Page 27 of Pride: The Rogue
She cleared her throat. “Allow me to gather my things.”
Silent, he stepped out of the rooms. For a second time, he shut that panel between them and allowed Livian privacy.
She quickly set to work gathering her belongings. As she went about tidying the handful of things she had out, she rapidly stuffed them into her valise.
Livian shed her night shift and donned her simplest gown. Biting her lip, she reached behind and strained to fasten the handful of buttons there. A short while later, out of breath and the muscles in her arms straining from having to contort herself, she found herself dressed.
Bag in hand, she made her way over to the door. Livian reached for the handle, but something held her back.
She cast a glance around the room; perhaps it was the late hour or the wild exchange that’d unfolded here, but as she took one final look, she had the feeling that something special had happened here this night.
Shaking her head to free herself of those fanciful thoughts, Livian let herself out.
“Good evening, Mr. Latimer,” she murmured, dropping him a curtsy.
He touched his fingertips to his forehead. “Mrs. Lovelace.”
While Livian made a slow walk down the hall to a room that didn’t exist for her, she felt Mr. Latimer’s gaze following her the whole while.
When she’d reached the very end, and there was no other fake room to find, she stopped. Raising her fingertips she gave Mr. Latimer a small wave and a smile. He bowed in return.
And as she took the hall door handle in her hand, she heard the faint click as Mr. Latimer entered his rooms and disappeared from her life.
Chapter 5
Lying on the lumpy, but warm mattress in his room at The St. George’s Inn, Latimer scowled at the ancient ceiling overhead.
He had spent enough nights sleeping on England’s grimiest, coldest, cobblestones. Hell, he’d spent evenmorenights without getting a single nod of sleep.
In his early years, all of his nights had been spent with one eye open to keep from getting a knife in the belly or worse.
As a man who’d made it out alive, he’d lived for his business.
This night, neither business nor the threat of danger kept him from sleep.
Rather, thoughts of the spirited, infuriating, and very delectable, Mrs. Lovelace occupied every blasted corner of his mind. It took a good deal to impress him, but after his initial fury at being displaced by a nob—who’d turned out to be a noblewoman—Latimer had found himself filled with a reluctant admiration.
She fought with a skill most men didn’t have and possessed a quick and colorful tongue that even in the throes of his anger, he’d fought to keep from smiling over.
With her doe-like eyes and pillowy lips made for all manner of wicked delights, he let himself imagine all the things she could do to him with that lush mouth.
She’d be as unrestrained in bed as she’d been in a fight. She’d take a man’s length, ballocks deep inside her throat.
“Bloody hell,” he said on a sharp exhale, through his teeth.
In matters of sex, he’d always possessed a lusty appetite. Never, however, had he been a slave to his hungering.
Latimer closed his eyes and finally surrendered to the thought of them. He allowed himself to imagine sweet Mrs.Lovelace, who’d trembled in his arms, and the things he’d like to do to her, andwithher.
Against the dim lighting, the ridiculously modest nightshift she’d worn to sleep left little to the imagination. Her breasts weren’t the overly enormous ones he generally favored, but there’d been something just as—maybe even more—entrancing about her flesh, ample enough to fill his palms. It was like those gentle swells were meant for just Latimer’s hands.
The slowly dying fire cast the perfect amount of light over her; enough to reveal dark pink areolas and the stiff, brighter pink peaks at the center.
A fresh swell of blood rushed to his cock.
She’d wanted him, too. She’d quivered in his arms as he’d held her. Her thirsting moans of desire weren’t the sort that could be faked. They repeated in his mind.
Aye, given the way she’d gone toe to toe with Latimer, a stranger in her rooms, she’d be a fiery tigress in bed.
