Page 33 of Lord Ramsey's Red-Headed Ruin
“That’s what you wanted from me! There is a reason—”
“Wonderful.” He walked around her.
“Don’t you want to know? No? Well…stop! Listen to me. I donotwant to tell the world this bit.”
He halted and flapped his arms at his sides. “What?”
She walked right up to him, her breasts spilling from that blue silk, heaving and gilded by the moonlight. “Edouard’s young friend says the new muskets are going to Sedan.”
His face fell. “Good to know.” After a moment’s consideration, he marched on.
“Wait! Ram! Stop. We must go to Sedan!”
He scowled, then walked around her.
She ran in front of him again.
He stepped to one side.
“Sedan, Ram. I will go to Sedan. You too.”
“Really? How wonderful. But in reality, my darling, it changes nothing.”
“Because I won’t go to London? Or…or all those other places?”
He whirled on her, an arm out, anger in every growl. “Oui,madame! Because I can’t leave. Because you won’t go. Because the night is long and my temper short. Because I am a man who needs to go swimming in the river, andyou”—he poked a finger at her—“cannot follow.”
She looked as if he’d struck her. “I… But… It’s night. Not safe.”
He spun away and back again, so quickly that she teetered on her feet.
He caught her arms and held her against him. Every sensuous muscle in her supple body rubbed against his. Damn his chivalry!
“Thisis not safe.This!” He crushed her against him. “And this!” He jammed one hand up into the thick curls of her hair and, with the other hand, found her arse, plump and hard. “And this,” he whispered against her lush lips, brushing them with the most innocent kiss and prying them open to explore all of her with his tongue.
*
She melted intohis embrace as his tongue seized every bit of her mouth.
He lifted away. She hung there in his arms while he squinted at her in the moonlight as if she were a stranger who had shocked him with her presence.
That was exactly what he had been to her. A stranger become friend. A friend who was now dearer. Necessary to her.
Fighting for logic as he took her lips again, she went, lost in the music of sweet security he alone brought her. The rhapsody he created played in her head like a score of violins leading tofreedom. Cares gone, love embraced, she drew him closer. Why could he not be her lover? She could not remember, did not want to. She only knew that to clutch him close and sink her fingers in his long, silken hair was assurance of ecstasy. And she had not had that in so very long.
He gave it freely. Always had.
“There is no rule,” she murmured to him when he raised his face. “No reason to this.”
“True.” He let her go so quickly, she struggled to find her balance again, waving her arms in the air.
He steadied her…and left her.
She would not let him go angry and without resolution.
Amber ran and caught him, seized him by his frock coat, and rose on her toes. Her arms around his shoulders, she looped a leg around one of his thighs and nearly climbed him like a cat. He washers.She was his and she’dhavehim. His anguish, his need, matched her own.
Andoh. Ohh.He felt like every lovely sentiment he’d ever spoken to her.Allow me to protect you, defend you, guard you from all harm.
