That we are sparring heartens me. We had spoken barely two words to each other during the rail journey to Larkspear Manor. She stared out of the window and I had pretended to be interested in my newspaper. I have a habit of needling her, but suffocating inside our rail compartment, I could find no lighthearted words to ease the tension, nor enough cruelty to remind her that had she listened to my advice and been more prudent in her conduct, she would not have needed to marry me to avoid being cast out.
She had been similarly silent and stoic as we dined underneath a thirty-foot-high ceiling, at two ends of a table so long we might as well have been on opposite shores of the English Channel. That resignation had remained in place even as I’d disrobed her, exposing her beautiful body inch by inch.
But now that I’ve tethered her to a bedpost, the lioness has reawakened.
“Surely you don’t take me for a silly female who doesn’t know her duties. You will have everything from me that a wife owes her husband.” Her tone is light, but there is a challenge to her voice. “Or is this the only way you can get other women to sleep with you?”
I smile in genuine amusement at her charge. “Do you want it to be the case, my dear? Would that make our wedding night more exciting?”
She pitches a haughty brow. “Can anything make a tonsillectomy more exciting?”
I rest my hand at the indentation of her waist. “How about when you find out that you won’t be getting a tonsillectomy, but instead a most pleasurable night of lovemaking?”
“And do you expect that by the end of this magical night,” she answers in a sardonic, yet almost seductive whisper, “I will have turned into your pet, your sweet, willing little pussy?”
Her words, her insolence, her soft, rosy lips as they move in speech—lust swells in my blood.
“Yes.” I step closer, my lips nearly caressing the shell of her ear. “Maybe not by tomorrow morning, but by the end of the week, you will be thinking of my lovemaking day and night.”
I do not feel quite as confident as I sound. But if this is a battle, then I might as well approach it as the ancient Greeks did, with much boasting of victories to come before a single chariot had been unleashed.
My bravado is not without its intended effect: The pulse at her throat accelerates; her breasts rise and fall with greater rapidity.
I am reminded of the one time we kissed, six months ago. She’d panted afterward, entirely out of breath, even as she glared at me.
I want to make her pant again. I want to make her lose herself entirely.
Perhaps she intuits my intentions, for she inhales sharply. “You are a pervert, Larkspear.”
I bite gently on her earlobe. “And you are just the sort of woman to appreciate one, Lady Larkspear, whether you realize it or not.”
Her nipples tighten. Now I am the one to lose my breath. My lust threatens to burn out of control, like a forest fire in the midst of a windstorm.
“Don’t be so excited for me,” I murmur. “You will make it less fun to prove that you have wanted me all along.”
“You cannot prove what doesn’t exist, Larkspear.”
It isn’t easy to tear my gaze away from those thrusting, gorgeous nipples, but I raise my eyes to hers. Familiar ground, this sort of verbal skirmish, even if this is our first time at it with one of us naked. But the engagement is an old one—we have been putting each other down with such speech for years. And for all the apparent fireworks it generates, I must still measure the distance between our hearts in light-years.
The time has come to break the cycle.
“Fortunately that is not my task here, which is only to prove the existence of something that you choose not to acknowledge.”
She tosses her head. A strand of her hair strikes me across my cheek. “Is that what you tell yourself?”
That is what I would love to prove to be true, but I do not inform her of my doubts. Instead, I hold out my hand and make as if to touch one nipple, but stop a fraction of an inch short. She half gasps, her eyes fastened to the sight of my fingers not quite fondling her.
“No,” I answer. “It’s what your body tells me.”
I settle my hand between her breasts and trace a line up along her sternum, lightly caressing her throat as I make my way to her lips. My thumb pulls down her bottom lip, revealing her small white teeth. Her breaths, rapid and shallow, tickle my hand. A flush spreads beneath her skin. Her eyes, raised to mine, darken—her pupils were dilating.
I lean in—and barely restrain myself from kissing her. This is not the time to betray my own sentiments, but to force a reaction from her so enormous and unmistakable that she will have no choice but to see me in a different light.
Our lips almost but do not touch. The timing of our breathing somehow aligns; we inhale and exhale with the exact same agitated rhythm. My eyes never leaving hers, I roll her nipple between my thumb and index finger.
Her eyelids flutter. Her toes dig into the Persian carpet. And behind her back, reflected in a mirror on the far wall of the room, her hands clench. I am unbearably aroused by her involuntary reactions.