Page 45 of One Dangerous Desire
Head bent, his voice muffled, May wasn’t certain she’d heard him. “Pardon?”
“Duchess. Countess. A title.” He snapped his gaze up, those glowing eyes of his boring into hers. “Does it suit you?” Two long strides brought his body close, an inch from hers, yet he didn’t touch her as she wanted him to do. And he didn’t spare a glance for the cat. “Do you want a title, May?”
“Not particularly, no.” It seemed such an odd thing to say, quite the opposite of what everyone expected of her. Enough to send her mother into apoplexy if she’d still been alive. It was a truth she’d always known but had never allowed herself to speak aloud.
He gripped her upper arms, and Duchess’s tail began a series of furious flicks as she glared at him. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.”
There was nothing soft in his gaze now, none of the heat of those glorious moments when he’d touched her. May pulled away from him and settled the cat back in her corner of the settee, rubbing a hand over Duchess’s sleek head a few times before stepping toward Rex again.
“My mother wanted it.” Suddenly chilled by his changed demeanor, May wrapped her arms around herself. “More than she desired anything, I think.”
“You told me you wanted it too,” he said quietly. “The first day we met.”
“For goodness sakes, I was boasting, parroting what I’d been told all my life.” She waved a hand, encompassing him from head to toe. “Besides, you were tall and handsome and altogether unexpected. You made me nervous. I hardly knew what I was saying.”
“Do I still make you nervous?” His husky tone lured her, and she stepped close enough to lay a hand on his chest. His heart beat frantically against her palm.
“Not when you’re looking at me as you are now.”
He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close. “How am I looking at you?”
“As if you want me. As if you . . . love me.” Her voice went quiet as she said the word, which was strange, since her heart, mind, and body were ringing with the sentiment.
Dipping his head, he took her lips tenderly. And far too briefly. “I need to let you choose. To give you the chance to have what you’ve always wanted.”
With that, he pulled away and strode toward the parlor door, glancing back at her for one long, searching moment before stepping out and pulling the door shut behind him.
That scream she’d held back during her climax welled up again. In that intimate moment with him, she’d made her choice. From the moment she’d met the man, he’d always been who she wanted.
Unfortunately, the choice she’d made had left her—again—and walked out the door.
Chapter Fifteen
Three days later
“MRS. HARK!” HE’Dgive the woman two more minutes, and then he was going to fire her. Not unreasonable, considering it was the third time he’d called her name, with no response, in half an hour’s time. As he straightened up in his desk chair, cupped his hands around his mouth, and prepared to shout for his housekeeper again, the one man in his employ who was always on time strode into his office at the exact moment he was expected.
Charlie scampered out from under Rex’s desk to welcome Jack Sullivan, emitting little growling squeaks.
“Good morning, sir,” Sullivan greeted. “You’ve taken on more staff, I see.” The inquiry agent sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose.
“No new staff.” Though he might be on the lookout for a new housekeeper soon. “Mrs. Hark has gone missing, so one of the kitchen maids is left answering the front door.”
Sullivan strode across the room and poked his finger into a divot in the wallpaper. “Did you shoot her?”
“Don’t be absurd.” Rex rolled his eyes, though the gesture was wasted on Sullivan, who continued to examine the bullet hole in the wall.
“Should I ask why you shot the wall? Or is that question too absurd as well?”
Rex sighed and ran a finger along the line of his eyebrow, across the spot where a pounding sledgehammer had taken up residence. Drink didn’t help. Sleep proved impossible. Distractions failed to distract. May was ever on his mind—her softness, her scent, and the delicious moans she’d let loose when he touched her. He needed to touch her again. The thought that another man would—Devenham or some other titled fop—made him seethe. His insides were twisted in knots, and he wanted to lash out at everyone and everything.
“I was . . . in a dark mood.”
“And took it out on the wall?” Sullivan turned on him with arms crossed and that pompous, disapproving frown marring his face. For a man of humble beginnings, he’d certainly perfected a superior mien.
“The wall didn’t complain.”
“Oh, Mr. Sullivan, thank goodness you’ve come!” Mrs. Hark hovered outside Rex’s office door, twisting her apron in her hands. “It still reeks of gunpowder in that room, doesn’t it?”
