Page 90 of What's an Earl Gotta Do?
Michael felt the man grab his arm from behind. “Where do you think you’re going? I said I wanted a go with her.”
Michael shook him off. “I’ve decided I want her for the entire night.”
Unable to take the hint, the man began jogging after them. “That’s fine and good but let me have a turn with her first.” He eyed Anne’s figure appreciatively. “Aren’t you a rum piece? Lift up your skirts for me, little squirrel, this won’t take me but a minute.”
That was when the lanky man made a crucial mistake. After another fruitless attempt to arrest Michael’s progress, he reached out and grabbed Anne by the arm, jerking her to a halt. Her eyes went wide.
“Unhand her,” Michael growled. “Now.”
A scowl crossed the blond man’s face, and this time he yanked Anne’s arm. “The hell I will! Not until I’ve—"
Michael’s fist took the man square in the left eye. The punch would have been enough to knock most men out cold, but it appeared this man’s one redeeming quality was that he knew how to take a punch.
The quality was redeeming only because it afforded Michael the pleasure of hitting him again. A hook to the right temple followed by an uppercut beneath his chin and the man’s body went limp, then crumpled to the ground in a heap.
Anne was staring slack-jawed at the man’s collapsed form. Michael grabbed her around the waist and lifted her over the man’s inert body. “Let’s go,” he growled, hauling her back toward the main road.
Chapter 33
They jogged back to Westminster Bridge, where Michael managed to flag down a hackney carriage. Inside, he found that his hands were shaking. He had lived on the frontier. He’d been charged by a bear. He was no stranger to life-or-death situations.
But seeing Anne in danger was something different altogether.
Watching that cretin lay hands on her, knowing that, had he not been there, that worthless piece of trash would probably have raped her… Michael finally understood the true meaning of things that had only been words before. Words like bloodlust and battle rage. He was furious, but in the moment, he’d felt fear such as he had never experienced before. The threat of getting mauled to death by a bear was nothing, nothing, next to the terror of something bad happening to Anne.
And even though she was out of immediate danger, Michael felt like a gunpowder wagon bumping along the road, ready to explode if a wheel threw up a single spark. He didn’t trust himself to say one word to Anne right now. He wasn’t mad at her, but there was no possibility of him speaking without shouting.
On the seat opposite him, Anne pulled off her cap, and her hair came tumbling out of its knot. God, she looked beautiful in the moonlight, with her hair falling all around her and that high color in her cheeks. She looked… freshly tumbled.
Just like that, all the violent emotions thrashing around inside of him transformed into pure, unadulterated lust. He wanted to bury his hands in her hair, bury his face in her neck, and then bury his cock inside her. He wanted to reassure himself that she was alive, she was well, and she was his.
He curled his fingers around the edge of the seat to stop himself from grabbing her and hauling her into his lap. He was in no condition to touch her; she deserved gentle caresses, and right now all he wanted to do was pound into her like a rutting animal. Hell, he hardly even dared to look at her.
But as she tossed her cap aside, he noticed that her fingers were trembling. He seized her hand. “What’s this?” he demanded in a voice that shook. “Are you hurt? Upset? Overwrought?”
Anne gave him a look. “Overwrought?”
“Your hands are shaking.”
“So are yours!”
He released her as if he’d been singed. “You don’t want to know why my hands are shaking,” he said darkly.
“Yes, I do,” Anne said, and that was when he noticed she was panting.
“Don’t push me right now, Anne.”
“Do you not know me at all? Telling me not to ask makes me all the more determined to know. You may as well go ahead and—”
He grabbed her with a snarl, hauling her into his lap so that she straddled him. His lips crashed down on hers, and then he was devouring her. His hands were not gentle, for all that they shook as he ran them absolutely everywhere over her body.
God, he needed to get control of himself. This was Anne, his Anne, his future lady wife, and here he was, mauling her like a rabid animal. Although she was tolerating it stoically. She was kissing him back, her arms around his neck, her hands stroking over his shoulders, and if he didn’t know better, he would have said that her hips… that her hips…
That her hips were grinding against his rock-hard cock.
He jerked his lips from hers, his hands coming up to frame her face in shock. “Anne?”
He could read her face, even in the near-darkness, and what he saw there was lust. Without breaking eye contact, she reached down and stroked his straining erection through his trousers. “Is this why your hands are shaking, Michael?” she asked breathily.
