Page 91 of The Secret of Flirting
“I have no complaints.”
He led her into his bedchamber and closed the door before saying, “I aim for better than that.” Then he thrust her against the door and kissed her hard and long, until he felt her soften against him.
She had put her faith in him, though he wasn’t sure why, given what she now knew about him. And he meant to prove himself worthy of it. He undressed her with great care, eager to see her body unveiled for him yet again.
And as before, he marveled at her perfection—full breasts, a slim belly that would make a man weep, and hips the right size for a man who liked a bit of flesh on his woman.
She blushed. “Why do you stare at me so?”
“Because I take great pleasure in looking at you.”
Seemingly self-conscious, she averted her gaze from him. “I’m not as pretty as some.”
“You’re a goddess,” he said, and meant it.
“With too prominent a chin and unruly hair and—” When he laughed, she cast him a hurt look. “What?”
“Forgive me, dearest, but surely a woman who entrances every man in her orbit knows that she’s gorgeous.”
She pouted in a way so classically French that he got hard just seeing it. “I still don’t like my chin.”
“Well, I love it.”
When the wordlovemade her shoot him a questioning glance, he cursed himself, not wanting her to put too much stock in whathadto be a mere slip of the tongue. Men like him did not fall in love. It was too... reckless.
He chucked her under her much-maligned chin. “It’s pert and assertive, just like you. As for your hair, I’ve only seen it covered in wigs, trussed up under hats, and wrapped up into fat chignons. Never down and loose.” He reached for her coiffeur, tugging it free of its pins. “So I mean to remedy that.”
With a satisfaction that sent his cock rousing even more, he watched her honey-brown tresses cascade down over her shoulders to nearly her hips, which was saying something, given how tall she was.
“There,” she said tartly. “Are you happy now? You have finally managed to unleash my hair.”
Unleashwas a good word. Because it was messy and thick and glorious. And all his.His.
He filled his hands with it, kissed its “unruly” mass, and then used hanks of it to caress her nipples until she sighed and melted. “Do you know what I see when I look at you?” he asked.
“A fake princess?”
“Not fake—but no, a princess is not what I see.” He backed her toward the bed, stripping off his clothes as he went. “I see the woman who will be my wife. The woman I will have in my bed for the rest of my days. The woman who will bear my children.”
The words sounded more like vows than he’d meant them to, and the alarm in her face gave him pause. “Oh, Gregory, we can’t marry. It will ruin you!”
“We can. Wewill. And it won’t.” He tumbled her down onto his bed, relishing the sight of her lying there, exactly where he wanted her. “I shall make it happen, my sweet. You just have to trust me to manage it.”
He had no plan yet, but he would find one somehow. He still had four days to do so.
Parting her legs with his knee, he moved between them and bent to kiss her mouth, but she caught his head in her hands to prevent it. “Are you marrying me solely because you took my innocence?”
He froze. The vulnerable look on her face told him what she wanted—the same words of love she’d given him. Words of love that would lay his heart bare to the knife, that would put the power to destroy him in her hands.
The man who ached to possess her wanted to say them, if only to please her. The cautious spymaster knew better.
The spymaster won out. “To paraphrase a certain fetching actress, ‘I desire you. That is all.’ ”
There was no mistaking the flicker of disappointment in her face. And seeing it made him feel as if he’d just told the first real falsehood of his life, even though he’d lied many times as a spymaster.
But never to himself. Never about something this important. And never to someone he cared about.
Then she smoothed her features into a seductive expression and said, in a coquettish voice just a shade forced, “Well, then, sir. What are you waiting for?”
