Page 49 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
“Congratulations,” he choked out.
“Oh, no need for such tidings. It’s not like that.”
He moved like dripping honey, turning his head to view her full red cheeks and soft dark hair, her bottomless moss-green eyes. “What is it like, then?”
“We are not in love. There’s no need for love in my marriage.”
And that killed him more than the falling tree had. A hundred bees stung him in a hundred different places. Those thorns from his caution-grown forest snagged him, tightened, pierced. Impossible pain. Suffocation.
He jumped to his feet. Too much energy coursed through him. His damned arse was soaked through, but he didn’t care. “That’s a lie, Miss Cavendish. We tell the truth, remember?”
Her dimpled disappeared entirely. So did the sun. “I’ve upset you. I do not see how. Many people marry without love.”
He knew that. But he also knew it was better to marrywithlove. And he knew, more than that and more than anything else, shedeservedlove. “You would deny yourself what your aunt and uncle share?” He dropped to his knees beside her and cupped his hands around her face. The moss inside covered every organ, softened his bones, and repatterned the beating of his heart. “You deserve a man to buy you every book in London, then take you to whichever country you wish to go and buy you every book there. And on the way, he should remind you again and again why you deserve such treatment. With his words and with his actions.” With his body.
“You look at me so wildly, my lord.”
He dropped his forehead to hers. “I feel wild when I look at you. And call me Cass.”
“Cass,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering closed. “I am no good for your reformation if I drive you to the edge of the wilderness.”
“It’s a good kind of wild. The best kind.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Let me show you.” He closed his eyes, brushed the pad of his thumb once along her plump bottom lip, settled it over the space her dimple would appear if he could make her smile, then dropped his lips to hers. He had tried to grow a forest, dark and deep and tangled, but one touch, one breath, and the world became a garden instead—fragrant, open, softening the sky with a rainbow’s splash of gentle color. He sank into it more deeply, slanted his lips for more.
She gasped, pushed away.
And the garden flickered out of existence. The moss inside browned, crisped, crumbled. His arms dropped to his side, dead logs with little purpose but to be burned. Had he expected her to let him kiss her? And what had he expected to happen after the kiss? Fool.
She glared. A good scold. That’s all he could expect after that kiss. She lifted her hands to his face. He held his breath as her fingers explored his mouth, glare still firmly in place. What the hell did she—
“Ouch!” Cass clapped his hands over his mouth and rubbed the raw tingling skin of his upper lip she’d freed of its fake mustache.
She held the mustache up between two fingers and gave it a look she likely reserved for slimy, wiggly insects rummaged up from the ground by her cousins. She opened her fingers, dropped it to the ground, then clapped her hands as if to dust them free of dirt. “There. That’s much better. Shall we continue?”
“God yes.” He could not name or describe the relief crashing through him, crunching his forest trees like twigs, crumbling to dust all his defenses.
His body screamed to kiss her hard, press her against the tree and mark her, so with trembling hands he worshiped her softly instead. His instincts, ever bad, would not ruin this moment. Her bottom lip first, he dusted a kiss on, then her top, then each corner of her mirth-filled mouth. She didn’t pull away this time but breathed into his gentle ministrations, her chest rising on her inhale so that it brushed against his.
He closed his eyes, the better to feel her kiss, smell her, taste her.
His tongue flicked at her lips, testing. Would she open? She did, with a gasp. He needed no other invitation to tangle his tongue with hers. He’d promised the edge of a wilderness, but the kiss proved no wild thing, breathless and howling. The kiss bloomed calm and inevitable between them, sweet and seeking, powerful in the gentlest of ways. It rocked him as no gentle thing ever had.
Her hands tangled into the hair at the nape of his neck, and she rocked with him, pulling him down as she surged up to meet him, pouring herself into him.
In the middle of Berkeley Square. Where anyone could see.
He broke away with a curse, the force of the lost kiss propelled him backward into the grass, ass wet once more.
She jumped to her feet, wiping her mouth, her green eyes dazed and fevered.
A tide of guilt and embarrassment lifted him to standing.
She straightened and brushed her skirts clean. “Yes, well. I understand the concept ofgood wildnow, I believe.”
Pride rippled through him, almost shaking away the guilt.
