Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)

Other men might set their scruples aside after nightfall and then take them up again in the morning. But Ned was laboring under another burden. When he let his control lapse, he’d found himself slipping down into darkness.

No. He couldn’t be just any man. He had to be better, stronger and more in control. After he’d hurt her, he owed her more than a few minutes with his trousers bunched at his ankles.

“When I take you again, Kate, you won’t be offering yourself to me out of a sense of duty or obligation or whatever this happens to be.” He slid a finger under her chin.

She shivered under his touch and took a step back.

“You won’t flinch when I touch you. And you won’t tell me it’s not a love affair. You won’t ever tell me that.”

More important, he would have control over himself—control over the inexorable wants that she brought up in him. He would be able to trust himself around her, trust that this time, he would not go careening off into the abyss again.

She looked up at him, the gray of her eyes silver in the moonlight. Her lips were parted. She didn’t say a word; she just stared at him, a strange combination of innocence and seduction, desire and hurt wafting off her. She drew him as strongly as any siren would have, and without any notion of the rocks that waited to dash him to pieces if he were to give in.

He pulled his finger from her chin and rubbed it surreptitiously against his trousers. “You told me earlier that our marriage might dry up and blow away in one great gust. If a little wind could do us in, what do you suppose would happen if I just used you?”

Her tongue darted out to touch her lips. “Then you’d have the use of me.” Her voice was low and husky.

He could have her flat on her back in the bed, her ankles wrapped around his thighs, in two seconds. He would hold her down and pour himself into her, would let go of all the rigid strictures that held him in place. His blood thumped insistently in his ears—not loudly, but a quiet beat, as unstoppable as the sea creeping up the strand. As impossible to ignore.

Ned had become an expert on turning back tides as they came in. “I won’t do that.”

Her eyes glittered, and he reached out one hand and touched her cheek. She shut her eyes under his touch. He wanted to take her, hard and dark and desperately, her body fitting around his. Instead, he forced himself to skim his hand over her face, a gentle brush. His thumb found her lips and he traced the path of a kiss against that pink softness.

She didn’t open her mouth, but he could smell her—lavender water overlaying the faint scent of rose soap. He traced that almost-kiss into her skin.

Before he could think better of it, he leaned down and touched his lips to hers. She was soft, and for all the murky complications of his own lust, the kiss he gave her was as simple and unshadowed as a summer noon. She tasted of warm sunshine and soft breezes. By contrast, he felt dark and wanting. He pulled away, the touch of her incandescent against his own mouth, before his wants could overwhelm him. He’d given her more the promise of a kiss than the actual delivery of one. He straightened while she was just beginning to reach up on her toes.

And then, before his own baser urges could be enlarged on, before he could put his hands on her waist and push her against the wall as he desired, he turned and left.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A FLUTTER OF COLD AIR. Kate’s nightgown swirled around her—she opened her eyes after that delicate dream of a kiss, to see her husband retreating. His leaving, now, was even worse than it had been before. He’d touched her, and she’d felt as if her heart had cracked right open. Her hands had spread; her fingers still tingled; her lips still yearned for his.

She’d been raised to be sensible about marriage. Marriage was an alliance, and Ned had been quite eligible—heir to a marquess, wealthy, handsome and without any truly horrendous shortcomings.

That kiss hung between them, like a thought half spoken. Her whole marriage hung before her like a sentence waiting to be finished.

He’d been calmly, politely, completely in control. She was the one who burned, who seethed. She was the one who’d made a fool of herself over a man—and apparently she’d not stopped fooling herself. This time she’d only needed the cheapest of excuses to hop into his bed—and he’d dismissed that excuse, threadbare as it was, and had sent her running with a mere pat on her head. He’d kissed her as if she were a child.

It was as if nothing had changed.

But it had.