Always a Rogue, Forever Her Love (Scandalous Seasons #4)(74)

He spoke haltingly. “Do you no longer want it?”

She wanted him. Juliet turned the packet over in her hands and lied. “Of course.” “Thank you,” she said stiffly.

“I owe you an apology.” His words, harsh and guttural, jerked her attention upwards.

She furrowed her brow. “For…?”

His tautly held shoulders indicated the thin thread he had on his control. “I offered to make you my mistress. I foolishly spoke to you about baubles and trinkets, and promised it all to you, if you’d take me as your lover.”

What had once so appalled her, now enticed. Juliet loved him so desperately she was almost tempted to throw away her virtue for the pleasure of his embrace. Almost. She suspected, if it wouldn’t kill her the day he decided he no longer wanted that place in her bed, she might more seriously consider his offer.

“Will you not say anything, Juliet?”

She traced the tip of her tongue over the seam of her lips. “What would you have me say?”

Anger sparked in his eyes. “Tell me I’m a bastard.” And she realized the volatile sentiment was directed at himself. “Tell me I never deserved you. Slap me.” He delivered those last two words pleadingly.

She shook her head. “I can’t do that.” She couldn’t say or do any such thing. Juliet took a step toward him. “I don’t know a more nobler—”

He groaned and shook his head in protest.

“More generous man,” she continued. She brushed back that single black lock from his brow.

He closed his eyes. “There is nothing noble about me.” His throat moved up and down.

“There is everything noble about you. You love your sisters with a kind of love I only dreamed of from my own brother, my lord.”

His eyes snapped open, filled with fury. “Is that what I am, now? My lord?”

The lord of her life. Her heart. “You were always my lord.” Her voice broke.

Jonathan took her gently by the shoulders. The velum packet slipped from her fingers and joined the sketchpad and riding crop on the ground. “That is not what I always was. I was Jonathan. I was yours, as you were mine.”

She opened her mouth to speak but he pressed two fingers against her lips.

“I spent the past three months telling myself you were better off without me.”

He was wrong. She was nothing without him.

He pushed her bonnet back and ran his gaze over her face. “I convinced myself I was doing the honorable thing, not just because I was being honorable, Juliet. Because I’m not honorable. I’m a selfish, greedy, bastard, and I’ve never been honorable where you are concerned.” He ran the pad of his thumb over her lower lip. “And I thought in staying away from you, and” his gaze moved beyond her shoulder to the stone cottage, and then back to her. “This cottage that I was finally doing the honorable thing where you were concerned, and not because of mere responsibility alone. But because I love you. And when you love someone, you set them free even if it tears you apart from the inside out.”

How wrong he was. A lone tear fell unchecked down her cheek. “You don’t set them free, Jonathan. You fight for them.”

He closed his eyes. “And I didn’t fight for you. Did I? Instead, I fought every day. I fought myself. I fought to turn around each time I marched out the doors of my house and forced myself back inside. I warred with myself. Because you deserve far more than a rogue like me.”

It wasn’t his right to decide what was best for her. Not when she knew in her heart that she would never want or love someone the way she did him.

He lowered his brow to hers. “But I’m still the same selfish, greedy bastard whose carriage you first climbed into because I want you regardless. I want all of you. I want your clever-wit, your cheeky smile. I want your indomintiable spirit. I even want you spitting angry so I can kiss the anger from you.”

I would kiss the proper from you…

Tears clogged her throat and prevented any response. How long she had wanted him.

“Ah, God, don’t look like that. I can’t bear the sight of your tears.”

Except she couldn’t stop them. They fell one by one. Followed by another. And another.

Jonathan dusted the tears from her cheeks, and then when they continued to fall, he lowered his lips and kissed away the remnants of her sadness. “My brave, beautiful Juliet, alone for so long.

He took her face in his palms. He touched his lips to her closed lashes. “But who has helped you, my sweet, fearless Juliet? Who has been there to help you?”

She forced her eyes open and nearly stumbled over the weight of emotion in his eyes.

“Let me be the one, Juliet. Let me be the one to take care of you when you need and love you as you deserve. And in turn, you can care for me as I need and love me even as I’m not deserving.”

Juliet leaned on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his. She poured every bit of longing that kept her awake in the midnight hours into the kiss. Their lips brushed against one another in an age-old rhythm, a meeting, and a reawakening. Then she pulled away. “Yes,” she said softly, and brushed back that same tousled lock. “You were always Jonathan. And I lo—”

“No!” he cut in harshly, killing the words on her lips. “Do not. I’d not let you say it. Not when you deserve to hear first how desperately I love you, how hopelessly empty my life is without you. How meaningless everything is when you are not around.” He dropped to his haunches and held up the deed to Rosecliff Cottage. “I came here to give you your cottage, Juliet. This is yours. It has always been yours. I never had a right to this property.” He reached into his front pocket and withdrew a single note. “I would offer you something else.”