He snorted, dismissive. “You Windermeres.” He shook his head. “You all think that.”
“But we can,” she said, undeterred. “And we do.”
“And yet here you sit, straddling”—a crack in his voice released on the word—“me without having followed through on your own logic.”
“Pardon?” she asked, indignation building. She very well might’ve shot to her feet if his hands hadn’t been holding her firmly in place.
“It’s simple,” he continued, evenly. “If anyone were to find out about us as we are now, you would have to marry.” A ragged heartbeat of time ticked past. “Me.” Another beat. “Would you risk your freedom for that future?”
Yes.
But how to say it without sounding positively desperate for him.
The fact was she’d risk anything for him in this moment of absolute, achingneed.
Even forever.
She pressed her mouth against his ear. “No one will ever know,” she cooed into the intimate space. “It’ll just be this one night.”
His jaw clenched as if he were waging silent battle with himself.
No matter.
She would win the war.
And the part of herself that had nothing to do with the mind, but only withfeelingintuited exactly how.
Chapter Nine
Juliet replaced herlips with her tongue and stroked along the whorl of Rory’s ear, dragging a long, ragged groan from him.
That groan made her toes curl inside her borrowed slippers.
Of a sudden, his arms tightened around her and he stood. “If we’re going to do this—”
“Oh, we most certainly are,” she assured him.
“Then we shall do it properly,” he finished. “In a bed.”
And with that, he marched with her in his arms straight through the dining room and down corridors blessedly empty of servants, until he was pushing open a door with his shoulder and depositing her to her feet on a worn wool rug before a low fire in the hearth.
“The bed is over there.” She indicated the rather imposing four-poster draped in heavy, satchel-brown velvet draperies from the same century as her dress.
“I didn’t want to be presumptuous.”
“I quite insist you presume.”
“This is your last chance.”
She shook her head. “This isyourlast chance.”
As they stood facing one another, her gaze dipped to the outline of his cockstand clearly illuminated by the flickering light of the fire. A shiver of desire rippled through her.
Perhaps it was her last chance.
Her last chance to have exactly what she wanted.
This man.