Hot Silk. Sharon Page

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СКАЧАТЬ was shocked into breathlessness. The most confident, audacious grin turned up the edges of Lord Wesley’s sensual mouth.

      “You are drunk.” She set down the glass, her heart like a live bird trapped in her chest. He was right. Of course. His very words had set her on fire. “And your sister warned me—”

      “That I’ve bedded a lot of women. So have most of the other men here who act like eunuchs around you. The men who try to treat you like you are sweet and untouchable. Can you imagine a life wedded to one of them?”

      “No.” It was simply the truth.

      “You don’t want marriage, Grace. You want sex. You have to take marriage to get it.”

      She laughed at that, thrown off balance by the entire conversation. Had she already waded in too deep? She could hardly swoon or race from the room now. She had shown him the woman she really was. But she liked speaking this way. Bluntly. Truthfully. It was exhilarating. “And you don’t,” she challenged. “What would ever tempt you to embark on marriage, my lord?”

      “Love. Obsession.”

      “The desire to possess something precious?”

      “Perhaps that.”

      “I saw a man tonight. Pru—Lady Prudence told me that he is your half brother. That he murdered—”

      “Shh.” He pressed his fingers to her lips. “That is something that I intend to make right. I intend to spill his blood.”

      Lord Wesley left her side and he raced over to the desk. She stood, stunned, watching as he wrenched open a drawer. He lifted out a brass box that gleamed in the firelight, laid it on the blotter, and opened it. When he lifted his hands, he held a six-inch dagger poised between the tips of both his index fingers, one pressed to the end of the handle, one pressed to the point of the blade.

      Watching her all the while, he dropped the knife to the desk. It landed on its side with a thud. He stripped off his coat and threw it to the nearest chair—a leather club chair. His cravat and waistcoat followed.

      There was only his shirt now. Fine linen between her gaze and his skin. “One day I will exact retribution from my damned half brother. But only if you tell me something that I need to hear.”

      She stared in confusion as Lord Wesley let his cravat slide off, as he undid the ties of his shirt. As he strode to her he grabbed the knife and he yanked the sides of his shirt apart. He pressed the tip of the blade to his chest, just beneath the plane of his pectorals, on the flesh that covered his heart.

      Her heart was in her throat. “What…what are you doing?”

      “Marry me, Grace. Be my bride. Fuck me tonight and marry me afterward. I cannot wait another moment to have you.”

      “Or you will stab yourself to the heart?” She was eighteen. She was not a schoolgirl—well, since they hadn’t been able to afford schooling, she never really had been, but—

      He wasn’t really in love with her that much.

      Was he?

      “I want you.”

      “Why me?” she asked. “Of all the others? Of all the rich beauties, of all the dukes’ daughters, of all the girls who try to move heaven and earth to attract you? No pretty words—the real words.”

      “Because you are like me.”

      That mystified her. And then he pushed the blade in and she was stunned to see a trickle of blood race down his body. It would ruin his shirt. “This is madness.”

      He bent forward, the knife still cutting into his skin, and he skimmed his lips along her throat. She stood, passively, letting the remarkable sensation wash over her. Soft lips—like velvet, like silk. No…more than that. Like the touch of a flame. Or the brush of an angel’s hand.

      “Saying no is madness,” he rasped.

      His tongue stroked the length of her neck. Her body became fluid. She was wet—indecently, wonderfully wet between her thighs. The stubble on his jaw teasingly scratched her skin. Her pulse seemed to beat everywhere at once—in her head, her lips, her fingertips, her…her sex.

      “You are beautiful.”

      How many men had said that? But it mattered, from him.

      “Touch me.”

      “Only if you take the blade from your heart.”

      “I will plunge it in if you leave me now. If you do not touch me. I cannot live without your touch. I could go to another woman. I know you are thinking that. I could bury my heavy, aching cock into her and fuck until my brain explodes and all the while I would be in pain because I wanted you. Do you have any idea what bloody torture that is?”

      “I think I know.”

      “I want to marry you, Grace. All I need is a yes. One simple word.”

      “Yes.” And there was no turning back. She hungered to touch him, and, once she did, she had to go forward.

      If she touched him, she had to agree to do everything a husband and wife were intended to do.

      Slowly, she pulled off her glove—a white, virginal, and utterly irritating scrap of satin. She reached out, touching her fingertips to his chest, his skin hot and damp beneath her touch.

      “Take the knife away,” she breathed. He was drunk and his hand cupped her bottom—a place a man’s hand had never been—but she was afraid he would crush her to him and stab himself by accident.

      He was young. Spoiled. Passionate. Wild.

      Hers. With one simple word.

      “Yes,” she said again, to ensure there was no mistake, and she released a sigh of relief as he tossed the blade back to the desk. But in the next instant, he slid her skirts, petticoats and all, up her thighs. He pulled her drawers down before she could squeak, held her as she stepped out of them.

      “You smell of lust, Grace. You stink of it and I love your smell. I want to cover my hands in it, my cock in it.”

      His earthy words made her more wet, more creamy and slick, and she could smell herself, flushing as she did so.

      “Now, hold up your skirts for me and let me explore.”

      She obeyed and his hands slid around her naked inner thighs. His palms were strong, a little rough, and as he squeezed her skin she feared she’d fall to the floor.

      “Stand up, Grace,” he commanded in a growl and his hands skimmed higher, up and up to the juncture of her thighs, to her hot and sticky quim. “Part your legs for me a little more.”

      She did, aware of the wetness leaking down her inner thighs.

      “Ah, yes, good girl,” he murmured, and his look of fierce hunger softened with his heartbreaking smile. “Lovely, soft curls.”

      His fingers combed through them and she squirmed. Her quim felt СКАЧАТЬ