Page 53 of Cora
“Yet you have avoided me all the weeks we have been married.”
“I didn’t want to fight with you.” He’d been busy cleaning up the mess he’d made of her brother’s bank, but he could hardly tell her that.
“It helps to know that you didn’t ruin me out of spite.”
“Never.” He smoothed a strand of hair away from her face. “Are you going to be frank with me about how you met other men?”
“You had no claim to me then,” she reminded him. “I am not asking about your past. I don’t want to know.”
“I’m curious, is all.”
“I met them through newspaper advertisements. I never told them my true name or where I lived. We always met in public. There weren’t very many who warranted a second letter, much less a second meeting, but I did meet someone. It’s been over for years,” she said in a rush of breath. “I didn’t know what else to do. It wasn’t as though I had great options elsewhere.”
“I’m not criticizing you, Cora. If anything, I’m angry with myself. I could have lost you to another man. That would have been unacceptable.”
“I didn’t exactly advertise that I was a duke’s daughter,” she said, and the sadness in her voice nearly undid him. She had tried so hard to find a place to belong, and only a handful of people had offered her friendship when she most needed it. Now his mother had all but demanded she abandon Honey Caldwell. All for a bank that would never love any of them back.
“You wouldn’t have had more than a decade to test the waters and decide that what you truly wanted was me, either,” she countered.
“What makes you think I tested the waters?”
She shrugged, unconvincingly indifferent.
“I did, but not seriously. None of those women were you.” He slid his arm around her waist and tugged her closer. Cora leaned into him, her solid warmth and delicious curves working their usual magic. “You were all I wanted.”
He bent his head and kissed her, unhurried, soaking in how right she felt. He had spent years plotting this marriage and it had been worth every heartache and setback, every ruthless action it had taken to get here.
“I’d have ruined you a hundred times over if that’s what it took to make you my wife.”
She pulled back, laughing.
“You could have asked me, you know.”
He pulled them fractionally closer, pressed together from shoulder to hip, and kissed her deeply. Daringly, he slipped one button free at the base of her neck. Then another. Cora arched into him, her generous breasts flattened and maddeningly caged behind layers of silk and cotton. He wanted—needed—to feel her skin on his. Weeks of torment, having her so near and so distant at once.
A second button slipped free. A third. Slowly, Cora withdrew, running her hands down his arms. Gideon’s stomach dropped.
He had miscalculated. Again.
But Cora simply took his hands and squeezed.
“As much fun as we had together the last time we played billiards, I did not find the table to be a very comfortable place for kissing. I suggest we relocate to your room?”
Gideon thought he might pass out from sheer joy of her leading him upstairs to their private quarters. He couldn’t resist pressing her against the railing on the way up. Cora giggled.
“I haven’t heard you laugh like that since your debut.”
Cora froze, and for a split second, Gideon thought he’d ruined the moment.
“I didn’t think it was possible for me to be happy like that again.” She bent her head and nipped his jaw. Pressed a soft kiss to his throat. Places where he wanted to taste her, too. His cock thickened in response. His throat worked when she said, “The day we married, I thought I would never be happy again. I was cold to you, Gideon.”
“You aren’t cold now.”
He slipped another button free. Her dress gaped open from the back of her neck to her waist. She held his eye.
“No. If anything, I am rather warm.”
Cora slipped out of his grasp and continued up the stairs. The narrow V of her exposed spine between the deep red edges of her gown sent a rush of blood southward so quickly he nearly saw stars. He had seen her wearing less, yet this glimpse of her sent heat shooting through his veins.
