Page 95
Her throat tightened.
“I know that.”
“Do you?” His expression was suddenly grave. “Because I have spent weeks trying to understand why no other woman interests me, why I find myself thinking of you when I ought to be attending to a dozen other matters, and why the mere sight of you can make a complete fool of me.”
Cordelia stared at him. “George…”
“I am not accustomed to feeling so thoroughly unsettled by anyone.” A rueful smile touched his mouth.
She reached up and touched his cheek, marveling at the freedom of the gesture and the way his expression changed beneath her hand.
He turned his face and pressed a kiss into her palm.
Her eyes stung unexpectedly.
She had gone searching for the truth about a rogue and had found herself confronting something far more frightening: the possibility that she was already in love with him. And judging by the way George was looking at her, she was beginning to wonder whether she might not be alone in her feelings.
It was such a terrifying feeling.
She remained on his lap, her arms loosely linked behind his neck. At his mention of the manor, she glanced toward the opening in the branches, where the last of the daylight had disappeared, before turning back to him.
He lowered his forehead to hers once more. “I ought to take you back to the manor before your sister comes searching for you,” he murmured.
“I know.”
“Before I forget every honorable intention I have ever possessed.”
She smiled faintly. “Have you possessed very many such intentions toward ladies?”
“Remarkably few, until recently.”
“And what has changed?”
His gaze held hers. “You.”
The simplicity of his answer stole her breath. For a long moment, neither moved. Then she slipped her arms around his neck and drew him down to her once more, unwilling to surrender the warmth of his embrace just yet.
George kissed her with a tenderness that made her heart ache. She stared at him, her heart swelling with something so tender and overwhelming that she could scarcely bear it.
“I accept your courtship.”
For an instant, his expression softened into something that made him look almost vulnerable. Her heart began to hammer wildly, and her cheeks grew flushed.
His gaze held hers inexorably, scorchingly. “I promise you’ll not regret it.”
Then he kissed her again. This time she shifted closer to him, parting her lips to the sweet invasion of his tongue gliding against hers. She had been fighting the need to be touched, kissed, stripped bare, and swept away by desire.
She wanted George.
Sensations dropped low into her belly like fire, and it was with a dazed sense that she felt her dress being dragged up to her thighs. Still facing him, she shifted back just enough to study his expression. She had been considering how to broach the subject since their visit to Aphrodite, and now, with his hands resting upon her inner thigh, she decided there was little point in pretending to be timid.
“A painting…one of the paintings showed a lady on her knees with a man’s…I am not sure what it is called…”
George stilled, his gaze transfixed on hers. “His cock…his manhood…his rod. There are many names for it.”
The rush of her heartbeat filled that scant space between their bodies. “I suspected it was the cock you wanted to place in me after you got me wet.”
“Sweet Christ,” he groaned. “We are not having this conversation”
