Page 45 of Unmasking a Wicked Marquess
“Envy me? Whatever for?” he asked with a laugh.
“Your freedom,” she declared with sudden vigour. “You have had a completely free life of your own. You have adventured this world as few ever get the chance to. And me? I have sat at home and done what my parents wish me to do.”
“Ah, rebellion,” he whispered, relishing the word as he took a sip. “It truly is the taste of freedom. I could tell you about my travels. I could tell you of India and the animals I saw there, the wildness of the parties, the staggering nature of the landscape. I could tell you too of Italy, the culture, the art, the masked balls, and the illicitness that happened in corridors.”
At his words, he looked at her, and she felt her breath hitch in her throat.
Illicitness?
“You have often bent the rules, have you not?” she murmured, leaning towards him even more than before. She was on the cusp of begging him to show her all the ways that she, too, could break the rules.
“You sure you want to hear how I have broken the rules? Not just bent them but broken them completely.” He sat up, moving closer towards her.
“You’ve been with women,” she whispered, longing to know what it was like, but would words be enough to know the taste of that rebellion?
He said nothing but raised his eyebrows a little. She bit her lip, feeling such tension in the air between them that she had to stop herself from moving forward into his arms, and took a sip of champagne instead.
“You want to be shown what it is like?” he asked, his eyes drifting down to her lips once more. “You want that rebellion?”
She nodded and sighed aloud. The sound seemed to do something to him, for he chuckled deeply and raised his glass to his lips.
“First, tell me this,” he whispered, putting down the glass behind him. “Has your childhood always been so closeted?”
“A little, yes.” Before Juliet knew what she was doing, she was telling Edward everything as if there had never been a barrier between his family and hers. She told him about how her mother and father stayed away from ton events, how she and Violet were often kept at home, away from others, and how the adventures she’d longed for had never quite been realized.
When she finished, she found his hand in hers. He toyed with her fingers, playing idly, as he looked into her eyes. “Can you blame me for longing for freedom after that life? It has not been miserable, far from it, but I can’t help …”
“Wanting more.” He finished her sentence knowingly and nodded. “I know that feeling all too well; it’s one of the reasons I travelled in the first place. It was a longing to know a world that wasn’t framed through my parents’ eyes but through my own.”
“And what did you make of it?” She had long discarded her own glass now. They had barely drunk any of the champagne but seemed captivated with one another instead, talking as they sat on the blanket, the moonlight basking his handsome features in an alluring white light. “What do you now think of the world?”
“That there is far more to it than anyone could ever describe in one sentence,” he said playfully. “It is far more beautiful than you think. Yet it is more dangerous, too. As much as there is good in this world, there is bad, but there are other things too. There’s excitement…” He lifted her hand between them, pulling it near his lips and brushing his lips across her knuckles. “There is pleasure.”
Excitement coiled in her stomach and shot even lower. That wet and aching feeling she had sensed before was back again now. To relieve some of it, she shifted on her knees, moving an inch towards him.
“You know the world as I do not,” she whispered.
“I can introduce you to it if you like,” he murmured.
For one wild second, she thought he meant completely, that maybe he would take her travelling too, then she remembered where they were.
He is offering me pleasure.
For some reason, this excited her just as much.
“Show me,” she whispered and edged towards him. He shifted her hand, pulling it across his shoulder so that her body slid against his own, one of her thighs moving between two of his so she could kneel on the ground, and then his arm slipped around her waist. Her body nestled against his completely, as if their bodies were moulded together. Everywhere that their bodies touched, she felt heat and that tingling excitement.
“Tell me to stop any time,” he whispered in a rush.
I do not think I will want to stop.
Then he kissed her again.
Chapter 14
“Edward.” Juliet moaned his name as Edward moved over her.
One heated kiss was melding into another, and Edward had no wish to pull back from her. He was already reaching for the pelisse on Juliet’s shoulders, shifting it and pulling it apart so he could reach more of her.
