Page 27 of The Wolf of Mayfair
How droll. “We are not friends,” he said. “I do not havefriends.” He’d people who sought a connection to him for the title he’d one day inherit, but that was it.
Compassion flared in her eyes, and she tightened her hold upon Wingrave’s hands, and that deepening heat in their drawing proved compelling. Lust stirred. From a mere touch?
Nay, it wasn’t a mere touch, but rather that of an innocent whose hands were unsullied and inexperienced.
Now, in his mind, he envisioned guiding her fingers around his hard cock and teaching her the rhythm he so loved.
“You may not have had friends before, but you have one now,” she murmured.
Friends. The half-wit. Had she not yet realized he was not a man who wanted or needed friends?
“I was fine before,” he purred.
Miss Wallace scoffed. “No one is fine without friends.”
Suddenly, he switched the position of their palms so that he’d hers under his, and his fingers curled tightly around to keep her in place.
She trembled but did not pull away, and that show of courage and strength only fueled the flames of his unlikely desire.
“As I said ...” He drew her closer and placed his lips close to her right ear. “I have no need of friends, Miss Wallace,” he whispered.
Near as they were, he felt her body quiver with a physical awareness he doubted she understood.
With his spare hand, he pushed her heavy titian curls away from her neck and exposed that long, graceful arch. He moved his mouth lower. “What I do have a current need for is a mistress.” As he spoke,his lips brushed her skin in an intentional kiss. “Might you be interested in filling that coveted role, Helia?”
Daughter of the sun god, and possessed of an irrepressible aura of light, a more perfect name for the lady couldn’t exist if Helios himself had conferred it upon the effervescent, titian-haired sprite.
The column of her throat moved wildly. Her supernaturally lustrous lashes fluttered.
Satisfaction brought his lips curling at the corners.
Hungry to taste of her innocent mouth, he moved to take it under his—and claim their first kiss.
“Helia.” Her threadbare name in the form of a breathy exhalation froze him.
He stared at her.
“You called me Helia,” she murmured, her eyes heavy with desire and some other soft, sentimental emotion he’d never before witnessed or experienced and as such couldn’t put a name to.
“And?” he snapped, annoyed that she’d befuddled him when all he wanted to do was drink his fill of her mouth so he could at last be free of this malignant spell that, in her innocence, she’d cast upon him.
Her long, sooty lashes lifted to reveal glittering green eyes. “That is the first time you’ve done so.”
Impatient, he repeated himself. “And? What is it exactly you are saying?”
“Well,” she said slowly, “you’ve now referred to me as my given name, but I do not have yours.”
“Wingrave.”
She shook her head. “That is your title.”
“You don’t need to refer to me as anything else,” he said bluntly.
Helia scoffed. “Of course I do, and it can’t be Wingrave, because that is a rather grim title that does not suit you.”
“It suits me beyond perfectly.”
“Aye, with your surly temper, it does, but as Edward Gibbon says, the prediction contributes to the accomplishment.”
