and feel pleasure rather than…indifference.”
Grant’s breathing visibly escalated, his chest swelling with every breath. He bowed his head, but his eyes stayed on her.
“If I take you to my bed, I’ll need to marry you, and that is something I cannot do.”
She twisted her fingers into the sides of her robe as irrational envy spiraled through her stomach. “Because of your late wife.”
“I barely survived,” he whispered. “I refuse to go through something like that again.”
Why hadn’t she seen it before? The anguish from losing his wife had burrowed into him so deeply that it was now a part of him. It had found a home within him, and it had settled with permanency. In that moment, Cassie wished she could magically steal away all his pain. Free him of the burden.
“I would never force you to marry me.”
Rather than setting his mind at ease, it only seemed to offend him. “I am not Renfry,” he growled. “I will not use you and set you aside.”
“What if I ask you to?” Incomprehension swept his face, but she only felt a new stroke of clarity. “Renfry lied. I gave myself to him because he told me he would make me his wife. With you…you’re not making a false promise to lure me in. I choose to give myself to you simply because I want it.”
Grant scrubbed his palm over his mouth again.
And with his unbroken reluctance, pangs of shame began to heat her cheeks.
Here she stood, practically begging him to make love to her…
and yet he hadn’t wavered in his resistance.
The great Lothario, the debauched physician lord, the man who was rumored to chase anything in a skirt…
would not have her. She licked her lips, the desire to flee formidable.
But her pride was too fierce to run back to her room in humiliation. No, she would go with her pride intact.
“I see,” she said, her voice tight. “The risk is too great for you. I understand. Forgive me.”
Cassie turned and with her back straight as an arrow, reached for the door. A hand slammed up against it, holding it shut. Grant had crossed the room and come up behind her at lightning speed.
“Please,” she said, the presence of him hot against her back. “If you don’t want me, let me go.”
“You have no earthly idea how much I want you.” Each rasping word scraped up her spine and pressed underneath her skin.
Her legs went soft as the hand not bracing the door curled around her waist. He hauled her against him, and her eyes fluttered shut as the hard wall of his chest caught her, his thickly muscled thighs bracketing her legs.
Cassie gasped, and the sound was joined by another: the unmistakable click of the door’s lock as Grant engaged it.
Her blood bubbled as he wrapped both arms around her and sealed her to him.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” he whispered against her neck. Then, with his lips against the lobe of her ear, “Are you absolutely certain?”
She nodded, or at least tried to. Her body wasn’t responding to what she wanted it to do.
“I need to hear it, Cassie.” His hands curved inward around her hips, splaying wide and reaching lower.
“Yes,” she sighed, the pitch broken and pleading. It would have embarrassed her to have sounded so undone—if Grant had not spun her around and smothered her half-formed answer with his mouth. He chased it with a coarse groan of his own.
She draped her arms around his shoulders and clung on as the assault of his kiss began.
The last of his resistance cracked and dissolved.
Grant’s tongue twined around hers, the kiss claiming and desperate and she couldn’t breathe.
Nor did she want to if it meant parting from his mouth.
Carnal sparks lit off inside her as he walked them in small steps closer to the bed, his fingers tugging roughly at the sash on her robe.
She took in a gulp of air as Grant shifted his mouth to her throat, where he pressed hot, openmouthed kisses.
“Cassie.” His teeth abraded her skin, and his hands pushed the robe from her shoulders.
It fell to the floor. “My God, the things I want to do to you.” He filled his palms with her backside and kneaded her through the linen shift.
He lifted his head to look at her. Firelight played over his face, his eyes dark with craving.
“I want those things too,” she whispered.
His gaze dimmed with a glint of warning. “You might come to regret saying that.”
She went still, though her heartbeat thrashed. Was he still trying to push her away? She wouldn’t allow it. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “Tell me. What are you going to do to me?”
With a devilish grin, Grant released her. She lurched, despondent, as he took a step backward and put an arm’s length between them.
“As you were the one to come to my room, I believe I am yours to command tonight. So, you tell me, my lady—what do you want me to do?”
Cassie’s mouth went dry, and she was suddenly nervous again. “Isn’t what I want clear?”
He shrugged, attempting for nonchalance. But his eyes were busily devouring her, the firelight likely rendering her shift near transparent, as his was.
“I’m a man who likes detailed instruction.”
She faltered. It had taken more courage than she’d imagined just to come here and tell him that she wanted to feel pleasure with a man. To tell him every detail? Cassie’s stomach flipped. She couldn’t do it.
Grant saw her doubt and winked. “Might I make a suggestion?”
She nodded, slightly embarrassed by the eagerness of it.
“Perhaps I am wearing too many articles of clothing,” he said, pulling at his shirt with his thumb and forefinger.
Oh. She licked her lips, her pulse stuttering again as she understood. “I…I want you to…” She could not believe she was going to say it. “Take off your clothes.”
A slow, sinful grin bowed his lips, and with languid motions, Grant gathered his shirt with both hands.
Lifting his arms, he peeled it up, over his head, and then discarded it onto the floor.
Cassie’s pulse quivered in her throat. Firelight gilded his taut shoulders and the chiseled lines of his chest and abdomen.
Her breath ceased entirely when she realized his fingers were moving at the buttons on the fall of his trousers.
He wasn’t stopping. He was heeding her command.
On the next unsteady throb of her heart, his trousers and smalls were on the carpet, his feet stepping free of them.
There was no longer a single drop of air in the room.
Heat stole over her as her eyes roved over the gloriously muscled figure standing proudly erect before her.
He was beautiful, his brawn a revelation, and instinctively, she reached for him.
Her fingers touched down on his chest, and instantly, he covered her hand with his, flattening her palm to his skin.
She felt the powerful thudding of his heart.
“Next,” he said, his voice a rasp.
It took her distracted and sluggish mind a moment to understand his meaning. He wanted his next command. There was only one thing she craved, and that was to feel his bare figure against her own.
“Remove my shift?” she asked.
Grant did not move slowly this time. He bundled the shapeless linen in his hands and hauled it over her head and off the tips of her fingers. The material disappeared behind her, and his eyes wolfed in the sight of her. Cassie felt a change in him as the intensity of his stare narrowed.
“Fuck, you’re perfect,” he groaned, the coarse word signaling his disintegrating control. He flexed his hands, but he didn’t reach for her. Instead, he lifted his searing gaze to hers and growled, “Next.”
In that moment, she knew she could say anything, demand anything, and he would give it to her.
“Take me to your bed,” she whispered. “Make me yours.”