Page 48 of One Dangerous Desire
“He’s injured.” She patted Charlie’s back near his misshapen rear leg, and his tail began wagging a merry jig.
“Happened long before I met him.” The little wire-hired dog had likely found himself on the wrong end of a fight with a larger dog or perhaps caught under the wheel of a drayer’s cart. Whatever the cause of his injury, he’d come through the pain and found a way to manage just fine. Rex admired that about the little scrapper. “His leg won’t improve, but it never seems to slow him down.”
May lowered her head close enough to kiss the mutt and whispered in his half-cocked ear. “It seems you’ve revealed that Mr. Leighton has a heart, after all.”
“I did try to shoo him off.” He had no idea why he felt the need to defend himself. He’d admit to a thousand weaknesses if it made her smile at him as she was now against Charlie’s brindled fur.
“We know the truth of it. Don’t we, Charlie?” After giving the dog a final pat, May stood to face him. “So you take in stray dogs but have an aversion to stray cats.”
“May—”
“You walked away. Again. Emily says her father told you that Henry planned to propose. You believed I’d accept. Why?”
As fetching as he found the blue fire in her eyes, the disappointment he read there sliced through him as easily as that stiletto blade had years before.
“Please don’t tell me it’s because I named my catDuchess.”
“I wanted to give you the chance to make a choice. Though when you put it that way . . . ” Rex stepped forward and caught her around the waist. Warm, lush woman filled his hands. Better, she pressed into him, all her curves snug against his hard edges.
“It sounds ridiculous?”
“You’re angry.” He stated the fact as he nuzzled the downy softness of her cheek.
“Less so now than when I walked through your door, I must admit.” She lowered her eyes, staring somewhere in the region of his third button. Her body warmed his, and when she arched her back a fraction to get closer, he fought to maintain control, to push past the desire she always stoked in him, and remember all the pretty words he’d imagined saying at this moment.
“Excellent, because I have a rather important question to ask you,” he finally said.
Her head tipped back and she watched him, not with distrust but with hope. So much hope. As much as he’d seen in her gaze half a dozen years before. How many times had he been on the cusp of asking her then? Fear and cowardice had always tied him up, bound his tongue as tightly and thoroughly as they’d strapped him to his bed at the orphanage when he got into a fight or spoke out of turn.
“I’m ready to hear your question,” she prompted, tugging at the button that had recently garnered so much of her attention.
Beyond ready. Overdue, she meant to say. He could see the anticipation in her lovely thick-lashed eyes.
Rex swallowed and drew in a breath that was as much an easing of tension as a deep inhale of May’s scent.
Why were words so damn difficult when his chest was on the verge of bursting? He could show her his feelings much more easily than he could talk about them. She’d always been the wordy one, enthusing like an onrushing train about this topic or that.
Her waist felt so right between the span of his hands. He wanted to hold her like this every day for the rest of his days. Stroking one hand up her back, he reached high enough to feel a few loose strands of her hair brushing against his fingers.
“Be mine, May.” It was all he could manage, the heart of all he wanted to tell her. “Marry me?”
The heartbeat pause between his question and her response stretched out for what felt like an agonizing eternity. Then, just a moment later, a soft inhale, parted lips, and “Yes.”
He dipped his head to take her mouth, forcing himself to be gentle, to taste her rather than devour. That would come later.
“Yes,” she said again when he pulled away. Then she balanced her hands on his shoulders and pushed up to kiss him, tasting him, stroking him with her tongue, driving him mad.
When her breasts slid down his chest as she lowered herself to her heels, she pulled her head back, assessing him. Whatever she saw, whatever evidence he displayed of the lustful craving she’d stirred in him, it seemed to please her. “Yes, I’ll marry you.” She reached up to caress his jaw, running her finger down to the divot in chin. “Mrs. Leighton has a nice ring to it.”
She knew exactly what he needed to hear. Her words salved his fears like honey soothed a wound.Mrs.was all he could offer her. No title, no inherited castle, no noble blood flowing in his veins.
“Then I think you should have it as soon as possible.” He lifted her off her feet and stepped with her toward the wall she’d been so fond of. Positioning her body just to the right of the dancing nymphs, he cupped her face in his palms, caressed her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs, and lowered his mouth to hers, urging her to open to him. She did, and the relief made his blood thrash in his ears.May is mine.His woman. His love. His wife.
He tasted her as if for the first time. Kissing her deep, then skimming his mouth down her neck, nipping at the tender skin, wanting more, always more of her. Never would he have enough of kissing, holding, loving May.
Minutes later, when they were both breathless, when she was pulling at the V in his waistcoat and he’d shaped his hand around one lush breast through the fabric of her bodice, she rasped against his mouth. “One thing first.”
He could think of nothing but having her against him, fusing his body with hers, dispensing with all the ridiculous layers of clothes keeping them apart.
