Читать книгу Wicked Rake, Defiant Mistress - Ann Lethbridge - Страница 2

‘I do not wish you to enter into an arrangement that is distasteful to you.’

Distasteful? It ought to be distasteful, given all it would mean. She ought to be snatching up the papers and running for her life. And yet something in his eyes froze her in place. Raw hunger swirled in the dark brown depths. Not the heat of desire, although that was there too, but a bleak, deep-seated loneliness as he waited to bid her farewell.

Her foolish heart ached to ease his hurt. A wild desire to dispel that look from his eyes pulled at her soul. She’d made a bargain.

‘Go,’ he said.

The harshness in his voice said if she accepted his generous offer she would never see him again. Torn in two, she stared at the documents.

Go now, the voice of sanity whispered. She didn’t want to go.

Reckless Ellie, always too impulsive by half, crossed the room behind him and laid a hand on his arm. ‘My lord, I would not have suggested it if I did not wish it.’

He lowered his gaze to meet hers, then he pulled her close and brushed her lips with his—a hesitant, questioning kiss, as if he doubted her words.

A rush of pleasure heated her body. Two days ago had been the first time she had felt a man’s body, hard and strong against her own. And she’d liked it. She’d had no idea, until then, that kisses created such internal conflagrations. And now she wanted more.