A Wallflower Christmas (Wallflowers #5)(20)

Bowman stopped with her beside the hedge. “You arrogant little baggage,” he said quietly. “The prey was not of my choosing. I’m merely trying to make the best of my circumstances. And if Lady Natalie will have me, it’s not your place to object.”

“My affection for her gives me the right to say something”

“Maybe it’s not affection. Are you certain you’re not speaking out of jealousy?”

“Jealousy? Of Natalie? You’re mad to suggest such a thing”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with ruthless softness. “It’s possible you’re tired of standing in her shadow. Watching your cousin in all her finery, being admired and sought after while you stay at the side of the room with the dowagers and wallflowers.”

Hannah sputtered in outrage, one of her fists clenching and rising as if to strike him.

Bowman caught her wrist easily, running a finger lightly over her whitened knuckles. His soft, mocking laugh scalded her ears. “Here,” he said, forcibly crooking her thumb and tucking it across her fingers. “Don’t ever try to hit someone with your thumb extendedyou’ll break it that way.”

“Let go,” she cried, yanking hard at her imprisoned wrist.

“You wouldn’t be so angry if I hadn’t struck a nerve,” he taunted. “Poor Hannah, always standing in the corner, waiting for your turn. I’ll tell you somethingyou’re more than Natalie’s equal, blue blood or no. You were meant for something far better than this”

“Stop it!”

“A wife for convenience and a mistress for pleasure. Isn’t that how the peerage does it?”

Hannah stiffened all over, gasping, as Bowman brought her against his large, powerful form. She stopped struggling, recognizing that such efforts were useless against his strength. Her face turned from him, and she jerked as she felt his warm mouth brush the curve of her ear.

“I should make you my mistress,” Bowman whispered. “Beautiful Hannah. If you were mine, I’d lay you on silk sheets and wrap you up in ropes of pearls, and feed you honey from a silver spoon. Of course, you wouldn’t be able to make all your high-minded judgments if you were a fallen woman…but you wouldn’t care. Because I would pleasure you, Hannah, every night, all night, until you forgot your own name. Until you were willing to do things that would shock you in the light of day. I would debauch you from your head down to your innocent little toes”

“Oh, I despise you,” she cried, twisting helplessly against him. She had begun to feel real fear, not only from his hard grip and taunting words, but also from the shocks of heat running through her.

After this, she would never be able to face him again. Which was probably what he intended. A pleading sound came from her throat as she felt a delicately inquiring kiss in the hollow beneath her ear.

“You want me,” he murmured. In a bewildering shift of mood he turned tender, letting his lips wander slowly along the side of her throat. “Admit it, HannahI appeal to your criminal tendencies. And you definitely bring out the worst in me.” He drew his mouth over her neck, seeming to savor the swift, unsteady surges of her breathing. “Kiss me,” he whispered. “Just once, and I’ll let you go.”

“You are a despicable lecher, and”

“I know. I’m ashamed of myself.” But he didn’t sound at all ashamed. And his hold didn’t loosen. “One kiss, Hannah.”

She could feel her pulse reverberating everywhere, the blood rhythm settling hard and low in her throat and in all the deepest places of her body. And even in her lips, the delicate surface so sensitive that the touch of her own breath was excruciating.

It was cold everywhere they pressed, and in the space between their mouths where the smoke of their exhalations mingled. Hannah looked up into his shadowed face and thought dizzily, Don’t do it, Hannah, don’t, and then she ended up doing it anyway, rising on her toes to bring her trembling lips to his.

He closed around her, holding her with his arms and mouth, taking a long hungering taste. He pulled her even closer, until one of his feet came between hers, under her skirts, and her br**sts urged tight and full against his chest. It was more than one kiss…it was a sentence of unbroken kisses, the hot sweet syllables of lips and tongue making her drunk on sensation. One of his hands moved up to her face, caressing with a softness that sent a fine-spun shiver across her shoulders and back. His fingertips explored the line of her jaw, the lobe of her ear, the color-scalded crest of her cheek.

The other hand came up, and her face was caught in the gentle bracket of his fingers, while his lips drifted over her face…a soft skim over her eyelids, a stroke over her nose, a last lingering bite of her mouth. She breathed in a gulp of sharp winter air, welcoming the snap of it in her lungs.

When she finally brought herself to look up at him, she expected him to look smug or arrogant. But to her surprise, his face was taut, and there was a brooding disquiet in his eyes.

“Do you want me to apologize?” he asked.

Hannah pulled back from him, rubbing her prickling arms through her sleeves. She was mortified by the intensity of her own urge to huddle against the warm, inviting hardness of him.

“I don’t see the purpose in that,” she said in a low voice. “It’s not as if you would mean it.” Turning from him, she walked back to the manor in hurried strides, praying silently that he wouldn’t follow her.