Page 87 of Lessons for Marquesses
Mr. Wolf shot up to sitting on the opposite side of the bed.
Georgiana’s bottom fell back in shock to her heels. He would turn around and she would—what?
What now? What bloody now?
His fingers clawed through his hair. He threw his arm down, his hand capturing the bed linens, twisting them as he hung his head. His shoulders shuddered. The sinews in his back undulated in the shadows.
He began to weep.
Georgiana was crawling across the bed before she could weigh the consequences. He slewed his head at her approach, his eye creased at its corner in narrowed disbelief. For a moment, she feared his big hand upon the sheet would rise up and shove her to the floor.
“Wolf?” she whispered.
He stared without a word, without moving.
“I was walking the passageways.” He was so strong and so lonely. He just needed something. Someone. A touch to soothe his shattered spirit.
She cupped her palm along the thick line sloping from his neck.
He twisted farther toward her to peer down at her hand.
When she had been frightened, when she had almost fallen at the ruins, he had soothed her. She threaded through his damp, curling hair to his crown while he continued to stare. But the effect it had on her was a bewildering fire to her senses, spreading from the pads of her fingers to her arm, making her do the most outrageous thing. She wrapped her other arm about his neck and pressed her lips to his temple.
And she had words for him. They came out in a flood, to match the blood racing through her veins, faster than she’d everknown. “I know what it is, to be alone. To have to live with your choices and wanting nothing more than someone to share it with. You don’t have to tell me. But never doubt you share it without saying a word.”
He averted his face, his roughened cheek drawing against her arm that encircled him, back and forth, in the silence. The queasy unrest in her belly returned along with the compulsion to never let go of him. Ever. But she did, unlacing her fingers from his hair and soothing the black waves down to the rounded mass swathing his shoulder blade. There was another scar there, narrow like a whip had lashed at his flesh.
“I cannot make it better,” she murmured at the damp flesh of his throat. “Only a fool would think so. But whatever you have done, you are alive. And all you have are the very moments put in front of you. And then they are gone, and we never know what will replace them.”
A primitive sound formed in his chest. His voice rasped in a tight reply. “What do you want, George? In this moment.”
She answered without hesitation. “For you to know I am your friend.”
He pivoted swiftly. His thigh sheered the bed sheet, and knocking her knee, he threw her sideways. She fell back on her elbow, shocked at the decisive manner in which his body traveled through space.There.Here. Almost nothing in between.
His gaze seared her undress, her half-tucked shirt, her breeches unlaced at her knees. Looming over her, he planted a hand next to her hip, his arm locked across her middle. “You whispered to me words of utter tenderness. Words I have never heard. Sentiments I am certain you’ve never expressed.”
He looked over his own bare, muscled flesh and back at her. “I am for all intents and purposes, naked. And you are here in my bed. With this shirt.” He pinched a finger and thumb at hershirt lacing, untying it with painstaking slowness. “Leaving little to the imagination where your breasts are concerned.”
Her breasts tingled with heat at their bold mention. Other places.
He bent his elbow, slowly, surely, until their noses touched. His eyes glowed just like his namesake. “What do you really want?”
All the dreams she had never known she had could be fulfilled if she simply had the nerve to move one inch. Temptation quivered at her mouth. She released her teeth from the inside of her lip. “I want to kiss you.”
“Well.” His breath raised his shoulders. "Here I am.”
She slipped a hand to his scarred cheek. "You’ll allow it?”
"Love,” he whispered, "I’ll welcome it.”
"I’ve never?—”
"Kiss me, damn you. Now.”
She hurriedly brushed her lips against his and pressed her head back to the mattress shocked at the frightening pleasure. Heat ran an unheeded course through her body. Her first kiss. If only she had taken her time.
His lashes buffeted his eyes in the light. “Kiss me again, George.”
