Page 68 of Tempting the Scoundrel
Look at me,he willed her.Look at me.
But she only shrugged his hand off her shoulder and disappeared inside her bedchamber. The door closed behind her.
And she bolted the lock.
Thorne went into his own room, wondering at her confession of a sound. Did she spend the journey home imagining, like he had, what might have happened back in Mayfair? He had lost all sense of himself. Of where they were. His entire attention had been on her, noting every slip of her calm facade. Her teeth pressed to her lower lip. The hard grip of her fingernails on the chaise. The soft noises she made—had she even beenawareof those? Had—
His breathing came hard as Thorne leaned over his desk. He shut his eyes and reimagined that room in Mayfair. In his fantasy, Alex had let him kiss her, had taken his hand in hers and slipped it beneath her petticoat. She would have guided him unerringly to the juncture of her thighs, and left him there to explore as he wished.
With a groan, Thorne tore at the buttons of his trousers and took his cock into his hand. He imagined her wet quim gripping his finger as he slipped it inside her. One finger first, then two, mimicking what he wanted to do to her with his cock. He would have eased her back on the sofa. His tongue would have licked a path down her throat as he removed his fingers and finally thrust into her.
“Yes,” he hissed softly, working his hand fast.
She’d be warm and wet and tight. She’d whisper in his ear a request, a litany, just like back in Gretna, and then again in their private rail cabin as the train swayed back and forth:Harder. Faster. Fuck me, Nick. Fuck me.
He grasped the kerchief from his pocket. His orgasm left him dizzy. “Alex,” he whispered with a rough groan. “Alex.”
After a few heartbeats, his breathing came down. Nick turned to toss the kerchief into the wastebasket—
And found Alex standing in the doorway that connected their bedchambers.
Nick shut his eyes and buttoned up his trousers. He wasn’t ashamed that she had caught him—for he knew, based on her expression, that she had heard him moan her name. That she knew exactly what he imagined in the privacy of his own room. How could he apologize for wanting her? It was fundamental, this fierce desire. It would be like apologizing for the way his heart sped up when he caught sight of her.
She opened her mouth to speak.
Nick braced himself.
But she only whispered, “Why haven’t you been with other women?”
Nick leaned over the desk again. “You know the answer to that question,” he said. “You remember the night in Gretna. I told you then.”
“You told me so many things.” Her voice was so low, it barely reached him.
“One truth. Do you want me to repeat it?”
“No.” She shook her head sharply. “I don’t want those words from you.”
And why should she? He had spoken those words the night after he was rewarded for his months long deception. Telling her he loved her didn’t matter, not after that.
He studied her face, so familiar that he could recall every line, every freckle, every detail. It was terrain he had explored in his dreams for almost five years. Yet her thoughts were as uncharted to him as the darkest depths of the ocean.
“Then what do you want from me?”
She drew closer. Again, he braced himself. To Thorne, she would always be that woman in the lake, capable of loving him or drowning him. It was a mercurial notion often left to the Irish fairytales his ma told him as a lad, but she embodied it. Loving her meant taking the leap into the water.
“As far as I’m concerned, this was our only truth in Hampshire.” She reached out and pressed her palm to his arm, but it was as if she had marked him. The heat of her touch seared his skin. “You desired me; I desired you. That was real.”
“Alex . . .”
She turned her nails into the fabric of his shirt. “We will not mince words. You wanted to fuck me in that room in Mayfair. Yes or no?”
Thorne loosed a breath. “Yes.”
“You want to fuck me now,” she whispered. “Yes or no?”
Christ god.“You know I do.”
“Then you must understand one thing,” she told him. “I don’t want pounds, shillings, pence, or properties. I want nothing from you. This means nothing. Do you agree?”
