Trial by Desire (Carhart #2)(18)
Instead he pulled away. “There,” he declared again. “Now you’re free to leave.”
Leave. She could leave? She stared at his profile in disbelief. After he’d practically pinned her to a fence post and joked he could use her twelve ways—after all that, he thought she could leave before he tried even one of them?
She bit her lip, hard. She could taste copper salt on her tongue. She could finally breathe now—and her breath seemed heated to fury.
“I can leave?”
He didn’t look back at her. His hands were balled at his sides.
“I can leave? And here I thought that was what you were best at.”
He flinched and looked back at her. “I was trying to be a gentleman.”
“I think,” Kate said, “you are the most obtuse man in all of Christendom.”
“Possible, but unlikely.” He gave her an apologetic shrug. “There are a great many Christians, and a good number of them are idiots. If there were not, Britain would never have gotten into a war with China over the importation of opium.”
She kicked at his boot—not hard, but enough to vent her frustration in physical form. “If I want to speak in hyperbole, I am going to do it. And don’t believe you can stop me with irrelevant political analysis. It’s neither sporting nor gentlemanly.”
“Trust me,” he said wryly, “right now, all I can think about is being a gentleman. It taxes my brain to think of anything except my gentlemanly duties.”
He swallowed and glanced down her neck. It was almost as if he’d never left, as if they were three months into their marriage. As if she were the one yearning forward, while he held himself back in polite denial.
“I retract my statement.” Her voice shook. “You are not the most obtuse man in all of Christendom.”
“No, no. You were perfectly right. The lady of the pasture always retains the right to hyperbole. Use it with my blessing.”
“There’s no need,” Kate said. “I’ve realized that I am the most obtuse woman.”
That finally brought his gaze flying from her bodice to her eyes.
She’d come out here to see if there was any substance to this marriage of theirs, to ascertain if he could accept a wife who took on unladylike pursuits. But she was still susceptible to him after all these years. And despite his informal attire, he still treated her as if he were the consummate gentleman.
“Here I am,” she continued, her voice still shaking, “practically begging you to kiss me. That you haven’t done so…well. I’m not so innocent that I miss the import of that. Men are creatures of lust, and if you haven’t given in to yours, you probably haven’t got any. At least not for me.”
His mouth dropped open.
“Just say so.” She looked up into his eyes. “Make this simple for both of us, if you will. Tell me you have no interest in me. Tell me, so I can stop standing in the middle of a field, believing you might kiss me. It’s been three years, Ned, and I am sick to death of waiting for you.”
He turned to her; his eyebrows drew down. He stared at her for a few seconds, and then he shook his head.
“Speak already.” She felt on the edge of desperation. “Tell me. What have you to fear? I can’t hurt you. And you can’t possibly hurt me more than you already have.”
“Women are the most curious creatures.” He reached out and caught a strand of her hair against her cheek.
That bare contact froze her. “Oh?”
“That’s what you think, is it? That I haven’t kissed you for lack of interest?”
“If you really wanted me, you wouldn’t be able to hold back. I understand how these things work.”
“Someone has been telling you lies. You must think all men are beasts by nature. That we see a thing, and like Champion, we charge unthinking across the field.”
He leaned toward her, and Kate moved back. The wood of the fence post pressed against her.
“You must think we have no semblance of control, that we can do nothing except obey our baser urges.”
That had rather been the import of the furtive discussions she’d conducted with her married friends. It was, after all, why men took mistresses—because they could not control their urges. So she’d been told.
“You’re half right,” he continued. “We are all beasts. And we do have base urges—deep, dark thoughts that you would shrink from, Kate, if you heard what they whispered. We have wants, and trust me, I want.”
She swallowed and looked up at him. He looked no different than before. He had that carefree, casual smile on his face, and for all that he loomed over her, his stance was easy. But she saw something in his expression—a tightening of his brow, the unbidden press of his lips—some quiet, unexplainable thing that suggested gray clouds lurked behind the casual sunrise of his smile.
“Right now,” Ned said, lifting a hand toward her, “I am thinking about taking you against that post.”
Her lungs contracted.
“Trust me when I say I am a beast.”
His fingers brushed down the rough lace at her neck. He found the line of her collarbone through the fabric. The gentleness of his touch belied the harshness of his tone; his hands were warm against her skin. He ran his finger down the seam of her bodice, down her ribs. The trail burned a line down her body. And then his palm cupped her waist and he pulled her closer. She tilted her head up to look in his face. His eyes were hot and unforgiving, and she could almost see the beast that he claimed he was reflected in them. And then his head dipped down—oh so slowly, so gently.