Page 90 of Pride: The Rogue
A sigh slipped out and Livian tipped her mouth up to his. “Then, what I’m really trying to say is, spend the nightwithme.”
Lachlan’s fingers tensed at her nape.
“Livian,” he said slowly, his voice strained. “I don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
Yes, he did. He’d make her say it, anyway.
Fine.
Livian found the strength to speak in clear, solemn, unwavering, tones. “My husband is going to be a gentleman who will most certainly see me as his inferior. To him, I’ll be nothing but property. A vessel he uses to continue his line. There’ll certainly be no passion. No tenderness.”
With every word she spoke, the menacing glint in his eyes grew blacker and blacker.
Livian took Lachlan’s hands in hers and drew them to her breast. “I want to know what it is to be,”loved, “desired—truly desired.” In the absence of romantic love, she’d settle for pure, unbounded passion.
No, not just with any man, but with this one—Lachlan Latimer.
Before her courage deserted her, Livian lifted her chin. “Before I give myself to a husband, I want to know what it is to be held in the arms of a real man, Lachlan; atruegentleman, who will see to my needs, not just his own.”
And this marked her last chance.
“So will you?” she asked, shyly. “Make love to me?”
Lachlan’s harsh, angular features went taut, his body, tensed.
With an excruciating deliberateness, he untangled his hands from hers.
“Livian.” He spoke as gently as he might to a child, which somehow proved even more painful than his non-response. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Ido!” When her rebuttal came too vehemently, Livian repeated herself in calmer, more collected tones. “I do.
“You don’t though, darlin’.” Lachlan’s voice came strained. “You’re youn—”
At the look she gave him, he wisely corrected course. “You’re innocent,” he said bluntly. “You’ve never lain with a man, and to do so, it’ll only complicate things for you.”
She frowned. “Complicate things in what way?”
A ruddy flush splotched his cheeks. “Virgins,hell, mostallwomen, romanticize things in their head.”
“You’ve bedded virgins?” she asked, already almost sure he hadn’t.
Lachlan blanched. “Hell, no!”
“I know,” she said gently. “I was teasing.”
It didn’t help. Lachlan had the panicky look in his eyes of a man ready to bolt.
“Virgins will take a carnal act, Livian, and call it ‘making love’, and then go about confusing desire for love.”
“Iwon’t do that,” Livian said, softly.
Shecouldn’t.
She’d already fallen in love with him.
Lachlan leveled a flat, implacable stare upon her. “You won’t be able to help yourself, sweetheart.”
Livian feigned breeziness. “La, I didn’t take you as arrogant, Mr. Latimer.”
