Page 63 of Lord Ashley's Beautiful Alibi
“A shawl,” she announced, as if he should be smart enough to see it.
“For?”
“You!” she barked, and chuckled. “One gets cold when one sleeps alone.”
He sent her a quelling look. “You could invite me to join you.”
“Ba! You would never come.”
He’d been mad with nearlycomingevery day, every hour, since they’d left Paris together. It had taken all his control not to finish himself off day by day, night by night. “I have.”
She blinked. “Come?”
He laughed at her, at him, at their hellacious conflict of wanting and not having. That was his fault, her fault, her aunt’s too!For God’s sake.“I like you, Gus. Too much. You test my mettle by your very presence.”
“Do I?” she asked, sounding honored. “Don’t you defy your own rule not to have me by even telling me that?”
“I do. You cannot imagine how I almost destroy my resolve every minute of every hour.”
Her expression of surprise melted to one of naked desire.
“Put that down,” he told her, his words low and desperate, as was his need to at least hold her in his arms.
“No.” She went back to clickety-clacking.
“Gus.”
“I can’t, Kane. If I come over there, I may never leave.”
“What fun,” he ground out.
She dropped the needles to her lap. “This journey is too long, the road is too rough, and my…my shawl…” She held the silly purple thing up to the light from the window. “My shawl will never be beautiful. Besides, if I come over there, we can’t do anything. Not in this carriage. It’s too…lumpy. Bumpy. I’d be on the floor, and you…”
“Gus.”
“Yes.”
“Shut up.” He crooked his finger.
*
Oh, she wastempted. She kept up the business with the knitting not because she was lost in anxiety about Amber. Not lately. Not as much as before. She just knew this trip to Varennes would yield her friend. But this constant presence of Kane… The need. The urge to crawl into his lap and have his lips and his hands on her. She envisioned herself yanking off her clothes. If a woman could ever do that. Ripping them was more the expedient measure, yes?
“Gus, you think too much.”
“I do. I think of having you all the time. Day. Night. In between.”Oh, hell!She blushed like a pomegranate and put a hand over her face.
“Well, that is something I am so happy to hear.”
She could not go on denying all that he was to her. “When I woke up last night, you were all over me.” Not quite. But the sensation was one she adored. She hadn’t moved a muscle, either. To be handled by him as she had been in the lodge, and in St. Antoine’s house as he consoled her, was becoming her newest need. She thought of ways to have him touch her, or she him. He called her his darling or his dear, and she sank into the cheeryaura of his delight in her. If she did the same for him with looks or words or deeds, she was now not certain. She only knew she wanted to be near him, with him, beneath his hand and his fine, bold body.
“Put down those things,” he said, his gray eyes stark with an intent that made her drool. “I don’t want to be stabbed.”
She chuckled and tossed her head. “If I do,” she told him while her insides gushed with need, “I’ll never finish.”
“Augustine.” He beckoned again with his fingers. “Never finish.”
Her mouth dropped open.
