Page 53 of Sloth: The Fallen Earl
There were too many questions.
What to do with her? What to do with her?
There remained the obvious fact he couldn’t let her out of his sight. Once she slipped away, she could freely share what’d transpired between them at The Devil’s Den. With one utterance, the good name he’d built would be destroyed. Wakefield would deservingly find himself in the same category of his philandering father before him.
Wakefield’s jaw rippled and buckled. There’d be one important distinction between him and the previous earl. Wakefield would never leave those dependent upon him in squalor as his father had left Verity and Livian.
He kept up his study of her.
Cressida, as intrepid as Joan of Arc from behind the pearl-encrusted mask he’d carefully unwound from her head last evening, boldly watched Wakefield in return.
Thisis who she was. This magnificently audacious creature glaring angrily at him. She bore no traces of the hesitant, fragile, hurt innocent with a trembling mouth from earlier this morn.
It was settled. It had always been necessary. He’d known it the minute he arrived in the kitchens to find Cressida gone.
“You are coming with me, Miss Smith,” he purred, his voice came rougher, hoarser than usual.
The lady’s delicately pointed jaw dropped, and she went shooting to the edge of her seat. “I beg your pardon. I am most certainly not returning to The Devil’s Den! Absolutely not.”
Cressida fell back on an angry huff. Folding her arms at her chest, she glowered at Wakefield.
While the carriage rocked and swayed along uneven streets, he contemplated her in ways he oughtn’t.
The fire in her maple-brown, gold-flecked eyes brought on a rush memories of those variegated pools bright with desire—when he’d licked her, sucked her, rocked himself deep inside her sweet, tight channel as she came loudly.
There’d never been anything more satisfying than the way her walls clenched and spasmed about his length.
Wakefield’s jaw clenched, this time not with anger but restraint. He drew in a strained breath slowly through his nose, and he couldn’t stop himself from recalling all of it.
The sounds of her climaxing filled his ears. Her breathless screams. Her soft, sultry moans.
Wakefield’s lust for her, and the yearning to take her here in this carriage, threatened to make him forget all the concerns he had about his reputation or her intentions.
The sight of her, so poised and belligerent, managed to break Wakefield from his spell.
He was stronger than his basic, basest instincts.
“You are going home with me, Cressida.”
“I most certainly am not going anywhere with you. There is no reason for it,” she protested.
“There is.”
Cressida stared at him expectantly. “Yes?” she urged. With the lady’s impatience, she managed to squeeze an extra syllable into that one-word response.
God, she was vivacious. Like a Vauxhall Gardens firework packed into a cannon and exploding in an effervescent display upon the night sky.
Wakefield curled his lips in silent provocation. “I want you to.”
Just as intriguing, she didn’t take his bait. “You want me to?” she repeated back bluntly, so emotionless he thought maybe he imagined the lady who’d greeted him this morning…and last night.
“Yes.” Alas, it proved an even more exquisite challenge, attempting to needle her. “And more importantly, you will be joining me.”
She surged forward and placed her pert nose near the tip of his hawkish one. “Do you think so?” she seethed.
Ah, yes, he far preferred her this way, all fire and spirit and not downtrodden and wounded.
He smirked. “Indeed.”
